A U.S. Case Study
A sign of the times:- $180 million check to AOL's chief should the Verizon merger go through.
- $1 billion in just one week of art sales for Christie's.
- Rents for a two-bedroom apartment in the historically Bohemian, West Village neighborhood of Manhattan -- where 50 years ago a starving young artist by the name of Bob Dylan once strummed a guitar -- start at $5,000/month and go for $6,500 -- easy.
Yet U.S. federal guidelines for minimum wage is $7.25 per hour -- rendering a family of two or more, with one wage-earner, below the poverty line at a little over $15,000/year. Need I say anything further in advocating an increase to the minimum rate for low-wage earners and its positive impact on society as a whole? To go otherwise is counterproductive to healthy and collective social growth when one strata of the population is the sole beneficiary of economic gains.
Are we blind to the parallels of social inequality via our unsustainable economy as previously demonstrated in the 20th century that contributed to a severe worldwide depression? Nearly 100 years ago the Roaring 20's were a similar era wrought with income disparity feeding unbridled wealth. Right before the Wall Street Crash it was a decade of gluttony and voracious appetite for profit and heightened speculative activities, which gave an illusion it would last forever – we know all too well how history played itself out. Thus the times we live in now hark back to lyrics from a popular 1921 song that still ring true, "the rich get rich and the poor get poorer ~ ain't we got fun?!"
