Category Archives: poverty

All Posts, economy, immigration, poverty, science

WILL YOU BE FIRED?

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“Oh people, look around you.  The signs are everywhere.  You’ve left it for somebody other than you to be the one to care.”  Jackson Brown wrote those lyrics to “Rock me on the water” (click to hear Keb Mo sing it) about 50 years ago.  Today his words seem to haunt our future as much as they did our past.

There are more than 7.5 billion of us humans and our numbers continue to grow.  Who cares about the unintended consequences of our collective actions?  Our individual choices about economics, environment, health and other questions seem to be our personal business until we consider their collective effect. Continue reading WILL YOU BE FIRED? →

All Posts, Christianity, economy, ethics, justice, poverty, public education, religion, taxes

THE ECONOMY MUST SERVE PEOPLE

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“The economy must serve people, not the other way around.”  That is the opening sentence of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ statement “The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers“.  Regardless of your religious beliefs, I encourage readers to look it up on the internet.  It’s easy to understand the values being taught but challenging to apply them in our lives, businesses and government. Continue reading THE ECONOMY MUST SERVE PEOPLE →

All Posts, economy, health, poverty, public education

WE CAN CHOOSE HOPE OVER DESPAIR

“There are people whose lives are so hard they break.”  Those are the words of Eileen Crimmins, a professor at the University of Southern California.  She wasn’t talking about Syrian refugees or undocumented immigrants.  She was talking about a large subgroup of white American citizens.

The average life expectancy of white Americans age 25-54 declined between 1999 and 2014 because of a rapid rise in premature deaths from drug overdoses, suicides, and cirrhosis associated with alcohol consumption.  The death rate from drug overdoses among 25 -34 year old whites was five times higher in 2014 than in 1999.  It tripled among 35 – 44 year olds.  By 2014, the overdose death rate among whites was double the rate for blacks or Hispanics.  Although whites still live longer, the black-white gap closed considerably because of the premature white deaths.

CLICK GRAPH to enlarge and see changes in drug overdose death rate by race.
CLICK GRAPH to enlarge and see changes in drug overdose death rate by race.

The rising death rates are heavily concentrated among whites without college degrees.  Rural areas and small towns of the Southeast, Southwest, and the Midwestern “rustbelt” have been especially hard hit.

Why are so many white Americans killing themselves with drugs, alcohol and guns?  (Almost half of all American suicides are by gun.)  The most common hypothesis among researchers is that these are “deaths of despair” among Americans who no longer have hope for a satisfactory future.

Economists, sociologists, psychologists and public health researchers are only beginning to study and understand this troubling trend.  It’s clear that the problems of poverty, lack of jobs with good wages, and lack of education have existed at higher rates among black Americans than among whites for all of our history but it’s the white Americans who are killing themselves with drugs, alcohol and guns.  Why?

One hypothesis is that this large group of white Americans have been taught to expect that, like their parents, they could support a family and live middle-class lives with a high school education.  They counted on factory work, and semi-skilled labor to pay for necessities and a few luxuries.  Those expectations have been shattered.  They blame corporations, immigrants, government, and public policy (such as trade treaties) for their plight.  They also point a finger at themselves and far too many turn to drugs, alcohol, and suicide as avenues of escape.

The white labor class may be suffering so much despair because they are just now experiencing what the black labor class, unprotected by labor unions and discriminated against by employers, have known from childhood.  They can’t pay their way into the middle class.  In many cases their marriages have failed and their families have shattered under the stress of economic pressures.  Many lack the literacy skills, time and money to pursue better opportunities.  They see little hope for themselves and their communities.

Our economy will use the least expensive combination of machines, computers, and people to produce goods and services.  Then it will sell those goods and services in exchange for more money and repeat the process.  In that environment, it is up to each individual to find a way to succeed.  Otherwise, the economy will find you to be expendable.

Blame is irrelevant.  The important question is, “What future will we choose to create?”  The replacement of human work with automation and artificial intelligence has barely begun and no one knows how rapidly it will accelerate.  A report by PWC, an international consulting firm, says that 38% of American jobs are at high risk of replacement by automation in the next 15 years.

