Is This "American Exceptionalism"?

So, what's the common denominator here?

What links poor educational outcomes, poor health-care outcomes and high levels of violence all together?

It's the inequality stupid!

Thanks to the United States' 34-year-long failed experiment with Reaganomics, right now we are seeing unprecedented levels of wealth inequality.

Today, the 400 wealthiest Americans own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.

Similarly, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans now own more than 35 percent of the United States' wealth, while the bottom 50 percent of Americans own just 2.5 percent of this nation's wealth.

And, over the past 15 years -- the annual income of the typical American household has fallen by 9 percent.

The wealth gap in the US today is as wide as it was in 1928, just before the Great Depression.

As Yale University economist Robert Schiller put it, "The most important problem that we are facing today ... is rising inequality..."

Inequality alone is a huge problem, but as Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett point out in their book The Spirit Level, higher levels of inequality directly cause a host of other problems.

For example, they found that health and social problems are worse in more unequal countries, like the US, which comes in dead last in their study.

Those health and social problems include things like life expectancy, infant mortality, homicides, child wellbeing, math and literacy rates, mental illness and imprisonment.

So, while jingoistic politicians might argue that the US is the greatest country in the world, the facts really speak for themselves: We aren't and inequality is to blame.

Fortunately, we can change that.

We can become exceptional once again, and become the "city upon the hill" for the rest of the world to emulate.

That starts by fighting income inequality by rolling back the Reagan tax cuts, giving labor better protections and making corporations pay their fair share to support the US economy.

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