So...how much did the wealth gap increase during the 1990s and what was done to stop it?

[izzybeans]

Hidden in this new round of Orwellian campaign bitterness are the answers to those questions. That's what we should be focusing on. Who cares if Obama is right and who cares if a certain subset of this population is too bitter to accept it?

Seek the answers to those questions and get over yourselves.

[redqueen]

1. Good questions.

[MadHound]

2. The gap between the wealthy and the rest of us increased to a record breaking chasm

Higher than the previous record set during the Gilded Age. I'm not sure what the numbers are, and I'm away from my home library right now, but you can find the specifics in Kevin Phillip's "Wealth and Democracy" among other books.

[izzybeans]

3. Great resource thanks. "Wealth and Democracy"

[Armstead]

4. Here;s one analysis

Looks at it from different angles:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E3D7113FF936A25751C1A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

Grounded by an Income Gap


By ALEXANDER STILLE
Published: December 15, 2001

For 30 years the gap between the richest Americans and everyone else has been growing so much that the level of inequality is higher than in any other industrialized nation.

What no one can quite figure out, though, is why, or even whether anything should be done about it.

''Why there has been increasing inequality in this country has been one of the big puzzles in our field and has absorbed a lot of intellectual effort,'' said Martin Feldstein, a professor of economics at Harvard University and the chairman of President Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers. ''But if you ask me whether we should worry about the fact that some people on Wall Street and basketball players are making a lot of money, I say no.''

With inequality growing through out the industrialized world, Mr. Feldstein, like many economists, has come to see inequality as a basic feature of the new high-tech economic scene, the natural consequence of an economy that has begun to reward talent, skills, education and entrepreneurial risk with increasing efficiency.

''There is no doubt that market forces have spoken in favor of more inequality,'' said Richard Freeman, a professor of economics at Harvard. Just look at the figures. Most of the incredible wealth generated during the 1990's boom went to the richest of the rich. ''Forty-seven percent of the total real income gain between 1983 and 1998 accrued to the top 1 percent of income recipients, 42 percent went to the next 19 percent, and 12 percent accrued to the bottom 80 percent,'' writes Edward Wolff, an economics professor at New York University in a new edition of his book ''Top Heavy'' (New Press), about growing economic inequality.

In the 90's only the people at the very top and very bottom made any real improvement. Wages for full-time male workers, for example, have grown only 1.3 percent since 1989. The richest 10 percent of American households, economists point out, have 34.5 percent more financial wealth than the average family. These changes have persisted through Democratic and Republican administrations and began at the same time in Britain, even before Margaret Thatcher's market-oriented policies, Mr. Wolff said, indicating that they are not simply the product of economic policy but reflect deep structural changes in the economy. The leading hypotheses are technological advances, increases in trade and imports, growing immigration and declining union membership. ...MORE

[izzybeans]

5. Interesting perspective from back then.

The assumption the economists in that article make is "well it's the market". I'm still looking to see what was done about it.

[Armstead]

7. Basically nothing was done about it because of a falase assumption

If you remember, back then there was all kind of talk about how "There will be constant growth. No more economic cycles..." blah,. blah,blah

The assumption, encouraged by the right wing as well as by Clinton/DLC message was that the economy would continue to boom endlessly and thus that problems like inequality and unemployment will magically disappear.

[TacticalPeek]

6. The income gap narrowed during Clinton's administration after growing for over a decade.

Simple facts.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B01E5D8103EF932A25751C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1


Likewise the wealth gap had widened greatly under Reagan, and narrowed during Clinton's terms.
http://www.womenspeecharchive.org/women/profile/speech/index.cfm?ProfileID=60&SpeechID=290


Talking US, of course.

[izzybeans]

8. The Census disagrees with those admin. spokespersons.

Income inequality remained unchanged and the wealth gap grew as debt increased.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/incineq/p60204/p60204txt.html

[TacticalPeek]

10. Wrong dates on income and no mention at all of wealth at the source you cited.

Most of the data and analysis is from decades before 1992, some of it stops at 1992, and nothing is included past 1998, so nowhere is there an ability to state the Clinton Administration's record at your link.

Just scanning it though, you can see that it says income inequality growth stopped or reversed at the end of their date:

"it appears that the growth of household income inequality has slowed post-1992."

In fact, it did slow and reverse. This is not a disputed fact: income inequality decreased during Clinton's administration.

[izzybeans]

11. You are the first person I have ever heard say that it reversed.

In fact most studies suggest the slow down was minimal in light of historical data. In fact the only dip in the top 1% as an overall share of income was between 1998 and 2001. But 1998 their share was higher than 1988.

This is typical:

http://www.demos.org/inequality/numbers.cfm

[stillcool]

9. Interesting article from 1997...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Economics/ThreeYears_NAFTA.html
THREE YEARS OF NAFTA:
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH !
by Scott Cooper

On July 10, 1997, Bill Clinton released his Administration's report on three years of the North American Free Trade Agreement ( NAFTA).
By law, Clinton was required to release the report by July 1. But he missed the deadline-no doubt to ensure that the report would vindicate NAFTA, which has been under constant scrutiny and criticism since well before its ratification. As InterPress Service (IPS) reported on July 3, 'The delay appears reminiscent of the Administration's handling of a recent investigation of plant closings and labor practices under NAFTA, observers say. Release of that report was delayed for months, during which time the Administration repeatedly disputed allegations it was seeking to suppress and sanitize the document."

