Inequality

Report: US Has Highest Poverty Rate In Developed World

August 1, 2018 David Brooks, Resumen-english.org Educate! Inequality, Poverty, United States

A UN report released last weekend ranks the United States as the country with the highest poverty rate in the developed world. This explains the social problems facing the country, which, among other phenomena, have increased hatred towards migrants. In yesterday’s picture, an activist outside Trump Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, protests against the zero-tolerance policy toward undocumented immigrants with a placard that reads “Trump must be caged”. With the whirlwind of political scandals, the separation of children from their parents and the incessant noise caused by the Trump regime, few noticed the presentation of a report that documents how the richest country in history is now the most unequal, with the highest rate of poverty in the so-called advanced world.

Our ‘Rentier Capitalism’ Is One More Nail In Earth’s Coffin

July 31, 2018 By Paul Street, Truthdig.com Educate! Capitalism, Inequality, New Economy

“Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.” This famous socialist slogan, adapted from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ “The Communist Manifesto,” struck Noam Chomsky as a poor fit for most people in the world’s rich nations almost half a century ago. “There is no doubt,” Chomsky wrote in August 1969 (when I was a sixth-grader mourning the Chicago Cubs’ collapse before the onrushing New York “Miracle Mets”), “that we can learn from the achievements and failures of revolutionary struggles in the less-developed countries. …” But, Chomsky added, “In an advanced industrial society, it is, obviously, far from true that the mass of population have nothing to lose but their chains … [since] they have a considerable stake in preserving the existing social order.”

Risky Debt Spending Of Bottom Half Is Bolstering The Economy

July 29, 2018 Jonathan Spicer, Reuters Educate! Debt, Inequality, Jobs and Wages, New Economy

By almost every measure, the U.S. economy is booming. But a look behind the headlines of roaring job growth and consumer spending reveals how the boom continues in large part by the poorer half of Americans fleecing their savings and piling up debt.

Richest Man In The World’s Newspaper Says Inequality Is Not A Problem

July 27, 2018 By Dean Baker, Cepr.net Educate! Inequality, Media, Ruling Class

Wow, what a novel new idea, as though right-wingers have not been pushing this line since the dawn of time: "don't worry that your standard of living is awful, the important thing is that your kids will be able to get rich." (It doesn't help his story that his poster child for the rich being good is Lloyd Blankfein, who made his fortune shuffling financial assets at Goldman Sachs and benefitted from a massive government bailout.) But let's be generous and try to take Lowenstein's story seriously. He goes on: "Rising inequality, although a fact, is also very hard to find a culprit for. Not that economists haven’t tried." Really? There are plenty of really good explanations for rising inequality, many of which are in my [free] book Rigged.

American Society Would Collapse If It Weren’t For These 8 Myths

July 26, 2018 By Lee Camp, Truthdig.com Educate! Democracy, Electoral Politics, Inequality

Our society should’ve collapsed by now. You know that, right? No society should function with this level of inequality (with the possible exception of one of those prison planets in a “Star Wars” movie). Sixty-three percent of Americans can’t afford a $500 emergency. Yet Amazon head Jeff Bezos is now worth a record $141 billion. He could literally end world hunger for multiple years and still have more money left over than he could ever spend on himself. Worldwide, one in 10 people only make $2 a day. Do you know how long it would take one of those people to make the same amount as Jeff Bezos has? 193 million years. (If they only buy single-ply toilet paper.) Put simply, you cannot comprehend the level of inequality in our current world or even just our nation. So … shouldn’t there be riots in the streets every day? Shouldn’t it all be collapsing? Look outside. The streets aren’t on fire. No one is running naked and screaming (usually). Does it look like everyone’s going to work at gunpoint? No.

The New Gilded Age: Inequality State-By-State And Local

July 22, 2018 By Estelle Sommeiller and Mark Price, Economic Policy Institute Educate! Income inequality, Inequality, New Economy

Income inequality has risen in every state since the 1970s and, in most states, it has grown in the post–Great Recession era. From 2009 to 2015, the incomes of the top 1 percent grew faster than the incomes of the bottom 99 percent in 43 states and the District of Columbia. The top 1 percent captured half or more of all income growth in nine states. In 2015, a family in the top 1 percent nationally received, on average, 26.3 times as much income as a family in the bottom 99 percent. Rising inequality is not just a story of those on Wall Street, in Hollywood, or in the Silicon Valley reaping outsized rewards.

A Sweet New Century For America’s Most Privileged

July 17, 2018 By Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org Educate! Electoral Politics, Inequality, New Economy, Ruling Class, US Imperialism

The United States ended the 20th century on a roll — for the rich. Between 1973 and 2000, the nation’s most prosperous 1 percent tripled their incomes, after taking inflation into account. The even more prosperous top tenth of that 1 percent did quite a bit better. Their incomes more than quintupled between 1973 and 2000, rising an amazing 414.6 percent. And what about Americans of less exalted means, those stuck in the nation’s bottom 90 percent? Between 1973 and 2000, their incomes rose all of . . . 2.6 percent. Something, in other words, went horribly wrong over the last quarter of the 20th century. And what has happened so far in century 21? Our decision makers in Washington have done their best to make things even worse.

Ignore What The Gini Coefficient Says: Real Inequality Is Growing And People Are Suffering As A Result

July 10, 2018 Staff, Taxresearch.org.uk Educate! Class Struggle, Inequality, New Economy, Poverty

The right-wing love to say inequality does not matter. They also love to say that the Gini coefficient that measures inequality is improving. They trumpet as a result that in their opinion all is right in the world because people are now getting no worse off. But, as many familiar with such data know, it is not revealing of the truth. Inequality is seriously understated because its measurement is based on survey data and the wealthy don’t do surveys any more than they pay taxes. And the wealthy also hide their income and assets more effectively than do the rest of society precisely because they have so much of it that tucking it out of sight is much easier.

