new study on inequality of wealth in the us...
 

this article appears in tomorrow's guardian:

A $95,000 question: why are whites five times richer than blacks in the US? | World news | The Guardian

this link takes you to a 4 pages research brief from the institute for assets and social policy at brandeis:

http://iasp.brandeis.edu/pdfs/Racial...-Gap-Brief.pdf

this link takes you to the above and some other options, including a webinar about the report:

What's New: Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP)

which i didn't check out, but there we are. it may or may not be available etc...

---what do you make of this information?
---do you think that neo-liberal social policies, which most of you associate with the "reagan revolution" were explicitly racist or were the outcomes above unmotivated by racism?
[[i know that this question is a bit on the order of "when did you stop beating your wife?" but it is nonetheless an important question...feel free to jimmy around the phrasing]]
---one thing this points to is the misdirection at the center of much us social policy over the past 30 years (no less) which was predicated on tax and other material advantages given to the most affluent which resulted in the largest migration of wealth into the top 5% yet recorded, and a discourse of equal opportunity as if class/inequality of wealth and opportunity had simply gone away. but it hadn't. what this report makes abundantly clear is that
these inequalities have gotten worse thanks to conservative-style/neo-liberal-style social policy, and that this increasing inequality tracks along classically american racial/racist lines.
do you agree with the above (which is little more than a simplified restatement of the report's conclusions)...
if that's the case, what do you think should be done?

See, I don't see race as an issue so much as wealth. I think economic segregation is the real issue.

I'm going to attempt to be academic for a moment, so be gentle.

I think it basically shows the trend that's been occurring for the last 40+ years. In this piece called "The State of Working America" these guys demonstrate how income growth has changed in the "income quintiles" from 1947-1973 and 1973-2000. In the first set, 1947-1973, the poorest quintile gained 115% while the richest quintile only gained 84%... in the second set, 1973-2000, the poorest quintile only gained 10% whereas the richest gained 61%. All that basically means that, today, rich people are getting richer much faster than poor people are gaining any ground and that it didn't always used to be that way. This isn't race specific and yet it is... it's safe to say that racial minorities occupy the lower quintiles and that Grand Old Whitey occupies the upper ranks.

I just finished reading a gnarly textbook largely dedicated to this topic. It's called "Place Matters," it's unabashedly liberal, and it's all about economic segregation in the United States. Race and wealth are pretty much one and the same in the US (generally speaking, whitey has most of the money and doesn't want to live near The Other Colors, or so the text states). In order to combat this and the related suburban sprawl (whitey doesn't want to live next to darkie, so he moves to the 'burbs because he can afford the larger lot prices and wants to avoid paying taxes for services that help low SES families), the authors suggest an approach they refer to as "regionalism." The idea involves all sorts of things, such as tax base sharing, that would never fly in the US despite the rather convincing argument the book lays out as to how it could be done and the problems it will solve.

IIRC, some of the solutions the authors suggest are:
- Limit bidding wars between municipalities, they deprive a region of tax income; the only party that wins in a bidding war is the entity being fought over
- Making education regionally equitable by providing more federal and state funding to poor areas and developing new funding standards per child
- Adjusting minimum wage to the same ratio it was back in the 1970s and adjusting the poverty line (a total joke) to a more realistic standard

Well, this is alarming.

I don't know enough about Reagan's policies to comment on them in this context, but I will say that the problem should be examined in a comprehensive manner. I suppose you could see the lines of wealth divided by neighbourhood to a great degree.

I imagine you could set up programs by neighbourhood to provide job training, education, and the like to help provide for missing skills if that's the case.

What's particularly frustrating is how people in similar jobs are paid disparately based on race. How fucked up is that? Why is that? How do we deal with that?

Systemic racism is difficult to deal with because it can be difficult to see. Well, the essential problems can be difficult to see (and influence). The symptoms? Not so much.

And to think that the measure of wealth didn't include property such as home equity. This means it is indeed far worse than it looks.

What exactly about Reagan's policies would cause such a problem in this context? Is this about the tax system?

i used reagan to indicate the period during which the cluster(s) of policies and ideological correlates for them (justifications etc) have been developed. the specific feature of the reagan period was the beginning of this lunatic idea that tax breaks for the wealthy would drive economic activity. that became an element of the "washington consensus"---which shaped all aspects of us policy one way or another until the bush people managed to mess things up so thoroughly that the frame itself came apart.

the central enabling condition seems to me, like i noted above and is noted in the study, was this conservative canard that racism was somehow a thing of the past and that remedies which had been put into place to address certain (often superficial to the extent often not about distribution of wealth or economic opportunities at anything like a structural level, but still better than nothing) aspects of the racist history of the united states were now somehow reversing and were discriminating against white petit-bourgeois types. this enabled motivated folk who push all these issues right off the political table.

it's also of a piece with the whole horatio alger ideology that the conservatives liked so much.

you'd think that the consequences of this period would be better documented as almost every aspect of it has been shown elsewhere to produce crisis-to-disaster as outcomes, from "structural adjustment" to privatization and its flip in the dismantling of social services. no interest in looking, apparently. this is what political hegemony looks like.

As noted as well, those with wealth already in hand have a head start. And when you have a tax system in place that benefits you, it's that much easier for you to build even more wealth without the annoying consequence of paying proportionately back into the social system.

The trends of Reagan's deregulatory and taxation practices need to be reversed if anything is going to be improved. Economic policies that are left at the whim of the market end up being social policies left at the whim of the market. A free market is a terrible thing around which to organize a society.

