Rich-poor gap gaining attention

[swag]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0614/p01s03-usec.html?s=itm

By Peter Grier | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself.

Is that a liberal's talking point? Sure. But it's also a line from the recent public testimony of a champion of the free market: Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

America's powerful central banker hasn't suddenly lurched to the left of Democratic National Committee chief Howard Dean. His solution is better education today to create a flexible workforce for tomorrow - not confiscation of plutocrats' yachts.

But the fact that Mr. Greenspan speaks about this topic at all may show how much the growing concentration of national wealth at the top, combined with the uncertainties of increased globalization, worries economic policymakers as they peer into the future.

. . . more

[Puzzler]

1. Hey... I don't think the uber-rich will have that much to worry about...

... aside from being strung-up by the angry masses. It's happened before... and it will happen again if the gap gets so wide that people have nothing to lose.


-P

[htuttle]

7. Did you ever notice that at many ancient archeological sites

...Where a great civilization once existed then passed away into ruin, they often find evidence of brief periods of cannibalism right at the end when the society collapsed?

That's when they ate the upper class.

Burp.

[DBoon]

11. A diet consisting of too much "rich food"

causes indigestion

[happyslug]

46. Cannibalism occurred in Easter Island, but rare in other areas of collapse

The main reason seems to be that Easter island being an island, survived as a society long after continental based societies would have collapsed.

The main Characteristics of collapsing societies is NOT cannibalism, but the building up of walls where no external enemy threatens the society. Now in areas where you have external enemies, walled cities are built, but where you have no such enemies you do NOT waste your resources building walled cities.

The Classic situation is England where they can tell the difference between a pre-Roman Celtic Hill top fort and a post-Roman hilltop fort. by its size. Pre-Roman hilltop forts were made large enough for the entire population, post Roman hilltop forts are smaller, just larger enough to hold the Ruling Elite and their knights.

It is the building of fortifications where none are needed to face external foes that indicates the fall of a Society. The ruling elite start to fear the peasants and start building walls and other protections against the poor. The so called Pueblo builders of Arizona fit this bill, their Pueblos being hard to get into to, yet by all evidence their were the largest tribe in the Area (and large enough NOT to have to fear an attack from any of the other nearby tribes). Furthermore the building of these hard to get to sites only started just before the whole society collapsed. These Pueblos, much like the post-Roman Britain Hill Top Forts were NOT intended to protect ALL of the residents of the Society, just the leadership/landlords (and yes, against their own peasants more than foreign invaders).

Another Characteristics of collapsing society is when an invading force INCREASES in size as it invades (as the peasants on the land the invading force goes through join up with the invading force instead of fighting the Invading force). This happened to the Western Roman Empire, time and time again until the old Roman elite was finally removed from power in the 9th century AD (With those areas getting rid of the old Roman elite/landlords first becoming richer within a generation of the removal). The so-call "Dark Ages" seems to be one long time period where the old ruling elite lost their right to owning all of the land in the Western Roman Empire and the peasants, while not getting what we today will call full ownership, received RIGHTS to the land (These rights varied from time to time and place to place, but often connected military service with control of the land).

Thus when societies are NOT isolated (like Easter Island) the interaction with neighboring societies forces changes while before things get so bad that you have Cannibalism. People fight and/or move. The ruling elite first tries to prevent the movement of people, than protect itself from revolts of the peasants (often doing both at the same time for often both occurs at the same time, i.e. a suppression of peasants moving leads to a peasant revolt, or a peasant revolt leads to peasants moving out of an area). Thus as the peasants are more suppressed and more is demanded of them, the rights of peasants are suppressed or ignored. Rents are increased while the ability to move is eliminated. All this tension has to go somewhere and eventually it blows into a Revolution or a neighboring Society invades to take advantage of the situation (Or foreigners are brought in to suppress the peasants and than stayed to suppress the peasants in exchange for land).

My point here is that cannibalism is not the key, but walls and other military expenditures that make no sense from a foreign invaders point of view is the key to looking at a society about to fall.

