Clipmarks | dmegivern's 'inequality' clips

Richest Americans See Their Income Share Grow

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 21:25:18 GMT

clipped by: kkcapricorn
clipper's remarks: It's no surprise to us average - soon-to-be-poor folk.
Can we do something about it?

Clip Source: www.michaelmoore.com

By Jesse Drucker / Wall Street Journal

In a new sign of increasing inequality in the U.S., the richest 1% of Americans in 2006 garnered the highest share of the nation's adjusted gross income for two decades

the average tax rate of the wealthiest 1% fell to its lowest level in at least 18 years

the richest 1% reported 22% of the nation's total adjusted gross income in 2006. That is up from 21.2% a year earlier, and is the highest in the 19 years that the IRS has kept strictly comparable figures

As the wealthiest Americans' share of income has risen, so has their share of the income-tax burden. The group paid 39.9% of all income taxes in 2006, compared with 27.6% in 1988. In the most recently reported five years, however, the share of income reported by the very wealthy has risen faster than the group's share of income taxes.

The figures are from the IRS's income-statistics division and were posted on the agency's Web site last week.

Tags: wealthy, tax-breaks, income

America's "BRUTAL Approach to Punishment. "

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 15:13:39 GMT

clipped by: righthand
clipper's remarks: Inextricably linked to the long history of racial inequality, with blacks put away in numbers vastly disproportionate to their overall population.

The states with the highest ratio of prisoners per population are all former slave states with long traditions of jailhouse brutality, chain gangs and other barbaric practices: Louisiana (816 prisoners per 100,000 people), Texas (694) and Mississippi (669). In many states, blacks are up to 15 times as likely as whites to find themselves behind bars. In Florida, one in three adult black men has a criminal record.

Some trends are more recent - tied, in particular, to the mania for tough-on-crime legislation that has swept state after state in the past 25 years.

The national prison population up 400% since 1980, the increase fuelled in particular by the "war on drugs" and incarceration of petty drug offenders. Exacerbated a host of problems from overcrowding to prison rape to the formation of ultra-violent prison gangs, many racial

Clip Source: news.independent.co.uk

A nation's brutal approach to punishment

By Andrew Gumbel

Published: 15 August 2007

The persistence of the death penalty is only one way in which the United States stands out from the rest of the Western world on crime and punishment.

The US has just 5 per cent of the world's population, but 25 per cent of its overall prison population.

prison has taken the place of social services such as drug rehabilitation and mental health counselling and, according to critics of the system, has, in effect, criminalised large portions of the population who would have been much better and much more cheaply treated elsewhere

Prison guard unions have become major political players, especially in California, home to the single largest prison system in the world,

A whole industry has sprung up to support the burgeoning prison population

"prison-industrial complex"

California will be spending more on prisons than on its entire higher education system

highest incarceration rate of any country

wo million people

Tags: usa, prisoners, racism, retributionist, brutal

More Americans Say U.S. Split into Haves/Have-Nots

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 10:13:29 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.gallup.com

More Americans Say U.S. a Nation of Haves and Have-Nots

Half now say it is, up from 37% four years ago

PRINCETON, NJ -- Along with their mounting concerns about national economic conditions in recent years, Americans have grown more likely to perceive structural economic inequality in the country. Nearly half of Americans, 49%, now say the nation is divided into two groups: the "haves" and the "have-nots." This is up from 45% two years ago, and from 37% in June 2004.

At the same time that more Americans see an economic class divide in the country, the percentage of Americans holding a profoundly negative view of the U.S. economy has jumped sharply, from 41% in June 2004 to 55% in June 2006 to 84% in June 2008.

Tags: inequality

Income-Inequality Gap Widens

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 01:47:15 GMT

clipped by: cptenaud
clipper's remarks: The gap between the affluent and the poor is growing larger every day in this country and all over the world. The despair that accompanies poverty is seen by many as the primary cause of many of the world's most serious problems. Terrorism, disease, war, political unrest, hunger, malnutrition, polluted water, racial intolerance, crime, drug and alcohol abuse and suicide all can be traced to poverty.

