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From foreclosures to layoffs, the effects of the economic downturn have reached every corner of the commonwealth and the country.
But neither foreclosures nor unemployment has affected Virginians as significantly as another legacy of the recession that, despite officially ending in 2009, seems to still touch nearly every aspect of everyday life.
A recent report by the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis ranked Virginia as second in the nation - behind only New Jersey - in terms of the disparity between the state's wealthiest and poorest workers.
"In 2010, the top 10 percent of wage earners in Virginia earned at least 5.7 times the wages of the bottom 10 percent of wage earners," the report notes. "In just the first year of the recovery (2009-2010), workers earning in the top 10 percent of the wage distribution experienced greater real wage growth (5.32 percent) than workers in the bottom 10 percent experienced across the past 30 years (5.19 percent)."
Those findings give a sobering view of the widening chasm between Virginians who've managed to secure a college education and white-collar or professional jobs, and Virginians who've headed to work at a factory, store or job site after graduating from high school.
The lowest 10 percent of wage earners make the same in Virginia as they do across the country, but as income grows, so does the disparity between Virginians and the rest of America.
On one level, that certainly sounds good for Virginia, a state that has long been able to brag about its ability to lure businesses, particularly high-tech companies, from elsewhere.
But the implications of the gap are bleak. Those who ply a trade, who manufacture goods, who cook food, who work in retail, have been especially hammered by this recession and its nasty effects. That is only the latest insult.
Politicians over 30 years have systematically dismantled a system designed - by both Republicans and Democrats - to give all Americans an equal opportunity to excel. Now the tax system has helped concentrate wealth in the hands of fewer Americans than at any time in the past 80 years.
Government resources have been devoted not to those who need help to work upward, but to those who are already up. The result is a nation where economic mobility is as difficult as it has ever been, where the disparity between rich and poor is among the starkest in the developed world.
Too often, mere mention of such realities has been dismissed as demagoguery, as code for "class warfare."
But the fact remains that across the country, report after report has shown that the disparity is real.
In Virginia, it's glaring. And it's growing.
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The Premise
This whole article is based on the assumption that somehow the highest paid workers should only make a certian multiple of the lowest paid workers. That is a flawed concept from the beginning and not the way our society has historically worked. If today you work at McDonalds in ten years you may run your own restuarant and in 30 own a chain with the attendant increases in income. Perhaps today you are going to school but in ten years are "discovered" and become a highly paid entertainer. You cannot just toss out as "bad" that the workers in rural virginia make minimum wage while the high tech workers and CEOs in Alexandria make more. Income is often a function of your ambition, abilities and desires rather than what some highly paid think group wants to project as politically correct.
Federal Salaries Skew Figures for Virginia
The top 10 percent of wage earners in Virginia are boosted by the high government salaries many northern Virginia residents make. Many are overpaid for the work they do. This skews the firgures.
The Starkest on Earth? Come on.
While I agree with much of this article and I support the vauge undefined efforts of the OWS movement I do take severe umbrage when the author tries to state, when refrencing Virginia that "the disparity between rich and poor is among the starkest on Earth." This is just plain wrong and the author loses a great deal of credibility on this one remark.
As flawed as our nations corporate, legislative, elective and financial systems are they beat the hell out of India, China, Somalia, and the Persian Gulf States. To say that any American, who has access to universal education, a host of social welfare programs and one of the highest standards of living in the world is somehow among the worst served is infantile and severely lacking in perspective.
Let's not forget that while we are chanting against the 1% on wall street...OUR NATION is the 1% of the world and the single largest consumer of resources. Any day in Virginia, no matter your circumstances is better than it could be else where.
You are right
The line should have included some qualification, which I have now added.
More accurately, the income disparity in America is now among the starkest in the developed world.
http://goo.gl/kDoXx
Thanks for the catch.
Don Luzzatto, Editorial Page editor
Starkest in developed world?
