Jobs: Bad news for Dallas County

The title caught my eye right off: "Sinking City" (DMagazine, December 2014, page 26. 

The opening felt familiar, but made my stomach hurt.  The report came from the City of Dallas' Office of Economic Development: 

"Dallas is a top 10 city for affluent residents, says a new study.  Overall wealth went up 23.8% between 2012 and 2013."

Been here before--most of the year digging into the facts of life in Dallas as a part of my assignment with the Mayor's Task Force on Poverty.  This sort of data is exactly what got our Mayor engaged, concerned and determined to work on the amazing challenges at the other end of our community's economic continuum. 

The Dallas Morning News reported that Dallas was "leading in the growth of high-net-worth individuals and wealth."

But, if you move away from the top and focus on jobs and wages for Dallas County, things don't seem so encouraging.  As a metropolitan statistical area, Dallas is the fourth largest in the nation.  Dallas County is part of this 13-county region, and is the largest of the counties.   Our region grew by 1.2 million people between 2000 and 2010. 

At the same time, Dallas County lost 215,230 jobs.  The article points out a shocking truth:  to lose that many jobs makes Dallas County almost a Detroit-type economic environment. 

During the same timeframe, surrounding counties posted big jobs gains:  Parker (+72%), Rockwall (78%), Denton (59%), Collin (51%). 

Wages in Dallas County rose by just a shade above 2%, or 9th from last among U. S. "urbanized counties."

Get this:  on jobs and wages, Dallas County is the 3rd worst performing county in the nation. 

Any idea which U. S. county is the worst performing on jobs and wages? 

Right! 

Wayne County, Michigan, home of Detroit. 

Dallas, we have a problem. 

The amazing rise of the rich

Recently, I ran across Tim Dickinson's essay in Rolling Stone describing the intentional, dramatic and unjust strategy that has been imposed on us all over the past 25 years (see below). The facts of the case make me angry. The ugly truth about our culture, our economy and our political reality would enrage the Hebrew prophets, you know, guys like Amos, Jeremiah, Micah, Isaiah, to say nothing of Jesus and his brother, James.

Please take the time to read the entire report. Then, tell me what you think. I hope some of you who seldom comment will make the special effort to do so on this post. I can anticipate the predictable reactions of some of my regular readers. What I need on this post is a response from you who see the truth here. I'd love a conversation about what we can do. Or, if you disagree with the article, comment on its substance.

How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich
The inside story of how the Republicans abandoned the poor and the middle class to pursue their relentless agenda of tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent

By Tim Dickinson

November 9, 2011 7:00 AM ET

The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for two straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation's balance sheet. Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks for the rich. "We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share," he thunders to a crowd in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, "sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that's crazy."

Preacher-like, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. "Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver," he demands, "or less?"

The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: "MORE!"

The year was 1985. The president was Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Read the entire instructive report here.

"Trickle down" turns out to be "rush up"

For years, and especially since 2008, we've heard expression after expression of fear that the nation is in the midst of a great "redistribution of wealth" from the rich to the poor. We've been told that the United States is on the cusp of falling into a thoroughgoing shift to socialism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Well, almost.

It is true that there has been a great redistribution of wealth going on. As a matter of fact, it's been underway for the past 30 years. But the direction of the wealth's movement has not been downward toward the undeserving poor as so many seem to fear. No, the movement has been upward to the most well-to-do, and the shift has been massive.   And, we see the results every day, as increasing numbers of people come our way seeking assistance. 

Eugene Robinson explains in the following report: 

The study that shows why Occupy Wall Street struck a nerve

By Eugene Robinson, Published: October 27, 2011

The hard-right conservatives who dominate the Republican Party claim to despise the redistribution of wealth, but secretly they love it — as long as the process involves depriving the poor and middle class to benefit the rich, not the other way around.

That is precisely what has been happening, as a jaw-dropping new report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office demonstrates. Three decades of trickle-down economic theory, see-no-evil deregulation and tax-cutting fervor have led to massive redistribution. Another word for what’s been happening might be theft.

The gist of the CBO study, titled “Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007,” is that while we’ve become wealthier overall, these new riches have largely bypassed many Americans and instead flowed mostly to the affluent. Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I don’t remember voting to turn the United States into a nation starkly divided between haves and have-nots. Yet that’s where we’ve been led.

Overall, in inflation-adjusted dollars, average after-tax household income grew by 62 percent during the period under study, according to the CBO. This sounds great — but only until you look a little closer.

For those at the bottom — the one-fifth of households with the lowest incomes — the increase was just 18 percent. For the middle three-fifths, the average increase was 40 percent. Spread over nearly 30 years, these gains are modest, not meteoric.

By contrast, look at the top 1 percent of earners. Their after-tax household income increased by an astonishing 275 percent. For those keeping track, this means it nearly quadrupled. Nice work, if you can get it.

This is not what Republicans want you to think of when you hear the word redistribution.

To read the entire report click here. 

Reactions welcomed, as always.