And not even by Barack Obama, whose party once fought for working men and women against the economic royalists.īut as appalling as all this may be, here’s a new revelation of which you may not be aware. Not by Mitt Romney, who is the embodiment of the predatory world of financial capitalism. But in neither of the two presidential debates so far has the vastness of this astounding inequality gap been discussed. When the Supreme Court made its infamous Citizens United decision, liberating plutocrats to buy our elections fair and square, the justices may have effectively overturned rules that kept bosses from ordering employees to do political work on company time.Īcross America, this divide between the super-rich and everyone else has become a yawning chasm that studies indicate may stifle jobs and growth for years to come. At no time in modern history has the top one hundredth of one percent owned more of our wealth or paid so low a tax rate. This, in a city where economic inequality rivals that of a Third World country. Of America’s 25 largest cities, New York is now the most unequal. The median income for the bottom 20 percent last year was less than $9,000, while the top one percent of New Yorkers has an average annual income of $2.2 million. Simultaneously, the powers-that-be have just awarded Donald Trump the right to run a golf course in the Bronx, which taxpayers are spending at least $97 million to build - what “amounts to a public subsidy,” says the indignant city comptroller, “for a luxury golf course.” Good grief - a handout to the plutocrat’s plutocrat. “A lot of what is happening,” she said, “… is about wealth preservation.” The mega-rich have been buying these places “looking for a place to stash their cash,” a realtor from Sotheby’s explained to The Times. Others, more modest, range in price from $45 million to more than $50 million. At least of two of the apartments are under contract for more than $90 million each. The New York Times has dubbed it “ the global billionaires’ club” - and for good reason. The new Gilded Age is roaring down on us – an uncaged tiger on a rampage. Walk out to the street in front of our office here in Manhattan, look to the right and you can see the symbol of it: a fancy new skyscraper going up two blocks away. When finished, this high rise among high rises will tower 1,000 feet, the tallest residential building in the city.
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