more on poverty and working class USA

from state of working America:

The top 10% of the income distribution has claimed almost two-thirds of the gains to overall incomes since 1979, with the top 1% alone claiming 38.7% of overall gains.

http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/charts/view/10

Over the last three decades, inequality has grown by almost all measures. Historically, while those at the top of the income distribution have enjoyed far higher average incomes than everybody else, the gap between the top and the bottom has grown enormously in recent years, driven both by slowdowns in income growth at the bottom and middle, and rapid acceleration of income growth at the top. In addition, there has been a further pulling apart even within uppermost reaches of the income scale, as the richest of the rich have seen significantly faster gains than the merely affluent. These outcomes are true when measured by family income, by wages, and by wealth. Clear disparities exist between racial and ethnic groups, and they have also grown over time in the form of higher poverty rates and larger wealth gaps. Furthermore, access to “good jobs”—those not only with decent wages, but also access to pensions and health insurance—is far lower among the lower income andnon-white groups, and the gulf between access to such benefits is growing over time.

This fragmenting of income growth has been accompanied by other fissures—for example, those at the bottom of the income distribution are not only less likely to get ahead financially, but they have also been left behind when it comes to recent gains to overall life expectancy. In the past three decades, it has been impossible to answer the basic question of “how’s the economy doing” without first specifying for whom.

http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/articles/view/7 FeatureInequalityNext Page:PovertyIncome inequality The top 10% of the income distribution has claimed almost two-thirds of the gains to overall incomes since 1979, with the top 1% alone claiming 38.7% of overall gains.

Excel data | Go to chart

The stunning growth of income inequality in the U.S. economy that characterized the last 30 years was not always the norm. Between 1947 and 1973, economic growth was both rapid and distributed equally across income classes. The poorest 20% of families saw growth at least as fast as the richest 20% of families, and everybody in between experienced similar rates of income growth. Since then, growth in average living standards has unambiguously slowed. Between 1973 and 1995, growth in productivity, or how much income can be generated in each hour of work, collapsed to less than half the rate that characterized the previous quarter century. Since 1995, productivity growth has risen sharply, but it remains well below the progress that prevailed between 1947 and 1973.

FeatureInequalityNext Page:PovertyIncome inequality The top 10% of the income distribution has claimed almost two-thirds of the gains to overall incomes since 1979, with the top 1% alone claiming 38.7% of overall gains.

Excel data | Go to chart

The stunning growth of income inequality in the U.S. economy that characterized the last 30 years was not always the norm. Between 1947 and 1973, economic growth was both rapid and distributed equally across income classes. The poorest 20% of families saw growth at least as fast as the richest 20% of families, and everybody in between experienced similar rates of income growth. Since then, growth in average living standards has unambiguously slowed. Between 1973 and 1995, growth in productivity, or how much income can be generated in each hour of work, collapsed to less than half the rate that characterized the previous quarter century. Since 1995, productivity growth has risen sharply, but it remains well below the progress that prevailed between 1947 and 1973.

Excel data | Go to chart

And, as shown in the above charts, this slower growth has been accompanied by a dramatic rise in inequality. The growth of typical families’ incomes, which once mirrored overall productivity growth, began flattening in the late 1970s, falling far behind productivity growth. The poorest families saw their real income actually shrink, while income growth increased notably higher up the income scale.

The chart above shows how increases at the top squeeze growth in the middle. The lines show actual growth in median family incomes as well as the growth that would have prevailed had there been no increase in inequality over the period—that is, if all incomes had growth at the overall average rate. Had this happened, the median family today would have incomes $9,220 higher.

This chart represents the amount of overall national income the bottom 99.5% of the population has to share. All but the top one-half of one percent (0.5%) of the U.S. population receives 83.1% of all household income, an amount that has shrunk over 10% since 1973. In essence, it is like the bottom 99.5% of the population had incomes cut by 10%, simply as a result of the growth in inequality over that time.

