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Recent
Articles
It’s
Oligarchs, Not Graduates
The new Fed chairman misses the inequality story, says
Paul Kugman in the NY Times (2/27/06).
"Responding to a question from Representative
Barney Frank... [Ben Bernanke] declared that 'the most important
factor' in rising inequality 'is the rising skill premium, the
increased return to education.'
"That's a fundamental misreading of what's happening to American
society. What we're seeing isn't the rise of a fairly broad class
of knowledge workers. Instead, we're seeing the rise of a narrow
oligarchy: income and wealth are becoming increasingly concentrated
in the hands of a small, privileged elite."
Hidden
in the Land of Plenty
Vast numbers of Americans cannot pay their bills even with
two or three jobs, writes Paul Harris in the Observer.
Candy and Amos Lumkin are among the “shocking
37 million Americans [who] live in poverty,” says Harris.
“That is 12.7 per cent of the population - the highest percentage
in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky
to Detroit's streets, from the Deep South of Louisiana to the
heartland of Oklahoma. Each year since 2001 their number has grown.
Under President George W Bush an extra 5.4 million have slipped
below the poverty line. Yet they are not a story of the unemployed
or the destitute. Most have jobs. Many have two. Amos Lumpkins
has work and his children go to school.”
How
Poor is Poor?
Political pressures keep the Census Bureau from fixing a 40-year-old
poverty yardstick.
An annual income of $13,000 is enough to place
some Americans above the poverty line. Owning a $1 million house
could not keep some other Americans from being labeled poor. “I
know virtually no one who thinks the current poverty line is an
accurate measure of poverty,” says Rebecca Blank, co-director
of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan.
Reforming
the Winner-Takes-All Economy
In the Jan 30 Financial Times, Gene Sperling of the Center
for American Progress lays out a plan.
"Consider twin brothers with equivalent education
and work histories, who each took good jobs six years ago - one,
fortunately, with Google, the other, less fortunately, with Lucent.
Since the investment community was still betting on Lucent in
early 2000 and Google was just getting established, it is hard
to say that skill led one worker to $2 million in stock options
and the other to a pink slip and a job retraining program...
"[E]liminating taxation on investment income
exacerbates - not moderates - winner-takes-all outcomes. Consider
our brothers. If the one at Lucent finds a new, Dollars 60,000
a year job, he could pay about 25 per cent in federal taxes (including
payroll taxes). Yet, under Mr Bush's tax policy, if his twin at
Google can find a solid 6 per cent return investing his Dollars
2m, he can make at least Dollars 120,000a year while paying a
lower 15 per cent tax rate. If we move closer to Mr Bush's vision
of zero taxes on dividends, capital gains and inheritances, the
Google twin could watch his gains accumulate tax-free year after
yearand then pass on his wealth to an heir, tax free..."
Happy New Year, American Dream
We are becoming a nation of Scroogemarts and outsourcers,
says Holly Sklar (Knight Ridder, Dec 27, 2005).
"We are breaking records we don't want to break. Record
numbers of Americans have no health insurance. The share of national
income going to wages and salaries is the lowest since 1929. Middle-class
households are a medical crisis, outsourced job or busted pension
away from bankruptcy. The congressional majority voted the biggest
cut in history to the student loan program at a time when college
is more important, and more expensive, than ever. Public college
tuition has risen even faster than private tuition, jumping 54
percent over the last decade, adjusted for inflation.
Sick of Poverty:
In the Dec. Scientific American, anthropologist Robert Sapolsky
writes about the stress of poverty and its "staggeringly harmful
influence on health."
"Psychosocial stressors are not evenly distributed across
society. Just as the poor have a disproportionate share of physical
stressors (hunger, manual labor, chronic sleep deprivation with
a second job, the bad mattress that can’t be replaced),
they have a disproportionate share of psychosocial ones. Numbing
assembly-line work and an occupational lifetime spent taking
orders erode workers’ sense of control. Unreliable cars
that may not start in the morning and paychecks that may not
last the month inflict unpredictability. Poverty rarely allows
stress-relieving options such as health club memberships, costly
but relaxing hobbies, or sabbaticals for rethinking one’s
priorities."
The Shape of Taxes to Come:
Congress is still playing the same game, says the NY Times
editorial page (11/18/05).