We shouldn’t even try to stop the trend, but we do need to prepare for it.  Public education must be redesigned to prepare every student for life-long learning at the college level.  Parents and communities must encourage and support it because jobs with good wages will require continuous learning at that level.  Even if manufacturing returns to the US, the old jobs will not accompany it.  There will be far more automation and the new jobs will require skills that few of us have today. In addition, minimum wage, healthcare, and other public policies must be sufficient to support viable families.

As we envision our futures, it’s good to remember Jackson Browne’s line, “You can dream but you can never go back the way you came.”  We can create a good future, but it won’t be the same as our past.  We must not sacrifice another generation of Americans by preparing them for a future that won’t exist.  Instead, we should prepare them for hope and success.

References for further reading:

Commonwealth fund brief on white mortality trends

NPR report with international comparisons

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD CDC life expectancy change by race

All Posts, Constitution, guns, health, lgbtq, north carolina, poverty, public education, taxes, war

What to do on the morning after?

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The day after the election will be the first day of the rest of our lives. What should we expect of our elected officials? Will we help or undermine each other and elected leaders?  If individuals, families and communities listen to each other’s ideas and agree on how to move forward together, we can invigorate the idea of “commonwealth”, a society that is organized to benefit all.  Everybody wins.  If, on the other hand, winners kick losers while they’re down in order to maintain dominance and if losers do all they can to stop winners from implementing their ideas then the republic will decline.  Everybody loses.

It’s happened in great societies throughout history and it’s especially clear in the Bible’s Old Testament. When those in power dominate and abuse the powerless, everybody loses and the society fails.  When the principle of commonwealth guides decisions, the society blossoms.

Poverty, income inequality and homelessness are at crisis levels in many places.  Rural America has depended on agriculture and manufacturing to provide family incomes and property tax revenue for local governments.  Both of those economic sectors now produce more goods with fewer people than ever before.  At the same time that rural employment opportunities paying middle class wages have become scarce, the tax revenues of rural communities have stagnated.  Budgets for public education, safety, and human services are under severe stress at a time when they are critical to redevelopment of communities.  The plight of rural America has much in common with high poverty neighborhoods of urban America.  Low incomes and insufficient resources have similar effects in both places.

Will legislatures reconsider how public services are funded and which tax revenues are available at local, state and federal levels?  Will high poverty areas have funding for education, high-speed internet, water, sewer, quality of life, health and other priorities at a level that is proportionate to wealthy areas?  If not, will their future be inter-generational poverty and emigration of successful residents to more desirable areas?  Will legislators work at solving the underlying problems or will they pit urban vs rural and white vs black vs Hispanic for partisan gain?

What about the sanctity of human life?  Will we expect our congress, legislatures and executives to behave as if “all lives matter”?  Does someone who wants a gun have the right to own an assault rifle designed for mass killing?  Does a woman have the right to remove a fetus from her body?  In which decisions should government have a role?

Conflicts between personal and constitutional values will not be fully resolved but can we make progress for the common good?   Could we agree to reduce the demand for abortion by providing free birth control, better access to pre-natal care, simple and inexpensive adoption procedures, and by solving our income inequality problems?   Will we expect legislators to find ways to preserve gun ownership for self-defense and recreation while getting weapons designed for mass killing out of circulation and screening gun purchasers to rule out suspected terrorists and known criminals?  Or will we reward leaders for continuing to insult each other?

The Republican controlled Senate has refused to consider President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court.  They hope to win the Presidential election and get a conservative-leaning nominee. Senators Richard Burr and Ted Cruz have made the radical statement that if Hillary Clinton is elected, they will refuse to confirm nominees and let the court shrink.  That abrogation of a senator’s constitutional responsibility would invite similar behavior from Democrats toward a Republican president. Will we insist that senators fulfill their constitutional duties?

Differences of race, wealth, religion and philosophy divide us on a long list of issues: immigration, transpacific partnership, climate change, war, taxes, LBGTQ rights, health care, and more.

