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is the link to all OMNI newsletters: http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/ For a knowledge-based peace, justice, and
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Contents #1
2014 People’s Guide to Federal Budget, National Priorities
Project
The Republicans’ Dystopian Future
Film Elysium, Matt
Damon, Jodie Foster
The PAST, HOW MAINLY THE REPUBLICANS CREATED THE SUPER-RICH,
IMPOVERISHED THE MANY, AND THE CONSEQUENCES
Newfield, Republican Attack on the Universities and Middle
Class
WEALTH INEQUALITY TODAY
Watson on Politzane’s Video
Stiglitz (2 books and an article), Inequality Increasing
STRUGGLE FOR RECOVERY OF A JUST SOCIETY
Pizzigati, Long Struggle vs. Plutocracy
Meyerson, Agenda for the Millenials
Moyers Co. Steady
Opposition to Inequality, E.g. Pope Francis and Philip Levine
The Nation
Magazine and Economic/Social Justice
BrucE McMath, To the Tea Party: More Than Food Stamps Needed
Recent related OMNI Newsletters
2014
Pentagon #11, 1-14 (diversion of attention and money)
US Westward Empire #9
2013
Christmas
UN Human Rights, 12-10
Support the Troops, 12-9
Thanksgiving
US Capitalism, 11-22
Compassion, 11-21
Pentagon, 11-21
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- HOME
- FEDERAL BUDGET 101
- FEDERAL
SPENDING: WHERE DOES THE MONEY GO
Federal
Spending: Where Does the Money Go
Federal
Budget 101
Tweet +1 Like
In
fiscal year 2014, the federal government will spend around $3.8 trillion. These
trillions of dollars make up a considerable chunk – around 22 percent
– of the
Mandatory
and Discretionary Spending
The
U.S. Treasury divides all spending into three groups: mandatory spending and discretionary spending and interest on debt. Interest on debt, which is much smaller than the other two
categories, is the interest the government pays on its accumulated debt, minus interest income received by the
government for assets it owns. This pie chart shows all projected federal
spending in 2014 broken into these three categories.
Discretionary spending refers to the portion of the budget which goes through the annual appropriations process each year. In other words, Congress directly sets the level of spending on programs which are discretionary. Congress can choose to increase or decrease spending on any of those programs in a given year.
This pie chart shows how President Obama proposes dividing up $1.15 trillion in discretionary spendingin fiscal year 2014.
Mandatory spending is largely made up of earned-benefit or entitlement programs, and the spending for those programs is determined by eligibility rules rather than the appropriations process. For example, Congress decides to create a program like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps. It then sets criteria for determining who is eligible to receive benefits from the program. The amount of money spent on SNAP each year is then determined by how many people are eligible and apply for benefits.
Congress therefore cannot decide each year to increase or decrease the budget for SNAP. Instead, it can review the eligibility rules and may change them in order to exclude or include more people.
Mandatory spending makes up around two-thirds of the total federal budget. The largest mandatory program is Social Security, which comprises more than a third of mandatory spending and around 22 percent of the total federal budget.
This chart shows where the projected $2.4 trillion in mandatory spending will go in fiscal year 2014.
Finally, putting together discretionary spending, mandatory spending, and interest on the debt, you can see how the total federal budget is divided into different categories of spending. This pie chart shows how President Obama proposes dividing up the whole federal budget in fiscal 2014. Income security programs like Social Security and unemployment insurance together comprise the largest slice, followed by Medicare & Health, and Military.
Spending
in the Tax Code
When
the federal government spends money on mandatory and discretionary programs,
the U.S. Treasury writes a check to pay the program costs. But there is another
type of federal spending that operates a little differently. Lawmakers have
written hundreds of tax breaks into the federal tax code - for instance,
special low tax rates on capital gains, and a deduction for home mortgage
interest - in order to promote certain activities they deem beneficial to
society. Those tax breaks function as a type of government spending. In fact,
tax breaks are officially called tax expenditures within the federal government
because, from the perspective of the government, they are no different from
spending on any other government program. That's because, when the government
issues a tax break, it chooses to give up tax revenue - so both spending and
tax breaks result in the same outcome, which is less money in the U.S.
Treasury. According to the White House, in fiscal year 2014 tax breaks are
expected to cost the federal government $1.18 trillion - slightly more than all discretionary spending in the same year.
