When 1% is Bigger than 99%

What I love most about stats and math is that they are apolitical (or at least they used to be). They care not for party affiliation, for whom you vote, or where you get your news.

To wit.....
....If your household income isn't at least $386,000 a year you're in the 99%, not the 1%
....14,000 American families make up the top 0.01% and AVERAGE $31million a year

0.01% is 1 out of every 10,000 families. They earn 5%, or 5 out of every 100 dollars, of all income earned in America. That leaves the other 95 to be split up among the remaining 131,986,000 American households(1).

Is it any wonder poverty in America is now at 14.3%(2)? That's 14 out of every 100 people. 14% is just over 2 out of the 17 people listed in the To: field of the original email from which this post was created. Think about that. 2 people out of every group this size in America lives in poverty. Not working poor. Not middle class. Not having to sacrifice that European vacation or third car in the driveway this year. Not cutting back on eating out or trading in filet mignon for ground chuck at the grocery store.

Poverty.

What is poverty? Poverty defined for a family of 4 is earning $22,314/year(3). That's $10.72/hour if it's full-time work; 40 hours a week, 2080 hours a year, at $10.72 per hour.

The second largest single employer in the U.S. (behind the federal government which, btw, includes everyone in the military before anyone starts ranting about the size of government) is, you guessed it, Wal-Mart. Average employee take home pay at Wal-Mart is $250 a week, or $13,000 a year if they actually work all 52 weeks. Wal-Mart's "full-time" employees average $6 - $7.50 an hour for working 28 - 40 hour weeks(4)

The federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour(5).

Am I the only one who thinks it's madness for companies to be required by law to pay $3.50 an hour LESS than the poverty rate?

I'm not against wealth or the wealthy. I am not a communist.

I'm all for a strong, vibrant, and sustainably-consuming middle class because we are the true engine of the economy. Without us, there are no markets to whom corporations can sell their goods and services, make a profit, and create more wealth for themselves and their shareholders. I am perfectly fine with that.

Something has gone terribly wrong, though, over the last 30 years or so and we need to get back to what we know works.

I'm no big devotee, but for all his faults and his anti-union stance Henry Ford seemed to understand how things could work for himself, his company, and his workers. He knew that in order to build a big, successful company he had to:
a) build a product people would want,
b) price that product (based on cost and a reasonable profit) so enough people could actually afford to buy it and,
c) create a big enough and sustainable market to buy his cars, partly by paying his workers enough to actually buy the damned things.

Like I said, there's a lot about Ford's business methods I don't like, but what confuses me now is how we seem to be living in an age when some of us in the middle class have forgotten this "symbiotic" reality between producing goods and services that markets want and can afford versus how much the people at the top want to earn from that buying and selling.

In other words, without all of us in the 99% underneath the 1% from where is their wealth supposed to come?

Oh, yeah. Wait. That's right.

Their wealth can still come from record-level profits derived at least in part from continuing to outsource what we used to call middle class jobs to the absolute cheapest overseas labor markets. The government isn't forcing them to do that. In fact, "free trade agreements" help to facilitate that. It's a P&L decision made easier by government removing regulation.

If that's not enough, their wealth can still come from duping some of us into believing that what we need to do is elect people who will bring "certainty" to their business, as if that's ever supposed to be a component of a free market and capitalism. Exactly how does government provide certainty to those poor, abused, and fearful titans of industry and commerce? I thought government was supposed to get out of their way, not do things for them?

From what we're being told by one party in particular (and only to a lesser degree by the other), certainty would come if only the following could be realized:

1) Deregulation
If corporations - and especially the financial services sector - were utterly and completely deregulated, the economy would just grow like crazy because who needs a watchdog when you have the "invisible hand" to guide you? We've seen - and even Greenspan has admitted - that hasn't worked out all that well, but what does he know?

2) Lower - even zero - taxes
If only the wealthy "job creators" and corporations - which, when it comes to corporations, we are now told by the Supreme Court and certain GOP candidates are people just like us - could just pay even less - better yet, no - taxes they could hoard even more cash until "certainty" finally arrived. Then they would have the confidence they need to create all those wonderful minimum wage and non-union jobs, and everyone could stop all their occupying and whining about not being able to find a job and get back to work.

3) Fear-driven cuts and bailouts
And if all else fails? Well, the powerful elite will still have their bought-and-paid for minions in Big Government in both parties who will be more than happy to cut social programs for the poor (who have no power anyway) while they take that money - our tax dollars - and distribute what's left to banks and private companies as tax breaks and bailouts for the mistakes they made because, as we all know, a free market based on libertarian principles and pure capitalism cannot afford to fail.


