Policies widen gap between rich and poor

To the editor:

For 25 years real wages, adjusted for inflation, dropped or remained stagnant for 70 percent of U.S. workers while CEO salaries rose from 41 times to more than 400 times that of the average wage earner. Median family income dropped while the top 1 percent of the richest families increased their holdings to 40 percent of the total wealth in the country. Manufacturing jobs steadily declined while millions of workers were forced into low-paying, dead-end, service-sector jobs without benefits or security. The majority of people currently living in poverty are working at low-wage jobs. Some 25 percent to 30 percent of those who become homeless are working when this occurs. It's difficult to support even one person on $6 an hour.

During this same period, U.S. taxpayer dollars given to corporations in various forms, what is now correctly called corporate welfare, steadily increased, with some estimates being as high as $150 billion a year, while the gap between the rich and the poor also increased to the highest level since the robber barons of the 19th century. Massive consolidations of power have occurred with, as one example, two corporations now controlling some 75 percent of the world's grain. I assume no one needs to be reminded of the extreme corporate influence on the political process and the media. And now we have Enron and WorldCom and how many more? How about that good old deregulated, trickle-down economics? Sure works for some people.

ROBERT POLACK JR.

Cape Girardeau