And what did the Clinton Administration conclude?
NAFTA had a modest positive effect," says the report's executive summary, i'on U.S. net exports, income, investment and jobs supported by exports."
In his cover letter to the report, Clinton wrote: "The Congress and the administration are right to be proud of this historic agreement. This report provides solid evidence that NAFTA has already proved its worth to the United States during the three years it has been in effect. We can look forward to realizing NAFTA's full benefits in the years ahead."
Why has the Administration been so keen on ensuring a positive assessment of NAFTA? Clinton is seeking Congressional support in the fall for so-called "fast track" authority to negotiate new trade accords, including the expansion of NAFTA to include Chile as well as the planned establishment of a hemispheric Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). This means legislators would agree either to approve or reject-but not amend-trade accords the president negotiates. Administration officials believe they need this authority to signal other countries that they can negotiate without fear that U.S. Iawmakers will amend deals beyond recognition.
------------------------
Devastating effects
The run-up to the release of Clinton's report touched off a flurry of activity. The week before Clinton's report was released, six research groups-the Economic Policy Institute, the Institute for Policy Studies, the International Labor Rights Fund. Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch campaign, the Sierra Club. and the U.S. Business and Industrial Council Educational Foundation- issued a counter-report. titled '-The Failed Experiment: NAFTA at Three Years," the report is a scathing indictment of the treaty.

Here are some of the highlights regarding the United States.
For nearly two decades, the real wages of American blue-collar workers have been declining. Imports from low-wage countries are an especially important cause of increasing wage inequality, and Mexico is one of America's most important low-wage trading partners."
Many firms have used the threat of moving to Mexico as a weapon against wage increases and union organization. In a survey commissioned by the NAFTA Labor Secretariat, Professor Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell found that over half of the firms used threats to shut down operations to fight union organizing drives When forced to bargain with a union, 15% of firms actually closed part or all of a plant-triple the rate found in the late 1980s, before NAFTA."
Based on standard employment multipliers, the increase in the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico and Canada has cost the U.S. 420,000 jobs since 1993 ('50,710 associated with changes in the trade balance with Mexico, and 169,498 with Canada). NAFTA was responsible for 38% of the decline in manufacturing employment since 1989. NAFTA and globalization generally have changed the composition of employment in America, stimulating the growth of lower paying services industries and accelerating the deindustrialization of our economy."
The Clinton report claims that U.S. exports to Canada and Mexico supported an estimated 2.3 million U.S. jobs in 1996, "an increase of 311,000 jobs since 1993." But Lori Wallach, director of the Global Trade Watch program at Public Citizen, had a different assessment: The administration's NAFTA report must be from Mars, which would explain both the delay and the amazing whoppers and omissions."
The "Failed Experiment" report illustrates how the 1995 peso crisis in Mexico, "commonly used to excuse the sharp deterioration of the U.S. trade balance with Mexico," in fact resulted from an engineered effort to support an aggressive export-led growth strategy in Mexico. The artificially high peso "held down inflation in Mexico" and "helped to win votes" in Congress for passage of NAFTA.
'The peso collapse has devastated Mexico's economy. The number of unemployed workers doubled between mid-1993 and mid-1995, to nearly 1.7 million. Additionally, there were 2.7 million workers employed in precarious conditions in 1996. To make ends meet, many families are forced to send their children-as many as 10 million-to work, violating Mexico's own child labor law. An estimated ~8.000 small businesses in Mexico have been destroyed by competition with huge foreign multinationals and their Mexican partners. Real hourly wages in 1996 were 7% lower than in 1994 and 37% below 1980 levels. Of the 1995 working population of 33.6 million, 19% worked for less than the minimum wage, 66% lacked any benefits, and 30% worked fewer than 35 hours per week. During three years of NAFTA, the portion of Mexican citizens who are 'extremely poor' has risen from 31 to 51%, and 8 million people have fallen from the middle class into poverty.'
-------------------------------------------------------
Those conclusions should be enough to convince every trade unionist and activist for social change from the Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego that the fight to stop NAFTA's expansion throughout the hemisphere should be a top priority. But if not. consider the scandalous report released on June 1 by the three nation North American Commission on Labor Cooperation on "Plant Closings and Labor Rights" under NAFTA. It had also been delayed-by some eight months-while commission officials sanitized the findings (not surprisingly, a charge they deny). IPS picks up the story. ' The study not only white-washes data, it also under-reports it.' Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research at Cornell University. was quoted as saying at the time.
"In research undertaken for the commission's report, Bronfenbrenner found a marked increase in U.S. employers threatening to move jobs to Mexico under NAFTA as a way of dissuading their workers from joining unions. When this effort failed. some 15 percent of employers actually closed their plants.
"These findings were expunged from the commission's report, " Bronfenbrenner told IPS. Even worse, the final conclusion of the report basically states that labor law is working effectively to deal with these problems and their only recommendation for the future is that there be more research.''
The job displacement effects and downward pressure on wages in the United States due to NAFTA is well documented. Here are a few examples.
-------------------------------------------------
Under NAFTA, JVC shifted production of television sets from its Elmwood Park, New Jersey plant to Tijuana, Mexico. laying off 198 workers in the process-according to the Labor Department. The New Jersey workers averaged $360 in weekly earnings, while the Tijuana workers get $50 on average. Some 24,600 workers in Tijuana are employed in the television manufacturing industry. (Miami Herald. May '4, 1996)
According to an Institute of Policy Studies report, an estimated 69,048 U.S. jobs in motor vehicle-related industries were lost in 1995 due to trade with Mexico. Meanwhile, an internal memo revealed that Chrysler invested $300 million in facilities in Coahuila, Mexico between 1994 and late 1996.
According to the U.S. Labor Department report cited above, more than 100,000 U.S. workers had lost their jobs directly due to NAFTA by the end of last year. The Economic Policy Institute puts the real number at 600,000.

read more: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Economics/ThreeYears_NAFTA.html

[izzybeans]

12. Was there no policy in place to address this issue? I still can't find one.