"The rich get richer
The poor get poorer"
This fallacy is inconsistent with the facts. Compare the wealth and power of the industrial magnates of the 1890's in the US with the wealth and power of today's wealthiest (i.e., Bill Gates and Warren Buffett). Back in the 1890's, a single individual (I believe it was a Rockerfeller, but that may not be correct) could pay off the entire US national debt from personal resources. How many of our wealthy citizens would have to pool their resources to pay off the current national debt? 120 years ago, the wealthy had sufficient power to run their businesses as they saw fit (albeit in many cases, in accordance with questionable moral practices). Today, the wealthy need government permission to sneeze.
The poor getting poorer? In the 1950's, growing up in a "middle class" family in the United States, we did not have air conditioning or an automobile, nor did my parents own their own home- but we always were able to rent quality housing (no leaky roof, no broken windows, well heated in the winter). But we were not poor- we ate well, attended good public schools, dressed well, attended the movies on a regular basis...We did not have a television (mostly because one needed a tower about 120 feet high to receive a signal in the rural area where we lived). Today, when I visit poor neighborhoods, I am struck by the number of cars parked outside the tenements, by the number of televisions and boom box stereos blaring from the broken windows, by the number of people talking on cell phones or walking about with earbuds stuck in their ears (true, one can not tell if these are really attached to a working IPod...). And this in in a "Third World" country. But, most tellingly, in most of the world, the life expectancy of the poorer elements of the society has increased dramatically over the past 100 years. I fail to see how one can claim that the poor are getting poorer...
