Sociological Spotlight on Current Affairs in the Global Age. The few, the proud, the very rich. Sylvia Allegretto, labor economist, Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics | 12/5/11 | | Much of the current political and popular discourse has focused on inequalities that exist in the U.S. In particular the Occupy movement has brought the huge disparities in wealth to the forefront. There are a few questions floating around about wealth. First, how skewed is the distribution? Well, there is a plethora of statistics (e.g. here, here, & here) out there but here are two. But, let’s look a bit further. In 2007 (the most recent SCF) the cumulative wealth of the Forbes 400 was $1.54 trillion or roughly the same amount of wealth held by the entire bottom fifty percent of American families.
Upon closer inspection, the Forbes list reveals that six Waltons — all children (one daughter-in-law) of Sam or James “Bud” Walton the founders of Wal-Mart — were on the list. BTW the new 2011 Forbes 400 has the inherited worth of these six Waltons at $93 billion. Three ways to dissimulate the conflict between the 1% and the 99% (#OccupyWallStreet update) Excerpted from Jodi Dean: ‘After the movement was impossible to ignore, after the protesters had demonstrated determination and the police had reacted with orange containment nets and pepper spray, other efforts to efface the fundamental division opened up by Occupy Wall Street emerged. All tried to reabsorb the movement into the familiar and thereby fill-in or occlude the gap the movement installs.
Three ways stand out: democratization, moralization, and individualization. I use “democratization” to designate attempts to frame the movement in terms of American electoral politics. One of the most common democratizing moves has been to treat Occupy Wall Street as the Tea Party of the left. So construed, the movement isn’t something radically new; it’s derivative. The Tea Party has already been there and done that. This division should in no way be assimilated into Claude Lefort’s idea of the empty place of democracy.
The second mode of division’s erasure is moralization. 13 Unusual Facts About the Saddest Photo in the Great Depression Altucher Confidential. Posted by James Altucher Last night I was on CNBC’s Fast Money. Everyone seems to want to talk about the impending Great Depression: Europe fails, contagion spreads it to here, all of our banks fail, everyone loses their jobs, blah, blah, blah. The world feels like it’s ending. But it’s not. I listed my reasons why. I won’t list them again here. Look at the above photograph. Realist photography is an interesting art form as it doesn’t seek to “create” but rather to document intensity exactly as it is, without embellishment. A) you don’t need a formal education to become a huge success at a field you are passionate about.
B) you don’t need anyone’s approval to fail or to succeed. her mother wanted her to be a teacher. C) it takes suffering to recognize suffering. More facts about this amazing photograph: The year was 1936. 3. 4. 5. “I did not ask her name or her history. Right now, I feel really bad for the people who are protesting at Occupy Wall Street. 6. 7. 8. 9. #OccupyWallStreet Teach-in by William K Black: unindicted fraud and the 1% The British 1 Percent. Grand Strategy Annex - Meritocracy or birth lottery? Why ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Makes Sense: Lessons Economists Could Learn from the 99% EmailShare 0EmailShare (guest blog) by Joe Mcivor Moral Majority?
Back in May of this year, Austin Mackell wrote in The Guardian that the Arab Spring revolutions represented “a rebellion not just against local dictators, but against the global neoliberal programme they were implementing with such gusto in their countries”. He cited Egypt in particular as an example of a nation which had taken IMF loans and then promptly implemented their recommendations of substantial privatisation and cutting of services, with the usual disastrous results for the well-being of the population.
He went on to write that people in the West had so far “failed to see the people of the region as natural allies in a common struggle”. Some six weeks ago, thousands of people in New York began to try to correct this oversight. Lesson #1. Lesson # 2. There are two problems with this. Lesson # 3. India’s Middle Class Appears to Shed Political Apathy. When politics stops being "low," the middle class-fueled "progressivism" kicks in. Global Wealth Distribution. As we have discussed, from 1979 to 2007, inflation-adjusted incomes of the top 1 percent of households increased significantly versus the rest of the wage earners (i.e., the remaining 99%). Those even better off, the top 0.1 percent (the top one one-thousandth of households), saw their incomes grow 390%. In contrast, incomes for the bottom 90 percent grew just 5 percent between 1979 and 2007.
All of that income growth, however, occurred in the unusually strong growth period from 1997 to 2000, which was followed by a fall in income from 2000 to 2007. Is this wealth concentration a global phenomena, or is it a US centric? Lets go to the global data, via Credit Suisse Research Institute’s Global Wealth Databook: Source: Credit Suisse, Research Institute And as a reminder, here is the recent growth in the US data, via EPI: Source: Economic Policy Institute UPDATE: November 1 2011 12:51pm David Wilson of Bloomberg News points out that a rising Misery Indexes worsens the income-gap effect: #OWS, The Other 98%, US Uncut & Rebuild the Dream: A Look at the Shoes That Didn't Drop. Times Square, Occupy Wall Street rally, Saturday, October 15, 2011. Photo by Micah L. Sifry Here's a question to ponder: Did Occupy Wall Street succeed simply because it was non-hierarchical in method, had smart framing in tune with public anger about the economy and Wall Street, and made really effective use of social media?
