37th Year

Depending on which report you read, 2013 was either a tie for the fourth warmest or a tie for the seventh warmer year since 1880 with a temperature anomaly of about 0.6 degrees Celsius above the 20th century baseline.  In either case, the mean global temperature was above that baseline for the 37th consecutive year.

Update (February 13):  Coastal flooding may cost $100 trillion per year by 2100.

85 Equals Half of the World

An Oxfam report indicates that the richest 85 people control $1.7 trillion of wealth, equivalent to the wealth of the bottom half of the world's population.  The wealth of the top one percent is $110 trillion, nearly half the wealth in the entire world.

Update (January 22):  Emily Lodish points out that the Oxfam report documents how the wealth gap in the United States has grown more, and is now greater than just about any other developed country.

Update (January 30):  Michael Moran wonders if concern about inequality among the super rich is more than just talk.  The intention isn't clear when it's described as "the number one threat to global security".

Update (February 5):  Paul Buchheit describes inequality in the United States which is, in some ways, relatively worse than other parts of the world.

Update (April 1):  Research by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman show that the top 0.01 percent have increased their share of national wealth more than the "bottom" 99 percent of the top 1 percent over the past 40 years.

Update (April 12):  Gabriel Zucman also has a paper demonstrating that a lot of wealth is hidden in off-shore tax havens.  Paul Krugman thinks that would be the norm rather than the exception.

Update (April 19):  Felix Salmon argues that indebtedness distorts any calculation of wealth.

Update (May 18):  Sean McElwee reports on how wealth inequality makes it harder for those at the bottom to save thus turning to debt as a safety net.

Update (June 20):  Paul Buchheit writes about greed and puts together a couple of interesting facts:  The Oxfam report indicates that the wealthiest one percent in the U.S. captured 95 percent of the gains since the recession ended.  And a Credit Suisse report shows that U.S. wealth grew from a recent low of $46.7 trillion at the end of 2008 to $72.1 trillion by mid-2013.  If we "generously" distribute about $24 trillion to about 13 million U.S. millionaires (not quite the same as the top one percent), we get an increase of about $2 million per person.

Update (June 28):  Sean McElwee interviews Gabriel Zucman.

Update (August 12):  More about Zucman's research on how wealth is undercounted.

Update (November 23):  Oxfam calls for action to end extreme inequality with their Even It Up campaign.

Make governments work for citizens and tackle extreme inequality

Promote women’s economic equality and women’s rights

Pay workers a living wage and close the gap with skyrocketing executive reward

Share the tax burden fairly to level the playing field

Close international tax loopholes and fill holes in tax governance

Achieve universal free public services by 2020

Change the global system for research and development (R&D) and pricing
of medicines so everyone has access to appropriate and affordable medicines

Implement a universal social protection floor

Target development finance at reducing inequality and poverty,
and strengthening the compact between citizens and their government

Update (November 30):  Sean McElwee describes how the financial sector makes inequality worse and endorses a financial transaction tax.

Update (December 30):  The 400 richest people gained $92 billion in wealth during 2014 for a total of $4.1 trillion.

Update (January 28, 2015):  Mona Chalabi has the list of the 80 wealthiest people in the world.

Update (December 4, 2015):  A report from the Institute for Policy Studies finds that the 20 wealthiest Americans own as much as the bottom half of the country (152 million people).

Update (December 23, 2015):  Sue Sturgis collects facts about inequality.

Number of the richest U.S. households whose wealth exceeds that of the country's entire 42 million African Americans: 100

Number of the richest U.S. households whose wealth exceeds that of the country's more than 55 million Latinos: 186

The total wealth of those on the Forbes 400 list of richest people in the U.S.: $2.34 trillion

Update (January 17, 2016):  Apparently it now only takes 62 people to equal half of the world.

The wealth of the richest 62 has increased an astonishing 44 percent since 2010, to $1.76 trillion. Meanwhile, the wealth of the bottom half of the world dropped by 41 percent.

Update (January 20, 2016):  More from the Oxfam report--soon the world's richest one percent will own fully half of all the wealth. The top twenty percent own 94.5 percent of the wealth.

Update (April 17, 2016):  Lynn Stuart Parramore argues that the top one-tenth percent are much different than even the rest of the top one percent.