100 Kids, 100 Toys: The Rich Are Only Rich If We Let Them Be.

July 8, 2018 Dariel Garner, Popular Resistance Educate! Inequality, New Economy

Life would be very different if we all shared equally. The 325 Million people of the United States produce nearly 20 Trillion dollars of income every year. Credit Suisse estimates that we have a combined net worth (what we own less what we owe) of 94 Trillion dollars…and none of this counts what the rich have secretly hidden away in overseas tax heavens. Sharing equally, every family of four would have a yearly income of over $240,000 per year and a net worth of over $1,000,000. We are all rich if we share. The decision about how we share ultimately comes from the people. It is a political decision. The rich are only rich if we let them be.

How Credit Card Wars Lead To Greater Inequality

June 30, 2018 By Stephanie Savell, Tomdispatch.com Educate! Finance, Inequality

In the name of the fight against terrorism, the United States is currently waging “credit-card wars” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. Never before has this country relied so heavily on deficit spending to pay for its conflicts. The consequences are expected to be ruinous for the long-term fiscal health of the U.S., but they go far beyond the economic. Massive levels of war-related debt will have lasting repercussions of all sorts. One potentially devastating effect, a new study finds, will be more societal inequality. In other words, the staggering costs of the longest war in American history -- almost 17 years running, since the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 -- are being deferred to the future. In the process, the government is contributing to this country’s skyrocketing income inequality.

Resurrection City II Evicted From Dupont Circle Park

June 14, 2018 By John Zangas, DC Media Group Resist! Inequality, Poor People's Campaign, Resurrection City

U.S. Park Police and Metropolitan Police Department officers forced a protest encampment at Dupont Circle to disband Monday evening. The Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign set up the camp, which they called Resurrection City II, on Saturday to bring attention to worsening conditions experienced by poor people and the homeless. They had obtained a permit from the National Park Service to be in the park until Wednesday. Police began gathering on the outskirts of the park in the upscale neighborhood of Dupont Circle around 7:00 pm but gave no prior warning to organizers that they would soon evict them. No one was arrested, but police confiscated tents and bedding. About 40 people staying in the park, many of them veterans as well as homeless, took refuge at a nearby church on 16th Street.

Inequality Made Worse By Cruel Economic Policies In US

June 4, 2018 Ed Pilkington, Theguardian.com Educate! Economics, Inequality, Policy, US Imperialism

Donald Trump is deliberately forcing millions of Americans into financial ruin, cruelly depriving them of food and other basic protections while lavishing vast riches on the super-wealthy, the United Nations monitor on poverty has warned. Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur who acts as a watchdog on extreme poverty around the world, has issued a withering critique of the state of America today. Trump is steering the country towards a “dramatic change of direction” that is rewarding the rich and punishing the poor by blocking access even to the most meager necessities. “This is a systematic attack on America’s welfare program that is undermining the social safety net for those who can’t cope on their own. Once you start removing any sense of government commitment, you quickly move into cruelty,” Alston told the Guardian.

Why Are CEOs Paid 361 Times More Than Their Average Employees?

May 28, 2018 By Paul Ausick, 24/7 Wall Street Educate! CEO Pay, Inequality, Jobs and Wages, New Economy

In 1980 the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio was 42:1. In 2017 the ratio was 361:1. Total CEO compensation averaged $13.94 million last year, compared to just $38,613 for the average production and non-supervisory worker. We’ve all seen numbers like this so many times now that we barely even blink at a new set. There is, however, new research that may partly explain why this gap has gotten so wide. The CEO-to-worker pay data were reported Wednesday morning by the AFL-CIO in an update to the union’s Executive Paywatch database and website. The data were compiled from disclosures by companies of the ratio of CEO pay to the median worker’s pay required for the first time last year in federal financial filings. New research by Harvard Ph.D. candidate Nathan Wilmers, published Wednesday by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, indicates that increased pressure from large corporate buyers suppresses wages for the workers in the buyer’s network of suppliers. Thus, large corporate buyers like Boeing and Walmart exercise outsized influence on the wages of their suppliers’ workers.

US CEO’s Paid More Than Foreign CEO’s, And They Pay Their Workers Less

May 28, 2018 By Sam Pizzigati, Inequality Educate! CEO Pay, Inequality, New Economy, Worker Rings and Jobs

PayWatch report, thankfully, provides that context: Average worker pay in the United States last year increased just 2.6 percent. In other words, as the PayWatch study notes, “the imbalance in our economy between the pay of CEOs and working people is worsening.” And that rates as a big deal. But to really understand how staggering America’s CEO-worker pay imbalance has become, we need to widen our field of comparative vision, from domestic to global. And what do we find when we take that step? Simply this: CEOs in the United States make significantly more than their counterparts in our peer nations, and American workers make significantly less.

The Real Driver Of Rising Inequality

May 8, 2018 Lance Taylor, Ineteconomics.org Educate! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Inequality, New Economy, Wages

Income distribution and employment are crucial macroeconomic indicators. Profits are key to distribution. Ther share in the value of output has risen steadily since around 1980. Households near the top of the size distribution of income receive business profits through various channels including interest, dividends, capital gains, proprietors’ incomes, and even labor compensation—which in US statistics includes profit-related items such as bonuses and stock options. Rising household inequality can be traced directly to higher profits fed by slower growth of real wages than of productivity (Taylor and Ömer, 2018).

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