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You probably also noticed that the economy isn’t doing so well, and it isn’t producing jobs. Instead of caring about the wage collapsing effects that are draining public funds, the people who were wrong about everything in the first place and missed the crisis coming, have busied themselves with slashing the social safety net for ordinary people.

In the middle of this complete economic failure, promises to the middle class aren’t worth much and the kinds of jobs that always sustained a middle class seem to be vanishing.

This is the political climate in which we have to work to close the gender pay gap. There are uncanny similarities to when the New Deal coalition fell apart in the 1970s, as eerily highlighted by Jefferson Cowie; the early racial integration of the labor force had the bad fortune to coincide with a contraction that decreased opportunities for (almost) everyone.

And at this point, I tend to assume that since there are whole other countries that have done things differently for years and had it work out fine, that decreasing opportunities for (almost) everyone is sort of the point. It isn’t as though the way overwhelming concentrations of power follow overwhelming concentrations of money is some kind of secret to people with power.

It isn’t only that, as Dean Baker states so clearly, “Our income is a cost to the rich,” it’s that our income is a cost to the power of the rich. Because it would be better for the economy as a whole if there was less inequality, better for the all-important deficit, even.

It’s just that our economic arguments aren’t about economics. Or the suddenly remembered deficit. They’re about the ruthless preservation of power in the hands that already hold it. Everything else is a distraction.

What if Congress listened to mothers, maybe even single mothers, the way they listened to CEOs?

What if Congress cared about the futures of the working class?

What if Congress really believed that it was wrong for anyone to go hungry or be without medical care?

What if Congress thought that people who were women, or queer, or brown, or foreign, or young, or poor, were real and important people?

There are economic consequences to each of those scenarios that are a cost to the power of the rich, just as the economic consequences of the status quo are a boost to the power of the rich. That we even have political conversations where the supposed merits of concentrating private profits can outweigh the lives and health of human beings really says a lot, particularly because inequality is actually expensive.

Now that the din of Glenn Beck’s revolting appropriation of the civil rights movement has faded a bit, it’s worthwhile pointing out that Martin Luther King thought a lot about the intersection of money and power. Being him, he didn’t only think it was something worth talking about, but actually worth doing something about.

… We’ve come a long way in our understanding of human motivation and of the blind operation of our economic system. Now we realize that dislocations in the market operations of our economy and the prevalence of discrimination thrust people into idleness and bind them in constant or frequent unemployment against their will. Today the poor are less often dismissed, I hope, from our consciences by being branded as inferior or incompetent. We also know that no matter how dynamically the economy develops and expands, it does not eliminate all poverty.

The problem indicates that our emphasis must be twofold. We must create full employment or we must create incomes.

… Now our country can do this. John Kenneth Galbraith said that a guaranteed annual income could be done for about twenty billion dollars a year. And I say to you today, that if our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their own two feet right here on earth. …”

Though as they say, the past isn’t dead, or even past. The waste of humanity’s resources on wars and obscene wealth, to the point of giving some people $79,000/month salaries, continues. The struggle to see that everyone gets a chance at a good life, whoever they are, continues. The struggle to expand our definition of ‘us’, until so many of us stand together for every kind of justice that we can’t be denied, continues.

And on that note, I’d like to sign off on what’s been a very enjoyable guest blogging gig. Thanks for having me, thanks for chatting in comments, and thanks for all the work you do to bring us closer to a time when equality means something more real than the absence of flagrant public insult. Until that day, I couldn’t ask for better company in dissatisfaction.

I’m back! I was in the middle of moving and just overwhelmed with everything. Anyway. Talking Points Memo posted a link to an article at Slate about income inequality in the U.S., and particularly the increasing proportion of total U.S. income earned by the very rich. Timothy Noah refers to the “great compression” as a time period when income concentration among top earners dropped significantly, and argues that in the past three decades we’ve seen a “great divergence,” with increasing income inequality hitting levels not seen since the Great Depression:

A slideshow accompanies the article, providing more info on the changes Noah discusses. A few examples (the slideshow provides the data source used to create each image):

Even among the very rich, we see increasing divergence, with the super-ultra rich, the top 0.1% of earners, now making 8% of all U.S. income:

A comparison to some other countries (I don’t know why these specific nations were chosen for the comparison):

Keep in mind, this data includes only income. Wealth — the worth of all assets, including retirement and savings accounts, stocks, homes, cars, and anything else of value — is much more unequally distributed.

