Karl Marx having (reportedly) advocated “alienation of the proletariat”, one observes some not-too-dissimilar activities in the American Press 2006.

This seen by my many times in one Los Angeles newspaper ; I have not even bothered locating the articles. This hoax is presumably present in other Press.

The facts of the matter, if you think of it, the reader, are more or less so :

Joe Smith 1 has 10,000 dollars,

Joe Smith 2 has 10,010 dollars,

Joe Smith 3 has 10,020 dollars,

Joe Smith 4 has 10,030 dollars,

Joe Smith 5 has 10,040 dollars,

Joe Smith 6 has 10,050 dollars,

Joe Smith 7 has 10,080 dollars,

[ etc. etc. ]

There are over 200,000,000 million individuals in the US. There may be a broad range of the personal “worth” of the individual ; a whole gamut. One can measure the disparity between the incomes of the wealthiest and of the poorest — were such a calculation any use.

But there nowhere is any “gap”, such as advertised by the newspapers.

And What Of It

Who cares that the rich are getting richer (so long as nobody gets ripped off in the process) ?

(The "so long as nobody gets ripped off" may indeed be part of the problem, but, presumably, only in the minority of the instances of somebody's getting richer from time to time.)

On any account, “the poor” would ever denote some persons at the bottom of some monetary “worth” scale.

What is “the poor” would vary with the times and places ;

One can conceive of decent conditions even at the bottoms of the “worth” scale. This has nothing to do with “the rich getting richer” (and some claimed but non-existent “gap”).

”The rich”, as least some such persons, might not even mind parting, in some instances, with some portions of their fortunes — provided, naturally, that any such contributions would go towards some demonstrably workable solutions.

WPT