{"id":13681,"date":"2026-09-20T23:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T03:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/?p=13681"},"modified":"2026-09-27T17:46:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T21:46:13","slug":"ben-ybarbo-discussion-board-5-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/2026\/09\/20\/ben-ybarbo-discussion-board-5-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Y&#8217;Barbo &#8211; Discussion Board 5.3"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The statistic that stood out most to me is that the top 1% owns between 40 and 50% of the nation\u2019s total wealth (although new data discussed in the video: Wealth Inequality in America Updated: 2026 says 32%), more than the combined wealth of the bottom 90%. This contradicts the old idea of the strong middle class the U.S. was once known and envied for. Now, 90% of families, once debts and mortgages are factored in, have little to no assets at all. This isn\u2019t just a gap between the rich and poor, but a sign of a deeper issue.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>This extreme wealth concentration turns into political power. The reading describes the DuPonts as some of the largest contributors to Republican presidential campaigns, and the Rockefellers had family members and close associates occupy positions from the presidency to the Federal Reserve Board to the CIA. When that much wealth translates into that much direct access to the government, one begins to question whether the policy gets shaped by public need or by whoever can afford the most influence.<br>Worker productivity has risen by about 75% over the past few decades, while taking into account inflation, wages for the majority have stayed flat or fallen. If the federal minimum wage had kept pace with productivity, it would be over $14\/hr instead of $7.25. An hour of labor produces more value than it used to, but workers aren\u2019t the ones seeing it in their paycheck, instead it\u2019s going back to that small few.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":12053,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discussion-board-5-3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12053"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13683,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13681\/revisions\/13683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu\/pol-100-0501-fall-2026-american-government\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}