Conflict between rich, poor strongest in 24 years

HOPE YEN

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Ten­sions between the rich and poor are increas­ing and at their most intense level in nearly a quarter-century, a new sur­vey shows. Amer­i­cans now see more social con­flict over wealth inequal­ity than over the hot-button top­ics of immi­gra­tion, race rela­tions and age.

The sur­vey released Wednes­day by the Pew Research Cen­ter high­lights U.S. per­cep­tions of the eco­nomic divide, an issue that has moved to the fore­front in the 2012 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign amid stub­bornly high unem­ploy­ment, increas­ing poverty and protests by the Occupy movement.

The find­ings come as vot­ers in New Hampshire’s pri­mary Tues­day night made clear that the econ­omy was the issue that mat­tered most to them. In the end, they chose Mitt Rom­ney by a large mar­gin, even as Repub­li­can rivals already gear­ing up for more com­pet­i­tive con­tests in South Car­olina and else­where had stepped up pop­ulist attacks on him as a heart­less cor­po­rate raider who slashed jobs.

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama has been pro­mot­ing a cam­paign mes­sage of middle-class oppor­tu­nity, call­ing for higher taxes on the very rich and suc­cess­fully push­ing a two-month exten­sion of a pay­roll tax cut.

The Pew sur­vey shows that younger adults, Democ­rats and African-Americans remained the most likely as in pre­vi­ous years to cite the exis­tence of strong dis­agree­ments between rich and poor. But in the last two years, three impor­tant swing groups — whites, middle-income Amer­i­cans and polit­i­cal inde­pen­dents — reg­is­tered some of the biggest increases in those who now also hold this view.

As a result, majori­ties of each polit­i­cal party and ide­ol­ogy all agree that seri­ous dis­putes exist between Amer­i­cans at the top and bot­tom of the eco­nomic ladder.

Still, while over­all U.S. aware­ness of class con­flict has grown sig­nif­i­cantly in recent years, pub­lic atti­tudes toward wealthy Amer­i­cans remain largely unchanged.

For instance, about 46 per­cent of Amer­i­cans hold a dis­ap­prov­ing view that rich peo­ple are wealthy because they were for­tu­nate enough to be born into money or have the right con­nec­tions. But almost as many peo­ple — 43 per­cent — say wealthy peo­ple are rich “mainly because of their own hard work, ambi­tion or education.”

That sug­gests some peo­ple who see more con­flict between the classes may believe that anger toward the rich is misdirected.

A recent Gallup sur­vey also found that fewer than half of Amer­i­cans said reduc­ing the gap between rich and poor is “extremely” or “very impor­tant,” com­pared with more than 8 in 10 who said poli­cies to build eco­nomic growth should be a high pri­or­ity for government.

“These changes in atti­tudes over a rel­a­tively short period of time may reflect the income and wealth inequal­ity mes­sage con­veyed by Occupy Wall Street pro­test­ers across the coun­try in late 2011 that led to a spike in media atten­tion,” said Pew sur­vey ana­lyst Richard Morin. “But the changes also may reflect a grow­ing pub­lic aware­ness of under­ly­ing shifts in the dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth in Amer­i­can society.”

In recent weeks, a slew of recent cen­sus data have illus­trated a widen­ing divide, includ­ing the share of over­all U.S. wealth held by the top 10 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion that increased from 49 per­cent in 2005 to 56 per­cent in 2009. A sep­a­rate cen­sus mea­sure also found that a record num­ber of Amer­i­cans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or make earn­ings that typ­i­cally clas­sify them as low income.

“As the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign begins in earnest, it is rea­son­able to expect that these issues will be a part of the polit­i­cal dia­logue,” Morin said.

About 3 in 10 Amer­i­cans polled said there are “very strong” con­flicts between the rich and poor, accord­ing to the inde­pen­dent research group. That is dou­ble the share who believed so in July 2009 and the largest pro­por­tion report­ing that view in the 24 years the ques­tion has been asked in surveys.

In all, about 66 per­cent of those polled now say there are “very strong” or “strong” con­flicts between the top and bot­tom income groups.

In con­trast, a slightly smaller share of Amer­i­cans — 62 per­cent — said there were “very strong” or “strong” con­flicts between immi­grants and native-born Amer­i­cans. Even smaller shares of peo­ple saw such lev­els of con­flict between blacks and whites (38 per­cent) and between young and old (34 percent).

That is a change from 2009, when immi­gra­tion topped the sur­vey list as caus­ing the strongest lev­els of social con­flict. At that time, about 55 per­cent reported “very strong” or “strong” con­flict between immi­grants and native-born Amer­i­cans, com­pared to 47 per­cent who saw such con­flict between the rich and poor.

Other find­ings:

• Per­cep­tions of class con­flict grew for Amer­i­cans of all income groups since 2009. The share increased by 17 per­cent­age points, to 64 per­cent, among those earn­ing less than $20,000; it rose 18 points, to 67 per­cent, among those mak­ing $75,000 or more. The increase was largest among middle-income Amer­i­cans earn­ing between $40,000 and $75,000 — ris­ing 24 points to 71 percent.
• Since 2009, the share of whites who see seri­ous class con­flicts between rich and poor grew by 22 per­cent­age points to 65 per­cent. That is roughly triple the increase among blacks and His­pan­ics. About 74 per­cent of blacks and 61 per­cent of His­pan­ics saw seri­ous conflicts.
• About 73 per­cent of self-described Democ­rats said there were seri­ous class con­flicts, an 18 per­cent­age point increase from 2009. The increase among Repub­li­cans was nearly as large, ris­ing 17 points to 55 per­cent. The biggest increase was among polit­i­cal inde­pen­dents, jump­ing 23 points to 68 percent.

Pew based its find­ings on inter­views with 2,048 adults by cell­phone or land­line from Dec. 6–19, 2011. The poll has a mar­gin of error of plus or minus 2.9 per­cent­age points for all respon­dents, higher for subgroups.

Posted by AP News on Jan 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.