But unlike discretionary spending, which must be approved by lawmakers each year during theappropriations process, tax breaks do not require annual approval. Once written into the tax code, they remain on the books until lawmakers modify them. That means there is minimal oversight to ensure tax breaks actually achieve their intended purpose, even as they can grow in size from year to year as more taxpayers claim them for tax savings.
Additional
Resources
You
may want to visit NPP's interactive budget tools to learn more about where your
tax dollars go:
Cost of National Security
View
our numerous counters to see where your tax dollars are being spent.
Search local spending data
Find
out how the government spends money on a variety of federal programs – from
food and housing to military and healthcare – in your state, county, and city.
You can also see corresponding social indicators – such as health insurance
coverage, poverty rates, and school district stats – that illustrate the impact
of those dollars
Your Tax Receipt
How
did the government spend your federal income tax dollars?
Explore School District data
See
federal spending on education at the state and school district level.
Use our Trade-Offs tool
See
the possibilities for how tax dollars from your state and city could be
reallocated to different federal spending priorities.« Where Does the Money Come From
·
BUDGET BASICS
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY’S FUTURE
FILM, ELYSIUM, Matt
Damon, Jodie Foster
In 2159, two classes of people exist. The wealthy live on Elysium, a man-made space
station and the rest live on an overpopulated and destroyed earth. Damon plays a man who strives to bring
equality to these polarized worlds.
THE FIFTY-YEAR REPUBLICAN
ASSAULT ON ECONOMIC JUSTICE (Goldwater’s first campaign 1964, Richard
Viguerie’s data-base, think tanks 1970s, etc.)
Newfield,
Christopher. Unmaking the Public
University
Publication: April
2011
408 pages
6-1/8 x 9-1/4
inches
9 line
illustrations, 10 tables
Facebook Twitter
Pinterest Email
An
essential American dream—equal access to higher education—was becoming a
reality with the GI Bill and civil rights movements after World War II. But
this vital American promise has been broken. Christopher Newfield argues that the financial and
political crises of public universities are not the result of economic
downturns or of ultimately valuable restructuring, but of a conservative campaign to end public
education’s democratizing influence on American society. Unmaking the Public University is the story of how conservatives have
maligned and restructured public universities, deceiving the public to serve
their own ends. It is a deep and revealing analysis that is long overdue.
Newfield carefully describes how this campaign
operated, using extensive research into public university archives. He launches
the story with the expansive vision of an equitable and creative America
RELATED LINKS
·
Read an article by Newfield in the journal Occasion about
public nanotechnology and social welfare
·
WEALTH INEQUALITY
Paul Krugman |
Disinformation on Inequality
Paul Krugman, The New York Times , RSN, 04 January 14 PM,
Reader Supported News
Paul Krugman, The New York Times , RSN, 04 January 14 PM,
Reader Supported News
Krugman
writes: "We could have a debate about whether rising inequality is a
problem, and whether measures intended to curb it would do more harm than good.
But we can't have that kind of debate if the anti-populist side won't
acknowledge basic facts - and it won't."
READ MORE
READ MORE
The Great
Disparity by William
Julius Wilson
·
|Take Action
A
review of these 2 books:
The Great
Divergence
America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It.
By Timothy Noah.
Buy this book.
America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It.
By Timothy Noah.
Buy this book.
Coming
Apart
The State ofWhite
America
By Charles Murray.
Buy this book.
The State of
By Charles Murray.
Buy this book.
About the Author
William
Julius Wilson
William Julius
Wilson is the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University
Between 1947 and 1970, every income group in America
But by the ’80s, the trends for
lower-wage workers had been reversed. Families in the higher income groups—the
top 20 percent—continued to enjoy steady income gains, adjusted for inflation,
while families in the lower income brackets experienced stagnating or declining
incomes. The labor movement began
its downward spiral; macroeconomic policy was no longer geared to tight labor
markets; and monetary policy, focused on lowering inflation above all else,
became dominant. As part of the “Reagan experiment,”
the tax structure became more regressive and Social Security taxes increased;
also, when George W. Bush took office, tax cuts were passed that distinctly
favored the wealthy at the expense of ordinary families. Finally, Congressional
resistance to raising the minimum wage further threatened the economic security
of disadvantaged families.