[saigon68]

55. Gated Communities,--Closed Circuit TV --Security Guards

Armored Cars, body guards in the suburbs

To keep the Riff-Raff away from the 6 million $$$$ House.

Are we far behind.

[happyslug]

57. No we are NOT, and that is the major problem with the US today

We are nearer the 1890s than the 1960s in economic lookout, the only difference is the Communist party is dead Killed by Lenin and Stalin. I fear a revolution for who will be the Radicals? In the 1700s it was the Anti-royalist middle class, in the 1800 and 1900s it was the anti-Capitalist Communists, I just do NOT see any equivalent group today. I see a lot of reactionary groups on the Right, but nothing that says CHANGE AND REFORM (And I mean radical Groups, not moderate Groups, moderate Groups can sometime moderate radicals, but you need radicals who are both organized and commented to get fundamental change done, and that ORGANIZED radical edge I Just do not see).

[mitchum]

23. Up against the wall!

the time is past due

[Protagoras]

54. They didn't have Lear Jets to escape in last time

The uber-rich no longer feel tied to particular estates or even countries...so I suspect having this one collapse as they're flying away to Europe or wherever won't bother then all that much.

[PsN2Wind]

2. Not just that

but the gap between the extremely rich and the obscenely rich has even gotten some attention.

[Puzzler]

3. ...

"but the gap between the extremely rich and the obscenely rich has even gotten some attention."

He-he... now that would be something new. A revolution coming from the rich trying to overthrow the uber-rich.

-P

[amazona]

41. no that would be the oldest thing in the world

Almost all war throughout history is rich people fighting other rich people for the top spot.

[cosmicdot]

29. link to the recent NYTimes article

for anyone who missed it

"Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind"

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

Published: June 5, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/national/class/HYPER-FINAL.html?ex=1118808000&en=149726305ce69586&ei=5070&oref=login&oref=login

~snip~

The people at the top of America's money pyramid have so prospered in recent years that they have pulled far ahead of the rest of the population, an analysis of tax records and other government data by The New York Times shows. They have even left behind people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Call them the hyper-rich.

They are not just a few Croesus-like rarities. Draw a line under the top 0.1 percent of income earners - the top one-thousandth. Above that line are about 145,000 taxpayers, each with at least $1.6 million in income and often much more.

~snip~

[barb162]

63. tbe great lie and the great truth

from the article

The GReat Lie: "As long as people think they have a chance of getting to the top, they just don't care how rich the rich are."


The Great Truth: "But in fact, economic mobility - moving from one income group to another over a lifetime - has actually stopped rising in the United States, researchers say. Some recent studies suggest it has even declined over the last generation.

[K-W]

4. MIGHT EVENTUALLY?!

Sheesh.

[ElectroPrincess]

5. We need to take a closer look at the greed of our elected

representatives! Wealth does not necessarily equate to greed. However, I'd like to know (the public should know) the SPECIFIC investments that our representatives have cashed in on and what is the current status of this "wealth."

Full Financial Disclosure - Public Officials - nothing less.

[lakeguy]

30. great graphic!

[nicknameless]

32. That graphic reflects stats from 13 years ago ...

Imagine how god-awful the numbers must be these days!!! :-(

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

34. I was gonna say...there's more than 26 millionaires in the Senate.

this says 40:

http://home.ix.netcom.com/~speaker7/lists/senate_millionaires.htm

[nicknameless]

35. Thanks for the updated info.

I'm surprised the number isn't higher.

... There's my horrible Senator DiFi at number 5.

[happyslug]

51. Also how little is a Million Dollars today

For example a minimum wage earner who starts working at age 18 and retires at age 68 (while today retirement age is still 65, under current law it raises to 67 for any born since the late 1950s, I fully expect it to be higher by the time I retire let alone a 18 year old worker entering the work force today) will earn 1/2 million dollars doing his life (Assuming 40 hour weeks, 52 week years, 50 years of working and no inflation).

