There’s something the wealthy and elite in America are leveraging against the middle class and the poor. They use it more effectively and more efficiently than anyone else. It’s politics. Voting. The rich are more politically active than you are and they have no desire to slow down.
Increasingly, income is accruing to the wealthiest. As of 2012, the top 7 percent control 22 percent of all wealth. At the same time, the GOP continues to tout that increasing taxes on the wealthiest will stifle growth, ignoring the reality that the working class barely makes enough to survive, much less save and make it harder and harder to vote. The problem will persist though, without legislative action of some kind, as wealth takes generations to disperse from families, if it does at all.
That’s the game that the wealthy know how to play so much better than those who are not wealthy. According to data reported by the Washington Post, 100 percent of the wealthy voted in 2008. They’re fighting tooth and nail to hold onto every cent they have and keep anyone from taxing that income.
If the working class will turn out to vote their added voices can take steps to change the direction we’re on.
As Sean McElwee at Salon points out:
The wealthy are using the political system to turn their income into wealth and then that wealth into more wealth. They’re going to keep doing it, unless we stop them. One solution is to reduce the massive turnout gap between the rich and poor.
So if you want to do your part to try and combat income inequality: vote!