Part of the tax problem is assets are taxed at a much lower rate than income. Thus people who have only income pay more taxes on their wealth then people who have lots of assets. Also income generated via property gains is taxed at a lower rate than standard income. Finally the rich are better at avoiding taxes by gaming the system (legally and illegally).

I'm not touching this with you guys. I'll read what you say, though. Have fun.

Then why bother posting anything? In a sense, you just "touched it." And remember, this is a discussion forum.

Well, maybe if we take the word 'racism' (which is kind of a nebulous thing) out of the discussion altogether and replace it with ideas like 'disparity along racial lines' (which is an obvious thing) we can avoid the diversionary pitfalls that get dug whenever the word 'racism' is used in a political discussion.

This is an interesting study, but not one that I find particularly surprising. And I think it's probably the result of, not only a history of wealth being divided along racial lines but the history of privilege being divided as such, too. White people are better informed about smart investing and the tax system and loopholes and maneuvering through the processes of accumulating wealth? Big surprise there. How do we suppose they gained this knowledge? Friends? Family? Co-workers? Neighbors? This kind of goes hand-in-hand with this:
...which I had never really thought about before.

We've been so easily patronized by the idea that our history of racial discrimination is behind us, while so conveniently ignorant of the fact that desegregation and the civil rights movement were not events, but are processes. Ongoing processes. And if we don't wake up to that fact, then we will never put it behind us.

These topics drive me crazy. :)

This is just too hot of a topic to discuss in this environment.

Perhaps giving myself too much credit, I am a regular contributor in TP. I did want those who may have noticed an absence of the ususal suspects (again, perhaps giving myself too much credit) that I am receptive to the postings. I choose to participate by reading. I hope that makes sense and will suffice.

Well, what are the usual arguments? The "culture of poverty?"

Ah yes, "white flight." I can totally see how this happens without it being actually caused by racism. It's more or less simply a racial/class/wealth issue. Those who can buy will opt to move to the 'burbs because a) it's often cheaper (when buying as opposed to renting, i.e. compared to decent housing downtown), b) you get more bang for your buck if you do go more lavish, and c) you get away from the unsavoury elements of many downtown areas.

So the wealthy have the means to spread out to suburban areas, whereas the poor are stuck renting (for the most part) as much as they can afford, which isn't much comparatively. And what I think tends to happen is that tax dollars often favour these areas over run-down or poor areas because of the perceived "return on investment" and, likely, because of political pressure from those with influence. I don't know enough about this to say for sure, but I'd like to see information on that as well.

it's true that the preferred american mode of segregation is spatial, and i think that alot of the less...um...i want to say honest but that seems strong---less self-aware or situationally aware positions on questions of inequality of wealth and/or opportunity as it deploys along racial lines (which is also a class line) simply naturalize that spatial segregation---kinda in the way that you could easily do if you are standing on white island and look around and see only white people---if that's your context and you don't know any different, it could seem normal that where you stand literally, that point of departure for "common sense" approaches to social problems, is basically deceptive.


you have something parallel with respect to the relation of the present to the past:
in a general sense, what it seems like would be required is a sustained effort to basically transform the economic institutions that underpin american life in order to push them off what apparently remains the case---a kind of automaton repetition of the history of these institutions themselves as if that history was not implicated in racist practices in the past---and a dispelling of the illusion that history is separate from the present just because you can't see it.

and i think a politics geared around substantive equality is called for. in the recent past, we've been subjected to way too much political pseudo-philosophy from the populist right which has argued that substantive equality is communism and formal equality is what makes you free. this is of a piece with the attempts to naturalize economic hierarchy, to erase class as a variable and so forth. this slide seems a political correlate that enables folk to imagine it possible to have the most extreme economic inequalities of any industrialized country in reality on the one hand while investing in a myth of socio-economic mobility on the other. without the latter the horatio alger story would fall apart.

so there should be a shift toward arguments which say that substantive equality is the measure of freedom; equality of access to cultural opportunities, equality of access to credit equality of access to business--all of it. and you'd think this could come about as a result of an expansion of opportunities across the board. and you'd think the state would have a role to play in that. and that this might be a good time to do something based on the idea that redress of these problems is a worthwhile political objective...amongst other objectives--but as fundamental as any other objective.

specific policy thinkings i'm fighting my way through a head cold to think about.
interested in what others have to say.

This seems a bit inflammatory calling it a racial issue. Regardless of race if your economic habits are the same, your economic situation will be the same. That said, history tends to lend the advantage in wealth, as most great wealth is accumulated over time and built generation after generation. This same study could have used immigrants as a group and found similar results, regardless of race. And regardless of the nation in the studies focus.

This quote from the article link further defines the issue;

"There were also social factors, the study found. "In African-American families there is a much larger extended network of kin as well as other obligations. From other work we've done we know that there's more call on the resources of relatively well-off African-American families; that they lend money that's not given back; they help cousins go to school. They help brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, with all kinds of legal and family problems," said Shapiro."

Replace the words 'African-American' with 'immigrant' and you'll see my meaning.

I will also point out that a pool of 2000 out of 300,000,000 can be skewed to reflect anything you would like.

It should also be noted this 'inequality' is world wide, picking on America is just becoming an old pass time for the rest of the world. To which I say "Pull up your boots bitches and fix your own problems, quit wasting everyone's time worrying what others are doing."

