The coming of the second Gilded Age is a panel about inequality. Chuck Collins, from Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, said that "the data [of inequality] is no longer in dispute." He referenced the infamous Richistan, fantastic satire of the fact that the upper class doesn't even fell the tremors of a collapsing economy. His prescriptive agenda is that 1) we need to talk about the inequality and constantly push it forth in the public discussion and 2) return to an era of progressive taxation and public investment.

Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed, promised she wouldn't use words like "unfair" or "obscene." I'd never seen her before in person, but she's hilarious. Instead, she said, she would find the objective "problems" with the poor. One of the biggest problems, she said, is that this lowest class of people has depressed consumption -- they're not doing their American duty to shop! "The poor isn't holding up it's own," she said to a room full of laughter. The credit crisis was caused, in essence, by poor people. The lower class of people in this country "is actually a tripwire." So then she flipped this paradigm of the poor being a burden on society on its head. She talked about how the superrich squeeze us as consumers and spenders. She also says the ultrarich are "hogging all the good scenery in America." It turns out the rich are a burden on society. "When you have some people that can barely afford to buy groceries and you have other people that can buy congressman," she said eloquently, "You're not talking about democracy anymore, you're talking about plutocracy."

William Gates Sr. spent a lot of time over the last couple years campaigning against the repeal of the estate tax. He targets this as the real source of inequality in America and the biggest winnable political battle on inequality.

In the Q&A portion, Ehrenreich wisely debunks the "American dream." She noted that everyone wants to believe that they will graduate from college with a $60,000 starting salary, but the reality is that they will spend many years of working as a barista followed by a series of layoffs.  

This video is pretty interesting. RFK's speech on how we really want to measure the growth of our nation is actually surprisingly relevant. It sort of reminds me of this graph I came across yesterday.

By measuring the GDP, we're deciding that we care only about the bottom line. The bottom line may be growing, but we still have major social problems, like several million uninsured, a war and veterans who sometimes get screwed out of their benefits, massive economic inequality, and a slow march toward environmental disaster. At what cost should the bottom line grow?

Mychael Bell--the young man who thousands organized around just last month--is back in jail for violating probation of old drug charges:

"We feel this was a cruel and unusual punishment," said [Rev. Al] Sharpton, who was instrumental in organizing the protest held on Sept. 20, the day Bell was originally supposed to be sentenced in the case.

Activists organized around Bell's cause. Read Eliza Krigman's piece on how students at more than 100 campuses organized walkouts to protest inequal charges for blacks in the justice system.

• Blacks made up 41 percent of the nation's 2 million prison and jail inmates in 2006. Non-Hispanic whites made up 37 percent and Hispanics made up 19 percent.
• Non-Hispanic whites made up about 73 percent of the 2.3 million people living in college housing in 2006. Blacks made up about 12 percent, Asians about 7 percent and Hispanics about 6 percent.

Black students across the nation receive harsher discipline than whites, an article in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune notes.  Teachers dole out suspension, expulsion, and detention disproportionately to black students, who, researchers have shown, are not more likely to misbehave.

If you, like me, are looking for some clarity on the Jena 6 rally, Courney Martin has a great piece up at The American Prospect today that explains it:

Indeed, the Jena 6 case, like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, is a violent reminder that our country is actually many nations. Despite all of the progress that has been made, racism is still a part of too many American kids' ideological diets. A noose, even in 2007, struck these good ol' Southern boys as an apt symbol for the fear of "the other" that had been bred in them from birth. And their elders -- the school administrators, city officials, and parents -- called their inexcusable hatred by cutesy names: pranks, child's play, boys will be boys. It is a wake-up call to us all: The work of ending racism is far from over.

I encourage you to read the whole thing. 

The Chronicle blog links to a report (sub.) that says the average SAT score dropped by seven points last year. The College Board attributes the change to more minority and low-income students taking the test than the previous year. I guess it makes sense. The less selective the group is that takes the SAT, the lower the scores will be.

On the other hand, the testmakers definitely outline a very specific viewpoint -- one that may not be so appealing to low-income students who are starting to realize that to succeed in life, they need a college degree. So it makes me think: Is the way we test and teach too white?

As the 2008 Election season heats up, many progressive candidates have been running on a populist message, that too much wealth and power is concentrated in the very few. In response, some smug elitist columnists from the New York Times (I'll give you a hint, it rhymes with Pay-vid Crooks) and others have tried to trick us into believing that such inequality does not exist. The New York Times article cites modest increases in real wages, and the fact that the income of the lower brackets has increased since Bush's tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were implemented. Sometimes, smug economists/political theorists will try and isolate various statistics to make a point that contradicts the truth. The truth can be found through an analysis of what is really happening.

Since 1981, when supply side economics permeated into America's bloodstream, real wages have declined, while productivity has increased. According to an August 2006 article in the New York Times, (not written by the aforementioned author), wages make up the lowest share of GDP since statistics have been measured, while profits make up the highest percent of GDP than at any point in our history.  What does this mean? The money is being made through the great American engine of innovation, but only the very few are reaping the rewards.

