I’ve mulled this over quite a bit, and it seems that we must have a tiered society. If the guy repairing my car or serving fries at McDonalds made as much as we do, then we couldn’t afford to hire them. So we need a lower paid tier. So those of us in the middle class or those making $300 mil per year can afford to hire everyone below them. It’s kind of a service tier, isn’t it?

One thing I don’t know is if wealth could be better distributed. If every hedge fund manager and CEO was paid only $200K, could we raise minimum wage to a “living wage” and provide health insurance to everyone? Would this bridge the gap to the poor?

Are we destined to keep shrinking our middle class?

Are tens of millions of America’s children destined to grow up in poverty? It’s a shame, we are supposed to be the richest country in the world but we have a high rate of infant mortality (highest in the industrialized world, higher than Poland and parts of Russia) and a high rate of poverty. Our health care costs more per person than any other industrialized country, but we get less for it.