The growing American disparity
became a hotly debated issue in academic circles, and concerns about rising
inequality generated numerous research studies. Economists focused mainly on
the causes of income inequality, while many sociologists and political
scientists examined the related factors of social inequality, such as the
increasingly limited access to affluent neighborhoods and elite colleges and
universities. Before the emergence of Occupy Wall Street last year, Americans
remained largely ignorant of these trends. But OWS, which morphed into Occupy
as the protests spread to other cities across the country, had one important
effect: it raised public awareness of the growing economic inequality in the United States
Giving this public attention, the publication of Timothy Noah’s The Great Divergence
and Charles Murray’s Coming Apart
could not be more timely. Unlike the growing mountains of academic research
being filtered through the press, these two well-written and engaging books are
clearly meant for a general readership (Noah’s book originated as a series of
articles in Slate). But that is
all they have in common, because their analyses of the growing economic and
social disparities in America
Although scholars of inequality will find little that’s new in The Great
Divergence, it is nonetheless a very impressive and important
book. Fully aware of the public’s belated—but growing—interest in the rising
inequality, Noah thinks the problem has to be fully understood before it can be
adequately addressed. Accordingly, he has attempted “to synthesize the best
[social science research] for non-experts who would like to know, at long last,
what’s been happening to the economy, especially in the United States
Noah documents the drastic changes between the Great Compression (the period of growing income equality between
1932 and 1979) and the Great Divergence
(the period of increasing income inequality after 1979). He shows that the
level of inequality in the United
States
* * *
So what have been the significant
factors underlying the Great Divergence? Noah identifies four: the
increasing importance of a college degree due to the shortage of
better-educated workers; trade between the United States
Noah cites a widely discussed study by the Harvard economists Claudia
Goldin and Lawrence Katz, The Race Between
Education and Technology, which estimates, in Noah’s words, that
the increase in the economic returns to “people with college diplomas or
advanced degrees, whose limited supply bid up their salaries,” accounts for
roughly 60 percent of the growth in wage inequality between 1973 and 2005. The
American education system has not been able to supply a sufficient number of
better-educated workers to meet demand during the Great Divergence, which he
calls “terrible news for everyone else.”
The research Noah draws on reveals that trade with low-wage nations, “which
was negligible until the twenty-first century,” is responsible for around 12 to
13 percent of the Great Divergence. Why? The increasing trade in manufactured
goods with developing countries has resulted in a larger number of trading
partners whose workers earn considerably less than their counterparts in the United States America ’s
top ten trading partners had included Italy ,
the Netherlands , and Belgium China China China China paid
workers 3 percent of what workers in the United States United States
The evidence on how government policy—particularly under Republican
presidents—and a resurgent business lobby altered income distribution tends to
be less comprehensive and more impressionistic, but, according to Noah, “the
impact of government action (and inaction) in three particular areas—labor, finance,
and corporate compensation—is relatively clear and well documented.” As for the
fortunes of the labor movement during the Great Divergence, Noah cites a 2007
study by the Harvard economist Richard Freeman, which estimates that the
decline of union membership accounts for about 20 percent of the Great
Divergence among all workers. And a 2011 study by the sociologists Bruce
Western and Jake Rosenfeld concludes that the demise of unions has contributed
as much to men’s wage inequality as the relative increase in salaries for
college graduates. Western and Rosenfeld associate the demise of organized
labor with changes in the economy and intensified political opposition. In
particular, employment growth outside the traditional union stronghold of
manufacturing created a newly competitive economic environment and prompted
employers in unionized industries to intensify their opposition to organized
labor’s demands. Employer resistance unfolded in an increasingly adverse
political environment for unions, especially corporate donations to anti-union
policy-makers and the rightward shift of the National Labor Relations Board
under Republican administrations, which made union organizing more difficult.
“Draw one line on a graph charting the decline of union membership,” Noah
writes, “then superimpose a second line charting the decline in middle-class
income share (with ‘middle class’ defined broadly as the middle 60 percent),
and you will find that the two lines are nearly identical.”
