Income Inequality

Unlike global warming, I guess there's no debate that there is income inequality, world-wide as well as in the US.  I read that the top ten hedge fund managers make more money than all of the kindergarten teachers in the United States.  If that's so, that's pathetic.

I understand there is great wealth in this country.  There are almost 700 billionaires here.  I'm not sure I can count to 700 let alone one billion.  The often berated "top 1%" control about 40% of all the nation's wealth.  That really doesn't bother me.  I don't think it should.

According to some of the figures I found, the wealthiest 1% of the people in the US pay a little more than 40% of the income taxes, while the top 3% pay more than half of them.  And the tax rate for the richest folks is about double what it is for the "average" tax payer.  I'm not arguing "fair share" here, mainly because the definition of "fair" is very elusive.  I'm immediately suspicious when folks start talking about "fair," "fair share," etc.

I guess my question is, Why are so many people upset by others' wealth?  That there are 700 billionaires in the US doesn't detract from my life, at least financially, does it?  Maybe it does and I don't realize it.  But I can't see that it does.  Nor does it seem to have much of a negative impact on the vast majority of others' lives.  (Political influence is a different story.  That money can buy legislation that affects all of us is disturbing, particularly when that legislation harms more than it helps.)

Maybe many people, with the help of doo-gooders (and I do mean doo) have come to confuse income inequality with poverty.  Surely there are many people in the US (too many) and the rest of the world who live in states of poverty.  But doesn't "poverty" have an elusive definition?  I wonder if it has become a subjective, not an objective, term of measurement.

More than 80% of American households have at least one big screen television, that's "at least one."  (I have no idea what they cost.)  Almost all Americans have cell phones, 77% with smart phones.  (Does that number include kids?  Regardless, I know two of the three Americans who don't have a cell phone.)  And the list goes on.  If this is the case, what is wrong with "income inequality?"

Is it because people are greedy, regardless of their own situations?  Do they want what the other guy has?  Is it envy?  How does the wealth of Bill Gates or Warren Buffet or any other billionaire make most Americans less comfortable?

I'm not cold-/hard-hearted.  I know there is abject poverty in the United States.  In a nation with this much wealth that seems tragic.  But it seems that it's taboo to ask questions regarding that state of poverty.  Why are people poor?  Is it a natural condition in a capitalist system?  I think Thomas Sowell has done a lot of work identifying that.  He claims that there is always a state of flux, that many people in the lower income brackets rise while others in the upper brackets fall and vice versa.  Still, there seems to be a permanent "underclass" as the economists and sociologists call it.

But why is that?  Is it because of a lack of education?  If that is the case, then why is that so?  Can it really be the deteriorating state of schools/education, especially in urban areas?  Is it that education is not valued among some people, that to be educated, to try hard in school is not cool?

I suspect that income inequality has become equated with unfairness.  It's "unfair" that some people (and it depends on which people!  Where are the outcries of the unfairness of the money professional athletes, hippy-rock stars, the top Hollywood-types, and their ilk have?) have a lot of money while others have less (although not necessarily so little as to be poverty-stricken). 

At the same time perhaps the anger is not necessarily directed at wealth, but at the influence it can and does buy--political and governmental influence.  That some people spend millions and more to influence their causes is all right while that others do the same is not OK and sparks cries of protest.