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Friday, October 7th, 2016

Finance Is Ruining America

Author:     Alana Semuels
Source:     The Atlantic
Publication Date:     Sep 23, 2016
 Link: Finance Is Ruining America
Stephan:   Trickle down, supply side, Randian economics, the economics of Speaker Paul Ryan, the economics of the Republican Party, are an unmitigated social disaster -- unless you happen to be rich, in which case they are wonderful. There are few places where this is more obviously illustrated than the county of Fairfield, Connecticut.  Here's the story and the data. Note, in light of the previous story, how once again the tax code is used to protect the wealth of rich, at the cost of the middle class and poor.
An abandoned factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut

An abandoned factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut

BRIDGEPORT, CONNECTICUT —Few places in the country illustrate the divide between the haves and the have-nots more than the county of Fairfield, Connecticut. Drive around the city of Bridgeport and, amid the tracts of middle-class homes, you’ll see burned-out houses, empty factories, and abandoned buildings that line the main street. Nearby, in the wealthier part of the county, there are towns of mansions with leafy grounds, swimming pools, and big iron gates.

Bridgeport, an old manufacturing town all but abandoned by industry, and Greenwich, a headquarters to hedge funds and billionaires, may be in the same county, and a few exits apart from each other on I-95, but their residents live in different worlds. The average income of the top 1 percent of people in the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk metropolitan area, which consists of all of Fairfield County plus a few towns in neighboring New Haven County, is $6 million dollars—73 times the average of the bottom 99 percent—according to a report released by the […]

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