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  • Numbers show a second-rate US

    Numbers show a second-rate US
    August 28, 2006 (Christian Science Monitor)


    The United States is the world's only military superpower and has the globe's largest economy. Yet, by some measures, the US is a second-rate industrial nation - at best.

    "Compared to other advanced economies, our market-driven model yields highly varied results regarding the living standards of our citizens," notes a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

    It's an open question as to whether most Americans are better off than most Western Europeans.

    "We leave a lot of people behind," says Sylvia Allegretto, an economist at EPI.

    "We are a dynamic economy," says Timothy Smeeding, an economist at Syracuse (N.Y.) University. "A lot of people are doing well," he adds. But for those with median incomes ($40,000 a year) or less, it is a "second-rate" economy. They "are not getting much help."

    The US has about the same or worse income mobility between generations. The poor have a slim chance of escaping their parents' poverty, says Professor Smeeding.

    Our smartest kids do as well as smartest kids anywhere," he says. But that's not the case for low-income families. The odds of their children entering or graduating from college are not good.

    The usual comeback to such comparisons is that the US has a marvelous job-creation economy. But the EPI study find this claim "exaggerated." US job growth since 2000 has been "lackluster" and "far worse" than several other well-to-do nations belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

    AntiSpin: Even while the US economy is still doing relatively well, evidence of discontent among "those with median incomes ($40,000 a year) or less" is growing in the form of a rapidly increasing violent crime rate. A recent Washington Post article Violent crime returns with a vengeance explains:
    After a welcome decline, cities such as Philadelphia, above, are seeing a resurgence of violent crime.

    The United States is losing the war in Iraq; more specifically, Philadelphia is. This war is at home, in the city’s 12th Police District, where shootings have almost doubled over the past year, and residents have spray-painted “IRAQ” in huge letters on abandoned buildings to mark the devastation.

    It is a story being repeated up and down the East Coast and across the nation. In Boston, where the homicide rate is soaring, Analicia Perry, a 20-year-old mother, was shot and killed several weeks ago – while visiting the street shrine marking the site of her brother’s death on the same date four years earlier. Recently, Orlando’s homicide count for this year reached 37, surpassing the city’s previous annual high of 36 in 1982. And in Washington, D.C., where 14 people were killed in the first 12 days of July, Police Chief Charles Ramsey declared a state of emergency.

    Many factors drive crime – poverty, inequality, racism. But to those we should add the spread of a subculture once found only in the toughest urban areas: the culture of respect.
    Rather than show a US government pursuing a deregulated economy, the report shows the US government as no less interventionist than other governments reviewed in the study, but shows that government intervention in markets in the US "tends to favor business more than the poor."

    As reported by the Christian Sience Monitor, Alan Greenspan, in testimony before the Joint Economic Committee June 2005:
    Greenspan's comments at a Joint Economic Committee hearing last week were typical, for him. Asked a leading question by Sen. Jack Reed (D) of Rhode Island, he agreed that over the past two quarters hourly wages have shown few signs of accelerating. Overall employee compensation has gone up - but mostly due to a surge in bonuses and stock-option exercises.

    The Fed chief than added that the 80 percent of the workforce represented by nonsupervisory workers has recently seen little, if any, income growth at all. The top 20 percent of supervisory, salaried, and other workers has.

    The result of this, said Greenspan, is that the US now has a significant divergence in the fortunes of different groups in its labor market. "As I've often said, this is not the type of thing which a democratic society - a capitalist democratic society - can really accept without addressing," Greenspan told the congressional hearing.
    No question, few European nations offer a panacea for problems of racial, ethnic and economic equality of opportunity. The riots in France last year offer a clear indicator of deep rooted problems in European society. However, more than a decade of failing to address the problems of income immobility between generations and between rich and poor, compounded by a regulatory blind eye turned toward predatory lending within these communities, will come back to haunt the US during the next major economic recession that is now in its early stages.

    US policy makers need to develop a
    culture of respect toward the portion of American society that the EPI study reveals as losing from a set of policies of government intervention in markets over the past decade that favor wealth concentration. Instead, there appears to be a culture of contempt which, as the economy heads into recession, is likely to produce a level of civil unrest that may put American democratic society to its greatest test in 70 years.
    Ed.

  • #2
    Re: Numbers show a second-rate US

    Rapidly rising rates of violent crime associated with job loss and wage disparities may stimulate the U.S. economy.

    Sentenced violent criminals join the prison population, creating jobs for prison guards, contracts for prison vendors (food, etc.) and increased shareholder value for those investing in private prison corporations. And those injured wind up in hospitals creating jobs for health care workers, contracts for suppliers, value for shareholders, etc.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Numbers show a second-rate US

      Originally posted by tree
      Rapidly rising rates of violent crime associated with job loss and wage disparities may stimulate the U.S. economy.

