tweeking the edges

This article should be read once a week until everyone understands and
agrees with the message.

Carl Jarvis

On 12/6/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > Inequality is Fundamental to U.S. Capitalism: Tweaking the Edges
> Will
> Accomplish Nothing
> ________________________________________
> Inequality is Fundamental to U.S. Capitalism: Tweaking the Edges Will
> Accomplish Nothing
> By Steven W. Thrasher [1] / The Guardian [2]
> December 5, 2015
> The economic hoarding by those at the top has been termed "income
> inequality", but that's neither a strong nor accurate enough phrasing. I
> have never heard poor people complain about "income inequality"; poor
> people
> complain about being screwed out of housing [3] , or about working more
> hours for less pay [4] or about having to choose between medicine and food
> [5].
> "Inequality" sounds like something that happens by accident and can be
> remedied by fiddling around the edges. It is not as if the rich are a
> little
> more equal and the poor a little less equal, and if we shift a bit we'll
> all
> come out in the middle. What we've been calling "income inequality" might
> be
> better understood as a war waged by US political and economic policy on the
> poor.
> A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies [6] issued this week
> analyzed the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans [7] and found that
> "the wealthiest 100 households now own about as much wealth as the entire
> African American population in the United States". That means that 100
> families - most of whom are white - have as much wealth as the 41,000,000
> black folks [8] walking around the country (and the million or so [9]
> locked
> up) combined.
> Similarly, the report also stated [6] that "the wealthiest 186 members of
> the Forbes 400 own as much wealth as the entire Latino population" of the
> nation. Here again, the breakdown in actual humans is broke down [10]: 186
> overwhelmingly white folks have more money than that an astounding
> 55,000,000 [11] Latino people.
> The disparities in wealth that we term "income inequality" are no accident,
> and they can't be fixed by fiddling at the edges of our current economic
> system. These disparities happened by design, and the system structurally
> disadvantages those at the bottom. The poorest Americans have no realistic
> hope of achieving anything that approaches income equality; even their very
> chances for access to the most basic tools of life are almost nil.
> President Lyndon Johnson's so-called War on Poverty didn't angle to take
> anything from the rich so that the poor could see equality. It was designed
> to keep some of the poor just alive enough that they wouldn't rebel, and
> designed to let other poor people perish as an object lesson to the rest of
> us to keep scampering.
> Income inequality is better termed structural racism. White people earn
> more
> money with less education [12] than black people and consistently have half
> the unemployment [13] of black people. And, as new research [14] has shown,
> "family wealth" predicts outcomes for 10 to 15 generations. Those with
> extreme wealth owe it to events going back "300 to 450" years ago,
> according
> to research published by the New Republic [14] - an era when it wasn't
> unusual for white Americans to benefit from an economy dependent upon
> widespread, unpaid black labor in the form of slavery.
> Income inequality is better viewed as structural sexism. Women earn 78
> cents
> on the dollar [15] overall compared to white men, but black women only earn
> 64 cents and Latinas 56. Women are also routinely [16] discriminated
> against
> economically for bearing children.
> Income equality is better viewed as structural child abuse. In the United
> States, one in five [17] children needs government help to eat. As Aisha
> Sultan recently wrote [18]in the Education Writers Association, if a
> 30-child classroom looked like the nation at large, seven of the children
> would be living in poverty, six would be victims of abuse and one would be
> homeless. These kids aren't just unequal; they are never offered the
> opportunity to achieve equality.
> Income inequality is better viewed as economic genocide, which shortens the
> lives of the poor. As the New York Times bluntly put it [19] last year,
> "where income is higher, life spans are longer". For one of the most
> jarring
> examples of how this plays out, look no further than the Ferguson Report
> [20], which shows how just in St Louis County, the average life expectancy
> ranges from 91 in the whitest neighborhood to 56 in the poorest, blackest
> neighborhood.
> Too often, the answer by those who have hoarded everything is they will
> choose to "give back" in a manner of their choosing - just look at Mark
> Zuckerberg [21] and his much-derided plan to "give away" [22] 99% of his
> Facebook stock. He is unlikely to help change inequality or poverty any
> more
> than "giving away" of $100m [23]helped children in Newark schools.
> Allowing any of the 100 richest Americans to choose how they fix "income
> inequality" will not make the country more equal or even guarantee more
> access to life. You can't take down the master's house with the master's
> tools [24], even when you're the master; but more to the point, who would
> tear down his own house to distribute the bricks among so very many others?