We’re not all going to miraculously agree after the election. Continued success for our republic will require two things of us.  First, we must look honestly at facts.  Second, we must engage each other in ongoing conversation (listening more than arguing) about the principle of commonwealth – making decisions and laws that create opportunity and peace for all of us.

Our legislators are capable of that, but they will do it only if they know that we voters expect it, demand it, and that we’re doing it ourselves.

We can start on November 9.

All Posts, economy, poverty, public education

What is the future of our jobs?

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Today I’d like to introduce you to SAM. His full name is Semi Automated Mason.  SAM can lay as many bricks as three human masons.   He has only one year of experience and will become more skilled and productive as he continues to learn. On the other hand, SAM could become unemployed when on-site 3-D printing of walls becomes feasible.  It’s being tested now.

SAM’s story is important because it exemplifies a worldwide trend.  We are still in the early days of an economic and social upheaval that will be bigger than the industrial revolution; and we’re not prepared for what’s coming.  An Oxford University study identified jobs most and least likely to be replaced by automation.  Looking at the list, it becomes apparent that some among us will benefit from less expensive products and services produced through automation while others lose their jobs.

It’s going to happen regardless of what presidential candidates promise about creating jobs or trade treaties.  Even in China and undeveloped nations, automation is faster and cheaper than human labor.  That is true in the production of both “things” and services.  Human operators for elevators and long distance phone calls were displaced a long time ago.  Soon automation  will replace us in jobs as diverse as loan officer, manicurist, and drivers – not just drivers of taxis but also of trucks and buses.

In economic terms, this revolution means that fewer people can produce more goods and services.  The total amount of wealth available will increase.  Some of us will benefit from that but those who are replaced probably won’t.  If you’re old enough to remember it, think of what happened when mechanized agriculture drove down the cost of eggs, milk, corn, cotton and other products.   They became cheaper while previously successful farm families were devastated by agribusiness competition.  Today we can see  entire communities and families that are no longer self-sufficient because their jobs are gone.

The much-talked-about decline of the middle class is not primarily caused (and won’t be fixed) by tax or trade policies.  Instead, it is caused in large part by technologies that are cheaper and more productive than human labor.  This inevitable change brings opportunities along with threats.

What then, shall we do to prepare ourselves?

  1. Know the facts.  It’s particularly important for elected officials, educators, economic developers, city planners and business leaders to correctly anticipate the future and plan for it.  News media can improve public knowledge by researching  and reporting on these subjects.
  2. Understand the education and skills that will be necessary for success in the future economy.  I cringe when I hear someone say that, “not everyone needs to go to college.”  The statement is true of course, but it masks a more important truth.  Successful people will need to be able to learn at the college level.  Change will come at a pace that requires continuous learning of new information and skills.  The ability to read and learn at the level expected of a college freshman will be necessary for success in skilled trades, health occupations, and just about any field we can imagine.  It is a great disservice to children and parents to lead them to believe that they can succeed with less.
  3. Prepare community and regional infrastructure for success. For example, gigabit internet service will be more important than highways and railroads.  An increasing number of businesses require high-speed and high volume internet service at all of their locations. That’s often true of small startup businesses and may be true for in-home education opportunities.   Communities that lack gigabit service may be left behind as badly as those that lacked electricity, roads or railroads a century ago.
  4. Re-design public education and libraries to support lifelong learning so that all of us can continuously acquire new knowledge and skills as we need them, regardless of our economic status or geographic location.  We can discover ways to use the internet to deliver our finest instruction and most complete information to every American.

Issues of this kind should be on the agendas of national, state and local governments.  Instead we are arguing about voter IDs and bathroom privileges.  I don’t know all the answers, but I’m sure of one thing.  The people who find the right answers will be the ones who are asking the right questions.

 

All Posts, economy, justice, poverty, race

IS THE SYSTEM RIGGED AGAINST YOU?