      Sentenced violent criminals join the prison population, creating jobs for prison guards, contracts for prison vendors (food, etc.) and increased shareholder value for those investing in private prison corporations. And those injured wind up in hospitals creating jobs for health care workers, contracts for suppliers, value for shareholders, etc.
      hi, tree. clicked on your profile. looks like you joined yesterday and i'm guessing you're from the solari group, right? you think rising and soon to be exploding violent crime rate may help the economy? maybe help the prison business Fitts talks about but it won't help real estate business and that is much more of the economy. gentrification was part of the tapeworm idea, is it not? seems like those recently gentrified parts of nothern cities are turning into high crime zones. that isn't good for business. contradictions?

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Numbers show a second-rate US

        Sorry, I was being facetious (and no I'm not a member of the Solari group nor a new iTulip member).

        I was making fun of the free marketeers, the libertarians and "what me worry" types who jeer at concerns about perceived social disparities and their consequences. I'm with Eric on this.

        Alas, rising private prison populations and health care usage do benefit certain classes of workers, vendors and investors, who in turn can control amounts of money funneled to those running for office.

        A poetry teacher of mine once announced that the color of vested interests is white. I never did figure out what he meant. As Fitts says, look for the cui bono (who benefits).

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Numbers show a second-rate US

          I'm a libertarian type, and I am genuinely concerned about immobility between generations.

          I support education vouchers for all individuals. For those who are poor, their education would improve because they would have a choice about what school to attend rather than be forced to attend an ineffective public school.

          For those that are poor, I would support a more generous voucher. If by providing a $15,000 voucher, one can significantly decrease the probability that individual ends up in prison, it is worth it.

          Libertarians are also in favour of sending less poor folks to prison for possessing marijuana. Rather than put them in jail, it would be better to let them alone and provide them with a $15,000 school voucher.

          Libertarians are very upset that millions of Americans are imprisoned needlessly. It doesn't help poor little Johnny's prospects of lifting himself out of poverty when his father is in jail!

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Numbers show a second-rate US

            Originally posted by ChessMan
            I'm a libertarian type, and I am genuinely concerned about immobility between generations.

            I support education vouchers for all individuals. For those who are poor, their education would improve because they would have a choice about what school to attend rather than be forced to attend an ineffective public school.

            For those that are poor, I would support a more generous voucher. If by providing a $15,000 voucher, one can significantly decrease the probability that individual ends up in prison, it is worth it.

            Libertarians are also in favour of sending less poor folks to prison for possessing marijuana. Rather than put them in jail, it would be better to let them alone and provide them with a $15,000 school voucher.

            Libertarians are very upset that millions of Americans are imprisoned needlessly. It doesn't help poor little Johnny's prospects of lifting himself out of poverty when his father is in jail!
            i saved the link to the last poll on our politics and 66% of us are "libertarian".

            http://www.itulip.com/cgi-bin/vote.cgi?view=1155956672

            27% voted "centrist libertarian" and i put myself in that camp. to me means that you keep government from working with corporations in a way that results in putting johnny's dad in jail for smoking pot, keeping corp's from wrecking the environment, preventing education advantages from getting concentrated into the hands of a small group of people, creating incentives so that health care pros can do preventative medicine (now they are punished for it)... these are a few areas of the economy where if left to unfettered capitalism you get market failures. so libertarians like me are not about "no government" we're about getting rid of a big government that benefits a small part of society.

            17% voted "liberal libertarian". that cracks me up. what's that? a libertarian who's for handing out condoms in schools? i take it the "right libertarian" is very not for that.

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Numbers show a second-rate US

              I didn't list myself as libertarian, though I have those leanings. I am in fact a Shiite Democrat. But I think I understand the Liberal Libertarian label. Primarily it hold that drugs should be legal as well as prostitution, and both regulated and taxed by the state. Some "safety net" of social care is also a component.
              "The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have little." - Franklin D. Roosevelt

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Numbers show a second-rate US

                Originally posted by ChessMan
                Libertarians are also in favour of sending less poor folks to prison for possessing marijuana.
                I have as of yet to meet a Libertarian who feels that way, and is not a shill (I'm not accusing you of being a shill, just in case).
                http://www.NowAndTheFuture.com

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Numbers show a second-rate US

                  Originally posted by bart
                  Originally posted by ChessMan
                  Libertarians are also in favour of sending less poor folks to prison for possessing marijuana.I have as of yet to meet a Libertarian who feels that way, and is not a shill (I'm not accusing you of being a shill, just in case).
                  Some people (whose initials are both V ... ) might disagree with my labeling, but I am a self-described libertarian who thinks nobody should ever go to jail merely for possessing marijuana.
                  Finster
                  ...

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: nonpartisan think tank in Washington - Yah, right..