Congress is about to be embroiled in a major debate about whether to extend the tax cuts on high incomes; as both sides weigh in, here’s some context to keep in mind:

The effective tax rate is what people actually pay, as opposed to what their tax rate theoretically is. While we’ve certainly seen a large drop since the late ’70s, Noah argues that, compared to other economic changes, the effective tax rate hasn’t affected the rise in income inequality much. It plays a role, yes, but changing the tax rate on the very rich doesn’t affect the overall distribution of income a huge amount, in part because the effective rate, what people end up actually paying, generally ends up being smaller than what they theoretically owe based on the stated tax rate, once you take into account deductions, write-offs, loopholes, and so on.

So…happy post-Labor Day!

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

BYU graduate student Krista Frederico sent in a link to the active Dolce & Gabbana website. Like the campaign suggestion that Louis Vuitton handbags are hand-sewn by young beautiful white women, this campaign romanticizes the production of D&G clothing with soft Latin music and slow motion cutting and needlework in the background. Three screen shots (look past the boxes to the background images):

Frederico notes that, at least as of 2007, D&G outsourced its production to China.  But, she continues:

Regardless of whether or not they use sweatshops, I think it’s fascinating to see these close-up images  – scissors, a thimble, and a sewing machine – cast as luxurious.  A wedding band is shown on the hand – therefore, is it the hand of Dominico Dolce or Stefano Gabbana?  Is that why it’s luxurious – because it is a wealthy, highly trained fashion designer – and a man – whose hands are making the clothing rather than an overworked and grossly underpaid working-class seamstress?

Does the D&G imagery violate truth in advertising laws?   Earlier this year the U.K. advertising Standards Agency decided that the Louis Vuitton certainly did.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

The Lower 9th Ward was one of the neighborhoods in New Orleans most seriously devastated by Hurricane Katrina. As a largely working class, black neighborhood, it was also one of the slowest to recover. State disinvestment, residents low on resources, and unscrupulous insurance companies made for a tough time finding the funds to re-build. The first photograph is of the Lower 9th five years after Katrina; the second, looking significantly worse, is of the region at the four year anniversary (source):

Dmitriy T.M. sent us a link to an interactive graphic at NPR that allows you to virtually travel along Flood and Forstall streets in 2006, 2007, 2009, and 2010 simultaneously.  You’ll see that many destroyed homes weren’t even demolished till years after the storm, and most new homes weren’t built until the last couple years.  Here is one screen shot:

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Allie B. sent us a link to an image at GOOD that presents some pre- and post-Katrina information about New Orleans. The map indicates levels of population recovery; the darker the shade of green, the more the population has rebounded:

A close-up of one section (areas with black shading had over 6 feet of floodwater):

Notice that the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the hardest-hit areas, has among the lowest level of redevelopment.

There’s a much larger version of the map (with a not-too-specific list of sources) here.

Changes in the populations of different parishes:

The income distribution has changed somewhat as well, with a smaller proportion in the lowest income categories (though notice that the dollar range included in each color isn’t consistent as you get into the higher incomes):

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

These Bed Stü shoes, sent in by Dmitriy T.M., are meant to appear as if they are covered in oil accumulated while cleaning up the BP oil spill in the gulf.

According to Selectism, 100% of the proceeds are going to help wildlife affected by the spill.

So Bed Stü makes no money on this collection, but gains a great deal of publicity and, potentially, good will from consumers.  And then some dude is going to be wearing shoes that look like they’re covered in oil at a garden party.

This looks to me like an example of “conspicuous conservation.”  The term was originally derived from the phrase “conspicuous consumption,” defined by Wikipedia as “lavish spending on goods and services acquired mainly for the purpose of displaying income or wealth.”  Conspicuous conservation, then, is the (often lavish) spending on “green” products designed mainly to advertise one’s environmentally-moral righteousness.

If you wear regular shoes and donate to the gulf spill clean up, your altruism is entirely invisible.  But if you buy these hideous things, everyone gets to know what a nice guy you are.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

The Post-Gazette has a story today detailing the costs of transit cuts in the city of Pittsburgh.

The city’s Port Authority needs $47 million to avoid cuts of 35 percent. According to the P-G, the Port Authority would have to reduce services hours by 35 percent, lay off 555 employees, and eliminate more than 40 routes, resulting in service ending entirely to over 50 communities. Pittsburgh public transit would lose 15 to 22 percent of its ridership under these cuts.