Thus doing your working life if you earn on the average twice the minimum wage you will earn a million dollars. A million dollar is NOT much money now a days.

[yebrent]

6. This should be on the lips of every elected Dem 24/7.

[swag]

20. I agree with you.

You think this is a "liberal" talking point?"

Alan Greenspan himself said the widening income disparity spelled trouble for the entire capitalist enterprise. To be completely efficient and effective, capital markets need strong regulation and transparency (on this latter point, endorsed by former NYSE Chair Felix Rohatyn, among others, the Bush SEC Chair nominee is a walking disaster and should be rejected, given his position on stock options alone), and capitalist systems need reliable infrastructure (education, transportation, roadworks, public works, efficiently ((i.e., non-Enron)) priced utilities) to function at all for long, let alone optimally.

Most self-proclaimed free-market capitalists only see half of the equation and end up throwing the gum of their misguided zeal into the machine they claim that they're trying to grease with their anti-government drool.

See John McMillan's The Evolution of the Bazaar and other economic works on the evolution and optimization of governmental-market systems for more support. Economic Libertarians are, for the most part, philosophically and empirically bankrupt, and economic Republicans are just ridiculous, given their egregious track record.

[reprobate]

42. But the spineless Dems are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

[shanti]

8. he just had to put in a crack about howard dean

nice. :-(

[gizmo1979]

9. You must be joking

We bitched about this for the entire campaign and all of a sudden they finally write about it.Give me a break.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

10. It's because of the gap between the rich and the super rich...

The rich and slovenly want the obscenely rich to narrow the gap between rich and poor so there isn't as much of a gap between the wealthy classes.

[swag]

12. You deserve a break today, o' prescient one

but don't look a gift-horse, like the Droning Chair, in the mouth.

Just because you were ahead of the curve doesn't null or void the issue.

[gizmo1979]

14. I'm just saying what took them so long

and why now?I didn't have dibs on the issue 100's of duers were raising heck!Bring this up in oct.

[swag]

16. "I heard what you said, and it sticks in my head."

I was one of those 100s.

But nine months later, we at least have seminal penetration into the dazed ovum that is the Droning Chair's brain.

[DuaneBidoux]

13. I'm tired of Greenspan's excuse of education. Try tax policy and

corporate corruption. I mean forty years ago the gap between an average CEO and an average worker was 40 times. Now it's 420. So that means forty years ago the average CEO was 40 times as educated as an average worker and now he's 420 times? Education is a RED HERRING. Someone must call Greenspan on it.

[barb162]

36. totally agree. It's a phony issue, it's as if we had enough education

the jobs wouldn't be shipped to Asia. I know too many highly educated engineers and software types who have been out of jobs a really long time and will never find a job in their field again. This is now hitting the accounting and finance fields and even some medical specialities like radiology. Jobs are being outsourced because employers don't want to pay a living wage with benefits in this country, plain and simple.

[Chauga]

15. Bush's reply: Cut taxes. Borrow more. Kill more Muslims. Ignore the truth.

[swag]

17. You're right, Bush is the wealth disparity personified,

as is the Droning Chairman (a secondary cause of this disaster, what with his passive-aggressive endorsement of the idiotic tax-cuts in 2000, and his ((accidental?)) paternity to various asset bubbles throughout his tenure), but for longer term purposes the information should be noted. In 2005, the free-market fetishist Chair of the Federal Reserve Board, disciple of Ayn Rand, noted that the growing wealth disparities could undermine the very foundations of capitalism.

Imbalances tend to be corrected. The deniers of mean reversion most often end up in the poor house.

[newswolf56]

18. Anyone who believes concentration of wealth is accidental...

...also believes Enron was the exception rather than the monopoly-capitalist rule. What is happening is that BushCo is accelerating -- with a vengeance -- the process begun by the Reagan Administration of destroying all of the New Deal reforms and restoring economic oligarchy: two classes, fat-cat plutocrats and ever-more-exploited working families. Which -- not coincidentally -- also restores the world as envisioned by the Dominionists: the "select" (those "blessed by God" with lavish wealth) and the "sinners" (all the rest of us).