The fix for this is not greater taxes on the wealthy or 'redistribution of wealth', it's teaching fiscal responsibility and economics. The quote above states quite succinctly, 'it's their own families dragging them down, not society'. How can anyone get ahead when you have to bail cousin Billy Bob Leroy Javier Chen out of jail every week? Or when your paying niece Cindy Lou Who's tuition, because sister Jenny Mae can't put down the crack pipe?

Is there inequality in America, you betcha. But it transcends race, creed, color, religion and International borders. It exists everywhere and in everyone. It is the only true equal opportunity and until we are all exactly the same, it always will be.


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...

You could've just said this, so we didn't spend reading the rest, which belies an ignorance of basic concepts of sociology and race in this country. To color this as a race-agnostic issue is a staple of the 'color-blind' conservatism of America, but it does nothing to address the issue.

Good old-fashioned bootstrappy conservatism, also referred to as 'blame the poor'

Putting family first. What a travesty.

The only thing to this I have to say... (and I am sure my OPINION will be reemed... but it is just that MY OPINION and this one will not change)

This is not a race issue. To turn it into one is grossly unjust and shameful. And in fact racist itself. When you turn it into a race issue it only divides people and thus no true solutions benefiting ALL PEOPLE regardless of race, will come out and the inequality of wealth and continued death of a middle class will continue. But you far lefties make sure you keep it racist, you need those votes.

This is a problem that AFFECTS most people of ALL races. I have stated for years the growing inequality and lack of opportunity that has been growing in this country. It has not been difficult to see for the past 20 odd years.

I believe one of 2 conclusions are going to happen.

A reawakening of a "Dark Ages" complete with possibole revolutions.

OR

The bottom will be hit and because this is a consumer driven economy wages will start increasing, the middle class will start growing again and prosperity will resurface.

In the past I was very pessimistic, but lately I am becoming more optimistic. (Guess that is what true love does.) The biggest problem is taking race out of the equation and getting everyone, of every race working together for the better solutions (and for the far left it is a serious problem because it is votes they need).

pan, at the risk of turning this into another discussion about how your opinion is just your opinion and is simply not up for any sort of modification or education and we're just picking on you by addressing your opinion on its merits:

Do you have any education (formal or otherwise) with regards to macro-level social change, equality, 'the achievement gap' (education), opportunity differences between races in America, 'the glass ceiling' or even 'racism'?

No offense to your opinion or anyone else with the same opinion, but I think it's a bit hard to postulate a 'solution' for a disparity of wealth, clearly drawn along racial lines, without any experience with the above, particularly exposure to 'solutions' attempted in the past that have and haven't worked. Certainly hard to make those 'solutions' credible, at least. Anyone can pontificate about how to 'solve' this problem (which, by the way, the conservative solution is "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps"), but valuable solutions are advanced by those with the experience, education or rhetoric to defend why their solution is better than any other solution. Rhetorically, why should we believe your solution has greater efficacy than a solution that addresses the issue at its root causes?

Call this your opinion if you want, but the fact remains that a greater proportion of economic disparity puts blacks at a disadvantage. There's data on that. A large population of poor in the U.S. happen to be black; you're right, they aren't all black, but many of them are. The data also reveals that fewer whites compared to blacks have the same issues with being poor or impoverished.

In other words, this was not "turned into a race issue," this is a race issue—it also happens to be a class and wealth issue. To examine these things doesn't in itself divide people...the people are already divided.

When you compare blacks to whites within the context of wealth and you see this kind of disparity, to say race isn't an issue is at the very least naive. We can't just sing "Kumbaya" to make these facts go away and just move on to making things better for the "brotherhood of man."

Why is it that whites are far more wealthy than blacks? Is it just a fluke?

Sometimes the blame does belong with the poor, specifically when they make poor choices about finances. While not true in all cases, if your poor, do you really need to buy that nice car, or the big screen TV, or other goodies that you put on your credit card? I learned a long time ago that credit should be used only when needed, and that if I really wanted something, that I'm better off to save for it than to pay 10% interest or more just to have something right now. I also learned a long time ago that I don't really need every single thing that the adman on the TV is trying to sell me.

The other thing I learned is that you live within your means and you save a little money each week. If it means going without some of the luxuries, then go without.

What should be done to fix this is mandatory education about basics of finance and budgeting, and teaching that credit is not the way to wealth.


Helping your family out is fine. If you're bailing your kid or other relative out of jail every weekend, maybe it's time to let junior sit in jail for a while and figure out what he's doing to land himself in jail so often.

---------- Post added at 05:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:33 PM ----------

The Horatio Alger concept does work. As a kid, my family was lower working class with my father out of work about half the year thanks to drinking problems. The college I could afford was a two year tech school, and the year I graduated was a recession year so I took the job I could get. My net worth at that time was zero. I lived in a couple marginal neighborhoods for a few years, but busted my butt since since I thought I could do better than that. I worked for a few years and then took a chance on applying for a new job. Again I busted my butt and got a reputation as the guy who learned quick and got things done. That resulted in my employer rewarding me with good raises and promotions to the point where I live a decent lifestyle. Not wealthy, but comfortable.

I could have taken the attitude that the state owed me things. I'd probably still be living in those marginal neighborhoods.

That I credit to my father who despite his faults taught me that if you want things you have to work for them, and that you need to be careful how you manage what money you do have.

---------- Post added at 05:49 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:43 PM ----------

This article and the pdf makes a few claims without references to back them up.

Assuming this to be accurate, one thing jumps out at me, specifically the claim about minorities paying higher interest rates for mortgages. What's the reason for that?

