We've Adam Smith's principle that national economic well-being is tied to wealth redistribution: the greater a nation's wealth gap between rich and poor, the more unhealthy and even ruinous a given economy. Too great a wealth gap, in short, will ruin a nation, according to Smith. America's own economic failings, coming against the backdrop of a wealth gap equivalent to those of Third World nations, mirrors Smith's warnings.
Even before the Great Recession, America's redistribution of wealth to the rich had reached Third World proportions. In 2007, that the 400 richest Americans owned more wealth than the bottom 150,000,000 million Americans (that is, the 400 richest Americans own as much as does approximately 50% of the American population). (The entirety of the article linked above is worth a read; it reveals some eye-popping stats regarding America's widening wealth gap and how the richest of the rich are contributing less and less to America's tax coffers.)
And now the wealth gap is widening even more. As alerted by an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning, the Great Recession is throwing even more money at the rich while taking from the poor. "The incidence of underemployment problems in the fourth quarter of 2009 was 13 times higher among those workers in the bottom household income decile as opposed to those residing in the top decile of the income distribution (20.6% vs. 1.6%)." (). Broken down another way, among the top 10% of richest Americans, the unemployment rate is 3%, while among the poorest 10% of Americans, the unemployment rate is 31%.
The question is, will America's politicians have the backbone to heed Adam Smith's warnings about redistributing wealth to the rich, and take action in time to avert a total economic collapse in America?