But the greater horror is that BushCo is clearly winning. The last chance to defeat this Dominionist New Order was the Clintons' -- but (rather than restore working-family solidarity), the Clintons chose not only to squander their once-great political capital but to further the nation's burgeoning class-warfare -- this with the dire injury of NAFTA and the additional insult of foolish efforts to disarm all American citizens. Mrs. Clinton's ideologically motivated linking of health-care reform to forcible disarmament was even worse: it not only defeated single-payer health insurance but irrevocably damned the entire notion for at least one generation and more likely forever.

Yet the real turning point -- something most Americans are loathe to acknowledge -- was the defeat of the Soviet Union. Without the implicit threat of the Red Army (and capitalism's abject terror of the fact the Communist Party was in the 1930s the third largest political party in the nation), there'd have been no New Deal at all; the plutocrats would merely have continued to revel in their "let-them-eat-cake" ways. It was fear, pure and simple, that motivated the New Deal: fear of economic collapse, fear of a resultant revolution, fear in the boardrooms of America that the scenes of Petrograd in 1917 might suddenly be re-enacted in American cities during the 1930s. The shock of that realization kept the Democratic Party true to its working-family roots (and the Founders ideals) through the LBJ era. But with genuine socialism dismissed as "too intellectual" by the New Left, and the external threat of Marxism already banished by the '90s, there was no force left in the world to keep our increasingly DemoPublican politicians true to anyone but the plutocrats, party labels not withstanding.

The cause is surely lost for what remains of my lifetime -- lost both due to socioeconomic/historical circumstances and to the ever more breathtaking folly of our own leaders. Where is the Democrat who will once again make our party the party of the 70 percent of voters who voted to increase the minimum wage -- even as they cast their ballots for George Bush? Where is the Democrat who will make the economy THE issue? Where is the Democrat who will campaign on the glaring need for re-unionization? Nowhere -- the true meaning of DemoPublican politics: politicians fawningly faithful to the plutocracy regardless of party label.

Greenspan is of course right about the failure of capitalism: but it will probably be mid-century before the electorate fully awakens to the reality, but then it will be far too late.

(I agree that Dean is a start. So is John Edwards' two-Americas campaign. But they are still making too much noise with too little substance -- or at least are portrayed so by the monopolist media. And the electorate -- weary until desperation of empty sloganism -- no longer trusts ANY politician to do anything more than find some fancy new label for perpetuation of the status-quo.)

[swag]

19. Sure, the concentration of wealth is not accidental.

The wealthy, generally speaking (of wealthy entities, if not of all wealthy individuals), have every intention of growing their own wealth regardless of whether the game of the day is "rising tide lifts all ships" or zero-sum. The house does not rig its games for "fair" outcomes.

From my (admittedly limited) experience, I don't think this acquisitiveness is a product of extraordinary greed or evil as much as it is a function of inertia and attendant ignorance of the impacts of this behavior on others. If the Wall Street Journal is all you read, what you'll get is what the Financial Times would be if it were written by preternaturally sociopathic 10 year-old boys. Larry Kudlow for toilet-sitters. (Oh, wait. Larry Kudlow IS for toilet-sitters.).

At any rate, extraordinary imbalances do not persist indefinitely in any realm. Mean reversion is not a wild hair up someone's ass.

[newswolf56]

25. Mean reversion is indeed not a wild hair, but...

...extraordinary economic inequality is obviously the exception to this rule of mathematical probability: note Latin America and the entire Third World (oligarchy personified); Russia prior to 1917 (after which the Bolshevik Revolution betrayed itself by redistributing not wealth but inequality); Europe between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the revolutions of the Enlightenment (American; French) and the 19th Century (especially the revolutions of 1848, 1870 and 1905); China for the approximately 5000 years before its people proclaimed "The East Is Red," etc. ad infinitum.