As a cautious lender, I'd look at the statistical history of any group that I was loaning money to. If any given group had a higher rate of defaults or late payments, you can bet your life that I'd charge them a higher rate of interest. That's part of the way interest works. You make a low risk investment, you charge less interest because you can count on getting your principal back. You make a high risk investment, you get more interest because you're less likely to get your principal back.

how strange...there's data in the op that makes a strong case that holds regardless of whether you like it or not...the arguments against the study would have to center on either (a) problems of methodology or (b) problems of data. for (a) to work it'd have to be based on an interpretation of the study. going "la la la i don't believe this and that's my opinion man" is not an interpretation of the study. the difference between "la la la i dont like this" and an interpretation centers on actually engaging with the study.

but instead what seems to be getting started is a repetition of conservative received wisdom of the past 30 years: poverty is the fault of the poor; sociological and historical factors don't matter when thinking about an issue like poverty, which following the blame-the-poor model isn't a social matter in conservative-world: it's a "moral" issue.
but what's funny is that the folk who have a Problem with sociology or a Problem with the fact that there is a society or that there is a social world won't argue against sociology. instead they try to switch the terrain onto their own well-worn "moral" or "individual" terrain and when confronted will either lather repeat or go "la la la i can't hear you."

but in this case, the data is at the start of the thread, so it hardly matters if it's your "opinion" that poverty in the united states does not disproportionately impact upon african-americans---this doesn't mean that for other social groups it's "yay poverty"---it's that the african-american community is REALLY impacted by conservative-style social policies one characteristic of which is this illusion that racism and its history is irrelevant for thinking about the contemporary social realities in the united states.

===
dogzilla: it is a bit annoying that the whole report wasn't released on the website along with the shorter versions.
mortgage rate differences have been tracked correlating lending information with zip codes. the empirical stuff is out there---somewhere i have a couple articles on this that were done comparing before and after 2002 trends. i'll look around, see if i can find them.

Again, this said it all. The rest was really unnecessary when you lead with "sometimes the blame does belong with the poor." Have you ever truthfully considered the opportunity and education you have that enables you to even make a decision about your finances?

What opportunities and education? I went to a rather run of the mill public high school in a mill town in New England. I did not take a single class on financial management of any sort. I don't think such classes were even offered. The only financial advice I got was from my father and his family, none of whom were financially well off by any stretch of the imagination.

It doesn't take too much financial skill to discover that if I buy something for $50.00 on my credit card, that by the time I've paid my credit card bill I've paid more for my purchase than if I just waited and saved my money I could have paid $50.00.

I will stand by my comment that sometimes the blame for the problems the poor have is their own behavior. I've read repeatedly about how some working class guy hits the lottery for a few million dollars and within a few years he is broke because he knew nothing about money management. I also have had poor people tell me that because I had a job and they didn't, that it was my responsibility to give them stuff. It didn't occur to them that if they wanted stuff they should start by applying for jobs.

why is it that every time a bootstrappy conservative argument is made here, it's always coupled with an anecdotal reference to "back in my day..."?

Maybe I just answered my own question

Because personal experience beats 100 surveys from sources with arguably biased agendas trying to back up the liberal viewpoint. Especially when just from observation of people around me I can see numerous examples which contradict the surveys.

So what are you saying exactly? Everyone is all right except those lazy/dumb/indulgent poor people?

In other words, an unscientific, casual survey done inside your head, you being an arguably biased conservative, is worth 100 scientific surveys performed by people who you just assume have a liberal bias because you disagree with their conclusions. Nice.

Just a wild guess: I bet you haven't even read 10 surveys on this subject and couldn't put up a persuasive argument for the existence in liberal bias in 2.

the trick is that the report is a sociological study. you cannot possibly simply equate sociological analysis with some vague "liberal viewpoint" and the pretend that the results are false. the results of this study are not new--that the distribution of wealth in the united states is far more unequal than is the case in any other industrialized country is the case. this is not new. this is not a surprise. that this inequality has extreme impacts on social mobility in reality, not in some horatio alger fantasy, is true. it is empirically the case. that these effects are bourne disproportionately by african-americans is also the case. there's no way around the data.

now if this study was the first to conclude that there are problems of unequal distribution of wealth in the united states *maybe* i'd be sympathetic to your objections. but this is **far** from the first such study. what this study isolates are the perverse effects of ideological positions like yours, dogzilla, transposed into policy. and these results are stark and unpleasant.

so your recourse is to attempt to dismiss sociological work? you're clutching at straws, methinks

The problem with YOUR personal experiences is that they are a tiny fraction of a percent of the actual population. Where as the survey in question encompasses a vastly greater number.

So one person's experience is more valuable than 100 surveys worth of data?

You failed Statistics 101, didn't you.....

The common thread I've gleaned from the types of people I know personally (good friends) and online is that the same people who believe in 'bootstrappy conservatism', the same people believe that those who are poor are primarily there by choice, those same people who believe that the poor are primarily 'Welfare Queens in their Shiny Cadillacs using foodstamps' are the same people who suffer from the uniquely American conception that their opinion is of equal value to every other opinion. They seem, again, only in my experience, to be uniquely incapable of performing the critical question of whether their opinion matches with reality, and whether their opinion is equal in value and truth (relative to objective reality) as individuals with considerable knowledge, evidence or experience in the matter.

At first I thought it was minor unawareness, that they simply were not aware of the objective data on the matter, whether in regards to AGM or evolution, or in regards to poverty, but I've unfortunately concluded (after repeated attempts at sharing the available data) that they are aware of the data, but still believe their opinion to be of greater value because they formed it themselves.

