Krugman and income distribution inequality

Recently, I sat in a working group convened by the United Way that focused on income, one of the organization's priorities as it responds to community reality going forward. The emphasis is a part of the new focus to "Live United."

Our facilitator wrote on a large sheet of sticky paper this phrase:

"Root Causes of Poverty"

The group began throwing out answers and ideas. A number of our answers related to education issues and opportunities.

During our discussion, I thought of the clip below. Watch it and tell me what you think.

bell hooks. . .Class Matters

bell hooks writes powerful, challenging, disconcerting, revolutionary stuff.

"Class" issues occupy her thought and analysis. She makes it very, very clear that we are not comfortable talking about these "class matters" and that we are in deep denial about them.

What follows is a sample of her work from her book, Where We Stand: Class Matters (Routledge 2000).

Nowadays it is fashionable to talk race or gender; the uncool subject is class… In less than twenty years our nation has become a place where the rich truly rule… While greed has always been a part of American capitalism,it is only recently that it has set the standard for how we live and interact in everyday life. Our nation is becoming a class-segregated society where the plight of the poor is forgotten and the greed of the rich is morally tolerated and condoned. (p. vii)

Everywhere we turn in our daily lives in this nation we are confronted with the widening gap between rich and poor… Yet there is no organized class struggle, no daily in-your-face critique of capitalistic greed that stimulates thought and action – critique, reform, and revolution.

As a nation we have become passive, refusing to act responsibly toward the more than thirty-eight million citizens who live in poverty here and the working masses who labor long and hard but still have difficulty making ends meet. The rich are getting richer. And the poor are falling by the wayside. At times it seem no one cares. Citizens in the middle who live comfortable lives, luxurious lives in relation to the rest of the world, often fear that challenging classism will be their downfall, that simply by expressing concern for the poor they will end up like them, lacking the basic necessities of life. Defensively, they turn their backs on the poor and look to the rich for answers, convinced that the good life can exist only when there is material affluence. (pp. 1-2)

More and more, our nation is becoming class-segregated. The poor live with and among the poor – confined in gated communities without adequate shelter, food or health care – the victims of predatory greed. More and more poor communities all over the country look like war zones, with boarded-up bombed-out buildings, with either the evidence of gunfire everywhere of the vacant silence of unsatisfied hunger… No one safeguards the interests of citizens there; they are soon to be the victims of class genocide. This is the passive way our country confronts the poor and indigent, leaving them to die from street warfare, sugar, alcohol, and drug addiction, AIDS, and/or starvation. (p. 2)

We live in a society where the poor have no public voice. (p. 5)

Solidarity with the poor is the only path that can lead our nation back to a vision of community that can effectively challenge and eliminate violence and exploitation. It invites us to embrace an ethics of compassion and sharing that will renew a spirit of loving kindness and communion that can sustain and enable us to live in harmony with the whole world. (p. 49)

Wealth built and maintained by the exploitation and oppression of others undermines a democratic vision of prosperity. (p. 79)

…the widening gap between the rich and the poor causes pain far beyond economic suffering, it rends and breaks us psychologically, tearing us asunder, denying us the well-being that comes from recognizing our need for community and interdependency. (p. 158)

Categorically Unequal--book notes

I haven't read Categorically Unequal, but I plan to in 2009.

Not long ago, someone sent me the following synopsis of the book's content. Controversial, no doubt. Worth a careful study because usually this sort of study turns bright lights on subjects we'd just as soon ignore.

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The United States holds the dubious distinction of having the most unequal income distribution of any advanced industrialized nation. While other developed countries face similar challenges from globalization and technological change, none rivals America’s singularly poor record for equitably distributing the benefits and burdens of recent economic shifts.

In Categorically Unequal, Douglas Massey, the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University, weaves together history, political economy, and even neuropsychology to provide a comprehensive explanation of how America’s culture and political system perpetuates inequalities between different segments of the population.

Categorically Unequal is striking both for its theoretical originality and for the breadth of topics it covers. Massey argues that social inequalities arise from the universal human tendency to place others into social categories. In America, ethnic minorities, women, and the poor have consistently been the targets of stereotyping, and as a result, they have been exploited and discriminated against throughout the nation’s history.

African-Americans continue to face discrimination in markets for jobs, housing, and credit. Meanwhile, the militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border has discouraged Mexican migrants from leaving the United States, creating a pool of exploitable workers who lack the legal rights of citizens. Massey also shows that women’s advances in the labor market have been concentrated among the affluent and well-educated, while low-skilled female workers have been relegated to occupations that offer few chances for earnings mobility.

At the same time, as the wages of low-income men have fallen, more working-class women are remaining unmarried and raising children on their own. Even as minorities and women continue to face these obstacles, the progressive legacy of the New Deal has come under frontal assault. The government has passed anti-union legislation, made taxes more regressive, allowed the real value of the federal minimum wage to decline, and drastically cut social welfare spending.