Drought

In 2013, California experienced the driest year on record.  Wildfires are now a danger even in winter.

Update (February 22):  More about the California drought.

Update (March 2):  Dealing with the drought.

Update (March 10):  The drought could get worse.

Update (March 30):  Kathleen Sharp reports on looming problems due to the drought.

Update (April 12):  Joe Romm reports on two studies that show climate change is drying out the US southwest and other regions.  He points out that because of the effect on agriculture, this will be the most consequential impact of climate change.

Update (April 20):  More bad news for the drought.

Update (April 21):  Lake Mead, which supplies water to Las Vegas, is drying up.

Update (April 28):  The news for California keeps getting worse.

Update (May 16):  Wildfires are already starting and a collection of drought related stories.

Update (June 10):  Drought and population growth are creating water problems in Texas.

Update (June 20):  And still worse in California.

Update (July 9):  Lake Mead in Nevada is approaching a record low depth.

Update (July 17):  California is pumping 62 percent more groundwater than usual.

Update (August 1):  Unbelievable.

Update (September 15):  And now fire.

Update (September 24):  Zero Percent Water

Update (October 1):  Now entering the fourth year of the drought.

Update (October 26):  The state of Sao Paulo is facing a water shortage.

Update (December 6):  A study concludes that the cumulative impact of California's drought is the worst in 1200 years.

Update (January 13, 2015):  Improved drought conditions in California, but a long way to go.

Update (February 14, 2015):  Computer models forecast megadroughts for much of the U.S.

Update (March 7, 2015):  California had the warmest February since records began in 1895.

Update (March 15, 2015):  Jay Famiglietti states that California has one year of water left and calls for rationing.

Update (April 11, 2015):  Lindsay Abrams interviews Karen Piper about dealing with a water crisis. One idea is to stop exporting virtual water.

Update (April 29, 2015):  A look at California's future.

Update (May 6, 2015):  If, in fact, extinction looms in our relatively near-term future, perhaps it will have been set off by the end of agriculture in California.

Update (June 28, 2015):  Looking at the larger water crisis.

Update (August 17, 2015):  Millions of trees are dying due to the drought.

Update (August 18, 2015):  William deBuys explains the mega-drought to come.

Update (August 22, 2015):  A study published in Geophysical Research Letters estimates that the California drought is 15 to 20 percent worse than it would have been due to climate change.

Update (September 15, 2015):  Fifty-two percent of the United States is abnormally dry or in some level of drought.

Update (August 2, 2016):  Adventures In Mapping illustrates five years of data.

Update (April 25, 2020):  Although the severe drought is past, a study published in Science finds that the years from 2011 to 2017 in California are part of a megadrought. From 2000 to 2018, the southwestern United States experienced the driest period in 400 years.

[R]esearchers from Columbia University, the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Idaho identified 40 prolonged drought incidents from the last 1,200 years. Only four are as severe as the megadrought we’re currently experiencing.

War on Poverty

Fifty years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson gave his first State of the Union address.

Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope -- some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity.

This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with me in that effort.

 President Reagan later declared that the war had been lost.  But there is evidence of progress.

Paul Krugman makes the point that persistent poverty is caused by high inequality of incomes. Republicans want people to get jobs, but low income jobs aren't enough to raise people out of poverty.  The United States is much richer than 50 years ago, but most of that wealth has gone to the top.

And so the middle class is in danger of disappearing.  Lynn Stuart Parramore offers a new anti-poverty agenda:

1. Make the rich pay their fair share by ending unfair tax breaks.
2. Expand Social Security, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others have demanded.
3. Protect people from going hopelessly into debt through medical expenses. Obamacare has failed to put a tight lid on potential total medical costs. Eventually, we must join the civilized world with single payer healthcare.
4. Increase state-supported education. It’s absurd that people have to go into debt just to pay for their educations.
5. Strengthen regulation so irresponsible companies do not rob ordinary Americans.
6. Restore the rights of workers, like collective bargaining and protection from wage theft.
7. Understand that austerity policies do not work, and only exacerbate economic woes.
8. Aggressively attack unemployment and remember the lesson learned in the Great Depression: when the private sector can’t come up with jobs, the government must fill the breach.
9. Protect the reproductive rights of women.
10. Protect civil rights, such as access to voting, in places where such rights are under attack.