> Share on Facebook Share
> Share on Twitter Tweet
>
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [25]
> [26]
> ________________________________________
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/economy/inequality-fundamental-us-capitalism-tweakin
> g-edges-will-accomplish-nothing
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steven-w-thrasher-0
> [2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/
> [3]
> http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/gentrification-doesn-poor-report-shows-a
> rticle-1.2393396
> [4]
> http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speed-up-american-workers-long-h
> ours
> [5]
> http://www.salon.com/2015/06/03/america_despises_its_elderly_why_seniors_hav
> e_to_choose_between_food_and_medicine_partner/
> [6] http://www.ips-dc.org/billionaire-bonanza/
> [7] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/2/#version:static
> [8]
> https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special
> _editions/cb12-ff01.html
> [9] http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
> [10] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=broke+down
> [11]
> http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/25/u-s-hispanic-population-grow
> th-surge-cools/
> [12]
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/10/white-high-school-dro
> pouts-are-wealthier-than-black-and-hispanic-college-graduates-can-a-new-poli
> cy-tool-fix-that/
> [13]
> http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/08/04/black-unemployment-falls-below-10-
> still-twice-the-rate-for-whites/
> [14]
> https://newrepublic.com/article/116462/family-wealth-lasts-ten-fifteen-gener
> ations
> [15] http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/13/news/economy/equal-pay-day-2015/
> [16]
> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/09/when-bosses-discriminate
> -against-pregnant-women/380623/
> [17] http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-16.html
> [18] http://www.ewa.org/blog-educated-reporter/when-grit-isnt-enough
> [19]
> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/business/income-gap-meet-the-longevity-gap
> .html
> [20]
> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/15/the-ferguson-commission
> -wont-bring-social-change-black-lives-matter-will
> [21] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/gallery/mark-zuckerberg
> [22]
> http://gawker.com/mark-zuckerberg-will-donate-massive-fortune-to-own-blin-17
> 45573343
> [23]
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-newark-schools-partially-squande
> red-a-great-prize/2015/10/20/ffff660c-7743-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html
> [24] http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/lordedismantle.html
> [25] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Inequality is
> Fundamental to U.S. Capitalism: Tweaking the Edges Will Accomplish Nothing
> [26] http://www.alternet.org/
> [27] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > Inequality is Fundamental to U.S. Capitalism: Tweaking the Edges
> Will
> Accomplish Nothing
>
> Inequality is Fundamental to U.S. Capitalism: Tweaking the Edges Will
> Accomplish Nothing
> By Steven W. Thrasher [1] / The Guardian [2]
> December 5, 2015
> The economic hoarding by those at the top has been termed "income
> inequality", but that's neither a strong nor accurate enough phrasing. I
> have never heard poor people complain about "income inequality"; poor
> people
> complain about being screwed out of housing [3] , or about working more
> hours for less pay [4] or about having to choose between medicine and food
> [5].
> "Inequality" sounds like something that happens by accident and can be
> remedied by fiddling around the edges. It is not as if the rich are a
> little
> more equal and the poor a little less equal, and if we shift a bit we'll
> all
> come out in the middle. What we've been calling "income inequality" might
> be
> better understood as a war waged by US political and economic policy on the
> poor.
> A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies [6] issued this week
> analyzed the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans [7] and found that
> "the wealthiest 100 households now own about as much wealth as the entire
> African American population in the United States". That means that 100
> families - most of whom are white - have as much wealth as the 41,000,000
> black folks [8] walking around the country (and the million or so [9]
> locked
> up) combined.
> Similarly, the report also stated [6] that "the wealthiest 186 members of
> the Forbes 400 own as much wealth as the entire Latino population" of the
> nation. Here again, the breakdown in actual humans is broke down [10]: 186
> overwhelmingly white folks have more money than that an astounding
> 55,000,000 [11] Latino people.
> The disparities in wealth that we term "income inequality" are no accident,
> and they can't be fixed by fiddling at the edges of our current economic
> system. These disparities happened by design, and the system structurally
> disadvantages those at the bottom. The poorest Americans have no realistic
> hope of achieving anything that approaches income equality; even their very
> chances for access to the most basic tools of life are almost nil.
> President Lyndon Johnson's so-called War on Poverty didn't angle to take
> anything from the rich so that the poor could see equality. It was designed
> to keep some of the poor just alive enough that they wouldn't rebel, and
> designed to let other poor people perish as an object lesson to the rest of
> us to keep scampering.
