In the latest move by so-called conservatives in North Carolina, the National Book Award winning novel has been banned for having no "literary value."
Students in Randolph County, North Carolina, won’t have access to “Invisible Man.”
That county’s board of education voted 5-2 this week to remove all copies of the Ralph Ellison novel from school libraries, following a parental complaint about the book’s content and language when it was assigned as summer reading in local Randleman High School.
“It was a hard read,” said board chair Tommy McDonald, who voted in favor of the ban.
Another board member said, “I didn’t find any literary value.”
“Invisible Man,” which won the National Book Award upon its 1953 publication and which has a place on the Modern Library’s list of the 100 best novels of the twentieth century, appraises the social conditions surrounding blacks in the decades before the eventual civil rights movement; the protagonist is invisible because white society refuses to see him.
The book’s fate is uncertain; a Randleman High School committee has recommended the book remain on shelves there. Randleman has recently been a flashpoint for civil liberties, with the ACLU demanding this month that the school stop invocations of the Lord’s Prayer at football games.
N.Y. Times, Sept. 17, 2013 By Thomas B. Edsall A lot of people are making money off the poor. The Center for Responsible Lending, a North Carolina nonprofit that tracks predatory lending practices, issued a revealing report earlier this month on payday loans, which carry annual interest rates as high as 400 percent. Using data compiled by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the center found that most borrowers repeatedly rolled over or renewed loans. The center’s analysis also found that “the median annual income of a borrower was $22,476, with an average loan amount of $350.” Most crucially, though,
the median consumer in our sample conducted 10 transactions over the 12-month period and paid a total of $458 in fees, which do not include the loan principal. One-quarter of borrowers paid $781 or more in fees.
You might think these companies are making enough money from their usurious interest rates, but the center’s report makes it clear that payday lenders are dependent for profits on borrowers who take out repeated loans:
The leading payday industry trade association — the Community Financial Services Association (C.F.S.A.) — states in a recent letter to the C.F.P.B.,“[i]n any large, mature payday loan portfolio, loans to repeat borrowers generally constitute between 70 and 90% of the portfolio, and for some lenders, even more.”
The center cites the following industry analysis, which is remarkably clear on how this scheme plays out in practice:
“In a state with a $15 [fee] per $100 [loan] rate, an operator … will need a new customer to take out 4 to 5 loans before that customer becomes profitable. Indeed, Dan Feehan, C.E.O. of Cash America, remarked at a Jeffries Financial Services Conference in 2007, “[T]he theory in the business is [that] you’ve got to get that customer in, work to turn him into a repetitive customer, long-term customer, because that’s really where the profitability is.” Lender marketing materials offer incentives to promote frequent loan usage, such as discounts to promote repeat borrowing.
Payday loans, the report concludes, “create a debt treadmill that makes struggling families worse off than they were before they received a payday loan.” The payday loan industry operates out of storefronts in poor neighborhoods, but a share of its profits filter into some of the nation’s most prestigious banks. Jessica Silver-Greenberg, a banking and consumer finance reporter for The Times, disclosed on Feb. 23 that major banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, have been acting as key intermediaries, allowing online lenders to directly collect money from the bank accounts of those borrowers who have accounts. The intermediary role of the banks is particularly controversial, Silver-Greenberg writes, because
a growing number of the [payday] lenders have set up online operations in more hospitable states or far-flung locales like Belize, Malta and the West Indies to more easily evade statewide caps on interest rates.
Banks have been profiting from their customers’ “shaky financial footing,” according to Silver-Greenberg, by collecting “a cascade of fees from problems like overdrafts.” The Times financial columnist Gretchen Morgenson separately reported on Sept. 7 that court papers filed in 2007 revealed that Deutsche Bank and Citigroup were providing financial banking to Cash Call, a payday lender specializing in loans to the working poor at annual interest rates as high as 343 percent. (Spokespeople for both Deutsche Bank and Citi told Morgenson that they no longer did business with Cash Call.) Another of the multiple pathways eager moneylenders have found to profit from the cash needs of the poor is through title loans to low-income car owners who need to make monthly payments. Title loans offer lenders another chance to collect astronomical interest rates. In a Feb. 28 report, the center found that the average title loan, secured by an automobile, is $951, and carries a monthly interest rate of 25 percent. That’s 300 percent a year. Customers typically renew these loan eight times. The center determined that for a typical borrower the total amount paid in interest and principal for a car loan of $951 is $3,093. • It is not only the middle class and the wealthy who exploit the poor. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that at times the poor exploit one another. For his doctoral research in 2008 and 2009, Jacob Avery, now a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, spent 17 months with homeless men in Atlantic City. What he found was a hierarchy of exploitation. Avery describes the way that cabdrivers would purchase SNAP food stamp cards — at half their face value — from homeless men desperate for cash to buy liquor or drugs. Other homeless men, who qualify for a meager supplemental-security stipend, took advantage of people with even less money, using their S.S.I. income to buy cartons of cigarettes that they then sold to their fellow homeless men for 50 cents a cigarette. As Avery dove deeper into his research, he came to see the organization of society as a whole “like layers on a cake, with those at the highest level of each layer exploiting those below.” The exploitation of those on the bottom is also revealed in the work of Gretchen Purser, an assistant professor of sociology at Syracuse University. For her dissertation, Purser spent time with a group of largely “homeless, formerly incarcerated, African-American men” who were paid $6.15 an hour by a major Baltimore property management company to evict tenants behind in their rent. Purser writes that while poor, homeless African-Americans evicting poor, soon-to-be homeless African-Americans would seem to present “an opportunity for solidaristic identification amongst the poor,” it didn’t work out that way.
Laborers on eviction crews tend to espouse the same disparaging characterizations of tenants as do the property managers who hire them, thus reinforcing the belief that eviction is rooted in the individual moral deficiencies of the tenant. In this social drama of eviction, the vertical conflict between landlord and tenant is subtly transmuted into a lateral conflict amongst the propertyless.
• Those profiteering off the most vulnerable are nothing if not innovative. In a Washington Post series that began running on Sept. 8, Debbie Cenziper, Michael Sallah and Steven Rich disclose how an effort by the District of Columbia to collect overdue property taxes has turned into a bonanza for enterprising real estate operators:
For decades, the District placed liens on properties when homeowners failed to pay their bills, then sold those liens at public auctions to mom-and-pop investors who drew a profit by charging owners interest on top of the tax debt until the money was repaid. But on the watch of local leaders, the program has morphed into a predatory system of debt collection for well-financed, out-of-town companies that turned $500 delinquencies into $5,000 debts — then foreclosed on homes when families couldn’t pay.
Real estate in Washington has been booming, leading to greater interest in buying tax liens:
As the housing market soared, such investors scooped up liens in every corner of the city, then started charging homeowners thousands in legal fees and other costs that far exceeded their original tax bills, with rates for attorneys reaching $450 an hour.
The Post series focused on Bennie Coleman, a 76-year-old former Marine suffering from dementia, who lost his home in 2011 to foreclosure. The process began in 2006 when he failed to pay a $134 tax bill, which was then sold to a Maryland company. In 2010, the Maryland company, claiming Coleman owed a total of $4,999 in legal fees and expenses, 37 times the original tax bill, won a court-ordered foreclosure. “Not only did Coleman lose his $197,000 house, but he also was stripped of the equity because tax lien purchasers are entitled to everything,” the Post reported. While predatory practices and rising levels of inequality have been gaining media attention, poverty itself has been the subject of news coverage less often. In May, the University of Michigan’s National Poverty Center foundthat 1.65 million households in the United States — with 3.55 million children living in them — are now in “extreme poverty.” In 1996, there were 636,000 extremely poor households. The center uses the World Bank definition of extreme poverty — “surviving on less than $2 per day, per person, each month,” or $8 dollars a day for a family of four. Since the start of the recovery in 2009, the number of homeless people in the New York City shelter system has grown steadily, reaching a high (Fig. 1) of 50,926 people in June 2013, according to the Coalition for the Homeless. Figure 1.
