It's like watching the 'Grand Canyon' of earning basic Human Dignity getting wider and wider -- only that it's not really so "grand" when you drill into some of the latest data ...
Divide between rich and poor a widening chasm in US
by Joseph Stiglitz, smh.com.au -- October 14, 2014
[...]
In the US, upward mobility is more myth than reality, whereas downward mobility and vulnerability is a widely shared experience. This is partly because of America's health-care system, which still leaves poor Americans in a precarious position, despite President Barack Obama's reforms.
[...]But, partly owing to a Supreme Court decision and the obduracy of Republican governors and legislators, who in two dozen US states have refused to expand Medicaid (insurance for the poor) -- even though the federal government pays almost the entire tab -- 41 million Americans remain uninsured.
When economic inequality translates into political inequality -- as it has in large parts of the US -- governments pay little attention to the needs of those at the bottom.
[...]
Interactive: A State-by-State Look at How the Uninsured Fare Under the ACA
Kaiser Family Foundation, kff.org -- Dec 2014
Here are some more glimpses of our ongoing "wealth erosion" from the recent Report that Stiglitz cites:
Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013
Current Population Reports
Issued September 2014 -- P60-249
by Carmen DeNavas-Walt and Bernadette D. Proctor
Widening disparities, flat-lining growth rates, spreading the impoverished 'pain' -- these are NOT good things -- for those of us without 'a winning ticket' in their Economic Game.