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Try Googling  “Is the system rigged?”  I found:  “FBI Director Comey: I need the American people to know the system is not rigged”  “Trump on Clinton FBI announcement: The system is rigged” “71% of Americans believe economy is rigged”  “The System Didn’t Fail Eric Garner. It Worked How a Racist System Is Supposed to”

The stories shared two disturbing qualities.  1)  Each is about an American institution.  2)  Each contended that some “system” is rigged.  Those headlines introduce angry stories that are backed by at least a few grains of truth.

The people who brought down our financial system avoided prosecution and most of them kept their ill-gotten gains. There is energy for deporting undocumented immigrants and their children but very little for prosecuting employers who hire them without mandatory benefits and wages.

The FBI Director didn’t recommend prosecution of a Secretary of State who was careless with national security information because, he says, she didn’t intend to break any law.  But when I unintentionally made an illegal right turn because I didn’t see the sign prohibiting it, I paid a fine.

We’ve seen people of African descent unjustifiably killed by police and the killers walked away.  Black youth are arrested for possession of marijuana in convenience store parking lots but campus police don’t arrest white college students for the same offense.

“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.”  That one-liner isn’t funny anymore.  Unfairness, whether real or imagined, is a great danger because our freedom and democracy work well only when the great majority of us support the system and see it as fair.

It is the need for fairness, not fear of violence, that should drive our national conversation about these issues.  The violence often comes from one deranged soul (lone wolf) not from Advocacy organizations.   One enraged man (not associated with the Black Lives Matter movement) used their Dallas demonstration as an opportunity to kill five police officers.  One Christian extremist (not associated with the Right To Life movement) shot five officers and six civilians at a Colorado Planned Parenthood Clinic.  The movements express the concerns of substantial numbers of Americans about laws or institutions that they see as unfair. Most don’t promote violence.

During a previous era of dramatic social and economic change, when family farms and the shops of cobblers and blacksmiths were giving way to mechanized industries, America saw similar unrest and even greater violence.  In 1882, Congress passed the  Chinese Exclusion Act banning all Chinese immigration because their cheap labor was perceived as driving wages down.  In 1887 there was a labor demonstration (The Haymarket Affair) in Chicago supporting an 8 hour work day.  Someone threw a bomb.  Gunfire followed.  Seven police and at least four civilians died.  In 1901, President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist who blamed his unemployment on government policies.  In 1920, Wall Street was bombed, apparently by an activist who believed that the financial system was rigged against him.

Recent events are strikingly similar to our history.   Activists and political candidates promise to fix rigged systems with simplistic ideas: Exclude immigrants.  Build a wall.   Block trade treaties.  Hold police accountable.  Enforce law and order.  Many Americans believe that “other” Americans are rigging our institutions (the system) against them, and that does not bode well for our future.

Our nation’s systems for finance, justice, law enforcement, health care, education and others that compose our national identity must be perceived as fair for all of us. We’ll need genuine improvements in fairness, not just slogans and polite listening. Otherwise we will continue to experience demonstrations and rage from those who believe that systems are rigged against them.

After successful efforts to pass civil rights and voting rights laws, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. shifted his attention toward economic justice by addressing financial and wage issues affecting Hispanic and white workers as well as blacks. At the time of his assassination he was in Memphis supporting a strike for higher wages by public sanitation workers.  Nearly half a century later many issues of economic and racial justice have not yet been addressed. Now is the time to improve, not because of fear but because our national sensitivity to fairness has been raised.    It is said that “Most people don’t read the writing on the wall until their backs are up against it.”  I can feel the wall now.

 

All Posts, campaign finance, poverty, taxes

Radically Practical Ideas for 2016

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As I listen to friends of varied political persuasions, it seems that we all want 2016 to be a better year than the one we just completed; but many of us are predicting a miserable future.   Being dissatisfied and angry won’t fix problems.  Neither will arguing about who to blame.  Instead, it is time to stop “predicting” the future and begin “creating” the one that we want.  We can do that by shifting our attention from all that is wrong to improving our nation with practical ideas that a majority of us can agree on.  Here are a few possibilities.

CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM:  We need to reduce the influence of big money without limiting free speech.  One solution is to create a national or state election website with a page for every elected office.  Only registered candidates for office would be allowed to post on the website.   Anything they post would remain until after the election, so any changes of position would be apparent.   Voters could see and judge whatever the candidates themselves say about issues and about each other.  Candidates could post written messages, photos, audio or video clips.  Their words would be unfiltered by Super-PACS, advertising or news media.  This is an inexpensive and easy way for candidates to campaign.  It would reduce the need for big advertising budgets.  And since everyone who is interested would have instant access to the candidates’ messages, there might even be fewer robo-calls.

INCOME DISPARITIES AND LACK OF OPPORTUNITY:  An economic map of America will show that extreme poverty persists across multiple generations within well defined geographic areas – some of them urban and others rural.  One solution is to make whatever government funded financial assistance we provide for housing portable so that people can use it anywhere.  Rather than building public housing, we could let those receiving assistance use housing subsidies to choose whatever private sector housing best meets their needs.  This change will allow them to migrate to places with jobs, grocery stores, good schools, public transportation and good public safety.  Families are much more likely to break out of the generational cycle of poverty if they are not  confined to communities devoid of opportunity and surrounded by underemployment, crime and other social ills.  This idea could be tested by gradual implementation to assure that it works as intended.  If it does, then we could expand it and eventually sell existing public housing for private use or re-development.

TAX REFORM:  Corporations are, at best, tax collectors, not tax payers.  All of the taxes that they pay are passed on to customers.  We might be better off treating their profits and losses as a per share pass-through of ordinary income to shareholders whether the actual cash is distributed or not.  This will have the effect of reducing the cost of American-made products and services in international markets, increasing exports and creating jobs.  By taxing corporate profits as income to the owners of the corporation,  we could maintain or increase the tax revenue that the government receives from corporate taxes.  Since our income tax is already graduated, the revised tax burden will be greater for the wealthy than for middle and low income families.  The only part of this idea that might become complicated is creating a mechanism to document profits to Americans from foreign corporations.

We could also create a small national sales tax (one half of one percent or less) on all financial instruments including stocks, bonds ETFs, credit default swaps, etc.  This tax would be only a modest burden to long term investors, including those saving for retirement but it would deter the high-frequency trading that creates wild swings in the value of our investments.  It would also bring in revenue to help us toward a balanced budget.

There is good news about America that we too easily forget:  We don’t have to agree on everything in order to improve.  We only have to begin seeing our problems as opportunities for improvement.  If we will do that, we will find radically practical ideas – if not mine then perhaps yours or someone else’s – to improve our lives.  In 2016 let’s resolve to build on our areas of agreement while we continue to debate our differences.

 

 

All Posts, budget, Christianity, Congress, deficit, economy, justice, medicaid, poverty, public education, taxes

STICKS STONES AND STEREOTYPES

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Election campaigns are under way and the name-calling season is open.  Names, labels and stereotypes can influence our opinions and our elections so it’s important to be aware them. Continue reading STICKS STONES AND STEREOTYPES →

All Posts, economy, justice, poverty, race, taxes

An Economy Divided Against Itself

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On June 16, 1858 a  little-known candidate for the Illinois Senate spoke these words, “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.”  Abraham Lincoln was defeated in that election.

Twenty-first Century America is a house divided.  Like Lincoln, we should expect that our nation will cease to be divided, not that it will fall.  Like the America of 1858, we must choose our destiny.  We may become a commonwealth where everyone has opportunity to develop her or his full potential; benefitting financially and socially from personal efforts. Or we may become a winner-take-all nation where the wealthy grant only subsistence to those who labor. Continue reading An Economy Divided Against Itself →

All Posts, economy, justice, north carolina, poverty

Legislators like Tillis betrayed military families and the poor

Thom Tillis and other red-state legislators made it easy for big banks and financial companies to prey on the poor with interest rates as high as 36%. The legislators accepted large contributions from financial industry representatives, and it appears that  Tillis got more than any other legislator in the nation.   Ignoring the advice of military leaders, these lawmakers sold out low income families trying to  climb into the middle class. Click here for specifics.  It’s wrong for elected leaders to help big companies take advantage of the poor.  Kudos to the NY Times for their research and follow-up.