What history proves is that in the realm of economics, the vast institutionalized inequalities you call "extraordinary imbalances" are the norm not the exception. And the only thing that momentarily changes the norm is the application of force, typically initiated from without: force expressed as "alien" notions, as in the French Revolution (the example of America) or the Russian Revolution (ideas from Marxism and democratic socialism).

In fact (something I had not thought of until this moment) it may be at least arguable that the (former) success of the American revolution -- a success now being undermined by global monopoly capitalism -- lay in the fact it is the only revolution known to history the ideation of which was primarily indigenous.

Nevertheless, what prompts my utter political and economic hopelessness is that the global economy is ultimately a new form of feudalism. And -- in the feudal world (until the Reformation developed into the Enlightenment) -- there were no ideas to challenge the "divine right" basis of the feudal order. Nor are there any meaningful challenges to the "money right" basis of globalism today. And given that one of the aspects of global neo-feudalism is the deliberate dumbing-down of exploited populations everywhere, the likelihood of new sociopolitical or economic ideals ever again arising from humanity is absolutely nil -- not until the environment itself intervenes forcefully enough to permanently downsize the entire system. At which point the best we can hope for is the rediscovery (a la the Renaissance) of the concepts that grew out of the Enlightenment and the revolutionary ferment of the 19th Century -- this and the probable emergence of some new, functional hybrid from those theories: not mere political liberty, but workplace democracy as well.

[swag]

33. Another great post from you.

Points well taken.

[barb162]

39. Although I have seen a few economists

dispute the "good" of the current economic catastrophe being done to this nation, most of them just keep looking at their supple/demand curves.I think we are turning into as world being run by corporations or businesses of various sizes.It has been drummed into our heads that only capitalism is the best economic policy. Business, being amoral by nature, uses this against all enemies. If I want fair trade for the USA versus free trade, I must be a commie pinko or anti-American.

PS I am thinking the situation is hopeless

[swag]

43. Your post reminds me of a great review of Tom Friedman's new book

"{Tom} Friedman is right to be impressed, however belatedly. After the long detour of Second and Third World pseudosocialism, capitalism has resumed the path Marx and Engels foresaw: toward one wholly rationalized, seamlessly integrated world; with everything for sale; with no one and no activity exempt from the pressure of competition, the risk of obsolescence, the specter of ruin; with no rest, no external haven, no inner sanctuary. A flat world."
~~ George Scialabba, Zippie World

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050613&s=scialabba

Anyway, I agree with you. There doesn't seem to be much to cheer about.

[barb162]

44. Well, there are a lot of optimistic Democratic people

who think we can win in the next few elections because people will get sick of the Bush economy. With fundamentalism, moral values, a decline in education standards, lack of critical thinking skills being taught in the schools today and the media being taken over by business, people tend to vote on phony issues like gay marriage. I think here of "What's the Matter with Kansas" and other books like it.
Many people who have been hurt by Bush will keep voting for him and others like him. I became utterly hopeless with the last election. We can't withstand another few years...we just won't recover from it.It has gone too far already. Middle class jobs aren't being created in this country anymore, heck, hardly any jobs are being created anymore. We are in economic decline now and we can't recover unless we started getting rid of some of these free trade and other deals. There is NO WAY that will happen with this COngress and administration because the underpinning of free trade is capitalism and that is what we are all brainwashed to believe. Kerry was pretty tongue-tied when asked questions about solutions to the economic mess we are in (well, duh, well, we can't stop outsourcing, but we can give credits to employers who kepe American workers, duh). He had no viable solutions to cranking up the economy. Meanwhile, you hear more and more outplaced workers talking about Jesus taking care of them instead of getting angry that their government is fucking them over. Like lambs to slaughter.

[cosmicdot]

60. from the book review

"Donning the Straitjacket means low social-welfare expenditures; low
or no tariffs or subsidies to protect domestic industries; no
barriers to foreign ownership, currency speculation or profit
repatriation; and a flexible labor market--i.e., no unions. (If you
want to know more precisely what a 'favorable investment climate'
looks like, study the decrees of the Coalition Provisional
Authority, which were designed--without consulting any nonrich
Iraqis--to fit post-Saddam Iraq for the Straitjacket.)"