Incomes and wages are not the only places we find staggering inequality. Wealth—also called net worth, measured as assets less liabilities—is skewed heavily, not only to the rich, but to the richest of the rich. Starting with the bottom fifth of the wealth distribution is a group that has negative wealth (in other words, on average, the least wealthy 20% of people in this country owe more than the value of their assets). From there, wealth increases dramatically by wealth class. By any measure, household wealth is far higher for whites than blacks. Within each group, comparing the median—i.e., the mid-point of the wealth distribution—with average wealth illustrates just how skewed the wealth distribution is. A relatively small number of people with very high wealth at the top pull the overall average upward, often masking the far lower wealth of the typical household.

Mobility Inequality means that some income earners claim a larger slice of the pie than others. Some might argue that this is less of a problem in and of itself if everyone has an equal shot at winding up at the top. Some even claim that this is the essence of the American dream: that regardless of where you began, if you work hard, you can have all the opportunities to succeed.

Unfortunately, income mobility—movement between income classes—is less common than purveyors of the American dream would have you believe. If all it took was high test scores to get ahead, then no matter what your income, you would have an equal opportunity to graduate from college. The data tell another story. This chart shows that high-income students who have low test scores are more likely to graduate from college than low-income students with high test scores.

Mobility is more restricted for some groups than others. African Americans who start out in the bottom 25% of the income distribution are nearly twice as likely to stay there than whites. And, whites are more than 10 times more likely to make it to the top 25% of the income distribution than blacks.

FeatureInequalityMobility Inequality means that some income earners claim a larger slice of the pie than others. Some might argue that this is less of a problem in and of itself if everyone has an equal shot at winding up at the top. Some even claim that this is the essence of the American dream: that regardless of where you began, if you work hard, you can have all the opportunities to succeed.

Unfortunately, income mobility—movement between income classes—is less common than purveyors of the American dream would have you believe. If all it took was high test scores to get ahead, then no matter what your income, you would have an equal opportunity to graduate from college. The data tell another story. This chart shows that high-income students who have low test scores are more likely to graduate from college than low-income students with high test scores.

Excel data | Go to chart

Mobility is more restricted for some groups than others. African Americans who start out in the bottom 25% of the income distribution are nearly twice as likely to stay there than whites. And, whites are more than 10 times more likely to make it to the top 25% of the income distribution than blacks.

Excel data | Go to chart

This version of the American dream is actually less common in the United States than in many peer nations. This chart shows the relationship between a son’s earnings and his father’s earnings. A far higher portion of a son’s earnings in the United States can be explained by his father’s earnings, illustrating once again the relatively low income mobility found in this country.

Even gains in life expectancy have been unequal in recent decades. The bottom half of the earnings distribution has seen gains of less than two years, while those in the top half have seen gains of 6.5 years.

CEOs have always made much more money than the workers they supervise, but the last three decades have seen this ratio explode.

Poverty Growing inequality has helped sever the link between the economy’s overall growth and how that growth helped reduce poverty. If the relationship between overall GDP growth and poverty that prevailed between 1959 and 1973 had continued, the poverty rate would have been driven to zero by the late 1980s. But as this chart shows, economic growth was not shared broadly after 1973, and gains in the fight against poverty changed course and became losses.

Even in the best of times, the poverty rate for African Americans and Hispanics is always at least twice as high as that of non-Hispanic whites. However, the full-employment period between 1996 and 2000 reduced poverty to the greatest degree among groups that historically needed this relief the most. This chart testifies to the ability of a strong economy to reach people across the entire economic distribution, underscoring the fact that poverty in the United States reacts to and can be improved by a strong job market.

Pavlovian conditioning of the people through TV

The System.

Sinister is America’s psychologist conditioning of people. People are conditioned by institutions to “believe in the system” for government wants to influence you for life. K through 12, BA to Ph.D., or else K-12 into the military or work or civil service or corporation. In other words, American society is predicated on the ‘total socialization of the population.” Education is simply a means of persuasion, indoctrination and socialization.

