[A. Pole]

However, the really animated core of the political lobby that supports illegal immigration—its mass base, so to speak—is composed of rich homeowners, who desperately want someone to do their dirty work and to do it cheaply.

Bump

[NonValueAdded]

I hope so ... I'd hate to finally make it to rich and find out that the new trend was for them to get poorer. :)

[sauropod]

This article is not even remotely "conservative."

[tx_eggman]

The Economist reports that in the U.S. “the gap between rich and poor is bigger than in any other advanced country.”

So, our rich are richer than theirs ... and our poor are richer than theirs. Hence, the fact that there is a gap between the two groups here doesn't amount to a hill of beans

[Inwoodian]

You lost me when you referred to Kevin Philips as a conservative.

[gcruse]

I couldn't wade through all the bloat. The shock is that it comes from something with the name Conservative attached to it.

[wideawake]

Let's hope so.

[Mase]

We must kill the greedy Kulaks ping

[aynrandfreak]

Buchananite alert! To the extent that a growing disparity is there, it's because of the socialism that we've had in this country since 1914 (central bank, income tax, etc). The biggest income disparities are in places like North Korea where there is a ruling elite that has all the wealth.

One of the reasons that many of 'the rich' are liberal is that they know that to "stay ahead of the Jones'" they have to continue to innovate with their wealth, or at least keep others from reaching their net worth via socialist policies that make it tougher for others to make money.

[Alouette]

Will there be riots in Detroit when the Fordtanic goes down?

[mjp]

the gap between rich and poor is bigger than in any other advanced country

Send all the rich people with all their entire wealth to China. Then there will be no more gap. And I'll bet China would love to have them.

[art_rocks]

Was there a dollar cutoff for what they consider to be rich?

[P-40]

But immigration policy is only one example of the most serious problem with increasing economic inequality

Leaving the door wide open for an unabated influx of extremely poor immigrants does not help this 'wealth gap' one bit now does it...

[Sam's Army]

Tell us A. Pole: What was your motivation to leave Eastern Europe and come to the US?

[laweeks]

Ah yes! Because the rich have theirs, I don't have mine. The eternal struggle. A zero-sum game. Karl Marx would be proud.

[Tailgunner Joe]

If the rich are getting richer, and the poor, if they are not getting poorer in real terms are not seeing their fortunes rise at comparable rates, this would seem to mean that the increasingly opulent consumption by the rich will have as its counterpart the increasingly austere consumption by the poor, and even by the now shrinking middle class. Eventually, the newly poor will not be able to earn enough to maintain their previous levels of consumption. Consequently, some goods produced will not be consumed, thus there will be fewer goods produced, there will be fewer producers or workers, there will be fewer goods consumed, and so on.

Karl Marx called this "immiseration." Its never actually happened.

It does mean, however, that our government will have to tax American citizens more in order to finance its debt.

But instead they cut taxes and this guy still complains about it. Some people you just can't please.

[Lancey Howard]

Ever since the exhaustion of the civil-rights movement in the 1970s, the way many young African-American males have actually contested growing economic inequality has been with crime—mugging, robbing, and raping the rich (and not only the rich but much larger numbers of the middle class and the poor as well, including vast numbers of other African-Americans).

However, the theology (more accurately, ideology) of political Islam is permeated with egalitarian norms and sentiments, and Islamists are often animated by egalitarian resentments and anger as well. Islamists speak frequently about the injustices and exploitation inflicted by the rich upon the poor, and by the rich West upon the poor Muslim world. “Social justice” is a central concept in most Islamist programs. They have their own way of claiming, as the Communists claimed in an earlier era, to speak for “the wretched of the earth".

Huh. So THAT explains crime and terrorism - - it's "the income gap".

[antiRepublicrat]

most obviously the current regressive tax policies of the Bush administration

Regressive tax policies? A gas tax is regressive, since both a rich guy and a poor guy with cars that get 20 mpg pay the same tax, and it's a larger percentage of the poor guy's income.

Lowering the tax for the rich so that it's not as high above that of the poor as it was before is not regressive, it's making it less progressive.

And that's not even all Bush did. I earn less than the max, so I get thousands in child tax credits taken off my taxes. People above that maximum income don't get that break.

[dfwgator]

Our "poor" are still better off than many middle class people in Europe.

You want poor people, go to Haiti.

[sandbar]

I can't wait to hear all the 'yeah for the rich' here, but I don't want to think of this country without a middle class.