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After my posting last Monday, May 30th, (see below) listing
the individual stories in the NYT series Class Matters, there have been 2 more: 8. The ‘relo’ class:
five-bedroom, six-figure rootless life http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2005/06/01/national/class/ 9. Richest are leaving even the
rich far behind http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/national/class/HYPER-FINAL.html?incamp=article_popular Check out the graphics at this second link, Not since the 20s Roared,
and Rich benefit most from Tax Cuts The Mobility Myth By Bob Herbert, NYT, Monday, June 06, 2005 The war that nobody talks about - the overwhelmingly
one-sided class war - is being waged all across America. Guess who's winning. A recent front-page article in The Los Angeles Times showed
that teenagers are faring poorly in a tight job market because of the fierce
competition they're getting from older workers and immigrants for entry-level
positions. On the same day, in the business section, the paper reported
that the chief executives at California's largest 100 companies took home a
collective $1.1 billion in 2004, an increase of nearly 20 percent over the
previous year. The paper contrasted that with the 2.9 percent raise that the
average California worker saw last year. The gap between the rich and everybody else in this country
is fast becoming an unbridgeable chasm. David Cay Johnston, in the latest
installment of the New York Times series "Class Matters," wrote,
"It's no secret that the gap between the rich and the poor has been
growing, but the extent to which the richest are leaving everybody else behind
is not widely known." Consider, for example, two separate eras in the lifetime of
the baby-boom generation. For every additional dollar earned by the bottom 90
percent of the population between 1950 and 1970, those in the top 0.01 percent
earned an additional $162. That gap has since skyrocketed. For every additional
dollar earned by the bottom 90 percent between 1990 and 2002, Mr. Johnston
wrote, each taxpayer in that top bracket brought in an extra $18,000. It's like chasing a speedboat with a rowboat. Put the myth of the American Dream aside. The bottom line is
that it's becoming increasingly difficult for working Americans to move up in
class. The rich are freezing nearly everybody else in place, and sprinting off
with the nation's bounty. Economic
mobility in the United States - the extent to which individuals and families
move from one social class to another - is no higher than in Britain or France,
and lower than in some Scandinavian countries. Maybe we should be studying the
Scandinavian dream. As far as the Bush administration is concerned, the gap
between the rich and the rest of us is not growing fast enough. An analysis by
The Times showed the following: "Under
the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes - a minimum of
$87 million in 2000, the last year for which the government will release such
data - now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes amounting to
virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people making $50,000 to
$75,000. Those earning more than $10 million a year now pay a lesser share of
their income in these taxes than those making $100,000 to $200,000." The
social dislocations resulting from this war that nobody mentions have been
under way for some time. But the Bush economic policies have accelerated the
consequences and intensified the pain. A big problem, of course, is that American workers have been
hurting badly for years. Revolutionary improvements in technology, increasingly
globalized trade, the competition of low-wage workers overseas and increased
immigration here at home, the decline of manufacturing, the weakening of the
labor movement, outsourcing and numerous other factors have left American
workers with very little leverage to use against employers. Many in the middle class are mortgaged to the hilt, maxed
out on credit cards and fearful to the point of trembling that all they've
worked for might vanish in a downsized minute. The privileged classes, with the Bush administration's iron
cloak of protection, avoid their fair share of taxes, are reluctant to pay an
honest dollar for an honest day's work (the federal minimum wage is still a
scandalous $5.15 an hour), refuse to fight in their nation's wars, and laugh
all the way to their yachts. The American dream was about expanding opportunities and
widely shared prosperity. Now we have older people and college grads replacing
people near the bottom in jobs that offer low pay, no pensions, no health
insurance and no vacations. A fellow named Mark McClellan, who was bounced out of a
management position when Kaiser Aluminum closed down in Spokane, Wash., told
The Times in the "Class Matters" series: "I may look middle
class. But I'm not. My boat is sinking fast." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/06/opinion/06herbert.html New
York Time series Class Matters
Status Markers Timeline http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2005/05/29/national/class/ |
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