As a result, the income gap between the richest and poorest has dramatically widened since 1980. Massey attributes these anti-poor policies in part to the increasing segregation of neighborhoods by income, which has insulated the affluent from the social consequences of poverty, and to the disenfranchisement of the poor, as the population of immigrants, prisoners, and ex-felons swells.

America’s unrivalled disparities are not simply the inevitable result of globalization and technological change. As Massey shows, privileged groups have systematically exploited and excluded many of their fellow Americans.

By delving into the root causes of inequality in America, Categorically Unequal provides a compelling argument for the creation of a more equitable society.

[Order a copy here. For a bibliography of Massey's previous work take a look here.]

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"Snooty" is never pretty--see for yourself!

The subject of my post today (below) is featured in at WFAA-TV Channel 8 news report.

Watch it here.

Amazing! Why am I surprised?

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"Snooty" is never pretty

Here's one for the books.

If you live in the Stonebriar subdivision in Frisco, Texas, pay careful attention to the make and model when you buy a pickup.

Jim Greenwood is learning his lesson the hard way.

You see, Jim bought himself a brand new Ford F-150 pickup, brought it home to Stonebriar and parked it in front of his house. I bet he was proud of that new truck. I sure would be. You know, new car proud, the emotion that makes your eager to show your neighbors?

Bad mistake.

Jim started receiving notices from the Stonebriar Home Owners Association (HOA) notifying him that he was in violation of the rules of the community that prohibit parking pickup trucks in driveways out front of homes.

As it turns out, that's not quite true.

The HOA does allow residents to park "luxury" trucks on driveways, including the Cadillac Escalade, the Chevrolet Avalanche, the Lincoln Mark LT and a few others, like Chevy Suburbans and Hummers. . .just not the standard Ford F-150.

Bill Osborn, a member of the HOA board, explained, "The high-end vehicles that are allowed are plush with amenities and covers on the back. It doesn't look like a pickup. It's fancier."

When Greenwood appealed, noting that his truck is not a lot different from the Lincoln, the HOA responded, "It's our belief that Lincoln markets to a different class of people."

Can't believe they said that!

Snooty just isn't pretty, is it? Class is a bigger issue in this nation than we'd like to admit, but then, this is not a new development.

Tomorrow I'll post a note about an interesting development that is starting to play out in the nation's cities. It seems that wealthy folks are actually moving back to the central cities of America, while the poor are moving to the suburbs.

Watch out, Stonebriar! The pickups are headed your way.

[This post was inspired by reading Steve Stoler's report, "HOA: Pickup not in right class," in The Dallas Morning News, Sunday, August 17, 2008, 2B]

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Voting as Lotto

Low-income workers and minorities vote in much lower numbers than higher paid, white citizens. People who are working hard to make ends meet and pay the bills often don't find their way to the polls on election days.

Beyond this, there is a cynicism among the poor about the viability and efficacy of the entire political process. A "what difference will my vote make?" attitude seems more prevalent among lower wage earners than among those who earn more for their work.

In Dallas it is certainly true that persons living in lower income neighborhoods don't turn out to vote like people who reside in more upscale parts of our city. I know that is true in my state house district. People living west of Central Expressway in the Park Cities part of our district vote at a 75 to 90% clip in every election. On my side of the district we do good to turn out 40% in even the most active precincts.

Now comes Mark Osterloh with one of the "bright ideas" for 2006, at least as determined by the annual review conducted by The New York Times Magazine (Rebecca Skloot, page 34, December 10, 2006).

Here's how his idea would work.

Each person who casts a vote would also be entered into a special state lottery in Osterloh's home state, Arizona. At the conclusion of each state election one person would be selected to win $1 million. The payout would come from the state's unclaimed lottery fund.

The odds are interesting when compared to other state and regional games of chance. If 2 million Arizonans vote, as they did in 2004, in the next national election, the odds of winning would be 1 in 2 million, as compared to 1 in 146 million for recent Powerball games!

With what remained in the unclaimed gaming fund, Osterloh would award 1,700 prizes of $1,000 each. Such a move increases the odds of winning something to 1 in 2,500.

Osterloh believes that odds like these, especially for low-income workers, would increase voter turnout, while costing voters nothing.

Critics say that the idea "degrades democracy."

Osterloh is amused.

"Excuse me?" he says. "Getting all those people to vote will degrade democracy? Isn't that the definition of democracy?"

Osterloh is so serious about his idea that he got it on the ballot in Arizona last November.

Voters didn't approve it.

As the Times Magazine notes, "It is quite possible. . .that his target audience didn't show up to vote."

What do you think?

Les Miserables

“There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.”

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

[Quoted on the cover of the program of the play presented by the School of Performing Arts at Garland High School, Garland, Texas February 7-10, 2007]