I think the most dangerous part of the American conscience is that everyone is entitled to an opinion and that all opinions are 'equal' regardless of their substance.

Note: If the sample size stated previously is accurate, it would be hard to see how these results can confirm their hypothesis. I was not able to confirm the sample size within the brief. Methodology DOES matter.

Since there are sociology buff in here: are there reports studying the choices the poor make regarding their finances? Do these choices differ along racial lines? Cultural? Immigrant, or native?

That black populations in America have been historically disadvantaged is not in dispute. What the report is suggesting is that there is a structural disadvantage in the economy against wealth creation in the poor, and that this is worse yet for those on the opposite side of the racial divide.

If being poor and black is worse than poor and white, then this is beyond a simple tax system fix. I think that it would be safe to say that the disparity is a result of culture; whose culture is, or what each culture contributes to, is the most important question to answer.

Is it a systemic discrimination by the white, the wealthy, or the white AND wealthy? Is it a cultural deficiency for overspending and financial mismanagement on the part of the black, the poor, or the black AND poor?

No, I didn't fail statistics 101, Nor did I fail statistics 102, or 201.

This particular article raises a number of questions about the validity of the research/survey. In particular the background references to the source of the data, the methodology for selecting the sample, etc.

As noted previously, the sample size is approximately 2000. How reliable is that sample in extrapolating that to 300,000,000 people? What was the economic backgrounds of the people? What was the educational background of those people? How much financial education did each of the participants have? What background information on their lifestyle choices was researched? What sort of information was gathered about each person's attitudes and behavior towards savings, spending and use of credit? Was the number of participant reasonably balanced between races at each level of economic background? What other factors were considered in explaining the difference in wealth between the races besides the assertions made in the article that taxation rates and interest rates on credit were the factors responsible for this?

If you're looking at who benefits from what tax breaks, lower income people benefit from earned income credits, child care credits, and a number of other tax credits which higher income people do not benefit from.

To make a blanket statement, as this article does that these are the reasons for the difference in net worth is not believable. To make a blanket statement as this article does that people with equivalent incomes but different races have differing net worth only because of their race and not because of other factors like spending choices and decisions about savings and investments is not believable.

I'll grant you there are differences in income between race. I'll grant you that there are cases where minorities have been discriminated against because of their race or ethnicity. Where's there's credible proof of discrimination, that should be fixed. I believe in equal opportunities and equal rights for everyone. I don't believe in special rights to make up for past offenses, especially when those offenses started to be fixed fifty years ago.

the sample is 2000 families which would make of it a pretty extensive study. what makes the dataset important is that this cohort was tracked over 23 years. so this is a dense and complicated dataset.

the question of representativeness will have to wait for the main study to be resolved if its a serious objection. personally i see at this point no particular reason to question that mostly because i see this as more a generational/temporal study.

and this is not the only such study being conducted on this generational basis.
this is potentially a huge amount of data, btw.

the central elements in the brief emphasize structural features in part because of the size of the cohort and the duration of the information that's gathered.

i've looked around a fair amount---the main study's not out yet. given the way in which the brief works, i expect that there'll be a combination of structural and anecdotal elements in the results, by which i mean that i expect there will be a fair presentation of a quite large and complicated data set.

but the outline of the research brief is pretty clear---look at the guardian article.

Wow, really? That's an amazingly complex and difficult thing to do, and extremely impressive. A longitudinal study over 23 years with 2000 families is stunning.

Yeah, putting family first is what it's all about. The legal issue must be those racist cops.

---------- Post added at 11:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:07 PM ----------

What exactly does a statement addressed to other Nations have to do with race issues in this country. Apparently you did quit reading before comprehension kicked in.

---------- Post added at 11:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:10 PM ----------

Are there some sort of special Liberal lenses I can get so I can see only what I want too?
No where did I say anything about boot straps, but some how in liberal translation, telling other nations to put on their boots and fix their own problem instead of worrying about what everyone else is doing. Has transformed to 'pull up your boot straps' and 'blame the poor'. Again, no where do I blame the poor. I in fact ask how anyone could get ahead with the financial obligation to shoulder an extended family. And only here do I make any political allusions, why, because some self righteous Liberal called me a Conservative. We all know Liberals fart rainbows and shit Unicorns, your that special blend of fantasy and ignorance that makes little girls giggle, but your reading comprehension sucks.

Now read it again, this time with comprehension, then try a rational response.

---------- Post added at 11:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:50 PM ----------

Oh and what would ever make you think 2000/300000000 or .000006% is in anyway a good cross section of the nation. :thumbsup:

That's like saying if a hair falls out of your head, the rest of you is gonna die now too. Better lie down and wait for it.

Unless you've done the calculations to determine how sample size affects study power with respect to this data, you don't know what you're talking about.

Assuming that there isn't too much variability in the data, and that there wasn't a lot of bias in the sample selection process, 2000 might be more than adequate to characterize the experiences of a significant portion of the population. It's likely a significantly larger sample size than the sample size generated by your own personal experiences.

A personal position that will never change regardless of evidence is not an opinion, but dogma.

As far as sample sizes go, 2000 families is more than enough to be representative of the country if the sampling procedure was done correctly, which I assume it was, given all the peer reviews.