New York City Department of Homeless Services and Human Resources Administration and NYCStat, Shelter Census Reports
Pending applications for New York City public housing have reached 227,000, and the queue moves slowly. Only 5,400 to 5,800 open up annually. Waiting lists across the country are growing. Payday lending, title loans, tax-lien foreclosures and the growing scarcity of affordable housing exacerbate the anxiety and insecurity of the poor. Inflation hurts, too. In contrast to the relatively lowofficial inflation rate calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the centrist American Institute for Economic Research has developed the Everyday Price Index. According to a report in Time magazine using the Everyday Price Index, in 2011 the official Consumer Price Index rose 2.9 percent, but the cost of certain basic necessities rose much more: meat and milk rose more than 9 percent; coffee, 19 percent; peanut butter, 27 percent; heating oil, 18 percent; children’s clothes for boys, 6 percent, and for girls, 9 percent. The rising price of milk and peanut butter is just one facet of the inflation that takes a higher share of a poor family’s resources than those of a middle or upper income family. Not only are the poor disproportionately exploited, the very fact of being poor creates extraordinary vulnerability to countless major and minor daily roadblocks. Recent research by Sendhil Mullainathan of Harvard and Eldar Shafir of Princeton demonstrates that, as a post on Truthdig put it:
There is a strong connection between scarce resources and cognition: The more a person struggles financially, the less he or she can channel brain processes to completing other tasks. When you can’t make ends meet, the weight of worry occupies a large portion of the mind. This doesn’t just mean those who suffer because of poverty are just stressed but rather, incapable of dedicating themselves to other endeavors because their minds are so fully engrossed in finding ways to survive. It goes beyond the ability to pay bills, and stretches out to other important everyday responsibilities, such as parenting, going to night school or even remembering to take prescribed medicine.
In the current political climate, there is little prospect for a major initiative to improve life chances for those at the bottom. But there is more we can do: enact restraints on predatory lending and corrupt eviction procedures, for one. Even more important would be to revive public discussion about the multiple impediments that restrict opportunity for those who are already confronted with hurdles to advancement far higher than those facing the affluent.
[Posted by Bill Allen] CBS News (NYC) Sept. 17, 2013
Rep. Grace Meng (speaking) with Rep. Stave Israel to her right, calling on the FAA to scrap rule change, Sept. 17, 2013. (credit: Alex Silverman/WCBS 880)
As WCBS 880′s Alex Silverman reported, complaints about airplane noise are nothing new in Queens.
“You can’t hear yourself think because every time it stops, it starts again,” one resident said.
The Federal Aviation Administration is planning to change its rules so it can change flight plans without any environmental review.
The rule change will lead to more noise pollution for Queens and Nassau County, Rep. Steve Israel said.
“This is a bad rule for our quality of life, it’s a bad rule for our environment, it’s a bad rule for people who live in the vicinity of New York’s airports,” Israel said.
The congressman also relabeled the FAA “The Federal Arrogant Administration.”
“I have no problems with airplanes flying over my house, but at a reasonable height at a reasonable time of the day,” resident John Kelly told Silverman.
“The people of Queens do not deserve to be steamrolled by the FAA,” Rep. Grace Meng said.
The lawmakers have written a letter to the FAA asking the John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia airports are excluded from the new rules.
The public has two weeks left to comment on the impending rule change.
Queens residents can send comments through Sept. 30 by logging onto http://www.regulations.gov. They can also fax comments to the FAA at 202-493-2251 or mail them to: U.S. Department of Transportation, Docket Operations, M-30, West Building Ground Floor, Room W12-140, 1200 New Jersey Avenue S.E., Washington, D.C. 20590-0001.
What’s missing in the current debate over economic inequality is enough serious discussion about investing in effective early childhood development from birth to age 5. This is not a big government boondoggle policy that would require a huge redistribution of wealth. Acting on it would, however, require us to rethink long-held notions of how we develop productive people and promote shared prosperity.
Everyone knows that education boosts productivity and enlarges opportunities, so it is natural that proposals for reducing inequality emphasize effective education for all. But these proposals are too timid. They ignore a powerful body of research in the economics of human development that tells us which skills matter for producing successful lives. They ignore the role of families in producing the relevant skills They also ignore or play down the critical gap in skills between advantaged and disadvantaged children that emerges long before they enter school.
While education is a great equalizer of opportunity when done right, American policy is going about it all wrong: current programs don’t start early enough, nor do they produce the skills that matter most for personal and societal prosperity.
The cognitive skills prized by the American educational establishment and measured by achievement tests are only part of what is required for success in life. Character skills are equally important determinants of wages, education, health and many other significant aspects of flourishing lives. Self-control, openness, the ability to engage with others, to plan and to persist — these are the attributes that get people in the door and on the job, and lead to productive lives. Cognitive and character skills work together as dynamic complements; they are inseparable. Skills beget skills. More motivated children learn more. Those who are more informed usually make wiser decisions.
These established findings should lead to a major reorientation of policies for human development. Because skill begets skill, the opportunity for education should begin at birth — and not depend on the accident of birth.
The family into which a child is born plays a powerful role in determining lifetime opportunities. This is hardly news, but it bears repeating: some kids win the lottery at birth, far too many don’t — and most people have a hard time catching up over the rest of their lives. Children raised in disadvantaged environments are not only much less likely to succeed in school or in society, but they are also much less likely to be healthy adults. A variety of studies show that factors determined before the end of high school contribute to roughly half of lifetime earnings inequality. This is where our blind spot lies: success nominally attributed to the beneficial effects of education, especially graduating from college, is in truth largely a result of factors determined long before children even enter school.
Improving the early environments of disadvantaged children is a promising way to reduce inequality, but conventional wisdom is to level the playing field with cash transfers, tuition assistance and raising the minimum wage. High-quality early childhood programs are great economic and social equalizers — they supplement the family lives of disadvantaged children by teaching consistent parenting and by giving children the mentoring, encouragement and support available to functioning middle-class families. Children in these programs develop foundational skills on par with those of more affluent children and create a stronger family structure for themselves. Caring parents and early stimulation are essential ingredients of successful early childhood environments.
Critics say that early childhood education is expensive and that it is not effective. They are right about the cost, but terribly wrong about the large return on the investment. Quality early childhood programs for disadvantaged children more than pay for themselves in better education, health and economic outcomes.
Proof comes in the form of a long-term cost-benefit analysis of effective early childhood programs. The Perry Preschool project was an intensive two-year voluntary program administered between 1962 and 1967 to disadvantaged 3- and 4-year-old, low-I.Q. African-American children in Ypslanti, Mich. The curriculum emphasized the development of self-control, perseverance and social skills in conjunction with basic cognitive skills. It also worked with the mothers to foster attachment, develop parenting skills and deepen their interactions with their children. The participants were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups, with the outcomes evaluated over a period of four decades.