Update (July 2):  A Census Bureau report, "Changes in Areas With Concentrated Poverty: 2000 to 2010" shows that the number and proportion of people living in poverty has increased during that period.

Update (July 14, 2018):  Jeff Stein and Tracy Jan present what seems to be a new Republican tactic to attack spending on social programs.

The White House in a report this week declared the War on Poverty “largely over and a success,” arguing that few Americans are truly poor — only about 3 percent of the population — and that the booming economy is the best path upward for those who remain in poverty.

The new messaging comes as the White House and Republicans in Congress pursue their long-held goal of adding work requirements for recipients of food stamps, Medicaid and housing subsidies.

It depends on how you want to define "poverty"--problem solved!

The most recent census data says that in 2016, 12.7 percent of Americans — about 41 million people — were in poverty compared with 19 percent in 1964. A separate census measure, known as the “supplemental” poverty rate, takes into account federal assistance flowing to households as well as regional differences in cost of living. By that measure, about 14 percent of Americans are in poverty.

Rather than measuring resources coming into households, conservative scholars prefer to use “consumption” statistics that rely on surveys of how much people report spending. Using the spending measure, poverty is closer to the 3 percent figure [von Clownstick's] economic council used, said Robert Rector, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Poverty measured by consumption has fallen dramatically since the 1990s, while data from the Census Bureau shows poverty remaining relatively flat.

Stranger in a Strange Land

Ideas fascinate me.  I can get caught up in a swirl of thoughts where one thing leads to another and another. Even among a handful of regularly visited web sites, there might be something to set me off.

An end-of-the-year book guide is one such danger.  There's a lot that won't interest me, and then, toward the end, is a recommendation from Norman Rush of George Scialabba's For the Republic: Political Essays.  It's a selection of reviews and essays Mr. Scialabba has published in various journals for over 30 years.  I quickly learned that this is his third collection (a fourth is out of print). I was familiar with many of the publications, but I don't recall his name from anything I've read previously.  But he's described as an independent, leftist intellectual, so I bought all three books.

It was interesting to learn that while Mr. Scialabba works for Harvard University, he's not on faculty. He maintains an archive of his work (though it doesn't always seem to be on-line).  The first review in his first collection covered late 1980's publications by Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn.  I was hooked. He even has a story about getting started with his writing by sending a review of an earlier work by Chomsky to Village Voice just to let them know it was something worth reviewing. So far, his essays have introduced new authors to me, explained ideas, and developed context.  I even learn about books I actually own, but never get around to reading.  And it makes me want to buy just about every book he reviews that I don't already own. Mr. Scialabba seems like the kind of writer I'd like to be if I had a way with words and knew about a hundred times more than I do.  He writes

because I am too lazy to be an activist, and I do have these political emotions. It keeps me from just choking on them, and it also allows me to avoid getting out and expending any actual physical energy on political organizing.

Which more or less explains this whole "blog" thing for me.  Fortunately, Mr. Scialabba has an audience.

Ideas fascinate, but some thoughts are difficult to bear.  Knowledge is good, but politics can get in the way of acting on what you know.  Sometimes we reach the conclusion that there is no answer.

"Plutocratic Vistas" starts out describing the impact of the financial crisis on Harvard.  People are worried, get angry.  But, "what can ya do?"  Well, Marx had an answer.  And there are other thoughts such as Callenbach and Phillips' citizen legislature chosen by lot that Mr. Scialabba outlines.  Despite the fact that one-third of Americans reject evolution, David Graeber suggests that most people don't hold on to illusions such as "America is a democracy", but they think that other Americans do.  Social control is possible not because anyone really believes the bullshit, we just think our fellow citizens are too stupid for anything to change.

By the end of the essay, I'm re-introduced to Morris Berman, who, in a series of books, concludes that the American experiment is over.  Berman does think that even smart Americans are not very bright. The decline has been a long time coming--nothing changes because we just don't tolerate criticism of the country. (Checking today, it turns out reasonably priced print copies of Why America Failed are hard to find.) Berman calls the United States a nation of hustlers and states that the American Dream is the problem, not something to aspire to.  Citing the upside down priorities of the US, Berman moved to Mexico where he finds a different set of values such as community--no longer a stranger.

