Poll: 2/3 Of Americans Unhappy With Income & Wealth Distribution
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Roughly two out of three Americans are unhappy with the current distribution of income and wealth in the United States, according to the latest Gallup Poll.
Breaking the numbers down by political party identification, three-fourths of Democrats don't approve of the income distribution compared to 70 percent of independents and 54 percent of Republicans. Forty-three percent of Democrats and independents are "strongly dissatisfied" with the U.S.' current income and wealth distribution, according to the Gallup Poll.
The Great Recession and the collapsed job market also played a role in the general dissatisfaction with the income distribution. Roughly 54 percent of Americans are satisfied that if you work hard in the U.S. you can "get ahead." Those numbers are starkly lower than the 70 percent who agreed with that statement just before the Great Recession hit in late 2007.
All of it presents both Republicans and Democrats with a tricky political agenda to move forward in the coming months. After several years of Republican-led and White House approved austerity and pro-business policies, Americans seem to want more of the wealth shared with the workers making the businesses run.
President Barack Obama spoke of income inequality during a late December 2013 speech and is expected to once again highlight the problems in the upcoming State of the Union address.
Both the White House and the GOP-led House of Representatives have competing jobs plans currently dead on arrival in both houses of Congress over partisan concerns.
But with a crumbling infrastructure and growing angst among the working class who are seeing wages drop while executive and Wall Street pay explodes, it could become the political issue that drives the elections in 2014 and the presidential election in 2016.
