04/09/08 - New York Times: William Nickerson Wants To Join The Fight To Close The Education And Income Gaps

The Nicherson Clan has greatly benefited from the education and income gaps in Connecticut - daughter Sarah; son, Storm; Senator Nickerson and his wife, Jane.

Featured Greenwich News Report:

Income Gap in Connecticut Is Growing Fastest, Study Finds
New York Times - United States

STAMFORD, Conn. — Marie Wendorff knows better than most about Connecticut’s economic contradictions.

By age 38, Ms. Wendorff had accumulated the trophies of suburban life: a picturesque 3,800-square-foot Colonial house in Wilton, membership in the local country club, a ski house in Windham, N.Y., and a 24-foot boat docked in Long Island Sound. But a messy divorce in 2004 pushed her into bankruptcy.

On the same day in the summer of 2005 that she applied for food stamps, she was invited to attend a friend’s birthday party on a yacht.

“It’s like two different worlds,” said Ms. Wendorff, a mother of three who has struggled to keep her family afloat amid a sea of wealth.

Like Ms. Wendorff, Connecticut is straddling those worlds. According to a new study by two groups based in Washington, the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the income gap between the have-lots and the have-nots is widening faster in Connecticut than in any other state....

The study, released on Tuesday, also found that Connecticut is the only state in the nation where the poorest 20 percent of people lost real ground over the last 20 years

...Higher income at the upper end and lower income at the bottom meant that Connecticut’s rich earned 8 times as much on average, as its poor, up from 4.6 times when measured two decades ago. Nationally, the gap was 7.3 times between 2004 and 2006, up from 6 times two decades earlier....

...The authors said that they hoped to use the report to advance policies — like raising income taxes rather than sales taxes or sin taxes, which tend to be regressive — that might reduce income inequality. They also favor indexing the minimum wage to inflation, increasing eligibility for unemployment insurance and expanding the earned-income tax credit to give lower-income families a break on state taxes...

Nancy Kail, who helped found the Greenwich Alliance for Education, a foundation that works to correct some inequities in public schools, said that the growing income gap “translates into other gaps like achievement gaps in school or success gaps.”

“It’s bad news for all of us, and in a town like Greenwich, which is resource-rich, it’s shameful that it exists,” Ms. Kail said. “It’s a community responsibility to do something about it.”

....Kristen Pavlik, 26, was the first in her family to attend college and is now a counselor at a domestic-violence shelter in Norwalk. She moonlights doing clerical work and tutoring. Ms. Pavlik said that living among “the extreme wealth” in Connecticut constantly tests her resolve: She must wait until midmonth, for her second paycheck, to buy groceries, and struggles to have $100 left after rent, utilities, gas and car payments. It helps that her mother, who lives nearby in Waterbury, often provides packages of frozen homemade meals.

“The thing that is stressful is it’s not always easy for me to put things away in my savings,” she said. “God forbid I ever had an emergency.”.....

... State Senator William H. Nickerson, a Greenwich Republican, said that closing the income and education gaps in Connecticut is a critical issue, but he rejected the idea that raising taxes on the wealthy is a solution...

4,000 Working Families In Connecticut Lost Thier Homes In January. The Facts Are That The Poor And Working Families Of Connecticut Pay A higher Percentage Of Taxes Than The Wealth Of Greenwich.

In The Town Of Greenwich, you have hedge fund Secretaries trying to hang on to thier home, while paying a higher rate of taxes than their fat cat hedge fund bosses who caused the mortgage fiasco and recession.

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