***
is Friedman's 'Straighjacket' term synonymous with the 'Ownership
Society' agenda?
***

Does Greedspam talk of these things?


We need more Neil Bush's Ignite! computer-aided education
:sarcasm:

speaking of which, I found this Ignite! article interesting (especially the funding by Bu$h corporatists to get it in the TX and FL schools -- and, note the 2 Georges 'lesson')

http://interversity.org/lists/arn-l/archives/Feb2004/msg00293.html

"A more serious complaint might be that Ignite! is dumbing down history."


from "The Financial Endgame Slowly Plays Out - and then..."
by Nigel Maund

~snip~

"Unfortunately, the insidious US style media is polluting the planet in the global attempt to produce a 'dumbed down', ignorant, poorly educated and malleable global serfdom, hooked on trashy TV and video entertainments and other such puerile nonsense, and moreover, up to their necks in debt and easy credit. Again, one is led to ask why? Aren't we living in the enlightened 21st Century?..... or, are we regressing to type, as demonstrated over thousands of years of human suffering at the hands of our own dubious species?"

~snip~

http://www.safehaven.com/article-3134.htm


welcome to Corporate Feudalism

[gorbal]

62. Extraordinary imbalances

"Extraordinary imbalances" have NOT been the norm in the overwhelming span of human history. And there are countries today that,without force, have maintained a much smaller gap between the rich and the poor.

There have been real concrete things that have been done to exacerbate the gap in the US-
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0523-02.htm

And here is a fascinating article about the difference between the US and other countries.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3671/is_200201/ai_n9037732

[NEOBuckeye]

26. We may be closer to upheaval than you think.

Had there been no New Deal in the 1930s, the very revolt the plutocrats feared likely would have left them hanging from light poles by broke and starving mobs of millions before the end of that decade.

Flash forward to today, and it seems that we are heading for an energy crisis in this country. Peak Oil production will force us all to examine the plutocracy and its' insistence upon maintaining an unmaintainable fossil fuel-based status quo for its own short term profit and gain.

Had this country stayed the course the President Carter charted towards energy independence, we would be looking at a far more optimistic future. But lucky for us, the plutocrats and fossil-fuel establishment set us back upon their course under Reagan.

So, watch what happens when gas seemingly inexplicably surges up to $4.50 a gallon, or worse. Oil is the economic life's blood of the United States. When it becomes too scarce and too expensive, the economy will come crashing down, and we'll be right back to where we began in 1930.

What will be the outcome this time?

[barb162]

53. people will say Jesus will help us find a way out

and there will likely be no riots and marches in the streets. They'll just go to church and pray more.

[NEOBuckeye]

64. It only seems that way.

Even many Evangelical Christians will eventually get tired of things being the way they are when they are forced out of their homes, into the streets by joblessness and poverty. Call it a "crisis of faith".

[barb162]

38. I think when Bush won the second term it became

too late. We are done for in this country. With one term the country could have withstood the mess he was making. Think of three more years of this crap...we simply cannot withstand the destruction of the middle class.

[sweetheart]

21. Monopolies don't create value

With reaganism and the decline of market intervention, with the ma bell
breakup as the last forward advance against the oligopoly, the results
are increased monopolistic behaviours, mergers and market constriction
that basically eliminates all small to medium developing business in
favour of the ultra large that use their capital weight to crush
competitors. This is in contrast to better products or other above
the table competition. Rather the new corporate competition comes from
under the table, from the back rooms of the oligopolists who fix the
markets as they see fit.

This state of affairs needs to reach a further apogee before a massive
lashback rises like the tide against it. It is no suprise that there
are fewer uber uber wealthy, as the owners have followed their corporations
in the merger mania in to the stratosphere, rewarding themselves for
value they are destroying. And to add insult to injury, the public
subsidizes them through its maintinance of the markets status quo,
the granting of monoplies, the court system, the patent system and
all that stuff that corporates use to screw joe public in to the
ground.

