We are in the midst of the highest level of income inequality ever and it is widening. According to Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, "America currently has the most inequality, and the least opportunity, among the advanced countries."

Nationwide, in the last ten years, 95 percent of the economic gains have gone to the top 1 percent of earners. Our nation's wealthiest 25 billionaires have more that $1 trillion in wealth, that's the equivalent to the wealth of 56 percent of the rest of the population. In New Jersey, according to 2012-2016 Census data, income inequality is getting worse in 14 of our state's 21 counties. In Mercer County, the median income in West Windsor is now $167,629 and just $34,257 in Trenton.

Lately the media is giving more attention to the widening of the income inequality gap. This is a good sign. However, they need to do more than just report that the chasm is expanding. They need to drill down and analyze what is going on. Why has the overall unemployment rate declined to 3.7 percent (lowest level since December 1969) while wage growth has been very sluggish? Why has the historical pattern of wages picking up when unemployment falls not held this time around?

Part of the explanation for the anomaly is the hallowing-out of labor market over the last two decades, a result mainly of accelerated automation and globalization. Jobs that require middle-range skills (not a college degree) have been declining rapidly, while those involving skills at the lower and higher end of the spectrum have been growing.

People in lower-paid, lower-skill jobs -- retail workers, janitors and home health aides -- have little bargaining power to demand higher wages. Middle-skilled workers -- including clerks, call center operators and factory workers -- are being replaced by computers, robots and frequently lesser-paid people in low-wage countries. Higher-skilled workers are capturing an outsized share of pay. The hallowing out has been especially prevalent in New Jersey which currently rank 49th out of 50 states in wage growth.

A key factor contributing to the lack of wage growth is the dramatic reduction in union members. Nationwide it is less than 11 percent of the workforce, down from 34.8 percent in 1954.

In a brilliant recent article in The New York Times Magazine by Dr. Matthew Desmond, a Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, entitled "Why Work Doesn't Work Anymore" the author describes in detail the plight of a mother of three, who for almost three years, has 'belonged to the "working homeless" a now-necessary phrase in today's low-wage/high-rent society." Dr. Desmond shreds the historic argument that the poor are lazy and don't want to work. He writes, "The nonworking poor person getting something for nothing is a lot like the cheat committing voter fraud; pariahs who loom far larger in the American imagination than in real life."

Desmond profiles Vanessa Sullivan, who lives in Trenton's East Ward and is a hard-working part-time home health working for a private health care provider. She is able "to work 20 to 30 hours a week, which earns her around $1,200 a month. And that's when things go well." Her wages are stuck at $10 to $14 an hour depending on insurance coverage of the client she is working for.

Vanessa is one of 7.6 million American's who fall within the category know as the "working poor". These folks who are mostly over 35 years of age spend at least half the year working or actively looking for employment. Desmond described the working poor in this way: "They are adults - and often parents - wiping down hotel showers and toilets, taking food orders and bussing tables, eviscerating chickens at meat-processing plants, minding children at 24-hour day care centers, picking berries, emptying trash cans, stacking grocery shelves at midnight, driving taxis and Ubers, answering customer-service hotlines, smoothing hot asphalt on freeways, teaching community-college students as adjunct professors, and yes, bagging groceries and scooping ice cream in paper hats."

The working poor, whether they live in the rust belt or in Trenton, are struggling to survive. They are rightfully anxious about their plight and panic stricken about the economic fate of their children and grandchildren. A key to addressing their anxiety is for the federal government to implement subsidized training programs to equip those lacking skills for 21st century jobs, especially in STEM (science, technology, engineering & mathematics) fields, and to undertake a desperately needed infrastructure improvement program that will rebuild our nation's roads, tunnels and bridges and provide thousands of well-paying jobs

Instead of doing that, we have a President, who has provided mammoth tax breaks to the super rich and who in order to curry favor with those who are fearful, appeals to their darkest impulses - racism, bigotry, xenophobia and protectionism rather - than addressing the underlying causes of income inequality.

The Democrat must nominate a presidential candidate with a comprehensive plan to close the wage gap. Such an effort could be funded through a 1-5 percent sliding-scale increase in the tax rate on investment income (dividends and capital gains) on those earning in excess of $250,000 annually and through the repatriation of funds currently held overseas, with a portion of returning funds earmarked for infrastructure improvements, not the pockets of those who are already extremely wealthy.

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