I would think anyone who had a basic understanding of statistics, or statistical significance, or p-values ought to know this. Then again, even if they did.. I'd have to go back to my post above..

this is a pretty remarkable instance of collective epistemological closure---what makes it so is that there's only an ideological environment that connects these folk who cannot seem to wrap their head round this information or the perspective (in academic disciplinary terms) that it comes from. kinda makes one wonder about the effects of saturation exposure to media environments, doesn't it? and it also prompts a bit of speculation as to the psychological motives behind the fashioning of a politics that functionally denies the existence of the social. because that's what folk here who are all about attacking the sample size etc have in common: the attempt to replace images of a collective space, which is necessary a construct because the collective is simply bigger than the individual in physical/geographical terms, with some mapping of social characteristics onto a version of inner life. whence the blaming of the poor for poverty; it results from some moral or cognitive defect so is an inward matter---if there's a remedy it would come from the immediate context (family, in numerous posts above).

so it appears that an entire segment of the american electorate has for no doubt myriad reasons decided that a politics that erases the idea of a social reality is adequate for thinking about approaches to social problems and the consequences of previous approaches to social problems. it's a bit unnerving, in the way that most self-evisceration is a bit unnerving.

Since neither the article nor the pdf provide any information about the source of the data, the way the study was conducted, the specific questions asked, the background research that was done, or anything else besides what could be a predetermined conclusion that blacks are poorer because of an unfair tax system and unfavorable interest rates, the article itself is highly suspect.

Just because a publication is peer reviewed does not make it correct.

There are plenty of other reasons why groups of people are poorer than average which have nothing to do with what taxes they pay.

Poor money management skills and lack of training on fundamentals of budgeting your income are just two.

It would seem that some of you think that questioning the methods is an invalid form of comment. Nothing could be further from the the truth. Any form of empirical study can and should have it's methods probed for faults. We are at a disadvantage as the brief is not the actual report, which I assume would contain a detailed methods section. That said, in simple statistical terms, 2000 samples of 300,000,000 may indeed be enough; however, the sample is clearly not random, and the data subject to too many variables for me to necessarily believe that. How is family defined? How do you follow multiple families for a generation? How were families chosen? Were some compensated for their participation? There are too many variables not controlled, or not answered, in the brief. Methodology matters.

But, assuming the underlying study is fault free:


roachboy, no one is 'blaming the poor' for moral or cognitive defects. What, I think, most have said is that the poor (as a whole) do share some (but not necessarily all) of the responsibility for being in this position. Cultural forces for both rich and poor have driven us to a consumer, debt-ridden culture. If the tax system does favour the rich over the poor, and historically advantaged whites can maintain their assets while taking on debt; those are structural issues beyond culture.

That's right, poor people are poor because they spend all their money on new cars, big screen TV, and all sorts of crap. If they just stopped all that frivolous spending they'd have no problems making ends meet on 30k or less per year.

---------- Post added at 11:18 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:15 AM ----------

Maybe because 'questioning the methods' is the standard attack by the right on scientific research. By the time the questions are answered it doesn't matter anymore because the news cycle has already moved passed the issue. This has been the MO on the assault against global warming.

candle: i have no problem at all with questioning method. when i initially responded to your post, i noted that it was a drag that the whole thing has not yet been released...before i did that i spent quite a bit of time trawling about to see if it had been released elsewhere (like via the mcarthur) but saw nada. i did get to check out the authors of the report a bit and would suggest that you do the same. in the absence of the whole thing this is about as good as one can get in terms of markers that the methodology is likely to be legit. not necessarily perfect, but legit.

your main point is to the side of objections about method, however---it's more about sociological approaches in general and the objection comes down to: it's difficult to account for particularities in an aggregating or statistically based approach. to which one can only say...well sure. but that's not an objection against any particular social-scientific approach because it can apply to any of them. the anecdotal gets left out. that doesnt invalidate anything. it's merely a state of affairs.

structural problems, like the explanations for the stagnation of african-american wealth under 30 years of conservative economic domination, are simply the weight of history and actions shaped by that weight. the lack of access to credit and to opportunities to own and operate businesses that had been visited upon african americans out of "custom" continue to impact on the distribution of wealth. these are not magical or "extra-cultural" matters. they are institutional effects that have to be confronted in order to be reversed. nothing about conservative-dominated social policy or thinking about social policy gets anyone anywhere near doing that. and the evidence in this brief simply points out that there are consequences which follow from that, and that these consequences are kinda ugly. and big. hard to ignore. you know.


the basis for the critique

I never claimed all poor people were poor because they blew their money on silly things. Some people. Other people are poor because of large families, lack of interest in developing real job skills, etc, etc. Claiming all poor people are poor because of frivolus spending makes just as much sense as the claims in this brief that all the poor black people are poor because of high taxes and interest rates.

I learned a long time ago to not blindly accept the assertions in any publication, especially one which provides no backup information or explanation of sources. Otherwise you're likely to believe in nonsense and fairy tales like the ones postulated in this brief.

The problem isn't with questioning the methodology per se. That is actually what people are supposed to be doing.
The problem is with questioning the methodology without having read the description of the methodology or understanding even elementary statistics just because one doesn't like the results.

Another note on methodology: there is a glaring inconsistency in blindly questioning the sample size used in a particular instance of clinical research whilst at the same time taking as gospel the stuff you've personally experienced, which has a much smaller sample size.

For instance, the statement: "There's no way that 2000 people could be representative of 300,000,000, but I find my own personal experiences with the small and highly biased sample that is comprised of people in my vicinity to be an incredibly compelling representation of 300,000,000 people." Or stated another way, "I saw some poor people doing this thing once, and so that other, more rigorous study about poor people can't possibly be true."

