Poverty, Employment and Distress

From the Economic Policy Institute, most people in poverty who are able to work are employed.

It turns out that a fair number of people are underemployed and/or holding low-paying jobs.  And from the Centers for Disease Control, lower income is significantly correlated with psychological distress.

Update (May 31):  Elias Isquith writes about the CDC study and refers to a reality show as an example of the "war on poor people".

Update (June 1):  The middle class is declining and the social safety net is being shredded. Combating poverty is hampered

by the brain’s tendency to “tunnel” in response to scarcity: whatever is most urgent, whatever unmet need is most pressing, fully “captures” the mind and crowds out all other concerns, questions, or tasks that would otherwise compete for attention. What to have for lunch, what to do this weekend, and what bills are due soon are all issues easily ignored when feeling the effects of scarcity.

Social Liberal, Economic Conservative?

A recent Gallup poll shows a trend toward liberal views on social issues while economics remains fairly conservative.

But Greta Christina argues that

You can't separate fiscal issues from social issues. They're deeply intertwined. They affect each other. Economic issues often are social issues. And conservative fiscal policies do enormous social harm. That's true even for the mildest, most generous version of "fiscal conservatism" -- low taxes, small government, reduced regulation, a free market. These policies perpetuate human rights abuses. They make life harder for people who already have hard lives. Even if the people supporting these policies don't intend this, the policies are racist, sexist, classist (obviously), ableist, homophobic, transphobic, and otherwise socially retrograde. In many ways, they do more harm than so-called "social policies" that are supposedly separate from economic ones. Here are seven reasons that "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" is nonsense.

1.  Poverty, and the cycle of poverty. 

2.  Domestic violence, workplace harasment, and other abuse.

3.  Disenfranchisement.

4.  Racist policing.

5.  Drug policy and prison policy.

6.  Deregulation.

7.  "Free" trade. 

The reality of fiscal conservatism in the United States is not cautious, evidence-based attention to which government programs do and don't work. If that were ever true in some misty nostalgic past, it hasn't been true for a long, long time. The reality of fiscal conservatism in the United States means slashing government programs, even when they've been shown to work. The reality means decimating government regulations, even when they've been shown to improve people's lives. The reality means cutting the safety net to ribbons, and letting big businesses do pretty much whatever they want.

Update (May 26):  Catherine Rampell says liberals are making a comeback.

Higher Inequality

A report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that inequality within member countries is the highest ever recorded.  The average income of the top ten percent is nearly 10 times that of the lowest ten percent--up from about seven times the income thirty years ago.

True Cost of Fossil Fuels

A working paper from the International Monetary Fund estimates that direct subsidies and external costs attributed to the fossil fuel industry amounts to $5.3 trillion per year.

Shell Game

An internal business planning document from Royal Dutch Shell assumes global temperature will rise by 4 degrees Celsius in the near term and later by 6 degrees.  The paper notes that

We also do not see governments taking steps now that are consistent with 2 degrees C scenario.

Update (May 18):  Is Shell simply expressing an awful truth, or are we all guilty of ignoring the options we have?

Fixing the Economy

A report from The Roosevelt Institute called "Rewriting The Rules Of The American Economy: An Agenda For Growth and Shared Prosperity" offers thirty-seven ways to restore fairness:

Fix The Financial Sector

1. End “too big to fail” by imposing additional capital surcharges on systemically risky financial institutions and breaking up firms that cannot produce credible living wills.

2. Better regulate the shadow banking sector.

3. Bring greater transparency to all financial markets by requiring all alternative asset managers to publicly disclose holdings, returns, and fee structures.

4. Reduce credit and debit card fees through improved regulation of card providers and enhanced competition.

5. Enforce existing rules with stricter penalties for companies and corporate officials that break the law.

6. Reform Federal Reserve governance to reduce conflicts of interest and institute more open and accountable elections.

Incentivize Long-Term Business Growth

7. Restructure CEO pay by closing the performance-pay tax loophole and increasing transparency on the size of compensation packages relative to performance and median worker pay and on the dilution as a result of grants of stock options.

8. Enact a financial transaction tax to reduce short-term trading and encourage more productive long-term investment.

9. Empower long-term stakeholders through the tax code, the use of so-called “loyalty shares,” and greater accountability for managers of retirement funds.

Make Markets Competitive

10. Restore balance to intellectual property rights to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship.

11. Restore balance to global trade agreements by ensuring investor protections are not prioritized above protections on the environment and labor, and increasing transparency in the negotiation process.

12. Provide health care cost controls by allowing government bargaining.

13. Expand a variant of chapter 11 bankruptcy to homeowners and student borrowers.

Rebalance The Tax System

14. Raise the top marginal rate by converting all reductions to tax credits and limiting the use of credits.

15. Raise taxes on capital gains and dividends.

16. Encourage U.S. investment by taxing corporations on global income.

17. Tax undesirable behavior such as short-term trading or polluting and eliminate corporate welfare and other tax expenditures that foster inefficiency and inequality.