Nothing will test the moral foundation of humanity more than how mankind addresses this issue and nothing will be more important to our physical and spiritual survival.

Clip Source: bravenewfilms.org

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, the richest Americans' share of national income has hit a postwar record. They really needed those measly tax-cuts didn't they.

The wealthiest 1% of Americans earned 21.2% of all income in 2005, up sharply from 19% in 2004, while the bottom 50% earned 12.8% of all income, down from 13.4% in 2004. This according to new data from the Internal Revenue Service.

Jason Furman, a scholar at the Brookings Institution said,

We've had a 30-year trend of increasing inequality.

This latest result of laissez-faire capitalism gone amok must bring a smile to the faces of Bush and Cheney whose raison-d'etre has always been the enabling of their rich corporate buddies and enablers and the hell with the needs of working people. I can hear Ayn Rand applauding from the grave.

Tags: the, poor, get, poorer

Study: Conservatives rationalize more, are happier

Wed, 07 May 2008 19:37:12 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Some of the best comments I've seen on CM, toward the end, below! Knocked me out!

Clip Source: www.foxnews.com

Why Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals

Individuals with conservative ideologies are happier than liberal-leaners, and new research pinpoints the reason: Conservatives rationalize social and economic inequalities.

Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found.

Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.

The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," and "This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are."

Officials: Woman Found Hanging From Tree Died in Suicide

"apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light."

Tags: conservative, liberal, progressive

Separate Is Never Equal

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 18:19:22 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: Unfortunately, the tendency of self-segregation amongst races in America persists in spite of the economic repercussions it passes on to future generations.

The model incorporated the idea that parents tend to invest more heavily in giving their children the skills that employers value when they expect that investment to pay off later in higher wages. It also included the fact that children are more likely to succeed when they are surrounded by other children who are succeeding. For example, studies show that having friends with strong vocabularies helps a child to pick up more words with less effort.

The latter effect makes informal, social segregation particularly damaging, the researchers found. People who have been subject to discrimination in the past are less likely to have acquired the skills needed for high-wage jobs, compared with those who were not subject to discrimination. Their children, then, are less likely to pick up those skills naturally at home.

Clip Source: www.sciencenews.org

How social segregation leads to economic inequality

Indeed, the power of segregation may be even greater than commonly thought. The study shows that even when there is no history of discrimination between two groups, social segregation alone can cause dramatic economic inequities to develop.

Figure 1: Housing patterns show the extent of social segregation in Manhattan. This map shows the relative proportion of black households and non-Hispanic white households, using figures and classifications from the 2000 Census.
Sethi and Somanathan

This result should serve as a warning for societies with strong social divisions, Sethi says. Even when social groups are economically equal, continued segregation may result in inequality over time.

Figure 2: Segregation in Manhattan is not simply a result of discrepancies in income, a new analysis shows. This map shows what the level of racial segregation would be if it were merely a side effect of segregation by income.
Sethi and Somanathan

Tags: race, segregation, integration, inequality, sociology, economics, income, poverty, social, discrimination

We've seen the future ... and we may not be doomed

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:22:44 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

UN report finds life is getting better for people worldwide – but that governments are failing to grasp the opportunities offered at 'a unique time'. Geoffrey Lean and Jonathan Owen report

Humanity stands on the threshold of a peaceful and prosperous future, with an unprecedented ability to extend lifespans and increase the power of ordinary people – but is likely to blow it through inequality, violence and environmental degradation. And governments are not equipped to ensure that the opportunities are seized and disasters averted.

"This is a unique time in history. Mobile phones, the internet, international trade, language translation and jet planes are giving birth to an interdependent humanity that can create and implement global strategies to improve [its] prospects. It is increasingly clear that the world has the resources to address our common challenges.

Ours is the first generation with the means for many to know the world as a whole, identify global improvement systems

and

improve

Tags: another, optimistic, clip

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 18:17:24 GMT

clipped by: chiggles
clipper's remarks: An oldie but a goodie, not on clipmarks elsewhere (so far as my searches have shown). Written by Jared Diamond two decades back. Before being critical, read the entire article please. If you think the anthropology is somehow flawed, I suggest Anthropik's Thirty Theses ( http://anthropik.com/thirty ), which cover a lot of ground.

