Income Inequality is the Leading Destroyer of American Families

29 Feb Income Inequality is the Leading Destroyer of American Families

In this Opinion Piece that ran in the New York Daily News on 25 February 2016,, Dr. Paul explains how the growing economic gap between the “haves and have nots” is destroying the emotional and physical health of American families.
This year’s election has become a circus of fools and folly.
On the Republican side we have a reality TV star and a posse of human rights bandits manipulating a desperate and angry crowd.
On the Democratic side it’s not much better. There are candidates who talk of the most important issue facing our nation — income inequality — but one’s used her position of power to feather her own family’s nest and the other speaks of income inequality in a polarizing voice.
America is not a socialist nation. It’s a nation whose excellence was built on the hopes and dreams of a capitalistic system, a system where every citizen regardless of race, religion, gender and socioeconomic position can achieve a better life for herself and her family.
In order to get our great country back on track, we must focus first and foremost on reducing the gulf between the haves and the have-not’s. This can only occur by reinvesting in the emotional and physical well-being of the American family in the full range of its expression.
As a licensed marriage and family therapist who works in the trenches with American families at all levels of the income spectrum, I see each and every hour of each and every day how the stresses and strains of income inequality are destroying the emotional and physical well being of our families.
At the heart of this ability to realize the American Dream is the well-being of America’s marriages and families. To succeed in capitalism’s competitive environment, our citizens must first have a stable and nurturing launching pad from which they can venture bravely out into the world.
Historically, the institution of marriage and the integrity of the family unit provided this pad. We’ve made great strides in honoring the institution of marriage by expanding the human beings who can enjoy its benefits, but we’ve blindly allowed the pernicious effects of income inequality to erode the well-being of the American family.
These stresses manifest in a host of addictive disorders including alcoholism and drug abuse, domestic violence, infidelities, divorce and parental neglect.
Recently, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Department of Economics at Princeton University empirically confirmed my clinical impressions. In a groundbreaking study,* the researchers found that white middle-class Americans are living in an acute state of economic stress that has caused a sharp decrease in their physical health and an alarming increase in their death rates.