Attitudes towards Closing Economic Gaps: Mind-Sets and the Responses to Solutions and to Solvers

Abstract

One need only read the news to get a sense that the economic situation of the middle and the lower classes is becoming increasing dire. Over the past decades, the disparity in income or really in purchasing capabilities have widened, until there is almost a sense of a shrinking middle class, and an increasing group of people who are living from check to check, simply because of the high prices. The awareness of the disparity is decades old [1-3]. The answer is the economy, of course, just like it was in 1992, when William Clinton was elected. The problems of today, 2021, are more severe, however, and the issues far deeper. Economic issues, especially the massive disparity between the rich/ultra-rich and everyone else is codified in the phrase ‘the 1%.’ Furthermore, at the time of this writing, inflation is rearing its ugly head, goods are becoming in short supply because of the ‘supply chain,’ lawless is breaking out across the United States, the country is emerging slowly from the ravages of COVID-19 pandemic, and the nation is divided into the red states and the blue states, the socalled Republican (party) States, and the so-called Democratic (party) states. In other words, the Fraying of America, a term coined by Arthur Kover in work begun a decade ago with Howard Moskowitz, awaiting publication [4].