Wealth and income disparity continues to grow each year

Theoretical and empirical evidence points to various historical and contextual inputs, e.g., the decrease in

manufacturing jobs, decrease in union membership, continued effort to redistribute wealth upwards through tax

relief, racism and other forms of structural factors.

Governmental programs, initiatives and broader safety net attempts to mitigate disparity, such programming has not kept pace with broader economic factors.

The current state of affairs is likely a confluence of all of these factors and others. Disparity owing to racial and gender dynamics are acknowledged. Massive inequity impacting various demographic groups has been codified and practiced openly resulting in a pernicious disparity attributed to practices such as red lining.

It is also critical to consider the wide interplay of cultural and social context and attitudes that sustain disparity.

Americans enjoyed one of the lowest Gini-coefficient ratings post war through the 1970s. Economic mobility was possible, home

ownership was possible and health care was far more affordable. Unions were popular as was government involvement in health, education, and housing. The FDR administration was perhaps the highwater mark of governmental legitimacy in mitigating some of the adverse consequences of capitalism.

The highest tax rate ironically occurred under a republican, Eisenhower administration. The LBJ administration echoed many of these liberal democratic principles with growth in governmental programs.

The Reagan administration was the ‘right’ turn. The evolving social and cultural ethos favored individual initiative and entrepreneurship over more communitarian ideas and practices. Hostility to government intervention, taxes and unions evolved as economists began documenting the change and impact of how the lower economic rungs were being left behind.

Even though a significant percentage of the U.S. population have difficulty paying rent, obtaining, or sending their children to college, accessing affordable health care, debt due to health care there has not been a groundswell of support to reverse the trend.

The outrage and demonstrations surrounding racism, abortion, transphobia has not carried over to issues of economic inequality. Individuals in economic disenfranchisement have also been used as  fodder in culture battles by politicians that scapegoat others, e.g., immigrants. There has been a demonization of governmental intervention, despite the fact that and that economic disenfranchisement cuts across racial, religious, ethnic, gender and geographic lines,.

This acceptance of persistent and growing inequality results in an unarticulated economic segregation, leaving those who ‘have’ distanced and protected from those who ‘have not’. While not as pernicious or morally abhorrent as in racist practice, this economic segregation approaches an economic apartheid.

The economic disenfranchisement does not deny rights to economic fruits but the interplay and myriad number factors places a significant percentage of the U.S. population enduring a de facto apartheid to all the goods and services enjoyed by others.

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