[swag]

22. Great post.

Excellent summation of the dynamics at play.

[AirAmFan]

24. Before letting estate-tax elimination become permanent,

more people need to know what even the ultra-conservative Wall Street Journal has published (just last month) about the growing rich-poor gap and its sources in inherited wealth:

From http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05133/504149.stm :

"Despite the widespread belief that the U.S. remains a more mobile society than Europe, economists and sociologists say that in recent decades the typical child starting out in poverty in continental Europe (or in Canada) has had a better chance at prosperity. Miles Corak ... tweaked dozens of studies of the U.S., Canada and European countries to make them comparable. "The U.S. and Britain appear to stand out as the least mobile societies among the rich countries studied," he finds. France and Germany are somewhat more mobile than the U.S.; Canada and the Nordic countries are much more so....

As recently as the late 1980s, economists argued that not much advantage passed from parent to child, perhaps as little as 20 percent. By that measure, a rich man's grandchild would have barely any edge over a poor man's grandchild. "Almost all the earnings advantages or disadvantages of ancestors are wiped out in three generations," wrote Gary Becker, the University of Chicago economist and Nobel laureate, in 1986....

But over the last 10 years, better data and more number-crunching have led economists and sociologists to a new consensus: The escalators of mobility move much more slowly. A substantial body of research finds that at least 45 percent of parents' advantage in income is passed along to their children, and perhaps as much as 60 percent. With the higher estimate, it's not only how much money your parents have that matters -- even your great-great grandfather's wealth might give you a noticeable edge today. Even the University of Chicago's Prof. Becker is changing his mind, reluctantly...."

[Triana]

27. education for WHAT?

there are no JOBS. We don't need Phds for sweeping floors, pumping gas, waiting tables, digging ditches, doing landscaping, being walmart greeters and flipping goddamned burgers.

education for WHAT?

[Hardrada]

31. This has been the case for some time.

Even in the Seventies, lots of people were studying to be marine biologists but only a few positions were ever open. A friend of mine finally got tenure in the almost impenetrable English department of my alma mater but at a fairly advanced age for the job. Not incidentally his family has given the school probably two million dollars over the years, his ancestors include two past college presidents and the school library has his surname!! Most of us can't come up with any such plus points!!

[barb162]

37. It is a ruse on Grennspan's part to talk about this. It's blaming the

already educated victims of outsourcing. Correct... education for what, learning outsourcing methods?

[barb162]

45. I want to correct myself on something

I do think the state of education in this country is deplorable as the CSM article indicates and it going down fast. But the outsourcing is going after low-skilled but also very highly skilled USA jobs. Too many people with advanced degrees are jobless as their jobs are outsourced. At the same time, I think you're right, education for what? Why bother when jobs get shipped elsewhere.

[Triana]

52. Phds doing yardwork, delivering papers, waiting tables...

...flipping burgers, that's why kids can't find Summer jobs. They're all taken by elderly who have to return to work and the highly educated who can't find work except low-paying service jobs. It's bad, but that's where we are. Greenspan is full of sh*t. Education for WHAT? To flip burgers?

My a**...

[barb162]

56. I know, I see a lot of people around here

doing cashier jobs and they have hundred dollar haircuts, gold rolexes and Italian loafers. They just ooze ex-high paid 50 year old manager or director of a large department. I also notice I see no more signs on store doors asking for part-time help. Two or three years ago, every store around here had signs begging for part-time help. Even that crap is now being done by PhDs.

[Erika]

28. Greenspan knows corrupted capitalism when he sees it

and that's what we've got now. Creation of a permanent caste system to keep the top forever comfortable and the bottom forever poor. No more middle class. All brought to you by the Bush voters.

[lonestarnot]

40. Top 1% control 55% of nations wealth! This is a travesty!

[RedCloud]

47. It's family values!

We are supposed to value the rich family while the rich families value our valuables.