"The House took the opposite tack from the Senate: its version
includes the two-year extension of the investor tax breaks and
omits relief from the alternative tax. In other words, it has
tax cuts for the rich and no protection for middle class taxpayers,
wrapped up in a budget that cuts deeply into programs for the
poor."
Class Matters
Sebastian Mallaby of the Washington Post charges the Bush
administration with systematically aggravating a level of inequality
that is already horrifying (11/14/05).
"The president's congressional allies now propose to cut Medicaid,
food stamps, free school lunches and child-care subsides… This is
a scandal, and not because every liberal spending program deserves
protection. It's a scandal because, whether you support this program
or that, inequality is growing poisonous…."
Our Society's Middle Is Shrinking from View
In the San Jose Mercury News (7/26/05), Louise Auerhahn
describes the new America in cross-section.
With a shrinking or stagnant upper class, a disappearing middle
class and an ever-increasing low-wage service sector, income distribution
now resembles not so much an hourglass as an old-fashioned Victorian
gown: small on top, cinched down to nearly nothing in the middle,
and ballooning out at the bottom."
Minding About the Gap
"America worries that it is becoming a class society. With
reason." (The Economist, 6/15/05)
The Mobility Myth
It's off to the races for the wealthy, picking up the losing
tickets for the rest,says Bob Herbert in the Times (6/6/05).
"Put the myth of the American Dream aside. The bottom line is that
it's becoming increasingly difficult for working Americans to move
up in class. The rich are freezing nearly everybody else in place,
and sprinting off with the nation's bounty."
Mobility vs. Nobility
Where you are is the best predicftor of where your children will
be, says Michael Kinsley in the Washington Post (6/5/05).
"In recent decades, financial inequality has been increasing, not
shrinking. That didn't matter, many said, because studies show a
constant shuffling of the deck… But it turns out these studies were
flawed... And immobility over generations is what congeals financial
differences into old-fashioned, European-style social class."
Class Matters
A series of articles on the enduring power of class in America by
David Leonhardt, Janny Scott, Anthony DePalma, Tamar Lewin, Peter
T. Kilborn, Jennifer Steinhauer, & David Cay Johnston. -- New York
Times, 5/15/-6/12/05
- Class in America: Shadowy Lines That Still Divide (5/15/2005)
- Life at the Top in America Isn't Just Better, It's Longer (5/16/2005)
- Up From the Holler: Living in Two Worlds, at Home in Neither
(5/19/2005)
- When Richer Weds Poorer, Money Isn't the Only Difference (5/19/2005)
- On a Christian Mission to the Top (5/22/2005)
- No Degree, and No Way Back to the Middle (5/24/2005)
- The College Dropout Boom (5/24/2005)
- 15 Years on the Bottom Rung (5/26/2005)
- When the Joneses Wear Jeans (5/29/2005)
- The Five-Bedroom, Six-Figure Rootless Life (6/1/2005)
- Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind (6/5/2005)
- Old Nantucket Warily Meets the New (6/6/2005)
- In Fiction, a Long History of Fixation on the Social Gap (6/8/2005)
- Angela Whitiker's Climb (6/12/2005)
Moving Up--Challenges to the American Dream A series
of articles on economic mobility -- David Wessel and others, Wall
Street Journal, 5/13-7/20/05
- As Rich-Poor Gap Widens in U.S., Class Mobility Stalls (5/13/2005)
- Lagging Behind the Wealthy, Many Use Debt to Catch Up (5/15/2005)
- Old Money Isn't Having a Ball (5/20/2005)
- Promotion Track Fades for Those Starting at the Bottom (6/6/2005)
- As Economy Shifts, A New Generation Fights to Keep Up (6/22/2005)
- In Latin America, Rich-Poor Chasm Stifles Growth (7/18/2005)
- Once Here Illegally, the Laras Savor Children's Success (7/20/2005)
The New Deal. A series of articles on increasing
economic insecurity -- Peter G. Gosselin and others, Los Angeles Times,
12/04
- If America is Richer, Why Are its Families So Much Less Secure?
- The Poor Have More Things Today--Including Wild Income Swings
- How Just a Handful of Setbacks Sent the Ryans Tumbling Out of
Prosperity
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