Finally, one cause of the spectacular rise in top income gains in the
United States during the Great Divergence has been the shift in the principal
activity and structure of investment banks—from banking to trading, and from
partnership structures to publicly traded corporations—as well as the
government deregulation of Wall Street. While top income gains have increased
in many developed countries, nowhere are they growing as fast as in the United States United States , in comparison with an increase of
2 percent or less in France
and Germany
To reverse these trends, Noah
recommends enacting a more progressive tax code to prevent budget
cuts from eliminating programs that aid the poor and the middle class. He also
calls for enlarging the federal payroll to accommodate a jobs program—patterned
after the Works Project Administration—that would provide time-limited work for
lower- and middle-income people struggling to find employment, as well as
relaxing immigration barriers to attract more skilled labor and enlarge the
applicant pool, which would depress wages somewhat in high-skill industries and
thereby deflate the college and grad-school wage premium. Noah advocates a
number of other measures as well, such as universalizing preschool education
(because research suggests that early schooling can dramatically affect income
distribution in later life); using government levers to impose price controls
on colleges and universities (thereby enlarging the pool of educated workers to
meet demand and reducing the currently high inequality between educated and
uneducated workers); and building on the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform bill
with additional regulation of Wall Street (to create greater competition within
the banking sector and thereby reduce unseemly compensation levels). Finally,
Noah stresses the importance of electing Democratic presidents, because, as he
explains, the research of political scientist Larry Bartels reveals that
“Democratic administrations since 1948 presided over income gains that diminish
as you move up the income
scale, while Republican administrations have presided over income gains that
diminish as you move down the
income scale.”
Conservatives will denounce—and some liberals will question—these
recommendations. But as Noah points out, the problem is acute, and we need to
“get started while the vast disparities in how people live and what they have
still have the power to offend our sense of fair play. The worst thing we could
do to the Great Divergence is get used to it.”
* * *
With Coming Apart,
Charles Murray provides a
starkly different account of the growing economic and social disparities in the
United States Murray argues that America Murray
Thanks to Murray Murray
Belmont represents the neighborhood of the new upper class, or “cognitive
elite,” which Murray defines as “the most successful 5 percent of adults ages
25 and older who are working in managerial positions, in the professions
(medicine, the law, engineering and architecture, the sciences, and university
faculty), and in content-production jobs in the media.” The new upper class has
accumulated greater wealth because of the sharp increase in financial returns
on intelligence. This greater brainpower is conspicuously on display in elite
universities such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton, which attract the smartest
students, many of them offspring of the new upper class (which, according to Murray Murray
Moreover, in places like Belmont
Nowhere are these cultural differences more evident, Murray Belmont Belmont Belmont
According to Murray , these trends reveal a
withering away of the traditional bonds of civil society in lower-class white America Murray
* * *
Noah points out in The Great Divergence that the wage stagnation
experienced by working-class families and the income gains enjoyed by the top
20 percent of the population—and even more so by the top 5 and top 1
percent—are not unique to the United States. Severe wage stagnation and income
inequality have also occurred recently in other industrialized democracies,
though the gains of the affluent are more extreme in the United States
Moreover, as Noah shows, many factors have contributed to the income stagnation
in the bottom tiers and the overall increasing inequality in the United States
Furthermore, as Greg Duncan of the University of California, Irvine, and
Richard Murnane of Harvard University have pointed out, recent social science
research reveals that growing income inequality has widened the disparity in
resources that rich and poor families can invest in their children, thereby
exacerbating residential segregation and diminishing the interaction between
rich and poor in a number of social settings. Lacking the financial, human and
political resources of the wealthy, institutions in poorer neighborhoods (such
as schools) decline in quality, which in turn adversely affects the education
and life chances of children born in poor families. Also, Duke University
As Paul Krugman has demonstrated, since 1973 the entry-level wages of male
high school graduates, after adjusting for inflation, have plummeted 23
percent. To make matters worse, a collapse in employment benefits has
accompanied these changes. For example, a 2010 study by the Economic Policy
Institute revealed that employer-provided health insurance coverage among
private sector workers who are high school graduates (ages 18 to 64) declined
from 70 percent in 1979 to 50 percent in 2008. Murray
* * *
The considerable shortcomings of Coming
Apart are also evident in Murray Murray
Ethnographic research conducted in Philadelphia
and Camden , New Jersey ,
by sociologists Kathryn Edin of Harvard and Maria Kefalas of St. Joseph
Nor can Murray reconcile his argument about the collapse of moral values
among working-class whites with data from two key sources: the National Vital
Statistics System, which shows a sharp drop in teenage pregnancies among all
racial and ethnic groups since 1991, and the Justice Department’s Uniform Crime
Reports, which show a significant drop in violent crimes among all racial and
ethnic groups during the same period. Relatedly, research by Brian Jacob and
Tamara Wilder Linkow reveals that the percentage of children expecting to
obtain a four-year college degree has rapidly increased over the past twenty
years, and this increase was greater for children whose parents were not
college graduates. Obviously, the expectations of these children have either
been thwarted or were unrealistic to start. But such expectations hardly
reinforce the view of a collapse in the perceived value of higher education.
