I WONDER... ARE GOOD, DECENT AMERICANS SUPPOSED TO BE GETTING RICHER OR POORER THESE DAYS?

I just now caught Sunday's edition of the Times Union laying around and in a section ironically entitled "Reason," there's an article about the "Rise of the New Rich" - and it's written, albeit subtly, as if this is a problem. It classifies the "new rich" as upper-middle-class, making $250,000 per year or more at some point in their lives, but often falling below that threshold later on.  The article is full of subtle contradictions, going from reminding us that these people still tend to be white but, later, saying that they also tend to have more non-whites and be more politically diverse, at least when it comes to social issues.  In fact, their featured, interviewed and photographed example of a "new rich" person is a professional African American man! What confuses me is this: Morally and on the whole, are Americans supposed to get richer or poorer?

I'm confused because whenever there is data to suggest that ANYONE is suddenly doing better economically these days, it's treated more like some new symptom of income disparity than as the good thing it really is.  Since the last recession, the attitude seems to be that since the majority of people suffered and are unlikely to ever have it even as good as they did before, anyone that doesn't fall into that category is an almost intolerable exception and must be greedy and/or lacking in compassion and understanding.  At the moment, I'm pretty much at the bottom of the barrel, but if anyone is to blame for that, it's me.  What's more, nothing that Wall Street or any corporation can do is possible unless WE let them do it - unless WE incur the debt that's sold and WE conveniently ignore what should obviously be deals that are too good to be true... like "no down payment for 2 years" crap that basically counts on the buyer becoming complacent, NOT paying things off in the 2 year time frame and, in most cases, accruing enough interest and potential fees that they wind up paying almost twice as much in the long run. The worst part, of course, is that we live in an age in which the average homeless person can walk into a library or an Internet cafe and access a world's worth of information on pretty much every topic in sight.  So, if knowledge is power, then why are so many with so much access to knowledge also so allegedly powerless?  With information so readily available and accessible, how is ignorance any excuse?

What these articles often fail to mention - perhaps intentionally - is that, for the most part, long-term wealth is NOT all about high levels of income but about management, which is why a raise in the minimum wage isn't likely to do much good and why uproar over the so-called income gap that President Obama says will be a major issue next year is such bunk.  The rich are often characterized as people that stockpile and hoard money, but hoarded money tends to lose value in relation to the ever-rising cost of living.  The rich can only stay rich most of the time by investing their money in something that will replenish it.  This, to be sure, is not the same as buying a bunch of junk that loses at least half its value immediately upon first purchase and then excusing it as collecting.  It may not go towards philanthropy, but how philanthropic can ANYONE be with money they don't have!  How much can you pay in taxes if you don't have  much money to tax to begin with? Historically, redistributed wealth simply means that you lose that upper-class and its reservoir of funds, which generally causes a problem later on when it becomes more and more expensive for whatever government is doing the redistribution to keep their promises and suitably take care of what are often growing populations.

Per the income gap - yes, there has been a loss of traditionally middle-class jobs, particularly in manufacturing, which this article cites.  A lot of it, I suspect, simply has to do with the side effect of improving technology taking the place of some workers.  Be that as it may, the more you earn, the more you can potentially spend, and if you spend all your money - no matter how much that is - you're left with little or no money.  Period. That goes for the rich CEO as much as it does for the burger-flipper behind the drive-thru, and it's a fact no matter how either side of the political line tries to complicate matters.  I've known educated, hard-working people go from great wealth to bankruptcy and poverty while others with barely a high-school education and a middle-class income, at best, wind up retiring better off financially than many successful entrepreneurs.  These are people that have managed or not managed well over the course of years and decades on end, through economic up's and downs and whether DC was controlled by Democrats or Republicans. It is - or, rather, it should and CAN be - the beauty of a free market economy that, with few exceptions, individuals and their families need not be slaves to the consequences of actions on the parts of people they don't and will likely never meet or know.   Only when a society loses sight of that and starts feeling sorry for itself during down times or when too many have made mistakes with consequences that they are unable or unwilling to deal with is it in danger of turning that much-maligned "income gap" into a whole society of people neither rich nor poor because ALL are living below, at or just barely above what once was the poverty level.

So, again, what is the desired outcome here: For people to have more money or less?  Because if you're going to complain when people suffer from poverty and income disparity, it seems STUPID to also complain when others - however few - start doing well. If anything else, the most liberal, tax-hike-loving person in America NEEDS those rich guys to be able to pay most of the higher taxes to fund the social "safety nets."