There's another chart you didn't link from the OECD, Social Spending. Our social spending stands at 17% of GDP which is exactly what the medium is for all member countries. From 2007 back to 1982, our social spending increased annually by 2% of GDP. Also, the OECD chart you linked needs some explanation; Income inequality, Panel A, for the US stands at .38 (OECD medium is .31) with Slovenia at .24 and Chile at .48 Hardly a runaway indicator with only a 7/10 of 1 percent difference (if I'm reading the chart correctly) between the US and the medium difference. Panel B, annual average change of income inequality for US is .5, OECD medium is .3 with a number of countries having 0 and Finland being the highest at 1.2. I suspect that those that embrace European Socialism may not realize that in many countries that embrace European Socialism, the wealthy continue to get richer including Great Britain and the inequality grows larger then in the US. Unless I have it all wrong, where's the beef?
The bigger problem
is not about the top 10% and the bottom 10%.
It is about the middle 80%.
They are losing ground at a shameful rate and that is what is going to hurt our economy, and our country, more than the disparity between the top and bottom.
And these were people with decent skills and education working in what used to be competitive enterprises.
But when investment stopped decades ago, the slow erosion of the stable and prosperous middle class began.
And I think it was the slow, but inevitable, reduction of earnings and the similar increase in such necessities as education and health care that blindsided Americans.
Credit was used to shore up lifestyle until it became a multi-headed dragon sucking the life out of familes: credit cards and home equity.
And it wasn't always just to buy the latest toy. Medical and educational expenses were adding to the debt load.
When it sneaks up over decades most folks use credit to tide them over until their incomes rise again.
And, of course, it never did.
Meanwhile, the biggest profit sector of our economy (about 40% today) shifted to the financial.
Useful for investment in productive enterprises, to be sure, but useless when it was just funding the casino called Wall Street.
So if the top 10% and the bottom 10% concern us, then wait until it becomes just the top 10% and the rest of America.
Banana republic anyone?
Sounds like the bottom 10% needs to get its act together
The days when a person could just show up with the ability to swing a hammer and draw a good wage are gone. They aren't coming back. A good wage requires skills and a good work ethic.
Employers will train good workers to operate high tech tools, but they won't invest in that kind of training unless the employee is reliable and committed.
But the problem is not that the top 10% is too well paid, it is that the bottom 10% just isn't productive enough to support higher pay.
Who's fault is that?
Maybe in your universe
but in this one, American workers are among the most productive. The problem for us is that we can't work as cheaply as workers in China, India, or the poorest developing countries and the big producers, driven by short-sighted greed for maximum profits choose to maximize exploitation at our and ultimately, their own expense. Your unwavering credo of unfettered capitalism has wreaked havoc on the global economy and left desolation and misery in its wake. It is a failed model. That said, if it is training that is needed you should support public investment in workforce training so that we can get people back to working and consuming but more than likely you have a simplistic parable of why that can't work either. In any case, the private sector cannot provide the number of jobs needed and will not ever be able to. We need public works jobs and we need to redefine work. We also need a sustainable economic system that prioritizes citizen needs and the common good.
Not all men are created equal
despite what the Declaration of Independence said.
There are always going to be those who thrive in our economic system and those who struggle to survive.
And it is not always about work ethic. It has to do with innate skills, marketable intelligence, physical and mental abilities, risk tolerance, educational opportunities and drive.
Many, if not most, of those in the bottom 10% are probably doing the best they can. They often have multiple jobs just to stay afloat.
And they are also doing jobs that need to be done, that we are dependent upon for a functioning society, but are not willing to pay for.
The only jobs available today that pay well are not just high tech, but serious high tech requiring engineering degrees and science education at the post graduate levels.
As a percentage of society, few can attain those goals. And those that do, of course, start out in debt up to their eyeballs. Which means that those that tried, but could not achieve that level, are in debt up to their chins with no job prospects.
Regarding the hiring and training you mentioned, that last I looked, few are doing either. Mainly, companies are just adding workloads to existing employees.
If skills are needed, why are we making education so woeful at the early stages and so expensive at the higher levels. That is certainly not the fault of the lower income child.
Add the fact that there has been virtually no investment in manufacturing for almost a generation.
"And they are also doing jobs that need to be done,"
Yeah, someone has to cook the fries. ...