Make Full Employement The Goal

18. Reform monetary policy to give higher priority to full employment.

19. Reinvigorate public investment to lay the foundation for long-term economic performance and job growth, including by investing in large-scale infrastructure renovation: a 10-year campaign to make the U.S. a world leader in innovation, manufacturing, and jobs.

20. Invest in large-scale infrastructure renovation with a 10-year campaign to make the U.S. a world infrastructure innovation, manufacturing, and jobs leader.

21. Expand public transportation to promote equal access to jobs and opportunity.

Empower workers

22. Strengthen the right to bargain by easing legal barriers to unionization, imposing stricter penalties on illegal anti-union intimidation tactics, and amending laws to reflect the changing workplace.

23. Have government set the standards by attaching strong pro-worker stipulations to its contracts and development subsidies.

24. Increase funding for enforcement and raise penalties for violating labor standards.

25. Raise the nationwide minimum wage and increase the salary threshold for overtime pay.

Expand Access to Labor Markets and Opportunities For Advancement

26. Reform the criminal justice system to reduce incarceration rates and related financial burdens for the poor.

27. Reform immigration law to provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented workers.

28. Legislate universal paid sick and family leave.

29. Subsidize child care to benefit children and improve women’s workforce participation.

30. Promote pay equity and eliminate legal obstacles that prevent employees from sharing salary information.

31. Protect women’s access to reproductive health services.

Expand Economic Security And Opportunity

32. Invest in young children through child benefits, early education, and universal pre-K.

33. Increase access to higher education by reforming tuition financing, restoring protections to student loans, and adopting universal income-based repayment.

34. Make health care affordable and universal by opening Medicare to all.

35. Expand access to banking services through a postal savings bank.

36. Create a public option for the supply of mortgages.

37. Expand Social Security with a supplemental public investment program modeled on private Individual Retirement Accounts, and raise the payroll cap to increase revenue.

Rising Sea, Collapsing Ice

Articles in Nature Climate Change and The Cryosphere indicate that global sea levels have rising faster than previously thought, and that the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica is thinning from above and below.

Update (May 22):  A study published in Science indicates that glaciers along the southern Antarctic Peninsula coast have been losing about 56 billion tons of ice per year since 2009.  It's being driven by warmer water melting the undersides of ice shelves.

Update (July 10):  Looking at past warm periods, a study published in Science projects a 20 foot sea level rise even if warming is held to 2 degrees Celsius.  The melting will take at least 200 years with a loss of 48,000 square miles of land in the U.S. which is home to 15 percent of the population.

Peak global mean temperature, atmospheric carbon dioxide, maximum global mean sea level (GMSL), and source(s) of meltwater.  Light blue shading indicates uncertainty of GMSL maximum. Red pie charts over Greenland and Antarctica denote fraction (not location) of ice retreat

Update (July 20):  A study by lead author James Hansen (not yet peer reviewed) argues that sea level could rise by 10 feet by the end of this century.  Even 2 degrees Celsius of warming is considered "highly dangerous".

Update (July 23):  The study by Hansen, et al is blunt:

There is evidence of ice melt, sea level rise to [plus 5 through 9 meters], and extreme storms in the prior interglacial period that was less than 1 [degree Celsius] warmer than today.

A relatively rapid rise in sea level will be quite destructive.  The timing depends on how fast the rate of melting doubles.

Doubling times of 10, 20 or 40 years yield sea level rise of several meters in 50, 100 or 200 years.

Recent ice sheet melt rates have a doubling time near the lower end of the 10 [to] 40 year range. We conclude that 2 [degree Celsius] global warming above the preindustrial level, which would spur more ice shelf melt, is highly dangerous.

Update (July 27):  More from James Hansen.  I suppose this study deserved its own entry, but it's not in final form.  It suggests sea level rise may be greater and faster than already anticipated.

Update (November 13):  A study published in Science finds that the Zachariae glacier in northeast Greenland is rapidly retreating. By itself, it would contribute one and a half feet of sea level rise.

Update (November 19):  A study by lead author Catherine Ritz published in Nature seems to dispute a large contribution from Antarctica to sea level rise by 2100. A 10 cm contribution is given as the mostly likely outcome.

Update (January 17, 2016):  More about Zachariae and the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream.

Update (July 2, 2017):  An international study finds that the rate of sea level rise has increased from 2.2 millimeters per year in 1993 to 3.3 millimeters per year in 2014. Greenland's contribution to that rate of change increase from 5 percent in 1993 to 25 percent in 2014.

A separate study finds that Greenland's surface melting is driven by decreasing cloud cover more than just rising temperatures.

Simple

I don't recall coming across this quote before.  It seems to be attributed to Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez (though it still might not be original) and I'm glad one Presidential candidate has picked up on it.

Nobody who works 40 hours a week should have to live in poverty.

Time to Listen

The death of yet another young, Black man at the hands of the police in Baltimore sparked protests which morphed into riots.  As usual, a heap of unwarranted blame is placed on the victims.

