WOE TO YOU WHO ARE RICH NOW...
"In its annual tax analysis for 2000, the IRS reported that the top 400 taxpayers - only 0.00014 percent of the population - now take in more than 1 percent of the total income of all taxpayers. Meantime, their tax payments plummeted, mostly due to substantial reductions in capital gains tax rates. In 2000, the average income of the top 400 increased to $174 million, while the average income for the bottom 90% was $27,000. Even The Wall Street Journal calls it "So much money in so few hands. ...a startling accumulation of wealth at the very top of the income pyramid."

Yet every time this growing disparity is raised, Republicans immediately call it class warfare. There is indeed class warfare raging in this country, but not from those who speak for the poorest Americans. It is a class warfare of tax cuts and budget priorities that make the rich richer while further decimating low- and middle-income Americans. For many in the religious community across the theological spectrum, that inequality is becoming, like I said, intolerable.

A paraphrase of the Bible by evangelical pastor Eugene Peterson, titled "The Message," contains some truth-telling from the prophets Amos and Isaiah about our current situation:

"People hate this kind of talk.
Raw truth is never popular."

"Doom to you who legislate evil,
who make laws that make victims-
Laws that make misery for the poor,
that rob my destitute people of dignity,
Exploiting defenseless widows,
taking advantage of homeless children."

It's the kind of talk we don't hear much these days in America. But we should. If those prophets were around today, they would surely be preaching about outrageous, shameful, and intolerable modern-day laws that enrich the wealthy and make misery for the poor."
Jim Wallis

And yet another sign that the rich are indeed getting richer: "Corcoran's agents had recently noted a resurgence in the (Manhattan) market for apartments priced at $10 million or more." NY Times