If one is going to pull the methodology card, one ought to do so in regards to one's own perspective and not just in regards to research whose conclusions rub one the wrong way.

There's gotta be some unstated caveat here, like 'families with children' or 'massive medical bills'. If a single person with unexciting problems can't find a comfortable buffer zone with 30k a year, then yeah, frivolous spending is probably the culprit.

And I don't understand why I need to qualify my opinion on anything other than my life experiences and that which my friends have experienced and shown me. Especially when I state it is nothing more than MY opinion. I did not qualify it as that of a scholar or expert on the subject. But my opinion and belief determines my vote far more than any article that can I am sure somewhere be rebutted by a different source just as respected.

I didn't know in order to have an opinion on anything I need a degree or college credits in the subject.

That's one of the problems here, in TFP and political debate in general. People allow their emotions and experiences to determine their opinion. Then you have those who want to be all holier than thou by asking, "what credentials do you have to have such an opinion? You can't have an opinion that will be taken seriously without a laundry list of credentials, links and proof." Thus.... people leave, get turned off and dig further into their beliefs and become more and more defensive and less likely to change their mind or find some type of compromise. This then leads to further partisanship and more of a divide in the nation.

You can disagree all you want, I will allow your opinion and listen to it. I am sure you have the required laundry list to have such an opinion. Then again.... wait a minute... I don't... fuck so my opinion doesn't matter.

Pan, I don't think anyone here is saying your not entitled to your opinion. But when someones opinion is proven wrong(not speaking about this particular discussion, but debate in general) and they still cling to that opinion, the discussion really can't go any further because some people cling to their opinions even when they have been proven to be utterly incorrect.

It is frustrating to talk to someone who can't achknowledge when they are wrong. (not speaking about you, just people in general)

I was unaware that an opinion could be classified as "wrong".

If you believe a thing, and that thing is incorrect, that is called "wrong".

No, if you base an opinion on erroneous facts - the facts are wrong. The opinion is neither right nor wrong. It is simply an opinion.

you cannot be serious. an opinion is a position taken on the basis of information. all aspects of it can be wrong--the information can be wrong, the interpretation can be wrong and the position itself can be wrong.

unless you take opinion to really be a device that enables a reversion to some infantile state in which your desires rule everything because you can't distinguish inside from outside.

it's funny to me that this discussion is happening in a thread that's about a sociological study on the patterns of inequality in the distribution of wealth in the united states. it's not like the problem of inequality in the distribution of wealth is new. it's been a characteristic of american-style cowboy capitalism for the whole of its sorry existence--cowboy capitalism reversed trends that were in place after world war 2 which tended toward a somewhat more equal distribution of wealth. the irony of the politics which sold cowboy capitalism is obviously the extent to which its memes appealed to people who were far from being the principal beneficiaries of the massive flow of wealth into the hands of the top 5% and away from everyone else. most folk who are **really** committed to the mythology of cowboy capitalism are properly speaking the victims of exactly the unequal distribution of wealth and educational and cultural opportunities that they champion. go figure.

given that, it's doubly ironic to find folk from the right (or who are ultra-right but deny that it's the case) defending know-nothing positions. made a fool of by the ideology they defend, they process things by denying reality, denying information which generates dissonance. the apex of this is:

"this is my opinion and because it's my right to have an opinion it necessarily follows that the opinion i have is correct."

that's just nutty.

An opinion is neither right nor wrong... it is drawn off life experiences, the education and the experiences and influences of those close.

THAT is an opinion.

It does not have to be "qualified" or it would be called a "qualified" opinion. An opinion is simply someone's belief.

And look for the last time because obviously you are missing something. When you degrade or tell someone their opinion/belief is LESS than... for whatever reason, it in NO WAY promotes a debate where respect, dignity and openness can thrive. Once an opinion is dismissed or degraded, the person automatically takes a defensive and it's over... you will NEVER get them to change their minds. They may because of other sources but I can almost guarantee it wasn't because of the degradation of their opinion.

Why do you think Limbaugh, Beck, Maher, Moore, Sharpton, whomever are so successful... because they alienate those whose opinions are disagreeable and give safe haven for those with a like opinion. They play on people's emotions, beliefs and opinions... AND THAT'S THE PROBLEM.... there is no mutual respect of opinion, no trying to reach a positive compromise... one side demands the other takes their stand and neither side will back down because there is NO RESPECT for the other's opinion.

When opinions are shared, respected and talked about... BOTH sides learn and can respect the other. If that sharing, respect and dignity isn't given... there will be no true resolution.

Is it really that fucking hard to understand?

Can't believe people are arguing that opinion has to be based on education and fact before they can respect it. I guess that's your opinion and I respect it ... but it's fucked up. Now how do you feel.... all defensive and a bit angry "how dare pan dismiss my opinion that way. I'll show him".

Exactly my point.

So, I did a brief study of the poorest 10 cities over the past 30 years. For the record, these cities all had over 50% minority (Black, Latino) populations, so they seem relevant to the thread.

America's 10 Poorest Cities - ABC News

I looked at which major political party ran those cities for the past 30 years. It takes a bit of legwork, but you can trace a city here The Political Graveyard and then look up the mayor/counsel members on that site as well as several places, including wikipedia.

Then I looked at which major political party ran those states for the past 30-35 years.

Results: In the cases of the cities which I traced, Democrat councils and mayors ran those towns for 80% or longer over the past 30-35 years. In some cases, it was impossible to find party affiliation, so I left that leader out. Below is a listing of the cities, their current mayor's party, and the % of time they've had a Democrat for Governor over the last 35 years.