The system was organized during the “Cold War” so that we could compete with the Soviets. During that period of manufactured hysteria, the State, the military, and the corporations organized the populace through the educational system, on the one hand, in order to promote potential young scientists, and on the other, to create a loyal cadre of indoctrinated, elite students whose work would be useful to the State. The USA emulated its enemy, the USSR, and realized its goal of shaping the minds of millions of young people. Hence, education for socialization. This message is daily reinforced by the parents, schools, churches, and the electronic box in the living room.

The Churches had a role to play in helping to mold people in the desired image of the state as loyal citizens. The young were treated as a pliable mass of sheep-like subjects to be ruled over by a tolerant yet repressive authority. “Superpower” America sought to sustain itself as an entity so that it might cohere internally in the unlikely, indeed impossible event of a Soviet-led invasion of the United States (from across which ocean, the Atlantic or the Pacific?) Since we had a policy of mutually-assured destruction, or “MAD” via the delivery of atomic weapons, such a scenario was principally a stupid fantasy. The USSR was mainly interested in preventing an invasion of its territory from Europe, as had happened several times in Russian-Soviet history. The Soviets thought in terms of missiles, as launched from Cuba, not invading the US as depicted in the late Cold-war period propaganda film, “Red Dawn.”

Hence, the two political parties in the USA agreed eventually to put aside their mutual antagonisms in order to become two-halves of a single ‘national security state.’ In 1960 both Nixon and Kennedy’s policies were basically identical, causing them to receive an almost equal number of votes. Neither of them dared question the official policy of containing Communism, since the military-industrial establishment ran the show. Thanks to the recent invention of television, the public was well-indoctrinated to accept such a policy. The people failed to ‘question authority’ until it was far too late, and thousands of able-bodied young men found themselves drafted into the Vietnam war, “the big muddy,” which most people recognize today was a debacle.

Pavlovian conditioning had rendered much of the population suggestible to the directives of authority, the corporations, the military, and the government. The system worked!

To refresh our memories, the Russian psychologist Pavlov created an ingenious experiment on behavior. A dog was trained to listen for the sound of a bell before a meal was served to it. The bell was rung each time that the bowl simultaneously appeared in front of it. After repeated efforts, the dog was ‘conditioned’ psychologically by this association of bell with meal. It began salivating each time a bell was heard. The trainers began presenting the dog with an empty bowl, and then rang the bell: the dog behaved in predictable fashion by salivating. The dog’s spinal cord made the dog react to the stimulus. Essentially, that is ‘behaviorism.’

Pavlov’s experiments led scientists to gain new insights into how the mind and nervous system function. The US benefited from experiments conducted along similar lines. Uncle Sam poured hundreds of billions of dollars into higher education funding, largely in order to exploit scientific knowledge in the event of a nuclear war or similar catastrophe, and also to exploit new knowledge. The fusion of population and the state occurred in a more subtle fashion than had been the case in the totalitarian systems which we were fighting in Korea and Vietnam, which were proxy wars against the Reds.  What the establishment failed to understand was that the two behemoths — the USSR and Red China– pursued separate agendas; and that each of them was just as afraid of one another as they were of the USA.

Thus it was Sputnik’s emergence in 1957 which led the US to forge an educational system that would prepare us for any potential conflict with these two nations. The US claimed that there was a gap in our student’s achievements which threatened “national security.” Thereafter, the funding of universities and colleges expanded exponentially.

The state thus had a vested interest in raising generations of Pavlovian students who would serve as experimental subjects for the ideology of the state. It was believed that such students would go on to serve and improve our nation’s preparedness. The Cold war hysteria helped to create a ‘status quo.’ Citizens would work and pay taxes; students would go to school and college and forge careers; the military would continue to receive its level of funding in the absence of war. We would achieve Jeremy Benthamite-style happiness, “the greatest good of the greatest number,” ie, progress.

The State had in effect altered human behavior in order to produce the much-desired devourer of its puppy chow, a fat, contented and complacent public. Television became the visage of this belief-system.

Americans became a less-individualistic, free people, and more and more a nation of obedient puppies awaiting some form of statist concern for their welfare. The corporations  received their dole in the form of tax subsidies. The States’ economic partners were allowed to flourish insofar as they didn’t ‘rock the boat’ and become the greedy, monopolistic piggies that they presently are.

