Measured in millionaires, the boom has been a bonanza.
The United States has 5 million millionaires, up from 1.3 million a decade
ago.
Measured in real net worth, the boom has been a bust for families
headed by persons younger than 55 years old. The typical net worth (assets
minus debt), including home equity, of families headed by persons younger
than 55 actually fell between 1989 and 1998, adjusting for inflation.
We're in the midst of a record-breaking boom, but the minimum wage
doesn't bring a full-time worker with one child above the poverty line.
The real value of the minimum wage went up in the 1990s, but it's still
down 27 percent since 1968, when it was worth over $7 in 1999 dollars.
The number of people who do not have health insurance rose by nearly 11
million over the last decade.
A record $13 billion in year-end bonuses was handed out on Wall Street
last year, an 18 percent increase over 1998. In cities across the United
States, emergency requests for food assistance also increased 18 percent
last year.
In the last two decades, as income gaps have grown, voter turnout has
fallen, and higher-income voters make up a disproportionate share of the
electorate.
A recent report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the
Economic Policy Institute, analyzing income gaps (pre-tax) within states,
says "Since the late 1970s, the incomes of the poor have actually
fallen or stagnated in most states.. while the incomes of the wealthiest
grew rapidly." The middle class in most states lost ground or gained
little.
Income gaps translate into voting gaps. In the ten states with the
smallest income gap, an average 57 percent of the voting age population
turned out to vote in the 1996 presidential election, according to Federal
Election Commission data. The ten states with the widest income gap had an
average voter turnout of only 48 percent.
Voter turnout has fallen dramatically and rising economic inequality is
one reason why. Upper-income Americans participate in the electoral
process at much higher levels than middle- and low-income Americans.
Among the eligible citizen population, 76 percent of those with family
incomes above $75,000 voted in 1996, the last presidential election. Only
63 percent of those with family incomes ranging from $35,000 to $49,999
and 57 percent of those in the $25,000-$34,999 range voted, according to
the Census Bureau. Among those with family incomes under $10,000, just 38
percent voted.
Looking at turnout by occupation, 73 percent of those in managerial and
professional jobs voted in 1996, compared with only 43 percent of those
employed as operators, fabricators, and laborers.
As the Keystone Research Center noted in a 1999 report on democracy in
Pennsylvania, "Over half of middle- and low-income Americans believe,
'People like me don't have any say about what the government does.' Only
30 percent of Americans held this view in the 1960s."
Democracy's dilemma is that the more people feel like they have no
influence, the less they participate in the electoral process and the less
influence they have. When upper-income Americans provide a
disproportionate share of the campaign contributions and votes, democracy
is not rule by the people, but rule by the people with more money. If the
trend continues, we will be left with a democracy in name only.
Holly Sklar is co-author of the report, Divided Decade:
Economic Disparity at the Century's Turn, available from the Boston-based
United for a Fair Economy, www.stw.org