Perry did not produce lasting gains in the I.Q.’s of its participants, but it did boost character skills that produced better education, economic and life outcomes. The economic rate of return from Perry is in the range of 6 percent to 10 percent per year per dollar invested, based on greater productivity and savings in expenditures on remediation, criminal justice and social dependency. This compares favorably to the estimated 6.9 percent annual rate of return of the United States stock market from the end of World War II to the 2008 meltdown. And yes, these estimates account for the costs of raising taxes and any resulting loss of economic activity.
A similar long-term early childhood study, the Carolina Abecedarian Project, better known as ABC, gave cognitive stimulation, training in self-control and social skills, and parental education starting in the first few months of life. The children were also provided with health checkups and health care. Four groups of individuals born between 1972 and 1977 were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups, and their progress has been monitored so far through studies conducted at ages 12, 15, 21 and 30. This program had lasting effects on I.Q., parenting practices and child attachment, leading to higher educational attainment and more skilled employment among those in the treatment group.
Most dramatic were ABC’s effects on lifelong health. Now, over 30 years later, those treated in ABC have lower blood pressure, lower abdominal obesity, less hypertension and less likelihood of metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular conditions as adults. This evidence clearly shows the power of quality early childhood programs for producing flourishing people with healthier lives, which increases productivity and lowers health care costs.
Why aren’t we moving forward and changing our ways by making investments in life-changing early childhood development for disadvantaged children? Two things: unfounded doubt and fear of doing things differently..
Doubters say that high-quality programs like Perry and ABC cannot be replicated and scaled up. However private groups, states and municipalities have used these models to custom-build their own programs, and they are seeing substantial results and cost savings. What’s not working is taking away funding for these programs in the face of budget cuts. Also holding back progress are those who claim that Perry and ABC are experiments with samples too small to accurately predict widespread impact and return on investment. This is a nonsensical argument. Their relatively small sample sizes actually speak for — not against — the strength of their findings. Dramatic differences between treatment and control-group outcomes are usually not found in small sample experiments, yet the differences in Perry and ABC are big and consistent in rigorous analyses of these data.
These unfounded doubts feed our fear of taking new and more effective approaches. American public policy throws money at programs that don’t produce results as good or better than what is obtained from early childhood education.
What doesn’t work? Investing in smaller class sizes is not as effective as making sure each child has the foundational skills to do well inside the classroom, regardless of its size. Because skill begets skill, it’s common sense that adult literacy programs and many job-training programs are too little, too late. It is much more effective and cost efficient to create instead of remediate.
This is not to say that we should abandon all remediation programs; only that our focus on fixing downstream problems should not preclude enlightened upstream solutions.
Fortunately, the public knows that something is wrong and senses that early childhood development might be the solution. A recent public opinion poll commissioned by the First Five Years Fund found that 68 percent of voters think that only half or even fewer children begin kindergarten with the knowledge and skills they need to do their best in school. Eighty-nine percent say it is important to make early education and child care more affordable for working families to give their children a strong start, and a similar number want the federal government to help states build better preschools and make them more accessible to low- and middle-income children.
President Obama has proposed an early childhood initiative that combines family visitation, infant health and development, early learning, quality child care and more effective preschooling at ages 4 and 5. This is an encouraging shift in American policy, one that could significantly reduce inequality if it remained true to the evidence of what works — not to the politics of what is convenient.
Our choice in these difficult economic times is not just whether to spend or cut, but whether to choose knowledge over conventional wisdom. Will we put money in programs that pay off? Quality early childhood programs for disadvantaged children are not “entitlements” or bottomless wells of social spending. They foster human flourishing and they improve our economic productivity in the process. There is no trade-off between equity and efficiency, as there is for other social programs. Early investment in the lives of disadvantaged children will help reduce inequality, in both the short and the long run.
James J. Heckman is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and a Nobel Laureate in Economics.
By Mark R. Elsis | Lovearth.net mark@lovearth.net “The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.” –Gore Vidal
Wealth Inequality In America
Infographics On The Distribution Of Wealth In America, Highlighting Both The Inequality And The Difference Between Our Perception Of Inequality And The Actual Numbers. The Reality Is Often Not What We Think It Is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
Richard Wilkinson: How Economic Inequality Harms Societies
Inequality.is
http://inequality.is
Income Is Down 28% For American Median Prime-Aged Males In The Last 40 Years
http://www.milkeninstitute.org/publications/review/2011_7/08-16MR51.pdf
Nick Hanauer On Income Inequality
U.S. Standard of Living Has Fallen More Than 50%
Western Wages Have Plummeted So Low That A Two-Income Family Is Now (On Average) 15% Poorer Than A One-Income Family Of 40 Years Ago.
by Jeff Nielson
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11480568/1/us-standard-of-living-has-fallen-more-than-50-opinion.html
US Worst Income Disparity In World
America Is Even More Unequal Than It Seems
by Salvatore Babones
http://inequality.org/america-unequal
How Wealth Reduces Compassion
As Riches Grow, Empathy For Others Seems To Decline
by Daisy Grewal
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-wealth-reduces-compassion
The Spirit Level:
Why Equality Is Better For Everyone
by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/resource/the-spirit-level
Economic Recovery For Whom?
by Richard D. Wolff
http://www.truth-out.org/economic-recovery-whom/1331043859
The Ed Show — US Income Disparity Ranks Among Third World Countries
Top 1% Enjoyed 93% Of Economic Recovery In 2010: Report
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/03/06-5
US Income Disparity 1/3
US Income Disparity 2/3 (1969-2009)
US Income Disparity 3/3 (Structure Of Income)
It’s The Inequality, Stupid
Eleven Charts That Explain What’s Wrong With America.
by Dave Gilson and Carolyn Perot
U.S. Income Disparity – C-SPAN Video Library
http://www.c-spanvideo.org
A Guide To Statistics On Historical Trends In Income Inequality
by Chad Stone, Hannah Shaw, Danilo Trisi and Arloc Sherman
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3629
Their Plan For Low-Wage America
Jobs Are Coming Back, But You Can Forget About A Living Wage — Unless You And Your Co-Workers Are Organized Enough To Demand One.
http://socialistworker.org/2012/03/28/the-plan-for-low-wage-america
Five Reasons Why The Very Rich Have Not Earned Their Money
by Paul Buchheit
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/16
Five Facts That Put America To Shame
by Paul Buchheit
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/14-0
The “Buffett Rule” Charade
Barack Obama Is Talking A Lot About The Buffett Rule, But It Wouldn’t Come Close To Making The Rich Pay Their “Fair Share.”
by Gary Lapon
http://socialistworker.org/2012/04/17/the-buffett-rule-charade
Tax Fairness Debate Takes Center Stage In Presidential Election Year (Audio and Text)
http://btlonline.org/2012/seg/120427af-btl-farris.html
The Top 10 Facts About The Wage Gap
Women Are Still Earning Less Than Men Across The Board
By Sarah Jane Glynn and Audrey Powers
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/04/wage_gap_facts.html
Five Tax Fallacies Invented By The 1%
by Paul Buchheit
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/30
May Day Charts: We Don’t Currently Reward Our Workers
by Annie-Rose Strasser
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/01/474245/may-day-charts-we-dont-currently-reward-our-workers
It’s Executives And The Finance Sector Causing Surging 1% Income Growth!
by Lawrence Mishel and Natalie Sabadish
Stephen King: Tax Me, For F@%&’s Sake!