This could be devastating to many communities, and leave a lot of people stranded. Either you walk or you drive to wherever you have to go. Don’t have a car? Can’t walk that far? Sorry, you won’t be going to work today. Or bringing groceries home.

But people who ride public transportation are not the only people who would be affected by these cuts…

Chris Sandvig, project manager of the Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group’s GoBurgh Initiative, which has studied the benefits of transit in stimulating development, said Wednesday the actual costs would be far greater than those absorbed by displaced riders.

He estimated that $100 million to $200 million in infrastructure spending would be required to accommodate the additional traffic generated.

With Downtown parking already scarce and the city proposing to lease its parking garages to a private operator, increased demand could cause prices to skyrocket — an impact that would be felt by all commuters, not just former transit riders, he said.

“We really don’t have anywhere to put those cars,” Mr. Sandvig said.

Much of the additional money spent by former transit riders “doesn’t stay in southwestern Pennsylvania,” he added. “It leaves,” going to oil companies and automobile manufacturers.

Parking in the city of Pittsburgh is already a contentious affair. And driving? Do you really want to ask?

I grew up in California and I am used to navigating snarled, jammed, poorly-designed and/or simply overloaded roads and highways. It’s highly frustrating! But I know how to handle it. But I can tell you that driving in western Pennsylvania, especially the city proper, is nothing like I’ve ever experienced on the west coast. It’s not just that the roads are jammed; that’s true in any city. It’s the way Pennsylvania doesn’t know the value of a good sign — they’ll tell you when a lane is going to shift three feet, but they won’t tell you where the hell you are. That makes it rather difficult to figure out where you’re going, too.

Ahem. Anyway.

Imagine how bad it is trying to drive in a city already packed to the brim with wheeled vehicles (and the occasional duck boat) and occupied parking. Now imagine adding another 16,000 to 24,000 drivers.

Just because you don’t personally ride public transit doesn’t mean transit policy doesn’t affect you.

Cross-posted at three rivers fog.

In the game of Monopoly, as the title implies, the object is to get as much money as possible, ideally bankrupting all the other players until you are the only player left.  The game, then, socializes children into a particular version of economic interaction, one quite compatible with capitalism as we know it.

The idea that Monopoly is a socializing agent is brought into stark relief by The Landlord’s Game (from which, it is believed, Monopoly was derived).

Patented by Elizabeth Magie in 1904, the object of this game was to illustrate the economic inequality inherent in the renter/owner relationship.  From Wikipedia:

Magie based the game on the economic principles of Georgism, a system proposed by Henry George, with the object of demonstrating how rents enrich property owners and impoverish tenants. She knew that some people could find it hard to understand why this happened and what might be done about it, and she thought that if Georgist ideas were put into the concrete form of a game, they might be easier to demonstrate.

The game was manufactured beginning in 1910.  In 1935 the patent was ultimately purchased, ironically, by Parker Brothers; they wanted to buy the patents of all competing economy-based board games so as to have a monopoly on the genre.

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I found this Levi’s ad a while back and kept forgetting to post it:

What I think is interesting is the implicit class element, in which “men in suits” (presumably middle- and upper-middle-class white-collar workers) are less authentically American. The message is that hard working, jeans-wearing people are true Americans (notice the flag). Of course, it’s also a commentary on masculinity; the type of men who dominate economic and political life today are, from this perspective, lesser men compared to earlier generations of blue-collar workers.

For other examples of class and masculinity in ads, see old vs. new money in a Smirnoff video, upper-class dogs are sissies, and Acura says trust-fund money is out.

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

U.S. unemployment numbers only begin to describe how U.S. workers have suffered in this recession.  The Pew Research Center has some additional data on this experience.

Twenty-six percent of full-time workers who became re-employed currently only work part-time.  Thirteen percent moved from part-time to full time work.  So, among the employed, there are 13 percent fewer full-time workers.

Americans who lost their jobs and became re-employed during this recession say that they’re making about the same, that the benefits are about equal, and many like their new job better:

Still, the re-employed are more likely than the still-employed to say that they are overqualified for their current job:

People that moved from full- to part-time work are significantly less likely to be satisfied with their new position:

Forty-seven percent of part-time workers would like a full-time job:

The term “underemployed” refers to this 47 percent of the population.   Men, young people, the less educated, lower income, and non-whites are more likely to be underemployed:

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