Minimum Wage x 3 = Nearly a Living Wage
Jun 19, 08
Next month, the federal minimum wage will rise to $6.55 an hour. Even at that level, it will be a far cry from the nearly $10-an-hour level (adjusted for inflation) of forty years ago. The influence of the minimum wage, Holly Sklar says on the June 13 Bill Moyers Journal, is felt most immediately and clearly by the roughly 1.7 million Americans who earn it. But, as a statement of what our country considers acceptable compensation, Sklar adds, the minimum helps shape the pay of those higher up the economic ladder.
On the same program, one of those higher-ups, Jaron Quetel, discusses "the best job I've ever had in my whole life." Quetel, a 28-year-old Los Angeleno with a young son, works as a clerk at UCLA. He makes $30,000 a year "nearly three times the annual pay of a full-time worker at the current minimum wage of $5.85 an hour. "Yet I am a breath away from drowning," he says. "I am one car payment away from being re-po'ed. I'm barely surviving."
Extreme Inequality in The Nation and On-Line
Jun 13, 08
Check out the June special issue of The Nation on The New Inequality. In conjunction, we have launched a sister web site for the Working Group on Extreme Inequality at www.extremeinequality.org
In our introductory essay to the issue, The Rich and the Rest of Us, by John Cavanagh and I, we argue that efforts to reduce poverty will be stymied so long as concentrated wealth defines our nation's political priorities. And until we seriously tax the holders of that concentrated wealth, we will lack the funding resources that any bold poverty-fighting initiative demands.
Working Group member Barbara Ehrenreich laments in her essay This Land is Their Land, that these days if a place is truly beautiful, you can't afford to be there.
Check out the amazing centerspread, designed by the Working Group on Extreme Inequality. Soon to be available as a poster! And a Resource List produced for The Nation that includes this web site, www.inequality.org
Excellent article: "Tax Day Gifts for the Rich" by Holly Sklar
Apr 15, 08
By Holly Sklar
When it comes to cutting taxes for the wealthy, President Bush can truly say, "Mission accomplished."
The richest 1 percent of Americans received about $491 billion in tax breaks between 2001 and 2008. That's nearly the same amount as U.S. debt held by China -- $493 billion -- in the form of Treasury securities.
Do you want our government to mortgage more of our nation's future to finance tax breaks for the rich?
40 Years in the Wilderness
Apr 02, 08
Forty years after his death, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s words tragically speak to our current reality.
"The majority of white Americans consider themselves sincerely committed to justice for the Negro," he wrote in the 1967 book, "Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?" "They believe that American society is essentially hospitable to fair play and to steady growth toward a middle-class Utopia embodying racial harmony. But unfortunately this is a fantasy of deception and comfortable vanity."
The Institute for Policy Studies' report 40 Years Later: The Unrealized American Dream, provides evidence of striking little progress in closing the gap between African Americans and whites since Dr. King's death, particularly in the area of economic equality.
Listen to Dedrick Muhammad speaking with Jim Malone on Voice of America
Watch Dedrick Muhammad's interview about the "40 Years Later" report on YouTube
The Working Group on Extreme Inequality
Mar 11, 08
Tom Herman at The Wall Street Journal reports the latest on the Fortunate 400. New IRS data indicates that the 400 highest income earners together earned $85.6 billion in 2005, an average income of $213.9 million each. These 400 households took home 1.15 percent of all income earned in the U.S. The average federal income tax rate for the group was 18.23 percent, low because 86 of the income was capital gains and taxed at a 15 percent rate. A compelling case could be made that above certain income levels, income from wealth and income from wages should be taxed at the same level, especially on short-term capital gains. Want to do something about it?....
Come to Washington For Two Events on Extreme Inequality
Change to Believe In
Feb 21, 08
In February of 1968 President Lyndon B. Johnson's Kerner Commission Report was released. The Kerner Commission was created in response to the 1967 urban Black rebellions in Detroit and Newark. The report famously stated: Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal.
Forty years later, I sat down in front of my laptop to examine the current presidential candidate's plans to deal with the still prevailing black/white economic divide. In examining the four leading presidential candidates' websites and the dozen or so issues each highlight, only once did I find an issue that incorporated the black/white racial divide. Ironically enough it was the post-racial presidential candidate Barack Obama who saw civil rights as a worthy enough topic for his website....