The Iconic Writer Scolds The Superrich (Including Himself—and Mitt Romney) For Not Giving Back, And Warns Of A Kingsian Apocalyptic Scenario If Inequality Is Not Addressed In America.
by Stephen King
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/30/stephen-king-tax-me-for-f-s-sake.html
Report: How CEO Compensation Is Fueling Inequality
CEOs Were Paid 231 Times More Than Workers In 2011.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/03-4
Stunning Income Inequality Data Of The Day
by Digby
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2012051803/stunning-income-inequality-data-day
The Rich Hurt You And Me Every Day, New Book Reveals How The Rich — And Rampant Income Inequality They Foster — Hurt You And Me, Every Day.
99 To 1: How Wealth Inequality Is Wrecking The World And What We Can Do About It, by Chuck Collins
by Sam Pizzigati
http://peoplesworld.org/the-rich-hurt-you-and-me-every-day-new-book-reveals-how
US Families Saddled With Debt, Have Few Savings
by Kate Randall
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/may2012/debt-m15.shtml
No Country For Rich Men
From Manhattan To Monaco, The World’s Wealthiest People Are Disconnecting Into A Class Of Stateless Transients.
by Sam Pizzigati
http://www.otherwords.org/articles/no_country_for_rich_men
The Price Of Inequality
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-price-of-inequality
Preying On The Poor
How Government And Corporations Use The Poor As Piggy Banks
by Barbara Ehrenreich
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175543/tomgram%3A_barbara_ehrenreich%2C_looting_the_lives_of_the_poor
How Hard Is Poverty Hitting Your County?
A Map Of Changes In Poverty, County By County.
by Andy Hull, Nick McClellan, and Troy K. Schneider
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/map_of_the_week/2012/05/poverty_rates_most_u_s_counties_see_increasing_poverty_rates.html
Born Poor, Stay Poor: The Scandal Of Social Immobility
Report Reveals Shocking Gulf In Life Chances Between Those From Rich Backgrounds And The Rest
by Andrew Grice
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/born-poor-stay-poor-the-scandal-of-social-immobility-7771336.html
Who Will Step Up And Save The Middle Class?
Liberals Must Face The Stark Truth: Both Parties Have Agreed To Sacrifice The Middle.
by Jeff Faux
http://prospect.org/article/who-will-step-and-save-middle-class
Study: CEO Pay Increased 127 Times Faster Than Worker Pay Over Last 30 Years
by Travis Waldron
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/05/03/475952/ceo-pay-faster-worker-pay
US CEO Pay Continues To Climb
by David Brown
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/may2012/ceos-m28.shtml
Photos From Space Show Shocking Income Inequality
by Rachel James
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/cities/photos-from-space-show-shocking-income-inequality/3345
UNICEF: US Among Highest Child Poverty Rates In Developed Countries
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/05/30-6
The States With The Widest Gap Between Rich And Poor
http://247wallst.com/2012/05/31/ten-states-with-the-worst-income-inequality
The 1 Percent’s Problem
Why Won’t America’s 1 Percent—such As The Six Walmart Heirs, Whose Wealth Equals That Of The Entire Bottom 30 Percent — Be A Bit More . . . Selfish? As The Widening Financial Divide Cripples The U.S. Economy, Even Those At The Top Will Pay A Steep Price.
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2012/05/joseph-stiglitz-the-price-on-inequality
Half Of Americans In Households Receiving Government Aid
by Andre Damon
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/soci-j07.shtml
How Inequality Wrecks Everything We Care About
by Chuck Collins
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/9679-how-inequality-wrecks-everything-we-care-about
Family Net Worth Drops To Level Of Early ’90s, Fed Says
by Binyamin Appelbaum
This Next Generation Will Be Left Behind In The Land Of No Opportunity
by Salvatore Babones
http://truth-out.org/news/item/9595-not-news-america-is-no-longer-the-land-of-opportunity
The War On Old Folks
by Susan J. Douglas
http://inthesetimes.com/article/13351/the_war_on_old_folks
Fed Report Shows Crisis Has Thrown Back Us Families 20 Years
by Patrick Martin
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jun2012/pers-j13.shtml
The Price Of Inequality
by Joseph E. Stiglitz
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/the-price-of-inequality
Death By Degrees
http://nplusonemag.com/death-by-degrees
America Is No Longer A Land Of Opportunity
by Joseph Stiglitz
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/56c7e518-bc8f-11e1-a111-00144feabdc0.html
Some Outrageous Facts About Inequality
by Paul Buchheit
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/02-0
8 Ways America’s Headed Back To The Robber-Baron Era
We Are Recreating The Gilded Age, A Period When Corporations Ruled This Nation, Buying Politicians, Using Violence Against Unions And Engaging In Open Corruption.
by Erik Loomis
http://www.alternet.org/story/156111/8_ways_america%27s_headed_back_to_the_robber-baron_era
Corporate Profits At All-Time High;
Wages At All-Time Low: Can We Call It Class War Yet?
The Middle Class Is Being Hollowed Out; Increasingly, There Are The Super-Super-Rich, And There Are The Rest Of Us.
by Sarah Jaffe
http://www.alternet.org/story/156042/corporate_profits_at_all-time_high%3B_wages_at_all-time_low%3A_can_we_call_it_class_war_yet
After Austerity: The Widening Gap Between Rich And Poor
Fifty Shades Of Capitalism
Pain And Bondage In The American Workplace
by Lynn Parramore
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/14/fifty_shades_of_capitalism
Pursuing The American Dream:
Economic Mobility Across Generations
by Leonard Lopoo and Thomas DeLeire
http://www.pewstates.org/uploadedFiles/PCS_Assets/2012/Pursuing_American_Dream.pdf
America’s Long Slope Down
by David Cay Johnston
http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2012/06/20/americas-long-slope-down
Technology Doesn’t Cause Inequality – Deliberate Policy Change Does
The 1% Likes To Blame Technological Innovation For Income Redistribution But Calculated Policy Changes Are At Fault
by Dean Baker
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jul/16/technology-inequality-policy-change
Are Millennials The Screwed Generation?
by Joel Kotkin
http://www.thedailybeast.com/content/newsweek/2012/07/15/are-millennials-the-screwed-generation.html
Are Americans Better Off Than Their Parents?
A New Report From The Pew Economic Mobility Project Has Some Observers Celebrating How Well Americans Are Doing Compared To Their Parents.
But The Report’s Figures, Upon Closer Inspection, Give Little Cause For Celebration.
by Salvatore Babones
http://inequality.org/americans-parents-data
Inequality.org
Vertical Immobility: American Dream Too Steep To Climb
The Single Mother Myth
Inequality Is Glaring And Growing Worse In U.S. Society — And The New York Times Has A Handy Scapegoat To Explain It All: Single Mothers.