Sources:
(1) Where the One Percent Fit in the Hierarchy of Income, New York Times, 10/28/2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/30/nyregion/where-the-one-percent-fit-in-the-hierarchy-of-income.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1

(2) U.S. Census Bureau Quick Facts.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html

(3) U.S. Census Bureau Poverty Data.
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/threshld/

(4) Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town, PBS.
http://www.pbs.org/itvs/storewars/stores3.html

(5) U.S. Department of Labor; Wages.
http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/minimumwage.htm

Vilifying the Poor - Rebuttal to Star Parker

So, a friend sends an email to me containing a piece written by Star Parker summarizing (pitching?!?!) her 6 year old book, Uncle Sam's Plantation. This was my response....
---

Let's face it. One has to deal in facts - true facts or lies that are claimed to be facts - to get the attention of Factcheck.org. Star Parker offers neither. She only has opinions. Maybe her absence from sites like Factcheck ought to be read as testimony to her utter irrelevance in the larger debate about federal spending, policy matters, budgets, and the poor.

In my opinion, she's nothing more than the African-American Ann Coulter. Have a listen to her at: http://www.urbancure.org/article.asp?id=3162 She and Ann make about the same amount of sense to me, too.......none.

And it comes as no surprise to me that only the yellowest of all the news networks, The Hannity/Beck Network, would even care about what she has to say.

If anyone is interested in some facts about the programs she vilifies, here are some links you might find useful.
* Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF): http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/tanf/about.html
"Under the welfare reform legislation of 1996, (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act – PWRORA – Public Law 104-193), TANF replaced the welfare programs known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS) program and the Emergency Assistance (EA) program. The law ended federal entitlement to assistance and instead created TANF as a block grant that provides States, territories and tribes federal funds each year. These funds cover benefits, administrative expenses, and services targeted to needy families. TANF became effective July 1, 1997, and was reauthorized in February 2006 under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005."

The Goals stated are
" States receive a block grant to design and operate their programs to accomplish the purposes of TANF.

These are:

• assisting needy families so that children can be cared for in their own homes
• reducing the dependency of needy parents by promoting job preparation, work and marriage
• preventing out-of-wedlock pregnancies
• encouraging the formation and maintenance of two-parent families."

Now we can't have any of that, now can we?

* Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS): was replaced 13 years ago by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) (see above and http://www.childtrends.org/Lifecourse/programs/JOBS.htm)

* Emergency Assistance to Needy Families with Children (EANF)
One of the rare situations where you can actually stump Google.
Your search - "Emergency Assistance to Needy Families with Children (EANF)" site:.gov - did not match any documents.
If she's going to criticize a program - one that looks like it no longer exists (see above), was administered by states and, at least in New York, required conditions like you to be homeless with little or no food (http://www.dads.ny.gov/main/ta/default.asp) - she should at least get the name right. Those kinds of errors tell me a lot about the credibility of the source......again, none.


So what's my point? To point out what I consider to be the obvious, of course! ;-) Like most people with an agenda, she's not letting facts get in the way.


And why this fascination with vilifying the poor?
...They don't make laws
...They don't have lobbyists
...They don't have much, if any, money
...They don't own banks, brokerages, or insurance firms
...They aren't typically registered as members of the party who passed such legislative gems in the name of capitalism and free markets as the Graham-Leach-Bliley act which, as you all know, removed all the safeguards, oversights, regulations, and restrictions on financial services companies created by the Glass-Steagall act which, as you also know, had to be passed by a Democratically-led Congress in 1933 to try and protect us from the greedy motherf***ing capitalists who gave us the first Great Depression and are back with their sequel, "Great Depression II: You Dumb-Asses Didn't Learn a Thing the First Time, Did You?"
...The poor didn't create bullshit investment instruments like collateralized debt obligations that tanked the whole friggin' world's economy while the modern day heros of capitalism were still getting paid their obscenely large bonuses
...The poor weren't the ones buying homes they couldn't afford, nor were they the ones writing the mortgages without so much as a passing interest in anyone's ability to repay the loan because the mortgages were being bundled and sold to someone else which eventually turned into the CDOs which.....oh hell, my head is spinning.
...They don't lobby their Senators and Representatives for tax cuts to wealthy Americans that accomplished nothing except to piss away a federal surplus and didn't create any noticeable improvement to the economy
...They didn't leave the Obama administration with a wrecked economy, a $500billion deficit (which probably doesn't really account for everything since W did Iraq off the books), a financial system in total ruin thanks to a lack of regulation, and a world roiling in political, social, and cultural turmoil

Do I really need to go on?

So what's her message - all you poor African Americans stop sitting around pretending that there's no work and go out there and make your mark in the world? Is that it? Is that all that's needed to get our economy growing again?

So Obama should abandon social programs and keep funneling money to the wealthy? Will that solve our problems?

Or is she also complaining that the president didn't just let W's utter and complete disaster culminate in the closing down of the world's economy? Let them fail, is that it? No such thing as too big to fail? Now that really would have been poetic justice for those who really think there is such a thing as capitalism and free markets, now wouldn't it?

I've news for you.....there's no such thing. The world is run by an oligarchy of rich and powerful people. It's not James Bond versus Specter, but it's not truly capitalism or free markets, either. And Oboma ain't no savior and he ain't no devil. He's one of them, too, just a little further to the left than others.