[napi21]

48. You can't really run for the Senate anymore unless you're rich!

It costs SOOO much for the campaign, you need the kind of friends from the "rich circle of friends" to have a chance at winning!

I'm glad Greenspan is at least mentioning this problem though. I won't affect the response from the rich, but there are lots of middle income Americans who hang on every word uttered by the Fed Chairman, and just maybe it might make THEM think!

Any changes that may happen will be because of the anger of middle income Americans, because that's where the largest number of people are.

[ckramer]

49. "His solution is better education"

Education won't do you a damn thing if you are still paying student loans afte working for 20 years.

Better education must be a free education. Yet today's education industry is another blood sucker that eats the poor alive.

Only correct social policy can help the poor, not the education that the sole purpose of it is to suck the blood out of the poor.

[Megahurtz]

50. "Specifically High School Education"?

That's the problem, according to Greenspan?
What a fucking idiot.

[barb162]

58. From the article

"Specifically, high school education. US children test above world average levels at the 4th grade level, he noted. By the 12th grade, they do not. "We have to do something to prevent that from happening," said Greenspan."

We really do have lousy education in this country and I think it is getting worse, IMHO. The question is why better the education when there are no jobs to be had other than burgerflipping. Of course we know intrinsically the more you know, the more you can analyze, etc., the better you are. But you'll probably still burgerflip unless you had rich parents. The divide is growing greater and greater all the time between rich and poor and there is less and less movement out of one's class.

[HughBeaumont]

59. Mentioned this in another thread . . .

Greenscam, being off the mark as usual, parades the same bullshit that every Lancelot Link-paid economist will - "the workers just need more education!" i.e. BLAME THE VICTIM!!!

Never mind that the pro-megacorporate, anti-small business Bushconomy policies discourages free enterprise and start-ups. Where's OUR killer apps? Where's OUR "PC"? When is OUR next great invention/life-changing tool/medical breakthrough/process going to happen?

Here's another problem that needs to be brought to light: degree devaluation. It's looking to be that yesterday's high school diploma is today's master's degree because corporations won't even let your ass in the door without at least college under your belt. More and more, though, I'm seeing "MBA Preferred" for a lot of the upper level positions where you didn't need one before. And that's pretty sad.

What if some of us just don't WANT to continually go to school, school, SCHOOL? Who in the hell even has TIME for this? What do you do, sleep for 3 hours a night? I spend 12 hours a damned day away from home as it is, mostly at my job and studying new computer languages; (you know, because Willie Fucking Gates just doesn't have ENOUGH damned cash) I'm sorry, but I'm just NOT into the whole "going back to school" thing. Christ, it was boring and time-consuming enough the first time around, why isn't a damned plain ol' college degree enough anymore?

What's next, are we all going to need doctorates to compete with exploited Third World wage slaves?

[barb162]

61. To your last question, I think the answer is yes

I agree with what you're saying, the last thing I think he should do is blame the American worker. I think a lot of American workers are absolutely busting their asses at work and they get laid off anyway as their jobs are sent offshore to somebody else for pennies an hour. Yeah there is degree devaluation going on and I think it comes from at least two sources. One is that a lot of people, college grads included, can't even spell let alone write. High schools are pumping out grads now where they wouldn't have graduated from grammar school many years ago. Just last week I watched a doctor's asst. do a heart rate and she couldn't multiply 22X4 in her head. She went to the calculator. Isn't that about 6th grade stuff? Another reason of course is having reasons for weeding people out.

What's so disturbing is that throughout our history there have been jobs in this country for the most part for people who wanted to work and people could work their way up and make enough to support their families. Think steelworkers, union jobs of all kinds, etc. This isn't really possible now unless you get a government job.

Yes we will need doctorates and get a few bucks an hour. And we won't be able to afford to pay for the doctorates. My friend has a PhD in linguistics and for years has been teaching as a temp at various schools. None of the schools want to tenure anyone these days.

This is the first time in our country's history that the wages are not rising and people are not better off than their parents. SAD