by Jen Roesch
http://socialistworker.org/2012/07/23/single-mother-myth
Social Status: Why All Men Are Not Created Equal
by Philip Ball
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120713-why-all-men-are-not-created-equal
U.S. Poverty Heads Toward Highest Level In 50 Years
The Official Poverty Rate Will Rise From 15.1 Percent In 2010, Climbing As High As 15.7 Percent, Economists Predict.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-us-poverty-heads-toward-highest-level-in-50-years-20120723,0,5437495.story
Bill Moyers And Chris Hedges On Capitalism’s ‘Sacrifice Zones’
Debt Inequality Is The New Income Inequality
http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/02/news/economy/income-debt-inequality/index.htm
New Report Shows Rising US Child Poverty
by David Brown
https://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/jul2012/kids-j31.shtml
How Our ‘Growth’ Obsession Drives Inequity, And May Kill Us All
by Imara Jones
http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/07/how_the_obsession_with_growth_drives_racial_inequity_and_may_kill_us_all.html
Study: Rich, Poor Americans Increasingly Likely To Live In Separate Neighborhoods
by Carol Morello
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/rich-and-poor-grow-more-isolated-from-each-other-study-finds/2012/08/01/gJQABC5QPX_story.html
If You Worry About Civic Inequality, You Should Also Worry About Economic Inequality
by David Callahan
http://www.policyshop.net/home/2012/8/1/if-you-worry-about-civic-inequality-you-should-also-worry-ab.html
‘US Votes Counted In Dollars Of 1%, Not In Voices Of 99%’
The State Of America’s Children 2012
by Marian Wright Edelman
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/08/03-8
The 64-Gazillion-Dollar Question
A Top Authority On Poverty Has Changed His Mind About The Urgency Of Fighting Inequality.
by Sam Pizzigati
http://www.otherwords.org/articles/the_64-gazillion-dollar_question
One In Four Mississippi Residents Struggle To Afford Food
North Dakota Has Lowest Percentage Of Residents Unable To Afford Food
by Alyssa Brown
http://www.gallup.com/poll/156806/one-four-mississippi-residents-struggle-afford-food.aspx
U.S. Middle Class Set Back Over Last Decade-Report
Wealth, Standard Of Living Drop For Middle Income Group Americans Blame Congress, Banks For Their Woes
by Susan Heavey
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/22/usa-economy-middleclass-idUSL2E8JM66Q20120822
Wealthy Americans ‘Less Generous’ Than Middle-Class Americans: Study
http://www.presstv.com/usdetail/257728.html
The Lost Decade Of The Middle Class
Fewer, Poorer, Gloomier
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/08/22/the-lost-decade-of-the-middle-class
Pew Research: “Fewer, Poorer, Gloomier: The Lost Decade Of The Middle Class”
New Poll, Data Point To Vast Social Polarization In US
by David Walsh
https://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/aug2012/pewr-a24.shtml
Poverty’s Up, Yet Still On The Back Burner
by Bob Herbert
http://www.policyshop.net/home/2012/8/22/povertys-up-yet-still-on-the-back-burner.html
Missing The Story: The OECD’s Analysis Of Inequality
by David Rosnick and Dean Baker
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/missing-the-story-the-oecds-analysis-of-inequality
Poverty: The New Growth Industry In America
by Dean Baker
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/poverty-the-new-growth-industry-in-america
The American People Are Angry
She’s Back: World’s Richest Woman Makes Case For $2-A-Day Pay
by David Lazarus
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-richest-woman-pay-20120905,0,6971046.story
Politics And Plutocrats: A Parade Of Inequality
by Gar Smith
http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/politics_and_plutocrats_a_parade_of_inequality
Cuts In US Jobless Pay,
Government Layoffs Throw 1.5 Million More People Into Poverty
by Andre Damon
https://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/sep2012/econ-s10.shtml
US Middle Class In ‘Lost Decade’ As Income Falls
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19351183
How Americans View Wealth And Inequality
by Dan Ariely
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19284017
Household Income Fell In 2011
by Matthew Yglesias
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/09/12/median_household_income_it_fell_in_2011_as_the_recession_kept_biting_.html
Chris Hedges: The Absurdity Of American Empire
US Census Report: Record Numbers In Poverty And Widening Inequality
by Barry Grey
https://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/sep2012/pove-s13.shtml
Men’s Incomes Have Declined 28% Since 1968: Study
by Joe McKendrick
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/business-brains/mens-incomes-have-declined-28-since-1968-study/26235
The Revolution From Above
by Paul Craig Roberts
The Rich Are Now 288 Times Richer Than Middle-Class Households
by David Lazarus
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-wealth-gap-20120911,0,1844262.story
The US Poverty Report And The Obama “Recovery”
by Andre Damon and Barry Grey
https://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/sep2012/pers-s15.shtml
Rich-Poor Gap Widens To Most Since 1967 As Income Falls
by Catherine Dodge and Mike Dorning
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-12/u-s-poverty-rate-stays-at-almost-two-decade-high-income-falls.html
65 Years Of Tax Cuts For The Wealthy Created Record ‘Inequality’
Not ‘Prosperity,’ Says Report
by Common Dreams Staff
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/17-4
Net Worth Of Richest Americans Soars By 13 Percent In 2012
by Shannon Jones
https://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/sep2012/rich-s21.shtml
Poverty And Hunger In America
Food Stamps Work, Lifting People Out Of The Worst Deprivation. But In Austin, Texas, We See The Human Cost Of Growing Inequality
by John Turner
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/20/poverty-hunger-america
Half Of Americans In Poverty Are Politically Independent
by Elizabeth Mendes and Kyley McGeeney
http://www.gallup.com/poll/157607/half-americans-poverty-politically-independent.aspx
U.S. Income Inequality:
It’s Worse Today Than It Was In 1774
by Jordan Weissmann
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/09/us-income-inequality-its-worse-today-than-it-was-in-1774/262537
5 Obscene Reasons Why Richest Americans Grow Richer As Middle-Class Declines
The Super-Rich Have Learned A New Lesson: It Is Far Better To Take Than To Make
by Les Leopold
http://www.alternet.org/economy/5-obscene-reasons-why-richest-americans-grow-richer-middle-class-declines
Inequality Report Card
We Evaluate How Well Members Of Congress Do In Supporting Legislation And Measures To Narrow America’s Widening Economic Divide
by Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, Scott Klinger and Sam Pizzigati
http://www.ips-dc.org/reports/inequality-report-card
Ignoring America’s Poor (Video and Text)
With 46 Million People Living In Poverty, Why Are The Presidential Candidates So Quiet On Issues Affecting The Poor?
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryus2012/2012/10/201210343152481862.html
The Danger Of Wealth At The Top
by Paul R. Pillar
New York City Housing Crisis Reflects Record Inequality
by Fred Mazelis
https://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/oct2012/hous-o23.shtml
Why It Matters: Income Inequality
by Christopher S. Rugaber
http://www.adn.com/2012/10/23/2669140/why-it-matters-income-inequality.html
How Technology Is Fueling Urban Inequality
by Alexis Madrigal
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/technology/2012/09/how-technology-fueling-urban-inequality/3421
Lies Of Plutocracy: Exploding Five Myths That Dehumanize The Poor
by Jeff Nall
http://truth-out.org/news/item/12264-lies-of-plutocracy-exploding-five-myths-that-dehumanize-the-poor
Inequality: Living In The Second Gilded Age
by Brad DeLong
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/10/inequality-living-in-the-second-gilded-age.html
In Sandy’s Wake, New York’s Landscape Of Inequity Revealed
by Michelle Chen
http://truth-out.org/news/item/12497-in-sandys-wake-new-yorks-landscape-of-inequity-revealed
Nearly 50 Million Living In Poverty In US
by Kate Randall
https://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/nov2012/pove-n16.shtml
Ten Numbers The Rich Would Like Fudged
The Numbers Reveal The Deadening Effects Of Inequality In Our Country, And Confirm That Tax Avoidance, Rather Than A Lack Of Middle-Class Initiative, Is The Cause.
