Growing Chasm Between Haves And Have-Nots Is An Alarming Omen

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2012/07/20/increasing-wealth-inequality-is-a-warning-sign-of-instability/

James K. Galbraith is a chip off the old block. This University of Texas economist, the son of John Kenneth Galbraith, is continuing the family tradition of sticking the damn truth in front of the world by means of writing this just published volume–Inequality and Instability, A Study of the World Economy Just Before the Great Crisis (Oxford University Press).

Better consult it’s theme that finance has come to dominate the U.S. economy, not manufacturing, not agriculture and that the super wealthy have used finance to make themselves richer and faster than anyone else. Writes Galbraith pointedly: “the difference between the financial sector and other sources of income is– wherever we can isolate it– a large (and even prime) source of changing inequalities.”

The way to measure this inequality is to look at the incomes of geographic counties. See that the stock market before 2000 rewarded the inhabitants of Silicon Valley and the financiers in New York and Greenwich that rode the tech bubble up to 5000 on the NASDAQ index. Galbraith found out that just 15 counties in the whole of the nation– with half of them from New York, Silicon Valley and King County, Washington (Microsoft millionaires).