Free Republic

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT Now, one of the stories going around -- and it's been going around awhile -- is all of the disparity in income, the gap between the rich and the poor. And depending on what story you read, the middle class is about to be wiped out. There isn't going to be one much longer. Because the middle-class people are not moving north and upward, out of the middle class. They are moving south, and they're getting closer to poverty and near-poverty. And while that's happening, the rich are getting richer, and it's just not fair. James Pethokoukis, the...

Dennis Gartman gave a blistering defense of income inequality... We celebrate income disparity and we applaud the growing margins between the bottom 20% of American society and the upper 20% for it is evidence of what has made America a great country. It is the chance...to make something of one’s self; to begin a business and become a millionaire legally and on one’s own that separates the US from most other nations of the world. ... That is why immigrants come to the U.S.: to join the disparate income earners at the upper levels of society and to leave poverty...

Why So Depressed?BY CHRIS PUPLAVAPhil Gramm, economic advisor to Presidential candidate John McCain, said last month that the U.S. consumer was in a mental recession and that the economy’s fundamentals didn’t warrant the low consumer confidence numbers. Mr. Gramm made the following comments in a Washington Times interview: McCain adviser talks of ‘mental recession’ (07/09/2008)We have sort of become a nation of whiners.You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline.We've never been more dominant; we've never had more natural advantages than we have today. We have benefited greatly (from the globalization of the...