Showing all posts tagged: inequality
Part of the intellectual sleight-of-hand that Republicans employ in discussions of redistribution is to reserve that term solely for government intervention in the market that redistributes income downward. But markets redistribute wealth continuously. In recent decades, markets have redistributed wealth from manufacturing to finance, from Main Street to Wall Street, from workers to shareholders. Rules made by “pro-market” governments (including those of “pro-market” Democrats) have enabled these epochal shifts. Free trade with China helped hollow out manufacturing; the failure to regulate finance enabled Wall Street to swell; the opposition to labor’s efforts to reestablish an even playing field during organizing campaigns has all but eliminated collective bargaining in the private sector.
The conservative counter to such liberal cavils is to assert that the market increases wealth, which will eventually descend on everyone as the gentle rains from heaven. Decrying such Keynesian notions as unions or federally established minimum wages, hedge fund guru Andy Kessler recently argued in the Wall Street Journal that “it is workers’ productivity that drives long-term wage gains, not workers’ wages that drive growth.”
But Kessler assumes — and this is the very essence of the “trickle-down” argument — that workers reap the rewards of productivity gains. Believing and asserting that requires either ignorance or willful denial of economic history. The only time in U.S. history when workers substantially benefited from productivity gains was the three decades that followed World War II, when median household income and productivity gains both increased by 102 percent. Not coincidentally, that was also the only period of genuine union power in U.S. history, and the time when the tax code was at its most progressive. During the past quarter-century, as progressivity was lessened and unions diminished, all productivity gains have gone to the wealthiest 10 percent, according to research published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 1955, at the height of union strength, the wealthiest 10 percent received 33 percent of the nation’s personal income. In 2007, they received 50 percent, Economic Policy Institute data show.
If that’s not redistribution, I don’t know what is.
Harold Meyerson, The party that truly believes in redistribution
Myerson lays bare the moral dishonesty of the GOP and America’s 1%, which is at the core of the unsupportable income inequality and the globalistic chaos we are moving into.
The elite story about the triumph of the omnivorous individual with diverse talents is a myth. In suggesting that it is their work and not their wealth, that it is their talents and not their lineage, elites effectively blame inequality on those whom our democratic promise has failed.
Shamus Khan, The New Elitists via the NY Times
Not a single top executive at any of the firms that nearly brought down the financial system has spent so much as a day in jail.
Joe Nocera, The Mortgage Fraud Fraud via NYTimes.com
Corporate profits are up but the money isn’t flowing to American workers. The ratio of profits to wages is the highest on record – since the government began keeping track in 1947. Not only has the median wage continued to drop, adjusted for inflation, but a far smaller share of working-age Americans is now employed (58.6 percent) than was employed five years ago (63.3 percent). Today’s employment-to-population ratio isn’t much higher than it was at its lowest point last summer, when it dropped to 58.2 percent.
Robert Reich (via azspot)
(via azspot)
Extreme concentration of income is incompatible with real democracy.
- Paul Krugman, Oligarchy, American Style
One of the principles of our struggle against the 1%: rules for the reset.
Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.
(Source: stoweboyd)
SANTA FE, New Mexico (Reuters) - New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez, a Republican who has taken a hard line against illegal immigration in her state, said her own grandparents came to the country illegally.
“I know they arrived without documents, especially my grandfather, my father’s father,” she said in an interview with the Spanish-language television station KLUZ in Albuquerque on Wednesday.
“In those days, the law was very different,” she added, saying many people came to the United States without papers back then.
The governor’s comments come as she pushes state lawmakers, in a special session this week, to take up a bill to ban immigrants in the country illegally from getting driver’s licenses in the state.
Critics blasted the governor for what they called a “disgusting” show of hypocrisy by a woman they say clearly benefited from her grandparents’ decision to come to the country without papers.
“Her grandparents shared the same story of many undocumented people. It’s a sad day that the governor has chosen to turn her back on the same sacrifices she has benefited from. This is not the governor’s finest hour,” said Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based League of United Latin American Citizens.
Hypocrisy says what?
Michael A. Rebell via NY Times
Most state constitutions, in fact, guarantee all students a sound, basic public education. These constitutional rights cannot be put on hold, even in tough times. It is unconstitutional to call on parents to pay for textbooks and lab fees for required courses. And art, music, sports, basic educational support services and many extracurricular activities that promote learning, creativity and character are not luxuries; they, too, are essential features of a sound, basic education.
California acknowledged as much last December when it settled a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging illegal school fees. Officials ordered school districts to halt the practice and to refund the fee money they had collected. While schools in California now must eliminate textbook and activity fees, affluent children whose parents can afford to reinstate teaching positions will continue to have more educational opportunities than their poorer counterparts.
A number of judges have begun to respond to the devastation in state education financing: in May, the New Jersey Supreme Court ordered Gov. Chris Christie and the Legislature to reinstate $500 million in funds for poor urban districts, and last month, a North Carolina judge blocked cuts that would have decimated financing for a statewide preschool program.
The courts are doing their job, but litigation is time-consuming and expensive. Politicians have a constitutional obligation to protect public education. They need to ensure that adequate public funds are available, and the people need to hold them accountable for doing so.
We will have to take our elected officials to court, and sue for the basic premises of equality in everyday life.
Can we please sue all the officials who didn’t pay into legally-mandated pension funds, too? Who didn’t pave the streets? And who campaigned on lowering real estate taxes?
Bernie Sanders calls out the top corporate tax dodgers on the Senate floor today. My love for this man knows no bounds.
(via soupsoup)
