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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 11/4/13

Are Heartless People Simply Born That Way?

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In East Carroll, the rich live north of Lake Providence, the poor south. The two groups seldom interact. East Carroll's most affluent 5 percent average $611,000 a year, 90 times the $6,800 incomes the poorest fifth of the parish average. Such wide income gaps, Sutter shows, invite "gaps in empathy."

"Looking across Lake Providence from the north," as he puts it, "can warp a person's vision."

One example of this warped vision: East Carroll's rich see food stamps as an "entitlement" that rots poor people's incentive to work. Yet these same affluent annually pocket enormously generous farm subsidies. In 2010, East Carroll's most highly subsidized farmer grabbed $655,000 from one federal subsidy alone.

The average food stamp payout in the parish: $1,492 per person per year.

What should we do about the rampant inequality in East Carroll Parish -- and far beyond? For simple starters, of course, we could end federal farm subsidies for wealthy farmers -- and restore food stamps to full strength.

The longer-term task? CNN's John Sutter has some ideas on that score. He offered last week an eclectic short list that includes everything from raising taxes on the nation's most privileged to raising minimum wages for the nation's least.

In 2013 America, sums up Sutter, we've come to see stark gaps between rich and poor as "inevitable." His simple reminder for us all: "They don't have to be."

For more on the research that explores how inequality "weakens the willingness to share," in the words of economist James Galbraith, and concentrates resources that could be shared in the "hands least inclined to be willing," check "The Fraying Social Fabric," a chapter now online from the 2004 book, Greed and Good: Understanding the Inequality that Limits Our Lives.

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Sam Pizzigati is an  Associate Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies

Editor,  Too Much ,  an online weekly on excess and inequality

Author, The Rich Don't Always (more...)
 

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