by Paul Buchheit
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/11/19-3
The Social Crisis In The US
by Andre Damon
https://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/nov2012/pers-n24.shtml
37 Facts About How Cruel This Economy Has Been To Millions Of Desperate American Families
by Michael
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/37-facts-that-show-how-cruel-this-economy-has-been-to-millions-of-desperate-american-families
Study: American Households Hit 43-Year Low In Net Worth
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/11/30/study-american-households-hit-43-year-low-in-net-worth
Income Inequality In The United States Fuels Pessimism And Threatens Social Cohesion
by Eric M. Uslaner
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2012/12/05/46871/income-inequality-in-the-united-states-fuels-pessimism-and-threatens-social-cohesion
Inequality And Its Perils
Emerging Research Suggests That The Growing Gap Between Rich And Poor Harms The U.S. Economy By Creating Instability And Suppressing Growth.
by Jonathan Rauch
http://www.nationaljournal.com/next-economy/essay-the-growing-income-gap-in-the-u-s-harms-the-economy-20120927
Ten Ways To Reduce Inequality Without Raising Tax Rates
by Dylan Matthews
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/06/ten-ways-to-reduce-inequality-without-raising-tax-rates/
How Bernie Sanders’ Tax Plan Can Close the Huge Racial Wealth Gap
by Imara Jones
http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/12/how_bernie_sanders_tax_plan_can_help_close_the_huge_racial_wealth_gap.html
One In Seven US Seniors Live In Poverty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRjj2hBvsrU
Fiscal Cliff Cuts Threaten Austerity for 50 Million Americans Already in Poverty
Our Nurses See Dire Need Every Day In The ER, But The Growing Gulf Of Inequality In The Us Has Made Such Deprivation Ubiquitous
by Rose Ann DeMoro
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/19/fiscal-cliff-cuts-austerity-poverty/print
Report Details Massive Growth Of Social Inequality Across US
by Nick Barrickman
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/12/24/ineq-d24.html
It’s Wages, Stupid! Progressive Tax Reform Alone Will Do Little
To Close The Gap Between Haves And Productive Have-Nots
by Christopher Petrella
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13550-its-wages-stupid-progressive-tax-reform-alone-will-do-little-to-close-the-gap-between-haves-and-productive-have-nots
We’re Tumbling Over An Inequity Cliff
by Imara Jones
http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/01/were_still_tumbling_over_an_inequity_cliff.html
60 Facts That Prove The American Middle Class Is Being Wiped Out
by Michael Snyder
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/01/60-facts-that-prove-american-middle.html
Inequality Rages As Dwindling Wages Lock Millions In Poverty
New Study Shows Just How Hard ‘Working Poor’ Got Hit In Wake Of 2008 Crisis
by Jon Queally
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/15-2
The Cost Of Inequality: How Wealth And Income Extremes Hurt Us All
The World Must Urgently Set Goals To Tackle Extreme Inequality And Extreme Wealth
http://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/cost-of-inequality-oxfam-mb180113.pdf
Profits Of World’s 100 Wealthiest Could End Poverty Four Times Over: Report
Oxfam Report Shows How Extreme Global Inequality ‘Hurts Us All’
by Jon Queally
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/01/21-0
The Triumph Of The 9 Percent
by Matthew Yglesias
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/01/24/inequality_and_the_great_recession_the_poor_get_poorer_and_so_do_the_very.html
Big Banks And Income Disparity
by Wallace Turbeville
http://www.policyshop.net/home/2013/1/22/big-banks-and-income-disparity.html
Class Is A Five-Letter Dirty Word: The Lack Of Class Consciousness In An Era Of Record Inequality
by Anthony DiMaggio
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/14205-class-is-a-five-letter-dirty-word-the-lack-of-class-consciousness-in-an-era-of-record-inequality
The Problem Isn’t Growth; The Problem Is Inequality
by Salvatore Babones
http://inequality.org/growth-inequality
Richie Rich Gets Richer — World
2 Monkeys Were Paid Unequally
If Americans Realized How Bad Income Inequality Was Here,
We Could Have Our Own Cyprus Situation
by Michael
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-income-inequality-and-cyprus-2013-3
America Split In Two: Five Ugly Extremes Of Inequality
by Paul Buchheit
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/25-3
Income Growth For Bottom 90 Percent Of Americans Averaged Just $59 Over 4 Decades: Analysis (Video and Text)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/25/income-growth-americans_n_2949309.html
Income Inequality: 1 Inch To 5 Miles
by David Cay Johnston
http://www.taxanalysts.com/www/features.nsf/Articles/C52956572546624F85257B1D004DE3FC?OpenDocument
The Biggest Peaceful Coup In World History
The American Middle Class Is Almost Gone
by Al Cronkrite
http://www.verigospel.com/DOCS/thebiggestpeacefulcoup.pdf
Huey Long: Share The Wealth
December 1934. Huey Long Speaks Passionately About Income Inequality And The Wealthy In The United States.
American Winter – Preview Of The Documentary
Global Wealth Inequality – What You Never Knew You Never Knew
Bill Moyers Essay: The United States Of Inequality (Video)
Profits Just Hit Another All-Time High, Wages Just Hit Another All-Time Low
http://altwire.utne.com/rt_story/economics_v3/profits-just-hit-another-alltime-high-wa/4b36767135734531734a70356356347832706d6c62773d3d
Child Poverty In US Among The Highest In Developed World
by Nick Barrickman
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/18/pove-a18.html
UNICEF: U.S. Kids Worse Off Than Many Of Their Western Counterparts
by Caitlin Dewey and Max Fisher
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/04/18/unicef-u-s-kids-worse-off-than-many-of-their-western-counterparts
Sobering Presentation Reveals The Two Economies In America
by Sam Ro
http://www.businessinsider.com/nfib-one-country-two-economies-presentation-2013-4?op=1
Report: Wealthy Thrive And Poorest Dive As Surge In US Inequality Continues
Researcher: “The Income Recovery Thus Far For A Wide Swath Of Us Households Has Not Existed”
by Lauren McCauley
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/04/24-3
New Report Finds Increase In Social Inequality During US “Recovery”
by Ed Hightower
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/25/weal-a25.html
Congress Ignores The Poor Yet Again
by Matthew Yglesias
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/26/congress_ignores_the_poor_larry_bartels_research_explains_the_frequent_flier.html
Recovery For The 7 Percent
by Paul Craig Roberts
A Rise In Wealth For The Wealthy; Declines For The Lower 93%
An Uneven Recovery, 2009-2011
by Richard Fry and Paul Taylor
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2013/04/23/a-rise-in-wealth-for-the-wealthydeclines-for-the-lower-93
22 Facts That Prove That The Bottom 90 Percent Of America Is Systematically Getting Poorer
by Michael Snyder
http://www.pakalertpress.com/2013/05/02/22-facts-that-prove-that-the-bottom-90-percent-of-america-is-systematically-getting-poorer
Wealthiest Americans Only Winners In Recovery, Pew Study Says The U.S. Economy Has Recovered For Households With Net Worth Of $500,000 Or More, A New Study Shows. The Recession Continues For Almost Everyone Else.
by Frank Bass
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-23/wealthiest-americans-only-winners-in-recovery-pew-says.html
The Social Crisis In America
by Andre Damon
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/05/04/pers-m04.html
Unequal By Design
It’s No Accident That Inequality Has Grown To Staggering Levels–Capitalism Is Organized To Make The Rich Super-Richer. So What’s The Alternative?