The most generous conclusion one can reach about Murray ’s
book is that, if changing values are the root of the great economic and social
disparities between the new upper and lower classes in America
WEALTH INEQUALITY
Watson on Politzane
Joseph Stiglitz, 2 books and an article
Video Showing the Huge Gap Between Super Rich and
Everyone Else Goes Viral
By Bruce Watson 03/04/13 Personal Finance, Savings Experiment, Savings Bonds, Tax
Laws, Savings Accounts, Saving |
For
much of the past decade, policymakers and analysts have decried "Wealth Inequality in
It isn't hard to see why there is such a yawning gap between the richest Americans and the rest of us. Since 1976, the share of national income earned by the top one percent of workers has nearly tripled, from 9 percent to 24 percent. It's not hard to see why their share has increased: As Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reichrecently pointed out, the economy has roughly doubled in size over the last 30 years -- and, in an ideal world, more money in the economy should mean more money in everyone's pocket.
But the distribution of this huge economic bonanza has been startlingly uneven. While the earnings of the top 1 percent have tripled, the average household income has effectively stagnated. Put another way, there's a reason Americans haven't saved: they haven't had much money to save.
In terms of information, Politizane's video isn't offering anything new: Its analysis of American perceptions of wealth distribution, the line between rich and poor and the issue of America's wealth continuum echo stories that have been in the media for years. But there's something about seeing the country's wealth gap in easy-to-follow animations that allows the dry analysis to hit home. Or, as the video puts it, these illustrations make it easier for viewers to "wake up and realize that the reality in this country is not at all what we think it is."
Bruce Watson is a senior features writer for DailyFinance. You can reach him by e-mail at bruce.watson@teamaol.com, or follow him on Twitter at @bruce1971
JOSEPH STIGLITZ
-- Freefall: America U.S.
This week Republicans unveiled a budget proposal for 2012 that cuts more than $5.8
trillion in government spending over the next decade. The plan calls for
sweeping changes to Medicaid and Medicare, while reducing the top corporate and
individual tax rates to 25 percent. We speak to Nobel Prize-winning economist
Joseph Stiglitz, who addresses the growing class divide taking place in the United States Columbia
University and author of numerous
books, most recently Freefall: America Europe ." http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/7/nobel_economist_joseph_stiglitz_assault_on
The
Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided
Society Endangers Our Future, Joseph
E. Stiglitz (Columbia
Vanity Fair excerpt
NPR's Fresh Air interview by Terry
Gross
Powell's interview by C. P. Farley
Other
Sites
Overview
| Inside
the Book
The top 1 percent of Americans control 40
percent of the nation’s wealth. And, as Joseph E. Stiglitz explains, while
those at the top enjoy the best health care, education, and benefits of wealth,
they fail to realize that “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent
live.”
Stiglitz draws on his deep understanding of economics to show that growing inequality is not inevitable: moneyed interests compound their wealth by stifling true, dynamic capitalism. They have madeAmerica the most unequal advanced
industrial country while crippling growth, trampling on the rule of law, and
undermining democracy. The result: a divided society that cannot tackle its
most pressing problems. With characteristic insight, Stiglitz examines our
current state, then teases out its implications for democracy, for monetary and
budgetary policy, and for globalization. He closes with a plan for a more just
and prosperous future.
Stiglitz draws on his deep understanding of economics to show that growing inequality is not inevitable: moneyed interests compound their wealth by stifling true, dynamic capitalism. They have made
|
Joseph Stiglitz, Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth, New York Times, Reader Supported
News, 17 February13
 Stiglitz writes: "Today, the READ MORE http://www.readersupportednews.org/ |
STRUGGLE FOR JUSTICE
DIRECT ACTION
“We’ve found
through our experience that timid supplications for justice will not solve the
problem,” declared the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967 as he announced the
civil rights movement’s pivot toward the economic justice message of the Poor
People’s Campaign. “We’ve got to massively confront the power structure.”
SAM PIZZIGATI, THE
RICH DON’T ALWAYS WIN. SEVEN STORIES P, 2013.
1.
The Rich Don't Always Win - Seven Stories Press
The Rich Don't
Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy
that Created the American Middle Class, 1900–1970. Sam Pizzigati. Polls now show that ...
Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting
For
Jesse A. Myerson, Rolling Stone
Myerson writes: "It's a new year, but one thing hasn't changed: The economy still blows. Five years after Wall Street crashed, America's banker-gamblers have only gotten richer, while huge swaths of the country are still drowning in personal debt, tens of millions of Americans remain unemployed ..."
READ MORE
Jesse A. Myerson, Rolling Stone
Myerson writes: "It's a new year, but one thing hasn't changed: The economy still blows. Five years after Wall Street crashed, America's banker-gamblers have only gotten richer, while huge swaths of the country are still drowning in personal debt, tens of millions of Americans remain unemployed ..."
READ MORE
MOYERS & CO. DECEMBER 29,
2013
Two interviewed about the
poor, working class, US
THOMAS CAHILL, HERETICS AND HEROES
DICK’S NOTES
Contrasted Pope Francis
to Paul Ryan.
His “Exhortation” to all people.
US right wing, Paul Ryan, et al. attacking PF; e.g. Rush
Limbaugh called him a Marxist. But PF
simply devoted to the poor.
PF does oppose US unregulated capitalism, the “deified
market.”
RCC should end obsession with abortion, gay marriage, sex.
“Two movements” in the world: cruelty and kindness.
Most important Catholic tradition: economic justice: blessed are the poor.
PHILIP LEVINE, POET of JUSTICE , US
“A large ironic Whitman in the industrial heartland.”
Read several poems:
“They Feed They Lion” (?)
“The Helmet”
“Coming Close”
Collection: What Work Is, won National Book Award
The Nation Magazine’s
Economic/Social Justice Tradition
The January 20, 2014 number contains 11 small to large
articles on inequality in the US .
Editorial on the 50th Anniversary of the War on Poverty. Article on
a hero from the past: Fiorello La
Guardia. And one on a hero of the
present: Bill de Blasio. Articles on declining wages but wage increase
for D.C. and NYU students unionize. And more. (--Dick).
TEA-PARTY VS. THE PEOPLE
Let them starve? Food-stamp cuts won’t aid poor
By BRUCE McMATH
SPECIAL TO THE DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE, December 2013
The
Tea Party wing of the new Republican
Party wants to slash spending on food stamps. As justification, they point
to the growth in food-stamp usage, ignoring that we remain in the deepest
recession since the Depression.
Invariably the argument goes something like, “according to the government’s own statistics” (our government is an adversary in the Tea Party mind), “the number of people in poverty has not declined despite all the money spent on public assistance.”
The statement is true enough, but misleading, or in the case of the Tea Party, misled. Government poverty numbers are based only on earned income, not charity or public assistance. The point of the number is to indicate what portion of the population cannot, with earnings alone, maintain a minimum standard of living. Hence, money spent on public assistance cannot affect the poverty census.
Likewise, the goal of public assistance, such as food stamps, is not to reduce poverty, but rather to alleviate the worst consequences of it: hunger and homelessness. To the extent that people living in poverty are not hungry or homeless, these programs are effective.
But the Tea Party runs on folk wisdom and articles of faith sustained by well-nourished racial stereotypes and/or cherished political and economic dogma. InAlice
No doubt, welfare risks dependency, but addressing that risk was the focus of welfare reform under Bill Clinton and the earned-income tax credit under Ronald Reagan. Today there is little evidence that a significant number of people choose welfare as a lifestyle; the incentive is just not there. Still the myth continues.
To be real, over 7 percent of the population is unemployed but seeking work, and a full quarter of those who are employed earn less than $10 an hour. These people are not choosing to be unemployed or underpaid. Cutting safety-net assistance to those who can’t earn a living wage, even when working, will not eliminate poverty; it will increase hunger, homelessness and crime, and help scar another generation of children born into poverty. Instead of repealing public assistance, how about focusing on reducing poverty and hence the need for public support in the first place?
For decades we had a living minimum wage in this country. Re-establishing it would instantly remove millions of working poor from the poverty rolls. Why would we not? Post-war wages in the early 20th Century matched productivity gains until the 1970s, meaning that standards of living rose in tandem with increased worker productivity, and at least kept pace with inflation. Since then, while productivity increased over 80 percent from 1972 to 2011, wages have risen only half that and working class wages an eighth of it. Adjusted for inflation, the 1968 minimum wage today would be $10.56, not $7.25. There is no rational foundation for this; it simply reflects a shift in the political power from labor to capital.