If that was all it took to ignite a self-organizing movement for economic justice, then why didn't a very similar effort, called "The Other 98%," take off last year? Why didn't the US Uncut movement, a spin-off of an ongoing street protest movement in England, take off here this past winter? Why didn't Van Jones' new "Rebuild the Dream" movement, which was launched this summer with the backing of MoveOn, labor and the progressive netroots, take off?
The question of where Occupy Wall Street came from, in actual organizational terms, can be definitively answered by consulting a number of excellent write-ups that have appeared in recent days. Too negative? 1. Interview: Economist Who Co-discovered "the 99%" On The Occupy Wall Street Movement That Followed His Research | Business News. Q: What do you make of the Occupy Wall Street protesters' claims that they "are the 99 percent.
" Do you feel they are connecting – deliberately or not – with the bottom 99 percent that you have studied and written about? A: As you mentioned above, one of the most striking developments of the U.S. economy is how the top 1 percent has pulled away from the bottom 99 percent. Because the top one percent has captured about half of income growth since the 1970s, income growth for the bottom 99 percent has been only about half of the macro-economic growth we always hear about in the press. How is it possible that in a democracy the bottom 99 percent gets only half of economic growth? Q: Why do you think the Occupy Wall Street protests are happening now? A: The 2008 economic crisis was largely the consequence of deregulated finance running amok. The bottom 99 percent had not been that great. Q: What are the key causes for the substantial income gaps in the United States today?
99 Percent Movement. Nature is the 99%, too. What if rising sea levels are yet another measure of inequality? What if the degradation of our planet's life-support systems - its atmosphere, oceans and biosphere - goes hand in hand with the accumulation of wealth, power and control by that corrupt and greedy 1 per cent we are hearing about from Zuccotti Park? What if the assault on America's middle class and the assault on the environment are one and the same? It's not hard for me to understand how environmental quality and economic inequality came to be joined at the hip. In all my years as a grassroots organiser dealing with the tragic impact of degraded environments on public health, it was always the same: Someone got rich and someone got sick. In the struggles that I was involved in to curb polluters and safeguard public health, those who wanted curbs, accountability and precautions were always outspent several times over by those who wanted no restrictions on their effluents.
Democracy 101 First Kill the EPA, then Social Security. David J. Dunn, PhD: "It's the Democracy, Stupid!": The "Vague" Goals of the Other 99% Some conservative punditry has claimed to be flummoxed by the "vague" goals of the "Occupy" protests happening across the country. I will grant that there is some truth to this complaint. In their early days, "patchwork" protests often lack a clear and unified voice. Still, no one with a basic understanding of history or an ounce of empathy should be surprised or confused by the outrage of "The Other 99%. " Perhaps an example will make things clearer. For several summers I have taught a course on "Consumerism in Society" to gifted and talented teenagers. To help my students think about the way the market works, and especially how it affects real people, I have them play Monopoly. I do it this way because in many ways life is "rigged. " People are not protesting because the economy is bad.
"The Other 99%" are backed into a corner, and that is a dangerous place to be. It seems to work. They answer back with, "We die. " Libertarians usually leave that part out of their brochures. Why the 99% Can't Be Co-opted | Occupy Wall Street. Protesters at "Occupy Wall Street" camp, Liberty SquarePhoto Credit: Sarah Jaffe October 21, 2011 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. A month after it began with a few hundred people marching on Wall Street, the #Occupy movement has grown to include tens of thousands of participants throughout the country and has captured headlines around the world.
The movement can, in fact, propel significant changes. “Co-optation” or Flattery? Despite great success in capturing the public eye, the actual number of people camped out at the various occupations around the country remains relatively small. As more have signed on, some activists have been wary of outside expressions of support. How big of a danger “cooptation” actually represents is a matter of dispute. The danger of cooptation should be put in context. How the 99 Percent Really Lost Out - in Far Greater Ways Than the Occupy Protesters Imagine.
"Property is theft," French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon famously declared in 1840 - a judgment clearly shared by many of those involved in the occupations in the name of the 99 percent around the country, and especially when applied to Wall Street bankers and traders. Elizabeth Warren also angrily points out that there "is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.
Nobody. " Meaning: if the rich don't pay their fair share of the taxes which educate their workers and provide roads, security and many other things, they are essentially stealing from everyone else. But this is the least of it: Proudhon may have exaggerated when, for instance, we think of a small farmer working his own land with his own hands.
Knowledge? Take a simple example: In our own time, over many decades, the development of the steel plow and the tractor increased one man's capacity to farm, from a small plot (with a mule and wooden plow) to many hundred acres. We Are The 98% I feel little more than contempt for those who have ridiculed the "We Are The 99%" slogan of the occupy protesters. Some of these apologists for the status quo are more despicable than others. Those who have a reservation in Dante's inner circles of Hell tell us that only 13% of the 1% work on Wall Street (in finance). They thus feel entitled to conclude that the protests are misplaced and misinformed. Others who may live out eternity in Dante's upper circles say that the wealthiest Americans lost a lot of income after the meltdown, so the income equality problem is not as bad it was in 2007.
Megan McArdle, whose blog Assymetrical Information is hosted on The Atlantic's website, is one of those. I'll quote from Ms. Unsurprisingly, Occupy Wall Street have pushed income inequality to the center of the national conversation. I have no argument with any of this. But as it happens, I was back at the University of Chicago this weekend for my tenth business school reunion. On the very day Ms.