> Income inequality is better termed structural racism. White people earn
> more
> money with less education [12] than black people and consistently have half
> the unemployment [13] of black people. And, as new research [14] has shown,
> "family wealth" predicts outcomes for 10 to 15 generations. Those with
> extreme wealth owe it to events going back "300 to 450" years ago,
> according
> to research published by the New Republic [14] - an era when it wasn't
> unusual for white Americans to benefit from an economy dependent upon
> widespread, unpaid black labor in the form of slavery.
> Income inequality is better viewed as structural sexism. Women earn 78
> cents
> on the dollar [15] overall compared to white men, but black women only earn
> 64 cents and Latinas 56. Women are also routinely [16] discriminated
> against
> economically for bearing children.
> Income equality is better viewed as structural child abuse. In the United
> States, one in five [17] children needs government help to eat. As Aisha
> Sultan recently wrote [18]in the Education Writers Association, if a
> 30-child classroom looked like the nation at large, seven of the children
> would be living in poverty, six would be victims of abuse and one would be
> homeless. These kids aren't just unequal; they are never offered the
> opportunity to achieve equality.
> Income inequality is better viewed as economic genocide, which shortens the
> lives of the poor. As the New York Times bluntly put it [19] last year,
> "where income is higher, life spans are longer". For one of the most
> jarring
> examples of how this plays out, look no further than the Ferguson Report
> [20], which shows how just in St Louis County, the average life expectancy
> ranges from 91 in the whitest neighborhood to 56 in the poorest, blackest
> neighborhood.
> Too often, the answer by those who have hoarded everything is they will
> choose to "give back" in a manner of their choosing - just look at Mark
> Zuckerberg [21] and his much-derided plan to "give away" [22] 99% of his
> Facebook stock. He is unlikely to help change inequality or poverty any
> more
> than "giving away" of $100m [23]helped children in Newark schools.
> Allowing any of the 100 richest Americans to choose how they fix "income
> inequality" will not make the country more equal or even guarantee more
> access to life. You can't take down the master's house with the master's
> tools [24], even when you're the master; but more to the point, who would
> tear down his own house to distribute the bricks among so very many others?
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [25]
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[26]
>
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/economy/inequality-fundamental-us-capitalism-tweakin
> g-edges-will-accomplish-nothing
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/steven-w-thrasher-0
> [2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/
> [3]
> http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/gentrification-doesn-poor-report-shows-a
> rticle-1.2393396
> [4]
> http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/06/speed-up-american-workers-long-h
> ours
> [5]
> http://www.salon.com/2015/06/03/america_despises_its_elderly_why_seniors_hav
> e_to_choose_between_food_and_medicine_partner/
> [6] http://www.ips-dc.org/billionaire-bonanza/
> [7] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/list/2/#version:static
> [8]
> https://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/facts_for_features_special
> _editions/cb12-ff01.html
> [9] http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet
> [10] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=broke+down
> [11]
> http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/25/u-s-hispanic-population-grow
> th-surge-cools/
> [12]
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/10/white-high-school-dro
> pouts-are-wealthier-than-black-and-hispanic-college-graduates-can-a-new-poli
> cy-tool-fix-that/
> [13]
> http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/08/04/black-unemployment-falls-below-10-
> still-twice-the-rate-for-whites/
> [14]
> https://newrepublic.com/article/116462/family-wealth-lasts-ten-fifteen-gener
> ations
> [15] http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/13/news/economy/equal-pay-day-2015/
> [16]
> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/09/when-bosses-discriminate
> -against-pregnant-women/380623/
> [17] http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-16.html
> [18] http://www.ewa.org/blog-educated-reporter/when-grit-isnt-enough
> [19]
> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/business/income-gap-meet-the-longevity-gap
> .html
> [20]
> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/15/the-ferguson-commission
> -wont-bring-social-change-black-lives-matter-will
> [21] http://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/gallery/mark-zuckerberg
> [22]
> http://gawker.com/mark-zuckerberg-will-donate-massive-fortune-to-own-blin-17
> 45573343
> [23]
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-newark-schools-partially-squande
> red-a-great-prize/2015/10/20/ffff660c-7743-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html
> [24] http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/lordedismantle.html
> [25] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on Inequality is
> Fundamental to U.S. Capitalism: Tweaking the Edges Will Accomplish Nothing
> [26] http://www.alternet.org/
> [27] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
>
>