Hence, what we’re living under today  is a form of mixed statist-capitalism, not a ‘free-market’ form of capitalism. When banks and corporations go under, the state dutifully tosses them a bone, a very large bone indeed. When state and society work together to achieve commonly-agreed-upon goals, you don’t have “Liberty” as Jefferson might have understood it, but big statism. Obama represents the best and worst of this heritage, with the mass media serving both as his bully pulpit and his cheerleader.

TV or not TV, that is the question. Which shows to watch, that is Americans most important daily decision. It’s disgusting.

It is only now that a more conscious portion of the population is beginning to wake up from big-government-organized mass-society which the statists of the past had only dreamed of. They realize now that at its paternalistic heart lies a collusion of big-corporate, big-military, big-government interests. In other words, corruption. The brainwashed masses, the conformists, the believers in the system have largely had the ideas in their heads molded by social organizations, institutions and media so that they would help reproducethe status quo. In other words, they’ve been persuaded, bought, and sold.

To sum up: Television serves as the puppy bowl in the living room, stimulating people into salivating with expectation for their favorite show or game, which serves as their reward on earth for their good work, and also produces the desired idea-formations in their minds. The ideology of statist-capitalism penetrates their skulls as an unconscious form of education. Stomach, minds, and nervous system all receive their excitation from the stimulus. The dogs have indeed been well-conditioned by the Pavlovian system. They are indeed content that have their earthly reward!

Iraq, Afpak wars

notes on the wars.

2.915 coalition deaths, Afghanistan. How many Afghanis died? No one knows.

US 1910 UK 404 Other 601 —

Total non US coalition casualties: 1005

http://icasualties.org/OEF/index.aspx

— http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=12730 Old article:

The Bush regime has quagmired America into a sixth year of war in Afghanistan and Iraq with no end in sight. The cost of these wars of aggression is horrendous. Official U.S. combat casualties stand at 4,538 dead. Officially, 29,780 U.S. troops have been wounded in Iraq.

On April 17, 2008, AP News reported that a new study released by the RAND Corporation concludes that “some 300,000 U.S. troops are suffering from major depression or post-traumatic stress from serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 320,000 received brain injuries.”

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Hence, if there were at mim 6396 US deaths in the 2 wars.

US wounded in Afghan,  15,322 US wounded in Iraq        32,223 total us wounded: 47,545 http://icasualties.org/OEF/USCasualtiesByState.aspx

the american class system

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Das Kapital 2009

“It’s time to start exposing the American class system for what it is… a fraud!”

In 1972, disposable personal income was $4129 or $19385 in 2005. In 2005, disposable personal income was around $27640. It increased 43%. But how much did the real COLA go up?_______

Notes: Household income does not consider HH size.

$18,000 typical for an impoverished family.

$60,000 dual earner working class. Or DINK.

20th percentile was 14,000 to 18,000.

Median $33338 to 43318

80th was 55265 to 87000

95th was 88678 to 154,000.

US census 2004

Working class was 16 to 30,000

Less than 16,000 for the lower class.

The poor, the working poor, and the underclass. Cf. D. Gilbert, The American Class Structure.

Maryland has highest hh income of 68,000 thanks to US fed workers. Suburbs of D.C.

NJ is 2nd with 66,751.

CT 60,441

Mass 56592

CAL 54385

WA 53515

VT 50,000

NY 48472

MI 48,000

Since 1967 median hh income rose 31%

Median hh income in Suburbia, NY is $41,311. Median SWM earns 31,182. Median mortgage is 966. Median monthly rent is $815. SV is 41 %W, 47 % N or Sp. 42 percent of SV is “foreign-born”, incl. ‘illegals”.

Median hh income in Bergen county is 65241

Median hh income in Chestnut ridge, is 49,100. It is 70 percent White.

Geography is related to economic stratification

Nyc (manhattan), it’s 93377. Nassau it’s 90,000. Sfran it’s 62,614. Westchester it’s 62,000.