Julia Blount needs to be heard:

This post originally appeared on Julia Blount's Facebook page. 

Dear White America, 

It is somewhat strange to address this to you, given that I strongly identify with many aspects of your culture and am half-white myself. Yet, today is another day you have forced me to decide what race I am — and, as always when you force me — I fall decidedly into “Person of Color.” 

Every comment or post I have read today voicing some version of disdain for the people of Baltimore — “I can’t understand” or “They’re destroying their own community” or “Destruction of Property!” or “Thugs” — tells me that many of you are not listening. I am not asking you to condone or agree with violence. I just need you to listen. You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to, but instead of forming an opinion or drawing a conclusion, please let me tell you what I hear: 

I hear hopelessness
I hear oppression
I hear pain
I hear internalized oppression
I hear despair
I hear anger
I hear poverty 

If you are not listening, not exposing yourself to unfamiliar perspectives, not watching videos, not engaging in conversation, then you are perpetuating white privilege and white supremacy. It is exactly your ability to not hear, to ignore the situation, that is a mark of your privilege. People of color cannot turn away. Race affects our lives every day. We must consider it all the time, not just when it is convenient. 

As a person of color, even if you are privileged your whole life, as I have been, you cannot escape from the shade of your skin. Being a woman defines me; coming from a relatively affluent background defines me; my sexual orientation, my education, my family and my job define me. Other than being a woman, every single one of those distinctions gives me privilege in our society. Yet, even with all that privilege, people still treat me differently 

For most of my childhood, I refused to allow race to be my most defining feature. I actually chose for most of my childhood to refuse race as my most defining feature. But I found that a very hard position to maintain, given the way the world interacts with me and the people I love. Because I have to worry about my brother and my cousins getting stopped by the police. Because people react to my wonderful, kind, intelligent father differently, depending on whether he’s wearing a suit or sweat pants. Race has defined the way I see the world like no other characteristic has.

This can be hard to understand, if you never experienced it firsthand. So again, for just one more moment, reserve your judgments and listen. This is what you might come to realize, if you spent your days in my skin.

In childhood: People regularly ask “What are you” instead of “Who are you?” This will not end, either. In high school, one kid even asks if you are “Mulatto,” which, according to some scholars, originally meant “little mule.”

A few years later: Go on a road trip with your mom. Refuse to get out of the car at a gas station in the boondocks, because you are sure the person with the Confederate flag bumper sticker is going to realize your white mother married a black man and hurt her (and you too, being the byproduct of said union). He’s carrying a rifle on a gun rack. Now even more terrifying.

As a teenager: Be the only person of color in the majority of your Advanced Placement classes, even though there are a decent number of brown and black people at your school. For years following 9/11, get “randomly” selected for the additional screening at the airport.

In college: People assume you got into Princeton because of affirmative action. They refuse to believe it could be because you are smart.

In adulthood: Your younger brother has been stopped in his own neighborhood — the neighborhood he has lived in all his life – and asked what he could possibly be doing there.

At your workplace: For two years in a row the NYPD shows up randomly at the school you work at, which has a 100 percent minority student body. The first time the police don’t even tell the school beforehand. The cops just show up early in the morning, set up a metal detector and X-ray scanner, and fill the cafeteria with dozens of policemen. As your young students file in in the morning, the NYPD scans them like they’re going through airport security right after 9/11. They confiscate cellphones, and pat some of students down, particularly the older-looking boys. As you watch this, you feel anger welling up in your chest and almost start to cry. You think, “Why are you treating my kids like criminals?!” Children are in tears. The screenings are not due to any specific threat, but rather as part of a “random screening program” — but one that never seems to make its way to the Upper East Side. White America’s children are told they can go to college, be anything. These students are treated like suspects. And that is exactly what society will tell your children one day, unless something changes.

Today, tomorrow, every day: White people around you refuse to talk about what is happening in this country. The silence is painful to experience.

These are my experiences. They have deeply affected who I am. And I am SO PRIVILEGED. Mine has been a decidedly easy life for a person of color in America. I try to conceptualize what it is like for my students who got wanded by the NYPD, my students who have been stopped and frisked, my students whose parents work multiple jobs, my students on free and reduced-price lunch, my students whom white adults move away from because they look “scary.”

I try, when I can, to listen to them, because only by validating their feelings can we begin to find a way to overcome the challenges they face. That doesn’t mean I let them off easy when they do something wrong. But I try to understand the why.

I don’t need you to validate anyone’s actions, but I need you to validate what black America is feeling. If you cannot understand how experiences like mine or my students’ would lead to hopelessness, pain, anger, and internalized oppression, you are still not listening. So listen. Listen with your heart.

If you got this far, thank you. By reading this, you have shown you are trying. Continue the conversation, ask questions, learn as much as you can, and choose to engage. Only by listening and engaging can we move forward.

Black is Beautiful and Black Lives Matter,

Julia