Why the gap between rich and poor matters in the US and the world

Don't think the tax rates on the wealthiest 1% should rise to that whopping 39% from where they are, by letting the George W. Bush Tax Cuts expire?  Then read on, McDuff:


First, income in America is now more concentrated in fewer hands than it’s been in 80 years. Almost a quarter of total income generated in the United States is going to the top 1 percent of Americans.

The top one-tenth of one percent of Americans now earn as much as the bottom 120 million of us. 


The marginal income tax rate on the very rich is the lowest it’s been in more than 80 years. Under President Dwight Eisenhower (who no one would have accused of being a radical) it was 91 percent. Now it’s 36 percent. Congress is even fighting over whether to end the temporary Bush tax cut for the rich and return them to the Clinton top tax of 39 percent.


The perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top; a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy; and a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government that’s raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it back to work.

We’re losing our democracy to a different system. It’s called plutocracy.  --Robert Reich, Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley


And so we're reminded, this from none other than Plato, all those centuries ago:  


"An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics."  

Link:  http://robertreich.org/post/1344561814