Clip Source: www.agron.iastate.edu

To science we owe dramatic changes in our smug self-image. Astronomy taught us that our earth isn’t the center of the universe but merely one of billions of heavenly bodies. From biology we learned that we weren’t specially created by God but evolved along with millions of other species. Now archaeology is demolishing another sacred belief: that human history over the past million years has been a long tale of progress. In particular, recent discoveries suggest that the adoption of agriculture, supposedly our most decisive step toward a better life, was in many ways a catastrophe from which we have never recovered. With agriculture came the gross social and sexual inequality, the disease and despotism, that curse our existence.

Tags: diamond, agriculture, progress, hunting, collapse, doom

Causes of Poverty

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 18:03:32 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Articles on the nature and causes of poverty by Anup Shah.

Clip Source: www.globalissues.org

Causes of Poverty

Poverty is the state for the majority of the world’s people and nations. Why is this? Is it enough to blame poor people for their own predicament? Have they been lazy, made poor decisions, and been solely responsible for their plight? What about their government? Have they pursued policies that actually harm successful development? Such causes of poverty and inequality are no doubt real. But often less discussed are deeper and more global causes of poverty.

Behind the increasing interconnectedness promised by globalization, are global decisions, policies, and practices. These are typically influenced, driven, or formulated by the rich and powerful. These can be leaders of rich countries or other global actors such as multinational corporations, institutions, and influential people.

In the face of such enormous external influence, the governments of poor nations and their people are often powerless. As a result, in the global context, a few get wealthy while the majority struggle.

These next few articles and sections explore various poverty issues in more depth:

Tags: poverty, world, inequality, capitalism, globalization

Haryana's sex ratio changes drastically

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 08:39:57 GMT

clipped by: Deepti
clipper's remarks: This is excellent news...
'Successive state governments have taken various measures. Besides coming down heavily on private clinics doing sex determination tests that was attributed to the rising incidents of female foeticide, the state administration announced monetary incentives to parents giving birth to girl child, free education and government help in the form of cash at the time of their marriage.'

Clip Source: www.gulfnews.com

The skewed sex-ratio in Haryana has changed drastically with girls outnumbering boys in many parts of the state now.

A state government survey has thrown up the heartening news that stringent implementation of various laws and better awareness has helped increase the number of girl child during the past five years.

The 2001 census had put Haryana on the alert as it had emerged as one of the states with the worst sex ratio with 861 females for 1,000 males.

The situation had become so bad that people in many villages, particularly in Jat-community-dominated areas, had started looking for brides for their eligible youngsters from tribal areas of Jharkhand and Orissa.

The situation has changed even in urban areas of the state with girl child outnumbering boys in several towns

Tags: girls, population, ratio, improvement, india, culture, government, inequality, haryana, law

China’s scale and speed of growt leaves the outside world awed, & worried.

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 07:04:58 GMT

clipped by: einbar

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Any Olympic opening is a propaganda exercise, but Friday night’s blockbuster show demonstrated the broader public relations challenge facing the Communist Party as China becomes richer and more powerful. The party wants to inspire national pride within China, and bolster its own legitimacy in the process, even as leaders want to reassure the world that a rising China poses no danger.

“For a lot of foreigners, the only image of China comes from old movies that make us look poor and pathetic,” said Ci Lei,

“Now look at us. We showed the world we can build new subways and beautiful modern buildings. The Olympics will redefine the way people see us.”

The scale and speed of that growth often leaves the outside world awed, but also worried. China has the world’s largest authoritarian political system. Chinese society is prospering, even as it is cleaved by inequality and struggling with human rights abuses, corruption and severe pollution

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

A Fresh Look At Catholicism

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 15:03:51 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: Some good news from the article and one reason I am a Catholic:

"In one session, religious scholar Angel Galindo Garcia discussed the role of the church in an era of globalization. He referenced George Orwell's Big Brother and critiqued growing inequality between rich and poor nations.