Hell, it's starting to look more and more like how Bill Mahr recently described our two-party system, "Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital."

So let's say that Star (is that really her name?) is right. How could she not be, right? Hell, just look at the facts.
1. Our primary and secondary public education is extremely well-funded, progressive, and effective especially in inner city neighborhoods.
2. Higher education is eminently affordable to anyone who wants to go.
3. And the Republican administration of the last 8 years with all of their free market deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, and sound economic and fiscal policies has left us with an economy so sound and robust that it's just chock full of great paying jobs whether or not you even have a degree and so long as you get your sorry, shiffless, ass of the front stoop and go looking.

Right........

;-)

We're All In This Together?

A recent email written by a very, very conservative friend made me laugh and got me thinking. 

Did everyone know we're all in this together now?

The email in question wasn't sent directly to me.  It was forwarded by a mutual friend.  The author and I met in college in the early 80s, spent a ton of great times together, and stayed in touch after graduation.  He then decided to cut all ties and block all email from me about 12 or 13 years ago.  My recollection is that it was over a difference of political opinion.  I'm liberal and he's conservative.  Sadly, this kind of reaction has been disturbingly typical from conservatives I've met in my life, including my own brother who no longer speaks to me.  His choice, not mine.  

This forwarded email, combined with my experiences with this kind of reaction and rejection, struck me as both humorous and more than a little ironic.  The aforementioned conservative friend's email was his response to the mutual friend's suggestion that he read my blog.  Here's the text that got me thinking...

"I suggest you dig deeper and paste these links into your browser, there is not right or left in the theives  who do this its who ever is in power.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212948811465427.html"

There was more than one link in the email, but this one was the first and seemed like the one with potentially the most credibility.  I read the article and then decided I had to ask..............

What, all of a sudden we're all in this together?

 

I have to say that I think it's funnier than hell that some of my friends of the right-wing persuasion are suddenly talking like centrists and saying things like whomever is in power is the crook.  To be sure, there's plenty of blame to go around and no politician is an innocent.

 

(Where's Che when you need him?)

 

Still.....it's impossible to ignore the facts and the truth.

 

The WSJ article blaming Freddie and Fannie is an interesting twist.  This piece of journalistic legerdemain needs to be read carefully and with some important facts in mind; namely, that the White House was occupied by rich, white bread, oilmen Republicans for the last 8 years and, even worse, we dumb-ass Americans had allowed ourselves to be duped into putting Republicans in charge of Congress pretty much uninterrupted since 1995 (http://uspolitics.about.com/od/usgovernment/l/bl_party_division_2.htm).

 

So whose fault is this current economic mess?   Anyone?   Anyone?  Bueller??

 

And what does anyone expect from the ultra-conservative right-wing shill of a newspaper, the WSJ?  Where's the surprise that the WSJ would do anything but publish this biased drivel, and that it would do anything but try to pin the excessive risks taken by GSEs during Republican administrations on who else but Democrats?  This is, after all, the same rag that published Rove for chrissakes.  Who's next for them, the new de facto Republican icon and leader, Rush?

 

And talk about red herrings.  Comparing deregulated telecoms and the financial services industry?  Classic right-wing reframing and misdirection.  COME ON!!!  How f****** stupid do they think we are?  Of course the WSJ is going to be all for deregulation of the financial services industry.  And just look at who the authored this piece (of crap).  Anyone notice that both are associated with the American Enterprise Institute, self-proclaimed defenders of "...limited government, private enterprise, individual liberty and responsibility, vigilant and effective defense and foreign policies, political accountability, and open debate."  (http://www.aei.org/about/filter.all/default.asp)  Ah-hem.  That, for the uninitiated, is code speak for, "We're a bunch of Rich Republican Mother F*****s!!!"  Hell, Wallison was in Reagan's Treasury Department.  WTF else is he going to do but defend the failed ideology and policies of Ronny, "I-Come-Bearing-Smaller-Government-and-Historic-Deficits" Ray-gun and his minions from the deregulatory right?

 

No, no, no.  Let's make no mistake.  What put us here and in this economic disaster has everything to do with wrong politics, unchecked and unregulated greed, failed leadership, a corrupt belief system, and lack of ethics.

 

In other words and all the sincerest apologies I can muster on an email to my friends who are members, the Republican party.  Republicans are who bear the brunt of this economic collapse. 

 

One thing is absolutely certain....it wasn't the tree-hugging, peace-loving, middle-class-working, suburban-living, shopping-at-Walmart, Union-dues-paying, or even LETTUCE-PICKING-ILLEGALS who approved risky mortgages and then securitized them into investments, traded in unregulated derivatives, or who ran multi-billion dollar corporations (and Ponzi schemes) into the ground while getting rich beyond imagination. 

 

No, no, no.  It was the Rich Republican Mother F*****s, plain and simple.  Remember that the next time who hear one of them try to tell you that we're all in this together.  More importantly, remember it the next time you step into a voting booth.