http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States
"Data from the United States Department of Commerce and Internal Revenue Service indicate that income inequality has been increasing since the 1970s,[10][11][12][13][14] whereas it had been declining during the mid 20th century.[15][16]
As of 2006, the United States had one of the highest levels of income inequality, as measured through the Gini index, among high income countries, comparable to that of some middle income countries such as Russia or Turkey,[17] being one of only few developed countries where inequality has increased since 1980.[18]
Alan Greenspan stated before Congress in 2005 [19]:
“
As I've often said, this is not the type of thing which a democratic society - a capitalist democratic society - can really accept without addressing. ”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States
"Wealth inequality in the United States refers to the unequal distribution of financial assets among residents of the United States. Wealth includes the values of homes, automobiles, businesses, savings, and investments. [1] Those who acquire a great deal of financial wealth do so primarily through the appreciation of fiscal portfolios. For this reason, financial wealth involves only stocks and mutual funds, and other investments and is subject to much greater inequality than net worth alone. Various sociological
statistics suggest the severity of wealth inequality "with the top 10% possessing 80% of all financial assets [and] the bottom 90% holding only 20% of all financial wealth."[2]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality
Magnitude of inequality in the modern world
A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University reports that the richest 1% of adults alone owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000. The three richest people possess more financial assets than the lowest 48 nations, combined [2]. The combined wealth of the 10 million millionaires grew to nearly $41 trillion in 2008.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade
"The fledgling Republican Party led by Abraham Lincoln, who called himself a "Henry Clay tariff Whig," strongly opposed free trade and implemented a 44 percent tariff during the Civil War in part to pay for railroad subsidies, the war effort, and to protect favored industries.[8] President William McKinley stated the United States' stance under the Republican Party (which won every election for President until 1912, except the two non-consecutive terms of Grover Cleveland) as thus:
"Under free trade the trader is the master and the producer the slave. Protection is but the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, of self-development, of securing the highest and best destiny of the race of man. [It is said] that protection is immoral…. Why, if protection builds up and elevates 63,000,000 [the U.S. population] of people, the influence of those 63,000,000 of people elevates the rest of the world. We cannot take a step in the pathway of progress without benefitting mankind everywhere. Well, they say, ‘Buy where you can buy the cheapest'…. Of course, that applies to labor as to everything else. Let me give you a maxim that is a thousand times better than that, and it is the protection maxim: ‘Buy where you can pay the easiest.' And that spot of earth is where labor wins its highest rewards."[9]"
""Free trade" is opposed by many anti-globalization groups, based on their assertion that
free trade agreements generally do not increase the economic freedom of the poor or the working class, and frequently make them poorer. Where the foreign supplier allows de facto exploitation of labor, domestic free-labor is unfairly forced to compete with the foreign exploited labor, and thus the domestic "working class would gradually be forced down to the level of helotry." [26] To this extent,
free trade is seen as nothing more than an end-run around laws that protect individual liberty, such as the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (outlawing slavery and indentured servitude). In this regard, protective trade policies are seen, not so much as protecting domestic producers, but rather, as protecting liberty itself. This argument actually comports with the economic analysis of Free Trade to the extent that "slavery and perfect competition equilibria are Pareto optimal." [27] Thus, while admitting that some gain in efficiency might be realized in the short-term by implementation of free trade policies, the long-term question of the cost of that efficiency in terms of loss of liberty remains."
-Spyder