However, I had to laugh out loud at this quote:

"Can one be a homosexual without ever having sexual relations with a person of the same sex?" she asked the crowd rhetorically and then answered: "Yes, of course."

Save your questions for later kiddies! OMG, do you know how CRAZY I drove my nuns in catethism class with questions? I was almost held hostage by my fellow classmates once for questioning the dogma of purgatory as a place rather than a state of being. The teacher LOVED me though. It's the first time I saw him come alive in that class.

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

In a conference room at the Anaheim Convention Center, hundreds of Spanish-speaking spectators listened intently to a scholar's lecture on sex and Catholicism.

And in a giant room two floors down, hundreds of vendors from across the country sold everything from Bibles to bobbleheads.

On sale were plush saints resembling the popular "American Girl" dolls, silver "Bible Bangles" with religious inscriptions, gold-plated Communion chalices and elaborately embroidered vestments selling for thousands of dollars.

Then there was the magician.

"Many people think Catholics believe in three gods," Stagnaro said, pointing to three knots in a rope. "But," he said as he made the knots disappear, "it's really one God in three forms." People smiled and clapped.

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

"Can one be a homosexual without ever having sexual relations with a person of the same sex?" she asked the crowd rhetorically and then answered: "Yes, of course." Hands shot up and she reminded her listeners to save their questions for later.

Tags: us, catholics, are, one, fucked, up, bunch, of, individuals

The History of Inequality in America

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 15:20:59 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern
clipper's remarks: Paul Krugman, Harvard professor and NY times writer, offers a history of inequality in the U.S.

Clip Source: krugman.blogs.nytimes.com

The chart shows the share of the richest 10 percent of the American population in total income – an indicator that closely tracks many other measures of economic inequality – over the past 90 years, as estimated by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. I’ve added labels indicating four key periods. These are:

The Long Gilded Age:

Public policy did little to limit extremes of wealth and poverty, mainly because the political dominance of the elite remained intact; the politics of the era, in which working Americans were divided by racial, religious, and cultural issues, have recognizable parallels with modern politics.

It was a society without extremes of wealth or poverty, a society of broadly shared prosperity, partly because strong unions, a high minimum wage, and a progressive tax system helped limit inequality.

Tags: income, inequality, history, u.s.

Parts of the United States As Poor as Third World

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 20:24:47 GMT

clipped by: dmegivern

Clip Source: www.truthout.org

Parts of the United States are as poor as the Third World, according to a shocking United Nations report on global inequality.

The annual Human Development Report normally concerns itself with the Third World, but the 2005 edition scrutinises inequalities in health provision inside the US as part of a survey of how inequality worldwide is retarding the eradication of poverty.

It reveals that the infant mortality rate has been rising in the US for the past five years - and is now the same as Malaysia. America's black children are twice as likely as whites to die before their first birthday.

Although the US leads the world in healthcare spending - per head of population it spends twice what other rich OECD nations spend on average, 13 per cent of its national income - this high level goes disproportionately on the care of white Americans. It has not been targeted to eradicate large disparities in infant death rates based on race, wealth and state of residence.

Tags: inequality, poverty, u.s.

Poverty Facts and Stats

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 18:01:01 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Some stats from Global Issues.

Clip Source: www.globalissues.org

Poverty Facts and Stats

Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day. ^{source 1}

The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined. ^{source 2}

Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names. ^{source 3}

Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn't happen. ^{source 4}

51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations. ^{source 5}

The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation. ^{source 6}

The poorer the country, the more likely it is that debt repayments are being extracted directly from people who neither contracted the loans nor received any of the money. ^{source 7}

20% of the population in the developed nations, consume 86% of the world’s goods. ^{source 8}

The top fifth of the world’s people in the richest countries enjoy 82% of the expanding export trade and 68% of foreign direct investment — the bottom fifth, barely more than 1%. ^{source 9}

In 1960, the 20% of the world’s people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20% — in 1997, 74 times as much. ^{source 10}

Tags: poverty, world, inequality