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Poverty Is a Threat to Democracy, with Tavis Smiley | Big Think
Posted
June 3, 2016
Views
17,082
Likes
725
Comments
204
Engagement
5.44%
June 3, 2016
17,082
725
204
5.44%
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Poverty is the defining issue of our time, says Tavis Smiley. And while we have recognized the problem of income inequality, economic mobility is not yet part of our national conversation.
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TAVIS SMILEY:
Tavis Smiley is a talk show host, author, political commentator, entrepreneur, advocate and philanthropist. He became a radio commentator in 1991, and starting in 1996, he hosted the talk show BET Talk (later renamed BET Tonight) on BET. Smiley then began hosting The Tavis Smiley Show on NPR (2002-04) and currently hosts Tavis Smiley on PBS on the weekdays and "The Tavis Smiley Show" from PRI. From 2010 to 2013, Smiley and Cornel West joined forces to host their own radio talk show, Smiley & West. Smiley is the new host of "Tavis Talks" on BlogTalkRadio's Tavis Smiley Network. He is also the author or co-author of over a dozen books including his latest My Journey with Maya, about his friendship with the late Maya Angelou
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TRANSCRIPT:
Tavis Smiley: I believe that poverty is the defining issue of our time. I believe that poverty is threatening our very democracy and I mean that sincerely. It's threatening our very democracy, the existence of it, the future of it. I believe that poverty is a matter of national security because these numbers are not sustainable. One percent of the people cannot continue to own and control 40 percent of the wealth. The top 400 richest Americans, 400 individuals, have wealth equivalent to the bottom 150 million fellow citizens. That's not a democracy. You can call it an oligarchy, you can call it plutocracy but it's not a democracy. And that's why say that poverty is threatening our very democracy. So there is clearly the issue of poverty, there is the issue of incoming equality, but I think there's a third issue that we don't talk about enough is the issue of economic mobility. So income and equality is the difference, the gap between the rich and the poor. Well let's be frank, to some degree you're always going to have a gap between the rich and the poor. Economic mobility is about how you lift the poor up from the suffering that they have to endure every day. So the conversation is really not so much about income and inequality or wealth and inequality as it is about economic mobility, that's the issue we have to focus on.
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