                    The idea that a think tank based in Washington DC - is non-partisan - is that like the Alcoholic who doesn't have a drinking problem.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Numbers show a second-rate US

                      Originally posted by metalman
                      i saved the link to the last poll on our politics and 66% of

                      17% voted "liberal libertarian". that cracks me up. what's that? a libertarian who's for handing out condoms in schools? i take it the "right libertarian" is very not for that.
                      ... why do wise people hand out condoms in schools? Kids have sex usually starting the age of 13-15 and if you do not protect them they either get pregnant or catch up sexually transmitted diseases. Since we have educated kids on using condoms such as in France, Germany or Switzerland the number of abortions has dropped, same as new infections. See also: http://www.stopaids.ch/stopaids.php - Who earns the most with not educating kids right from the start are companies like Serono, Pfizer, Glaxo, Novartis etc. who make people life-time dependent on $400 plus drugs, and those help groups that "take care of the poor". (See also http://www.etuxx.com/diskussionen/foo282.php3 - In German - use Babelfish to translate)

                      Another liberal thing: Since in Zürich Heroin drugs are being given out to drug addicts free of charge (now being practiced since roughly seven years) the crime rate has dropped dramatically. Zürich is one of the safest places in the world to go out with a Rolex at night... (or with a Ferrari, as long as you don't drive above speed limit.. ) I might need to add that the prisons are still government owned and there is limited capacity so there is not that much interest to generate a lot of criminals in society as the cost imacts are felt immediately... And if you think that was just a crazy idea of some governing class, no this was supported by a broad majority of voters in a public ballot...

                      But if you of course criminalise drug addicts you strike a richer margin on:
                      * Private security firms
                      * Private prisons
                      * People who smuggle drugs and import it of support the import.

                      on the detriment of those who are already weak in society.

                      You might call me a ultra-liberal libertarian...
                      Christoph von Gamm
                      http://www.interenterprise.eu - with Queer-O-Pinion!

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: Numbers show a second-rate US

                        Eric concluded: "US policy makers need to develop a culture of respect toward the portion of American society that the EPI study reveals as losing from a set of policies of government intervention in markets over the past decade that favor wealth concentration. Instead, there appears to be a culture of contempt which, as the economy heads into recession, is likely to produce a level of civil unrest that may put American democratic society to its greatest test in 70 years." [Emphasis mine.]

                        If you agree with Eric's conclusion, what is to be done to end this "culture of contempt" perpetuated through government policy concentrating wealth by intervening in markets?

                        Should the way the feds intervene in markets be altered? Should there be no federal intervention at all in markets?

                        Is the situation hopeless on a large scale and can we only save ourselves on a community-by-community basis?

                        What do the Libertarians propose? And the Shiite Democrats?

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: Numbers show a second-rate US

                          Originally posted by tree
                          If you agree with Eric's conclusion, what is to be done to end this "culture of contempt" perpetuated through government policy concentrating wealth by intervening in markets?

                          Should the way the feds intervene in markets be altered? Should there be no federal intervention at all in markets?

                          Is the situation hopeless on a large scale and can we only save ourselves on a community-by-community basis?

                          What do the Libertarians propose? And the Shiite Democrats?

                          I can't speak for Libertarians or Shiite Democrats, only for myself, and to me it boils down to personal action and responsibility... as it always does.

                          I'm loathe to go much into political (or religious for that matter) areas due to their high emotional and "spin" content, but in my opinion cultures and societies are based on and built from individuals. The sum total "quality" of individuals is directly related to the "quality" of the culture/society and its groups, not the other way around.

                          As far as the situation being "hopeless on a large scale", that's something you have to decide for yourself - same with whatever approach you choose to take. In my opinion, the chances that any large government will ride in on a white horse and truly be effective in resolving all the large scale issues is quite low by actual history. Just look at New Orleans if you want a current picture of how effective "they" truly are.

                          On federal intervention, I believe its wrong and has very negative consequences on all time frames.
                          http://www.NowAndTheFuture.com

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: Numbers show a second-rate US

                            Originally posted by bart
                            In my opinion, the chances that any large government will ride in on a white horse and truly be effective in resolving all the large scale issues is quite low by actual history. Just look at New Orleans if you want a current picture of how effective "they" truly are.

                            On federal intervention, I believe its wrong and has very negative consequences on all time frames.
                            the current administration is populated by people who think government doesn't work, so when they are incompetent they can say their own failures prove their point. during the clinton admin [to which i am NOT giving a blanket endorsement] one of the things they did right was appoint someone to fema who knew something about emergency management. when bush puts someone in charge of fema whose experience is administering the arabian horse association, and fema screws up, it hardly constitutes proof of the general inefficacy of government.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: Numbers show a second-rate US

                              Originally posted by jk
                              the current administration is populated by people who think government doesn't work, so when they are incompetent they can say their own failures prove their point. during the clinton admin [to which i am NOT giving a blanket endorsement] one of the things they did right was appoint someone to fema who knew something about emergency management. when bush puts someone in charge of fema whose experience is administering the arabian horse association, and fema screws up, it hardly constitutes proof of the general inefficacy of government.
                              Of course its about individual people and of course they can make a difference, regardless of the administration.

                              But taking my individual example of New Orleans and FEMA and using it to imply that government is efficient is downright silly... assuming that's what you're trying to say.
                              If you want proof of declining and disgusting efficiency and extreme spending profligacy, its not tough to find.

                              All recent administrations since roughly the '60s have shown declining stats and efficiency. This is not about political parties.
                              http://www.NowAndTheFuture.com

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