The Rich and The Poor, Percentage Wise

THE OCCUPY WALL STREET movement (R.I.P.) tended to encourage us to see American society as consisting of two parts: the one percent wealthy elite powerful, and the ninety nine percent non wealthy, consisting of the rest of us. All along I think we all understood that this paradigm is a bit, shall we say, "contrived". You could just as easily claim that we are divided into the two percent versus the ninety eight percent, or three versus ninety seven, and so on. Recent research, the results of which are online today, show that the proper ratio may be more like twenty percent versus eighty percent. The odds are getting better for the wealthy powerful side of the line! Now maybe it'll be a more even fight. Twenty percent of American adults are found to be affluent, at least during some portion of their lives, if not all the time. People change jobs, and financial fortunes. Some high stakes gamblers amass large fortunes, squander them, then amass anew, over and over again. We know for sure than in any war between the rich and the poor, it won't be one versus ninety nine, under any circumstances. Many poor will side with the wealthy, hoping for a share of the wealth. The late writer Gore Vidal told the story of riding in the back seat of his grandfather's limosine. Gore Vidal was a seven year old child, and his grandfather, sitting next to him, was a Senator from Oklahoma. Protestors were throwing rocks at their car as they rode through Washington. This was the Bonus March, when tens of thousands of World War One veterans descended on Washington to force the government to pay their pensions early. At that point, said Vidal, he realized, even as a small child, that a war between the rich and the poor was indeed a real possibility in the United States. No matter what the exact numbers, in America ther is a growing number of poor, and a growing number of rich. A growing divide between rich and poor. That can only mean that the middle class is shrinking, and this is not good for domestic tranquility.