http://socialistworker.org/2013/05/06/unequal-by-design
The Racial Wealth Divide: Why Housing Matters (Infographic)
by Jamilah King
http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/05/the_racial_wealth_divide_why_housing_matters.html
Inequality And Growth
by Salvatore Babones
http://inequality.org/inequality-growth
APA Task force On Childhood Poverty
http://www.academicpeds.org/public_policy/pdf/APA_Task_Force_Strategic_Road_Mapver3.pdf
Actual US Poverty Twice Official Figure
Wealth From Economic “Recovery” Has Gone To The Richest Americans
by Nick Barrickman
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/06/03/weal-j03.html
America Feeds The Rich
by Leo Gerard
http://blog.ourfuture.org/20130618/america-feeds-the-rich
Inequality.is Makes Plain What Inequality Is
by Jane Yurechko
http://blog.ourfuture.org/20130628/inequality-is-makes-plain-what-inequality-is
Wall Street Banks Extract Enormous Fees From The Paychecks Of Millions Of American Workers
by Michael Snyder
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/07/wall-street-banks-extract-enormous-fees.html
Poverty And Race In America, Then And Now
http://datatools.metrotrends.org/charts/metrodata/_Blog/Maps/PovertyRace_DW/Map.html
‘Two American Families’: Is There Hope For The Middle Class? (Video)
Bill Moyers Chronicles The Lives Of Two Families –
One Black, One White — For Two Decades
https://www.commondreams.org/video/2013/07/10-0
New Record: 15 Percent Of Americans On Food Stamps
The Latest USDA Report Shows That 47.8 Million Americans, Which Make Up 15 Percent Of The Country, Are Receiving The Benefits.
http://rt.com/usa/food-stamps-record-americans-119
The World Peaked In 1978
by Janet Fang
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/the-world-peaked-in-1978/24283
Blessed Are The Rich
by Jim Hightower
http://www.creators.com/opinion/jim-hightower/blessed-are-the-rich.html
44 Facts About The Death Of The Middle Class That Every American Should Know
by Michael Snyder
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/07/44-facts-about-death-of-middle-class.html
Poor Prospects In A “Middle Class” Society
The Vast Majority Of Americans Will Experience Poverty And Economic Insecurity For A Significant Portion Of Their Lives.
by Gary Lapon
http://socialistworker.org/2013/08/12/poor-prospects-for-working-people
Park Avenue (Film)
Money, Power And The American Dream — Why Poverty?
How Billionaire ‘Philanthropy’ Is Fueling Inequality And Helping To Destroy The Country
Much Of Philanthropy Today Has Become A Weapon In The Class Warfare Of The 1 Percent.
by Prashanth Kamalakanthan
http://www.alternet.org/economy/philanthropy-trouble
Why Do The People Raising Our Children Earn Poverty Wages?
Why Can’t Democracy Trump Inequality?
by Sam Pizzigati
http://ourfuture.org/20130821/why-cant-democracy-trump-inequality-2
Millennials Love Living With Their Parents [Infographic]
If By “Love” You Mean “Can’t Afford To Leave.”
by Shaunacy Ferro
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/millennials-love-living-their-parents
A Decade Of Flat Wages
The Key Barrier To Shared Prosperity And A Rising Middle Class
by Lawrence Mishel and Heidi Shierholz
US Economic Policy: Keeping Wages Flat Since 1979
Pro-Worker Policies Have Been Under Attack For A Generation, But The Last Decade Has Been Simply Devastating, Says Report
by Jon Queally
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/22-1
The High Probability Of Being Poor
The Number Of Americans That Struggle With Joblessness And Poverty Throughout Their Lifetime Is Still Exceedingly High.
by Matt Bruenig
http://prospect.org/article/high-probability-being-poor
A Decade Of Flat Wagesthe Key Barrier To Shared Prosperity And A Rising Middle Class
by Lawrence Mishel and Heidi Shierholz
The Political Calculations Behind Growing Inequality
A Gusher Of Campaign Cash Is Driving Our Politicians To Comfort The Already Comfortable.
by Sam Pizzigati
http://otherwords.org/political-calculations-behind-growing-inequality
95 Percent Of Recovery Income Gains Have Gone To The Top 1 Percent
by Matthew Yglesias
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/09/10/one_percent_recovery_95_percent_of_gains_have_gone_to_the_top_one_percent.html
Top 1% Take Biggest Income Slice On Record
by Matt Krantz
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/09/10/pay-gap-richest-poorest/2793343
Unprecedented Inequality:
The Top 1 Percent Captured 95% Of the Income Gains Since 2009
Tuesday, October 29, 8:30am-4:30pm | Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ or via free webinar
Superstorm Sandy flooded cities and changed coastlines, causing $75 billion in damage and making it the second-costliest extreme weather event in U.S. history. But the consequences would have been far worse without modern science. As we brace for more damaging storms, we must: improve prediction, response and recovery; better integrate science in risk assessments; create more resilient infrastructure; and ensure that communities can access adequate informationto make good planning decisions that benefit all community members. One year after Superstorm Sandy made landfall, UCS is holding a full-day forum to discuss how the application of scientific information can make communities more resilient and help the region plan for the future. Participants can attend either in person or via webcast. The event is part of the Lewis M. Branscomb Forum series. Presented by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Monmouth University, New Jersey Future, and the New Jersey Recovery Fund Morning Session: 9:00-12:15 Afternoon Session: 1:45-4:30 (Activities begin at 8:30 for in-person attendees. All in-person attendees will receive a box lunch free of charge.) RSVP and/or get more information by clicking right here.
NJSpotlight, Sept. 12, 2013
By Colleen O’Dea
A housing advocacy group yesterday filed a lawsuit seeking to force New Jersey to provide information about three of its largest housing-grant programs, which are expected to provide $850 million in assistance to residents affected by superstorm Sandy. At least two of the programs must provide a majority of funds to low- and moderate-income individuals and families.
The information sought by the lawsuit may help explain why five communities in Bergen and Hudson counties rejected low- and moderate-income residents for construction grants of up to $150,000 at rates much higher than the state average.
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N.Y. Times, Sept. 11, 2013 By Gary Gutting George Yancy’s recent passionate response in The Stone to Trayvon Martin’s killing — and the equally passionate comments on his response — vividly present the seemingly intractable conflict such cases always evoke. There seems to be a sense in which each side is right, but no way to find common ground on which to move discussion forward. This is because, quite apart from the facts of the case, Trayvon Martin immediately became a symbol for two apparently opposing moral judgments. I will suggest, however, that both these judgments derive from the same underlying injustice — one at the heart of the historic March on Washington 50 years ago and highlighted in the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech on that occasion. Trayvon Martin was, for the black community, a symbol of every young black male, each with vivid memories of averted faces, abrupt street crossings, clicking car locks and insulting police searches. As we move up the socioeconomic scale, the memories extend to attractive job openings that suddenly disappear when a black man applies, to blacks interviewed just to prove that a company tried, and even to a president some still hate for his color. It’s understandable that Trayvon Martin serves as a concrete emblem of the utterly unacceptable abuse, even today, of young black men. But for others this young black man became a symbol of other disturbing realities; that, for example, those most likely to drop out of school, belong to gangs and commit violent crimes are those who “look like” Trayvon Martin. For them — however mistakenly — his case evokes the disturbing amount of antisocial behavior among young black males. Trayvon Martin’s killing focused our national discussion because Americans made him a concrete model of opposing moral judgments about the plight of young black men. Is it because of their own lack of values and self-discipline, or to the vicious prejudice against them? Given either of these judgments, many conclude that we need more laws — against discrimination if you are in one camp, and against violent crime if you are in the other — and stronger penalties to solve our racial problems. There may be some sense to more legislation, but after many years of both “getting tough on crime” and passing civil rights acts, we may be scraping the bottom of the legal barrel. In any case, underlying the partial truths of the two moral pictures, there is a deeper issue. We need to recognize that our continuing problems about race are essentially rooted in a fundamental injustice of our economic system. This is a point that Martin Luther King Jr. made in his “I Have a Dream” speech, one rightly emphasized by a number of commentators on the anniversary of that speech, including President Obama and Joseph Stiglitz. Dr. King made the point in a striking image at the beginning of his speech. “The Negro is not free,” he said, because he “lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast sea of material prosperity.” In 2011, for 28 percent of African-Americans, the island was still there, the source of both images of Trayvon Martin.