If we continue to allow people and corporations to command the labor of others at below living wages—a sort of free-market/slave-labor system—we have two choices: We can leave people to live on the street and starve or we augment their inadequate wages with public assistance. So far, the latter is what we have chosen to do. As wages have stagnated, the cost and participation in publicly funded programs have naturally increased; it is as certain as the movements of a seesaw. Though preferable to letting people starve, rationally viewed, middle-class taxpayers are facilitating cheap labor and providing a huge public subsidy for certain employers, artificially lowering the natural cost of basic labor.
Cutting the food-stamp program, currently designed to assure adequate diets to the poor, is an overt step toward the first option. Certainly it fits the Tea Party’s free-market ideology, as presumably inadequate diets and homelessness would eventually reduce the labor “surplus,” thereby in time raising wages to a living level. It’s Charles Dickens’ Scrooge solution (“Let them starve!”).
But, contrary to Tea Party folk wisdom, markets don’t reflect divine wisdom. Indeed, markets can be quite arbitrary; our policy about a living wage should not be. Re-establishing a livable minimum wage would not only dramatically reduce the numbers of people living in poverty, it would also bring much-needed new demand to the economy, the missing ingredient in our recovery.
This would bring more jobs, which would mean more tax revenue as well as less need for public assistance, leading to lower government deficits and more money for education and public investment. This is an obvious virtuous cycle.
The well-being of a nation depends on optimizing the potential for all people, not just the privileged at the top. Labor should be rewarded with a living wage so that fewer need to be on public assistance and all who can work have the dignity of self-sufficiency. Doing so is part of a constructive path to reducing public assistance of all types.
Invariably the argument goes something like, “according to the government’s own statistics” (our government is an adversary in the Tea Party mind), “the number of people in poverty has not declined despite all the money spent on public assistance.”
The statement is true enough, but misleading, or in the case of the Tea Party, misled. Government poverty numbers are based only on earned income, not charity or public assistance. The point of the number is to indicate what portion of the population cannot, with earnings alone, maintain a minimum standard of living. Hence, money spent on public assistance cannot affect the poverty census.
Likewise, the goal of public assistance, such as food stamps, is not to reduce poverty, but rather to alleviate the worst consequences of it: hunger and homelessness. To the extent that people living in poverty are not hungry or homeless, these programs are effective.
But the Tea Party runs on folk wisdom and articles of faith sustained by well-nourished racial stereotypes and/or cherished political and economic dogma. In
No doubt, welfare risks dependency, but addressing that risk was the focus of welfare reform under Bill Clinton and the earned-income tax credit under Ronald Reagan. Today there is little evidence that a significant number of people choose welfare as a lifestyle; the incentive is just not there. Still the myth continues.
To be real, over 7 percent of the population is unemployed but seeking work, and a full quarter of those who are employed earn less than $10 an hour. These people are not choosing to be unemployed or underpaid. Cutting safety-net assistance to those who can’t earn a living wage, even when working, will not eliminate poverty; it will increase hunger, homelessness and crime, and help scar another generation of children born into poverty. Instead of repealing public assistance, how about focusing on reducing poverty and hence the need for public support in the first place?
For decades we had a living minimum wage in this country. Re-establishing it would instantly remove millions of working poor from the poverty rolls. Why would we not? Post-war wages in the early 20th Century matched productivity gains until the 1970s, meaning that standards of living rose in tandem with increased worker productivity, and at least kept pace with inflation. Since then, while productivity increased over 80 percent from 1972 to 2011, wages have risen only half that and working class wages an eighth of it. Adjusted for inflation, the 1968 minimum wage today would be $10.56, not $7.25. There is no rational foundation for this; it simply reflects a shift in the political power from labor to capital.
If we continue to allow people and corporations to command the labor of others at below living wages—a sort of free-market/slave-labor system—we have two choices: We can leave people to live on the street and starve or we augment their inadequate wages with public assistance. So far, the latter is what we have chosen to do. As wages have stagnated, the cost and participation in publicly funded programs have naturally increased; it is as certain as the movements of a seesaw. Though preferable to letting people starve, rationally viewed, middle-class taxpayers are facilitating cheap labor and providing a huge public subsidy for certain employers, artificially lowering the natural cost of basic labor.
Cutting the food-stamp program, currently designed to assure adequate diets to the poor, is an overt step toward the first option. Certainly it fits the Tea Party’s free-market ideology, as presumably inadequate diets and homelessness would eventually reduce the labor “surplus,” thereby in time raising wages to a living level. It’s Charles Dickens’ Scrooge solution (“Let them starve!”).