Of course, this is more than you need to know. Do you think that the 46 million people who can't afford health insurance, or the 13 million children living in poverty want to read articles telling them that inequality isn't THAT bad? I don't think so. According to the Children's Defense Fund, a vast majority of these children come from working parents, whose wages have remained stagnant. Even with today's raising of the national minimum wage, most low wage workers still live near or below the poverty line. Is it right that people should be suffering, is it right that people should be hungry, is it right that people should be impoverished, when hedge fund and equity owners are reaping record profits? Of course not. No statistician or Westchester County home-owning economist should be able to convince you otherwise.

We are the richest country in the world, our GDP will tell you that. So, the money is there. Where is it going? Rich people. One third of the 2001 tax cut, in which billions of dollars were given back to the wealthiest earners, could have funded universal health care for every child, 100,000 new teachers, and a fully funded head start program. The money is there, we are just not using it correctly.

Finally, I just want to make sure everyone is aware of some of the BS that comes out of these articles. Most of these writers, who have no background in Economics, often say that low wage workers have been gaining income just like the top earners! Wonderful, right? No. They never pay attention to relative wealth. As the rich get exponentially richer, the poor's relative wealth decreases, even if their wages increase. Also, make sure when they tell you that wages are rising, you know that they're usually talking about nominal wages and are not taking into account inflation. 

In the traditional sense, when women get married, they change their last name to their husband’s, or hyphenate their names (her last name-his last name). However, switch things around, and it isn’t too easy. Only six states allow men to take their wives’ last name (California is possibly the seventh state). This is posing a problem for married couples, as well as domestic partners. Under most states’ laws, the man must “must petition the court, advertise in a newspaper and pay hundreds of dollars in fees” if he wants his wife’s last name (just a little much?). All a woman has to do is sign the marriage license. Doesn’t the husband have every right to take his wife’s last name?

Though I have to interject an anecdote from my childhood here. When I was in middle school, the principle was Mr. W (I won’t use his full name here). When my youngest brother entered the same middle school, it was Mr. M. However, it was the same man. He didn’t take his wife’s last name…they had combined the two together. So when they got divorced (around the time my little brother entered middle school), he had gone back to his “maiden” name (what would be the masculine word for maiden?). It confused the current students, and the alumni, because it was something we had never seen before. And this was a conservative little town (a.k.a. Stepford).

Maybe it’s time for a change here?

~世界の革命

“Britney Spears was an idiot last Thursday, an idiot on Friday and an idiot on both Saturday and Sunday. She was, shockingly, also an idiot on Monday.” Meanwhile, the Bush administration advances its war on the American economy, with a pseduo-capitalistic kleptocratic budget guaranteed to provide the wealthy with a little more wealth.

In his Rolling Stone column, The Low Post, the intriguing, impassioned, and ever-hilarious Matt Taibbi notes a few curiosities that slipped under the radar during Shaven-Britneygate. Based on research by the office of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the article juxtaposes a few figures regarding Bush's proposed 2008 budget.

Taibbi notes that, with the repeal of the Estate Tax, the Walton  heirs (of Wal-Mart fame) alone would save “$32.7 billion dollars over the next ten years,” while Medicaid would be reduced by about $28 billion. For the Cox (of cable-provider fame) family to save $9.7 billion, education spending would drop by $1.5 billion.

“This is something different from traditional conservatism and something different from big-government liberalism; this is a new kind of politics that transforms the state into a huge, ever-expanding instrument for converting private savings into corporate profit,” Taibbi writes.

Sure, it is a heinous and unacceptable misallocation squandering of incredible resources to advance both individual and common good, and the select few in America who have the power and influence to improve our media probably won’t, since it serves their interests. But, then again, if most of us “would rather sniff Anna Nicole Smith's corpse or watch Britney Spears hump a fire hydrant than find out what our tax dollars are actually paying for,” maybe being robbed blind is exactly what we've been asking for.

Only 35 percent of American high school seniors are "proficient" readers, down from 40 percent in 1992. And almost one-third of our students, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress survey, lack even the basic reading skills necessary to determine the cost of a train ticket at a certain time listed in a brochure. Hilariously enough, six years after the passage of the mother of all failed, unfunded mandates, No Child Left Behind, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is quoted in the New York Times article claiming that--hey!!!--the poor results just prove the Bush administration's standards-based education policies were right all along. But what good are standards if we aren't doing anything real to give students the tools to meet them? You know, like actually providing states with the funding and programmatic supports to enact NCLB's requirements, such as putting a high-quality teacher with a subject specific degree in every classroom. Oof. I feel like I've been angry about this forevers and evers.

ANYWAY, it all makes me despair on an issue Ezra brought up earlier this week about health literacy. With so many Americans reading at an elementary school level, how can we expect them to navigate the HMO nightmare? Or to understand directions enclosed with their prescriptions? Or to know what a "hysterectomy" is when they might need one?

At times like this I remember how very much in our political and social system must be boiled down to improving public education. And for all those who say we should focus on income inequality instead of education reform (since social capital determines academic success), I say we just don't have the luxury of waiting -- we need to improve our schools now. I'd like to see just one presidential candidate thinking and talking big on this issue.