The poverty is not an accident. Our free-enterprise system generates enough wealth to eliminate Dr. King’s island. But we primarily direct the system toward individuals’ freedom to amass personal wealth. Big winners beget big losers, and a result is a socioeconomic underclass deprived of the basic goods necessary for a fulfilling human life: adequate food, housing, health care and education, as well as meaningful and secure employment. (Another Opinionator series, The Great Divide, examines such inequalities in detail each week.)
People should be allowed to pursue their happiness in the competitive market. But it makes no sense to require people to compete in the market for basic goods. Those who lack such goods have little chance of winning them in competition with those who already have them. This is what leads to an underclass exhibiting the antisocial behavior condemned by one picture of young black men and the object of the prejudice condemned by the other picture. We need to move from outrage over the existence of an underclass to serious policy discussions about economic justice, with the first issue being whether our current capitalist system is inevitably unjust. If it is, is there a feasible way of reforming or even replacing it? If it is not, what methods does it offer for eliminating the injustice? It is easy — and true — to say that a society as wealthy as ours should be able to keep people from being unhappy because they do not have enough to eat, have no safe place to live, have no access to good education and medical care, or cannot find a job. But this doesn’t tell us how — if at all — to do what needs to be done. My point here is just that saying it can’t be done expresses not realism but despair. Unless we work for this fundamental justice, then we must reconcile ourselves to a society with a permanent underclass, a class that, given our history, will almost surely be racially defined. Then the bitter conflict between the two pictures of this class will never end, because the injustice that creates it will last forever. Dr. King’s island will never disappear, and there will always be another Trayvon Martin.
Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. He is the author of, most recently, “Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960,” and writes regularly for The Stone. He was recently interviewed in 3am magazine.
Are political and corporate leaders even remotely aware of the conditions of society beneath the wealthiest 10% or so?
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/Portokalis
We live in a society that allows one man to make $15 million a day while a low-income mother gets $4.50 a day for food, and much of Congress wants to cut the $4.50.
Are political and corporate leaders even remotely aware of the conditions of society beneath the wealthiest 10% or so?
The following are some of the victims of an economic system that has forgotten the majority of its people. Children
One out of every five American children now lives in poverty, and for black children it’s nearly one out of TWO. Almost half of food stamp recipients are children. UNICEF places us near the bottom of the developed world in the inequality of children’s well-being, and the OECD found that we have more child poverty than all but 3 of 30 developed countries. It’s rather embarrassing to view the charts. Students
Over the last 12 years, according to a New York Times report, the United States has gone from having the highest share of employed 25- to 34-year-olds among large, wealthy economies to having among the lowest. The number of college grads working for minimum wage has doubled in just five years.
Higher education was cut by nearly $17 billion in the years leading up to 2012-13. Through those same years large corporations were avoiding about $14 billion annually in taxes. To make up the difference, students face tuition costs that have risen almost ten times faster than median family income, leading them into their low-wage post-college positions with an average of $26,000 in student loan debt. The Elderly Three-quarters of Americans approaching retirement in 2010 had an average of less than $30,000 in their retirement accounts. The percentage of elderly (75 to 84) Americans experiencing poverty for the first time doubled from 2005 to 2009.
The folly of cutting Social Security is reflected in two facts. First, even though Social Security provides only an average benefit of $15,000, it accounts for 55 percent of annual income for the elderly. And second, seniors have spent their working lives paying for their retirement. According to the Urban Institute the average two-earner couple making average wages throughout their lifetimes will receive less in Social Security benefits than they paid in. Same for single males. Almost the same for single females. Wage Earners
Workers have 30%LESS buying power today than in 1968. If the minimum wage had kept up with employee productivity, it would be $16.54 per hour instead of $7.25.
Almost unimaginably, conditions for workers have gotten even worse since the recession. While 21 percent of job losses since 2008 were considered low-wage positions, 58 percent of jobs added during the recovery were considered low-wage.
As for members of Congress who say “get a job,” only one of them was present at the start of a recent unemployment hearing. The Sick and Disabled
Over 200 recent studies have confirmed a link between financial stress and sickness. In just 20 years America’s ranking among developed countries dropped on nearly every major health measure. Victims suffer both physically and mentally. A recent study found that unemployment, whether voluntary or involuntary, can significantly impact a person’s mental health. Even grimmer, from 1999 to 2010 the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 increased by almost 30 percent.
In the long run, the only Americans to increase their life expectancy have been seniors covered by Medicare. Women
Recent figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reveal that women earn just 80% of men’s pay. In Washington, DC and California, Hispanic women make only 44 cents for every dollar made by white men. The only deviation from the norm is that in 47 of 50 large metropolitan areas, well-educated single childless women under 30 earn more than their male counterparts.
But the overall disparities have worsened since the recession, with only about one-fifth of new jobs going to women, and with median wealth for single black and Hispanic women falling to a little over $100. And there’s no respite with advancing age. The average American woman’s retirement account is 38 percent less than a man’s, and women over 65 have twice the poverty rate of men. Minorities The Economist states: Before the 1960s… most blacks were poor, few served in public office and almost none were to be found flourishing at the nation’s top universities, corporations, law firms and banks. None of that is true today.
Wrong. Much of that is true today. According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), median wealth for black families in 2009 was $2,200, compared to $97,900 for white families. (Pew Research reported $5,677 for blacks, $113,149 for whites). EPI said median financial wealth (stocks, etc.) was $200 for blacks, compared to $36,100 for whites.
Since the recession, black and Hispanic wealth has dropped further, by 30 to 40 percent, while white family wealth dropped 11 percent.
Blacks and Hispanics, with 29% of the population, are also severely under-represented on corporate boards and in higher education.
One of the reasons it’s so hard for young blacks to be successful is that they’re viewed as criminals by many white authority figures. In The New Jim Crow,Michelle Alexander documents the explosion of the prison population for drug offenses, with blacks and Hispanics the main targets even though they use drugs at about the same — or lesser — rate as white Americans. The Homeless
The super-rich want homeless people to get jobs. But they don’t want to pay taxes to support job creation. If the richest Americans – the Forbes 400 – had paid a 5% tax on their 2012 investment earnings, enough revenue would have been generated to provide a full-time minimum wage job for every person who was homeless in America on a January night in 2012.
Instead, it keeps getting worse for the homeless. North Carolina made it a crime to feed them. Columbia, South Carolina approved a plan to remove them. Tampa, Florida passed a law that makes it a crime for them to sleep in public. So who’s left after all this? Oh yes, rich white men.
New York City Department of Homeless Services and Human Resources Administration and NYCStat, Shelter Census Reports