But, contrary to Tea Party folk wisdom, markets don’t reflect divine wisdom. Indeed, markets can be quite arbitrary; our policy about a living wage should not be. Re-establishing a livable minimum wage would not only dramatically reduce the numbers of people living in poverty, it would also bring much-needed new demand to the economy, the missing ingredient in our recovery.
This would bring more jobs, which would mean more tax revenue as well as less need for public assistance, leading to lower government deficits and more money for education and public investment. This is an obvious virtuous cycle.
The well-being of a nation depends on optimizing the potential for all people, not just the privileged at the top. Labor should be rewarded with a living wage so that fewer need to be on public assistance and all who can work have the dignity of self-sufficiency. Doing so is part of a constructive path to reducing public assistance of all types.
Bruce McMath is an Arkansas
Jonathan Chait | Republican Reform?
Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine , RSN
Chait writes: "If John Boehner's support for immigration reform is a kind of Prague Spring for the mainstream of the elected Republican Party, the equivalent among conservative intelligentsia can be found in the latest issue of National Affairs, which launches a double-barreled assault on conservative dogma."
READ MORE
Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine , RSN
Chait writes: "If John Boehner's support for immigration reform is a kind of Prague Spring for the mainstream of the elected Republican Party, the equivalent among conservative intelligentsia can be found in the latest issue of National Affairs, which launches a double-barreled assault on conservative dogma."
READ MORE
[But Chait argues that the possibility of the Republican
Party repudiating its far-right turn that began in 1960s and 1970s is not
likely. –Dick]
Contact Arkansas
Congressional Delegation
|
SENATORS
Sen. John
Boozman
Republican, first term 320 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510 Phone: (202) 224-4843 Fax: (202) 228-1371 Arkansas offices: FORT SMITH: (479) 573-0189 JONESBORO: (870) 268-6925 LITTLE ROCK: (501) 372-7153 LOWELL: (479) 725-0400 MOUNTAIN HOME: (870) 424-0129 STUTTGART: (870) 672-6941 EL DORADO: (870) 863-4641 Website: www.boozman.senate.gov
Sen. Mark Pryor
Democrat, second term 255 Dirksen Office Building Constitution Avenue and First Street NE Washington, D.C. 20510 Phone: (202) 224-2353 Fax: (202) 228-0908 Little Rock office: (501) 324-6336
Contents #1
2013 (FYI 2014)
Mismanagement: How Can Our Generals and Secretaries of War
Lose Trillions of Dollars?
Tomgram (Nick Turse), Kramer and Pemberton, Conversion:
Demilitarize the Economy
United for Peace and Justice UFPJ vs. 2014 FY
Sia, Cutting Egregious Fat Insignificant, a Non-Killing
Drone Not Needed
Naiman, Cut Pentagon Not Social Services
Randall, FCNL, Demand a Budget for Helping People, Not
Neglecting or Killing Them
Comparing Earlier
Budgets
Korb, 2006
Website: www.pryor.senate.gov
|
REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Rick
Crawford
1ST DISTRICT Republican, second term 1771 Independence Avenues SE Washington, D.C. 20515 Phone: (202) 225-4076 Fax: (202) 225-5602 CABOT: (501) 843-3043 MOUNTAIN HOME: (870) 424-2075 Website: www.crawford.house.gov
Rep. Tim
Griffin
2ND DISTRICT Republican, second term 1232 Independence Avenues SE Washington, D.C. 20515 Phone: (202) 225-2506 Fax: (202) 225-5903 LITTLE ROCK: (501) 324-5491 Website: www.griffin.house.gov
Rep. Steve
Womack
3RD DISTRICT Republican, second term 1119 Longworth Office Building New Jersey and Independence Avenues SE Washington 20515 Phone: (202) 225-4301 Fax: (202) 225-5713 Arkansas offices: ROGERS: (479) 464-0446 HARRISON: (870) 741-7741 FORT SMITH: (479) 424-1146 Website: www.womack.house.gov
Rep. Tom
Cotton
4TH DISTRICT Republican, first term 415 Phone: (202) 225-43772 HOT SPRINGS: (501) 520-5892 PINE BLUFF: (870) 536-3376 Website: www.cotton.house.gov |
END ECONOMIC/SOCIAL JUSTICE NEWSLETTER #6
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