Sundance, Snow, and the Legacy of the Slave Trade
Jan 23, 08
I am sitting here in Park City, Utah at the Black House, a building that houses events for Blacks in the film industry and provides free internet access. Thousands from across the country come to this beautiful but cold place for the Sundance film festival, the most important film festival in the country. It has been snowing all morning and a good part of the night. When you look up to the mountains you can see deer running through the snowy terrain and on main street you see paparazzi running up and down looking for a celebrity.
Who would have thought that this is where work on the racial wealth divide would take someone?
See PBS's coverage of Dedrick and "Traces of the Trade" at Sundance
Want to Stimulate the Economy? Address Extreme Inequality
Jan 22, 08
Written for Alternet
Every couple of years, when big investors suffer losses, Congress and their partisan economists launch into a heated debate over how to stimulate the flagging economy. This is mostly a rehash of the "trickle down" versus "bottom up" debate that dates back to the Reagan years.
Conservatives argue that the answer to the recession is to cut taxes and interest rates targeted at their über-wealthy and global corporate patrons. This is their program for any season, rain or shine, so it is immediately suspect.
Progressives argue, correctly, that we should target tax breaks and rebates to low- and middle-income people; their consumer spending will keep the economy chugging. Give a tax break to big corporations and the rich, and it will go anywhere on the planet in search of maximum returns. Give a tax rebate to a lower-income person or a small business and it is spent in the local economy, thus stimulating bottom up demand.
The State of the Dream
Jan 16, 08
To commemorate the 79th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. the Institute for Policy Studies and United For A Fair Economy co-sponsored a forum on the new report The State of the Dream: 2008 . This report focuses on the historic racial wealth divide, what progress has been made in bridging this divide since the death of Dr. King, and the impact of our contemporary subprime housing crisis on this divide.
Listen to Dedrick Muhammad's Interview on National Public Radio
Listen to Dedrick Muhammad's Interview on Democracy Now
Charity Fuels Disparity
Jan 08, 08
In my home city of Boston, it is obvious where the money is. There is a building boom as new state-of-the-art buildings mushroom up on college and university campuses.
A few miles away, in the working class neighborhoods of Jamaica Plain, Roxbury and Dorchester, the skyline remains the same as it did two decades ago. Basic public infrastructure projects such as bridges, parks, neighborhood libraries lag for years, waiting for funds. What accounts for the disparity?
The dynamics of concentrated private wealth are driving these trends. Boston's private universities fueled by charitable donations from wealthy alumni are pushing their boundaries outward and upward.
The Senate Hears a Sage
Nov 16, 07
I got to watch Warren Buffett testify before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday in defense of the federal estate tax, the nation's only tax on inherited wealth.
It was really a remarkable hearing. A longtime Washington lobbyist and former Hill staffer said it may have been the best hearing he'd every seen.
Buffett's prepared remarks invoked the historical roots of the estate tax, established in 1916 during the Gilded Age to put a brake on anti-democratic concentrations of wealth and power. "Dynastic wealth, the enemy of meritocracy, is on the rise," Buffett told the panel. "Equality of opportunity has been on the decline. A progressive and meaningful estate tax is needed to curb the movement of a democracy toward plutocracy."
The Richest Get Richer
Oct 22, 07
The top 1 percent of Americans received 21.2 percent of all personal income in 2005, according to the latest Internal Revenue Service data. That's a big jump from 2004, when the top 1 percent's share was 19 percent, and slightly above the 2000 figure of 20.8 percent - the modern-day peak. The bottom 50 percent of Americans got 12.8 percent of all 2005 income, down from 13.4 percent in 2004 and 13 percent in 2000. The new IRS numbers highlight the "divergence of economic fortunes blamed for fueling anxiety among American workers," writes Greg Ip of the Wall Street Journal.
The latest leap upward of inequality parallels the recent performance of the stock market. This time around, though, the biggest gains appear to be flowing to dealmakers and speculators rather than to garden-variety corporate executives.
Privatization, the Lotto and You
Oct 16, 07
Privatization is to move that which is under public control (most often administered by government agencies) to private control (usually a corporation driven by a profit motive). The rationale for privatization is the theory that private companies guided by the profit motive, and not hindered by the public will, will be more effective and efficient.
A few years ago, President Bush came up with a privatization plan involving social security, one of the most successful government programs ever created. (Since its inception, the poverty rate among elderly Americans has dropped from 50 percent to 11 percent.) The public disapproved, as it usually does when such proposals are put forward. The unusual part of the story was that elected officials listened and put a halt to the Bush initiative.
