From VTdigger
These were the opening remarks by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., at a hearing this week titled "The Income and Wealth Inequality Crisis in America."
Today, we are going to discuss an issue that is of enormous consequence to our country, but gets far too little discussion. And that is the crisis of income and wealth inequality in America.
The simple truth is that in America today, the very rich have become much richer while tens of millions of Americans are struggling to put food on the table and live in dignity.
We're going to learn why it is that the middle class in our country, once the envy of the world, has been in a state of decline for decades, while, at the same time, we have seen a massive transfer of wealth from working families to the top 1 percent.
We're going to talk about why it is that, during this horrific pandemic, 63 percent of our workers have been living paycheck to paycheck worried that if someone in their family gets sick or if the car breaks down, they will be thrown into financial desperation, while 660 billionaires have become $1.3 trillion richer and now pay a lower effective tax rate than truck drivers, schoolteachers or nurses.
We're going to talk about the obscenity of the 50 richest Americans now owning more wealth than the bottom half of our society 165 million people while over 90 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured and cannot afford to go to a doctor when they get sick.
We'll be asking about how it happens that the top one-tenth of 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, and that two individuals own more wealth than the bottom 40 percent, while hunger in America has been at its highest level in many decades and more than half a million people are homeless and veterans are sleeping out on the streets.
Incredibly, if income inequality had remained the same as it was in 1975, the average worker in America would be making $42,000 more today. Instead, as the number of billionaires explodes, the average worker in America is now making $32 dollars a week less than he or she made 48 years ago after adjusting for inflation.
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