aGameOfThrones
03-08-2014, 01:30 AM
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It would be Ayn Rand's dream come true: separate states for rich people and poor people.
A proposal to split California into six states, introduced by billionaire investor Tim Draper in December, would formally create state lines between the haves and the have-nots.
"You'd be creating one exceptionally wealthy state and others with dire poverty," Corey Cook, a political science professor at the University of San Francisco, said to The Huffington Post. "You'd create massive inequality."
While the plan has little chance of becoming a reality, it's just the latest troubling sign that the rich are leaning in to the rising levels of inequality in the U.S. and increasingly seeking to break away from the middle- and lower-classes, depriving them of tax revenue and choking off much-needed resources.
Perhaps nowhere in the U.S. is income inequality as extreme as in California. One in four of its citizens live in poverty. Yet the state has the highest number of ultra-rich people in the country. The state deeply needs the tax revenue from the wealthy to support those who are less well-off. Under Draper's plan, this critical tax revenue redistribution would be lost.
Splitting up the state would "widen the chasms in education, incarceration and wealth that are already greater than they were 25 years ago," said Larry Gerston, professor of political science at San Jose State University.
Draper isn't alone in wanting to segregate rich and poor. Airlines are increasingly offering their wealthy clients more physical distance from the masses in coach. United and Delta now have private airport suites for first-class travelers, and will drive high-end passengers from one gate to another in luxury cars.
And then there are school districts. In the past two years, wealthy neighborhoods in several states have launched campaigns to break away from school districts that include poor communities. This has taken place in Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, California and Tennessee, and some of the efforts have been successful.
Elsewhere, many affluent Americans prefer to live in exclusive neighborhoods. It's common for wealthy residents of Southern California and Silicon Valley to live in gated communities, which often employ private security rather than relying on public police officers. And the security may be for a good reason. In the non-gated Lindenwood neighborhood, near Silicon Valley, average home prices exceed $7 million. Vandals recently spray-painted black graffiti on the 1 percent's walls, garages and white picket fences.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/07/california-6-states_n_4890982.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
It would be Ayn Rand's dream come true: separate states for rich people and poor people.
A proposal to split California into six states, introduced by billionaire investor Tim Draper in December, would formally create state lines between the haves and the have-nots.
"You'd be creating one exceptionally wealthy state and others with dire poverty," Corey Cook, a political science professor at the University of San Francisco, said to The Huffington Post. "You'd create massive inequality."
While the plan has little chance of becoming a reality, it's just the latest troubling sign that the rich are leaning in to the rising levels of inequality in the U.S. and increasingly seeking to break away from the middle- and lower-classes, depriving them of tax revenue and choking off much-needed resources.
Perhaps nowhere in the U.S. is income inequality as extreme as in California. One in four of its citizens live in poverty. Yet the state has the highest number of ultra-rich people in the country. The state deeply needs the tax revenue from the wealthy to support those who are less well-off. Under Draper's plan, this critical tax revenue redistribution would be lost.
Splitting up the state would "widen the chasms in education, incarceration and wealth that are already greater than they were 25 years ago," said Larry Gerston, professor of political science at San Jose State University.
Draper isn't alone in wanting to segregate rich and poor. Airlines are increasingly offering their wealthy clients more physical distance from the masses in coach. United and Delta now have private airport suites for first-class travelers, and will drive high-end passengers from one gate to another in luxury cars.
And then there are school districts. In the past two years, wealthy neighborhoods in several states have launched campaigns to break away from school districts that include poor communities. This has taken place in Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, California and Tennessee, and some of the efforts have been successful.
Elsewhere, many affluent Americans prefer to live in exclusive neighborhoods. It's common for wealthy residents of Southern California and Silicon Valley to live in gated communities, which often employ private security rather than relying on public police officers. And the security may be for a good reason. In the non-gated Lindenwood neighborhood, near Silicon Valley, average home prices exceed $7 million. Vandals recently spray-painted black graffiti on the 1 percent's walls, garages and white picket fences.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/07/california-6-states_n_4890982.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592