US  per capita average is 21587

US per cap average is 28000

US upper middle class makes more than 62,500

US middle class earns around 41,000 to 100,000

Lower middle class = semi-prof’l

“Status’.

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Half of the US are members of the working or lower class, NOT the “middle class”. This is a perfect example of Marx’s concept of “false consciousness” : a widely-implanted idea in people‘s minds that is not true.

Elite: 120,000 for four years at an Ivy league university: that’s 30,000 a YEAR! Which is the same as tuition for four years at a SUNY.

A man making 60,000 and a woman making 40,000 is ‘typically’ upper middle class.

Lower middle class earns around 35,000 to 75,000

Working class is clerical, blue collar, and is afraid of slipping down the ladder to the poor and the underclass, which is 12 % of the population. The poor exist below the poverty line, which US puts at $18,000 a year.

The corporate Elite, is about 10 percent of the population.

The economic ladder, or the class system, goes largely unspoken in public life. Hierarchy, inequality, and secrecy are its essence. This is the spirit of American fascism.

If you  earn less than 16,000 per year, that is considered Lower Class.

San Francisco per cap. Income: 41734

Median hh income 65,500

NYC per cap 27,500

Median hh 45,500

The cost of living is double that of middle America.

Median 45,285

COLA is highest in NY, SF, Honolulu, LA, DC, Boston, Baltimore, Seattle, Miami, Chicago, Vegas, Orlando, and Denver.

Cf. UCLA, Walter Allen, Professor of Sociology

“Stratification and inequality”

One adult and three kids equals $18,392 a year, or $8.90 an hour

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Social democracy

Does social democracy have a future?
Capitalism unregulated by government leads to the concentration of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. Yet people need to have the things people need to have. Shouldn’t there be a social safety net, public education, and other social goods?

The dismantling of the state is the sworn goal of the extreme element in the Republican party.

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Study looks at economic mobility state by state

By Marisol Bello, USA TODAY

 

Opportunity around the country Economic mobility — the ability of Americans to move up or down the economic ladder — varies by state. A look at mobility shows eight states do better than the national average (green). Nine states have worse mobility than the national average (red). States in gray are not statistically different than the national average. Source: The Pew Center on the States, Economic Mobility Project

The ability of individuals to achieve the American dream depends on where they live, according to the first state-by-state look at the opportunity to move up the economic ladder.

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People who live in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Utah are more likely to improve their economic standing after their prime working years than the typical American, a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts finds.

In Louisiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas, people are less likely to improve their economic standing, and in some cases, are falling behind.

Economic mobility “is a measure of opportunity and a measure of the health of the American dream,” says Erin Currier of Pew’s Economic Mobility Project.

Educational attainment, the ability to save or gain assets and neighborhood poverty impact economic mobility, Currier says.

In depth

MORE: Pew’s Economic Mobility of the States interactive

The study used Census and Social Security Administration earnings data for individuals born from 1943 to 1958. It focused on prime working years, the 10 years from ages 35-39 and 45-49.

Timothy Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says people are more likely to do better for themselves — and their children are likely to do better — in states with more educated residents and more dynamic economies, such as those in the Northeast.

“This study shows place matter,” Smeeding says. “It shows the American dream is harder to reach in some places.”

Scott Winship, a fellow of economic studies with Brookings Institution, says economic mobility is particularly important for the poor. He says 40% of the people who are born in the bottom rung of the economic ladder stay there.

In North Carolina, where the poverty rate is 16% and unemployment hovers at 9.7%, it’s not surprising that fewer residents move up economically, says Gene Nichol, director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

“The South is the native home of American poverty,” he says. http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/story/2012-05-09/state-economic-mobility/54866786/1

Timothy Bartik, senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research in Michigan, says higher moblity in that state is likely due to higher wages in manufacturing and public sector jobs compared to other states. However, he says the state has been hurt by cuts in the number of manufacturing and public sector jobs.

“Unless Michigan can either reverse these trends or boost educational attainment in the future, any current high ranking it might have in economic mobility will tend to decline over time,” he says.