The Invitations a Party Refuses
Oct 02, 07
Last week the top tier presidential candidates for the Republican Party rejected two important opportunities to engage the African-American community on the policy matters which will shape this country. It was widely reported that Romney, Giuliani, McCain, and Thompson refused to participate in the Republican primary debate held at Morgan State University, a historically Black college within an hour of Washington, DC. Less noticed was the absence of the candidates at the Annual Legislative Conference of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation held this past last week of September.
This conference brings together a who's who of policy makers, analysts, activists, and celebrities from across the country. Much insight was shared about policy changes that could move our nation forward. Congressman Bobby Scott of the 3rd District of Virginia held an impressive forum on the Federal Budget, revealing the radical fiscal irresponsibility of the "conservative" Congress and President.
The Jena 6
Sep 20, 07
The story of the Jena 6 has struck a nerve with Black America, particularly the youth and young adult population. Mos Def, a popular rapper and actor, expressed the sentiments of a generation when he said on the Bill Maher show, "I shouldn't have to live in two Americas... People should be more upset about it [the Jena 6]. What the f*** am I supposed to tell my kids? What am I supposed to tell my son, that you are supposed to be a second class citizen?"
At Howard University, there was a rally of support for the Jena 6 a few weeks ago. In Baltimore Black students designed their own Free the Jena 6 t-shirts and held their own rallies at Coppin and Morgan State University. Kids, young adults, and national radio personalities, as well as traditional Civil Rights leaders like Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III, came to the town of Jena, Louisiana on September 20th to voice their outrage over the treatment of Black youth.
The Housing Crash: A Crisis of Middle and Working Class Liquidity
Sep 10, 07
Over the last few weeks we have
seen daily reports concerning the decline of the housing market and how it could
affect the rest of the economy.
What hasn't been
reported is that this housing market crash is a result of the growing inequality
between the richest in society and the rest of us. This housing crash, the
resulting stock market volatility, and the possible oncoming recession all have
to do with the decline of our middle class economy.
From 1974 to 2004 the median
national home price increased from about $108,000 to $197,000, an increase of
almost 82%. Much of this
appreciation of homes happened after the stock market collapse of 2000. Wealthy investors bailed out of the
stock market and invested in real estate.
This led to a great increase in housing speculation that further inflated
the price of homeownership. During
this same time period, the median family income went from $44,678 to $55,869, an
increase of 25%. So how does an
average American family buy a home when housing costs are increasing at more
than three times the rate of their income?
The answer is debt, debt, and more
debt.
The Kerner Commission Was Right
Jul 20, 07
Forty years ago this month, two
years of Black riots/rebellions came to a head in
"Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal," the commission memorably declared in its report, issued in February of 1968. White racism and the chasm of inequality between Blacks and whites were the primary causes of the riots/rebellions, according to the Kerner Commission, which called for massive federal investment in undereducated, poorer African-American communities across the country.
Inequality Solutions: Don't Be Ridiculed
Jun 13, 07
The Sunday New York Times (magazine section, June 10) carried a package of articles on economic inequality. It is great to see these problems getting banner coverage in the mainstream media.
Having watched this debate for two decades now, though, I'm always struck by what's "off the table." Inevitably, there is alarm over the huge disparities of income. The Times article had a terrific graph on income trends.
But in real life, economic circumstances are governed by wealth as well as income. The income gaps show us the relative size of the skyscrapers and row houses; wealth is about the mountains and the valleys where the buildings stand. The income story is annual. Wealth is generational - and more revealing of the deep fissures that have opened in our society over the past three decades.
The Black/White Divide: An Unavoidable Truth
Jun 12, 07
I was giving a presentation on the racial wealth divide at a local Black university. For every dollar of per capita income among white Americans, I said, the average African-American had made about 55 cents in 1968; more than thirty years later, it was 57 cents! At that rate, I added, it would take another 581 years to achieve income equality.
The students were stunned. They had imagined that equality was coming soon in this new millennium - not 600 years from now.
Populists at Work
Jun 11, 07
Could our elected representatives in Washington be getting ready to do something about runaway CEO pay? That's one of the strange prospects that have recently entered the realm of political possibility. (Interesting place these days, political possibility. Worth a visit.)
On April 20, the House of Representatives voted 269-134 to approve a measure proposed by Barney Frank, chairman of the Financial Services Committee. A different proposal is moving forward in the Senate, so perhaps it's not to soon to look at what's in the two bills, and, for background, at what happened the last time that Congress acted, 15 years ago. Unfortunately, what Congress did then had, to put it mildly, unforeseen consequences.
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