Politics is depressing.  The thought of American decline or that something like climate change could mean the end of industrial civilization is just difficult to live with.  I think a friend in college once told me, "If you're happy, you're not paying attention."  There's a certain comfort in knowing that it's not your own problem, everything really is fucked up.  Mr. Scialabba ends a bit more upbeat--that "[w]e may as well give Money a good fight." And I buy that.  Even if decline can't be avoided, we can strive for a "soft landing".

But there's depressing and there's depression.  The very next essay is "Message from Room 101", a reference to George Orwell's 1984.  Mr. Scialabba's ordeal was somewhat hereditary but also related to money problems.

We are all issued neurological shock absorbers, usually good for a lifetime of emotional wear and tear. But if you’re equipped with flimsy ones, or travel an especially rough road, the ride becomes very uncomfortable.

I can't claim to know anything of his experience.  It's interesting how simple calculations point to money solutions--I recall calculating how much easier things would be if I could get just so much of a raise.  But I was 24; I've been lucky not to have that worry at 54.

Is everything political?  Well, it seems so.  Even as he makes the calculations that could bring him relief, Mr. Scialabba acknowledges that there would indeed be more worthy recipients than him. And then a shock:

The first draft—very much shorter and even more purple—was a suicide note, to be left behind on the riverbank or rooftop or night table.

But he got past it without sugarcoating the truth.

Blessedly, miraculously, everyday unhappiness returned.

The essay was published to try to reach out to others who might need help.  And the book is dedicated, in part, to Aaron Swartz which underscores, for me, how serious politics can be.

Raise the Minimum Wage

A study by University of Massachusetts-Amherst economist Arindrajit Dube finds that raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $10.10 per hour would directly bring 4.6 million people out of poverty.  Dube calls such a raise a moderate impact and notes that programs such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and SNAP are actually more effective at reducing poverty.

Update (January 23):  Lynn Stuart Parramore lists 11 jobs that pay poverty wages.

Update (January 25):  Lack of pay goes hand-in-hand with lack of paid leave for struggling American workers.  David Sirota reports on the implementation of mandated paid sick days in Connecticut.  It turns out that the benefits of sick leave outweigh the costs.  Not to mention being the humane thing to do.

Update (February 9):  A New York Times editorial endorses a higher minimum wage.  The editorial cites research showing almost no employment effect from a higher minimum wage.  In fact, it's reasonable to presume that when lower income people have more money to spend, that actually helps stimulate job growth.

Update (February 20):  As the Congressional Budget Office releases an estimate that a minimum wage of $10.10 per hour could cost 500,000 jobs, Brian Beutler points out that any economic policy has positive and negative impacts.  The CBO also estimates that 900,000 people would be brought out of poverty and that 16.5 million people would see higher wages.

Update (March 4):  Mike Konczal has 7 Bipartisan Reasons to Raise the Minimum Wage.

Update (September 6):  A report on strikes by fast-food workers, and Michael Lind discusses solving the "welfare" debate by raising everyone's earned income.

Update (January 15, 2016):  A study from Cornell University finds that increasing the minimum wage does not decrease employment in the restaurant industry.

Update (April 27, 2016):  A study from the University of Washington finds "little or no evidence of price increases" following implementation of Seattle's minimum wage law.

Update (February 11, 2018):  There is evidence that raising minimum wages does not decrease the number of jobs.

Update (February 27, 2021):  Richard Wolff says there is a fake debate.

Paying a decent living wage to workers by raising the minimum wage need not threaten the viability of small businesses. The latter need not collapse nor fire workers when minimum wages are raised. Indeed, raising the minimum wage can and should be one basis for a mutually beneficial alliance between wage workers and small businesses.

How then might a civilized society raise its minimum wage to provide a decent livelihood to workers and protect its small businesses? The solution is straightforward. Offset the extra labor costs for small businesses from a higher minimum wage by providing them with some combination of the following: a new and significant share of government orders, tax breaks, and government subsidies. Such supports now overwhelmingly favor big business and thereby facilitate its many efforts to destroy and replace small businesses.

In effect, this proposal changes the terrain of the minimum wage debate. It brings into stark relief that raising the minimum wage leaves open the question of which part of the employer class will bear the burden of compensating for that in the short run.