Sunday, June 10, 2012

Death of the American Dream

The inequality crisis
by Mike Marcellino

I knew something was wrong after the 1960s and 1970s when many Americans were living the dream and taking action to bring on civil rights and stopping America's longest war the Vietnam War people were living.

What happened? How did the American dream die in three decades? Well, now you and I can find out in the new book The Price of Inequality by Nobel prize sinning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz. Here's an article from Vanity Fair magazine to give you a test of Stiglitz' findings. This should help us figure out how to clear the decks, change direction and bring back The American Dream."

Well, at least this growing inequality in American may put the lid on the desire of people to immigrate to the United States. We are no longer the land of opportunity for the poor, working and middle classes. While many conservatives in American may not know the dream is dead, or care, as long as they get richer the rest of the world surely knows of our downfall.

Consider the Walton family: the six heirs to the Walmart empire possess a combined wealth of some $90 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of U.S. society.
- Stiglitz in Vanity Fair.

The 1 Percent’s Problem

Why won’t America’s 1 percent—such as the six Walmart heirs, whose wealth equals that of the entire bottom 30 percent—be a bit more . . . selfish? As the widening financial divide cripples the U.S. economy, even those at the top will pay a steep price.

Adapted from The Price of Inequality, by Joseph Stiglitz, to be published in June by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. (U.S.), and in July by Allen Lane (U.K.); © 2012 by the author.

(Excerpt from Vanity Fair)

Let’s start by laying down the baseline premise: inequality in America has been widening for decades. We’re all aware of the fact. Yes, there are some on the right who deny this reality, but serious analysts across the political spectrum take it for granted. I won’t run through all the evidence here, except to say that the gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent is vast when looked at in terms of annual income, and even vaster when looked at in terms of wealth—that is, in terms of accumulated capital and other assets. Consider the Walton family: the six heirs to the Walmart empire possess a combined wealth of some $90 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of U.S. society. (Many at the bottom have zero or negative net worth, especially after the housing debacle.) Warren Buffett put the matter correctly when he said, “There’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years and my class has won.”

So, no: there’s little debate over the basic fact of widening inequality. The debate is over its meaning. From the right, you sometimes hear the argument made that inequality is basically a good thing: as the rich increasingly benefit, so does everyone else. This argument is false: while the rich have been growing richer, most Americans (and not just those at the bottom) have been unable to maintain their standard of living, let alone to keep pace. A typical full-time male worker receives the same income today he did a third of a century ago.

From the left, meanwhile, the widening inequality often elicits an appeal for simple justice: why should so few have so much when so many have so little? It’s not hard to see why, in a market-driven age where justice itself is a commodity to be bought and sold, some would dismiss that argument as the stuff of pious sentiment.
Put sentiment aside. There are good reasons why plutocrats should care about inequality anyway—even if they’re thinking only about themselves. The rich do not exist in a vacuum. They need a functioning society around them to sustain their position. Widely unequal societies do not function efficiently and their economies are neither stable nor sustainable. The evidence from history and from around the modern world is unequivocal: there comes a point when inequality spirals into economic dysfunction for the whole society, and when it does, even the rich pay a steep price.

Let me run through a few reasons why.

Click this link for the full story by Stiglitz in Vanity Fair:

Stiglitz on the death of the American Dream in Vanity Fair magazine

I find this part rather startling. It captures just how upside down America is today:

Consider the Walton family: the six heirs to the Walmart empire possess a combined wealth of some $90 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of U.S. society.

(Many at the bottom have zero or negative net worth, especially after the housing debacle.) Warren Buffett put the matter correctly when he said, “There’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years and my class has won.”

We are now at a turning pout in the matter of the growing inequality in America, the death of the American Dream and the stagnant economy with millions jobless with the presidential election only 16 weeks away.

So, how many people are unemployed now? The Labor Department report for May shows unemployment is tuck at 8.2% with 12.7 million Americans unemployed. But that figure is grossly misleading.

And amazingly, I found the real, man on the street data in the most unlikely place: The Website of the Republican Majority in Congress. Funny, the very people who have supported policies favoring the 1%, the rich, show that the true number of American jobless or underemployed (part timers who can't find full time jobs and people who gave up looking) is 23,533,000! The Republicans of course are promoting the terrible state of the economy and unemployment in order blame it all on President Obama. Just image if Mitt Romney wins and the Republican Party now controlled with reactionary conservatives retain control of the House and capture the White House along with the Senate.

The Republicans also note that 46.2 million Americans live in poetry, the highest poverty rate in 52 years. It's mind blowing that they have the nerve to use the data showing the death of the American Dream that they, for the most part, caused.

Here's an excerpt from the Website of the Republican Majority in Congress:

15.2%: The rate of “underemployment” or “real unemployment,” including the unemployed, those who want work but have stopped searching in this economy, and those who are forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment is 15.2 percent.

12,806,000: There were 12.8 million unemployed Americans looking for work in the month of February, up by 48,000 from January.

8,119,000: The number of Americans who worked only part-time in February because they could not find full-time employment was 8.1 million. The number of people working part-time for economic reasons reached 8 million for the first time in history in January 2009 and has remained above 8 million for 37 consecutive months.

2,608,000: The number of people who are available to work and have looked for a job at some point in the last year but are not counted as unemployed because they gave up their search is now 2.6 million.

1,006,000: The number of discouraged people who stopped looking for work because they believed there were no jobs available is now 1 million.

23,533,000: The total number of “underemployed” Americans is 23.5 million, including those unemployed (12.7 million), those who are no longer looking for work (2.8 million), and those who are working part-time because no other work is available (8.2 million).

What I find rather frustrating is that President Obama has not and does not seem to be inclined to confront the causes of the growing inequality in America and death of the American Dream. He's made some off handed comments that Occupy Wall Street has a point, but he isn't making this a campaign issue, at least not yet.

I believe if President Obama does not confront the decline of America forcefully with a concrete plan of action to do something to reverse course and bring the dream alive, he will lose the election. And, if that happens, the great majority of Americans will suffer for it and American will become a second rate nation.

The time is now. The situation is critical. It's a turning point. You might say the choice is: a nation of opportunity versus a nation of Walmarts. It's just about that simple.