Please forgive the formatting. It looks correct in edit mode, but won't render with the correct spacing on the page.

City Current Mayor % Time Democrat Gov
Pine Bluff, Ark. Democrat 66%
Albany, Ga Democrat 80%
Macon, Ga. Democrat 80 %
Rocky Mount, N.C. Democrat 80%
McAllen, Tx Democrat 20%
Brownsville, Tx Democrat 20%
El Centro, Calif. Democrat 30%
Yuma, Ariz Republican 61%
Saginaw, Mich. Democrat 43%
Flint, Mich Democrat 43%

Hopefully, my facts will not be proven erroneous.

There have been opinions made by members that, what are traditionally Republican policies are responsible for the disparity of wealth. However, this sampling seems to indicate that, at best, the leadership was shared. At worst, it was actually 30 years of Democrat policy which has produced the 10 poorest cities.

Feel free to correct my facts or suggest why they may not be relevant. I would appreciate a level of civility in discussing this.

So let me get this right. It's alright to support an incomplete, undocumented preliminary study, but it's not alright to question it?

If disagreement bothers you so much, I suggest medication. Life is full of disagreements, you will always have to deal with them and most people are not going to be swayed to your point of view. Most will move further from your view the harder you push.

As has been stated, there is no documentation of the group making it impossible to verify. They could have cruised through Compton, canvased a 2 block area, moved on to Pacific Palisades for a sample then started their study. Or they could have formed a pool from through out the country based on finances, family, work, education, legal and an assortment of other financially impacting issues. Divided that pool into similar groups, then selected equal samples from each group. Or anything in between, but we don't know, do we.

As far as personal observation goes, having lived in 45 cities in 15 states and two foreign countries gives me a little more than your average Jose. I can safely say my personal cross sampling of the nation is far greater than this study entails and I would want much more info scientifically before making statements as they have. Knowing little about statistics is still enough to know, the larger the sample, the more accurate the result.

This thread and this nation would be going so much better if people did question more, instead of blindly following something because they think the source is an authority. Authorities make mistakes, no ones education is complete and having an education in a particular field does not make you an expert. It just makes you think you are one, which is more dangerous than not having a clue. Blindly following party lines is what is destroying this nation. Making assumed accusations of ones party association and through that assumption, assuming their values, is just infantile.

cimmaron: i have no problem at all with that information. none. but that may follow from seeing very little in the way of difference between moderate democrats and republicans, particularly during that unfortunate period of neo-liberal hegemony---here it was called "the washington consensus" when it was called anything at all--you know markets are rational and all that. i emphasize the role played by republicans because, well, historically they were at the forefront of constructing neo-liberalism and selling it. democrats like clinton were moderate republicans. policies at the federal level are significant constraints on what states and cities can do, given the role the federal government plays in allocating monies. so neo-liberal federal policies constraint states and cities to move in parallel ways.

personally, i see the problem as following from way too much conservative economic domination, but that doesn't parse the way you'd like. the policies that would be required to address these structural inequalities are social-democratic in nature. and i have no problem with that.

sadly i have to work at the moment.

I appreciate the response and I understand your point. Sadly, I have to work as well. Well, not sadly. I'm actually happy to work right now!

You're wrong.

The most dangerous part of the American conscience is that everyone is entitled to an opinion and that all opinions are 'equal' regardless of their substance.

I just found this and haven't gone through much of it:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr48/nvs48_16.pdf

There are some disturbing trends here, as well.

Probably not, people here in politics seem to have thicker skin than some who throw hissy fits whenever someone disagrees with their opinion, and scream 'personal attack, personal attack' anytime some disagrees with them, but meh, seems to be the usual.
Well, you see pan, this is a discussion forum, where sources generally come in handy to help people see what you're going on about, otherwise well we're debating your opinion, and we all know if we question that, it ends in another victim act, we've all seen the movie here before, don't question pan, he'll scream 'attack, attack', so you'll have to forgive people if they suddenly start ignoring you and your 'opinion'

Pan, an opinion can absolutely be right or wrong. If your opinion is that 2+2=6, that would be wrong. I wasn't singleing you out, I was merely trying to convey how a discussion/debate works. You can have opinions all you want, but when you inject them into a discussion that is involving facts/studies/surveys, your "opinion" really has no relevance unless you can provide some sort of basis for it. Without validating your opinion it is meaningless. You seem to have completely missed the point of my previous post and taken it personally for some reason. It was not an attack on you. It was basically a definition of opinion, as well as a definition of discussion.

it is my opinion that the sky is green and dogs can fly.

this opinion is as valid as yours.

USA! USA! USA!

It's my opinion that it's rather sad that this thread is turning into a nonstarter based on a denial of evidence.

I dunno. Maybe blacks in the U.S. are doing just fine. I wouldn't want to be a racist by accepting evidence suggesting otherwise.

I don't deny that there are poor people and wealthy of all races. What I don't buy is the attitude that somehow the major reasons for this is that minorities are taxed unfairly and charged interest rates that are too high.

There's dozens of other reasons for people to be poor, but it seems to be politically incorrect among the liberals to admit that the poor might bear some responsibility for their status.

Taxation and interest rates might not explain why many are poor in the first place, but it explains why the gap is growing, which I think is the point.

I don't disagree, but I think many reasonable liberals will understand and value personal responsibility, but this can only get you so far. When you have so many external factors stacked against you, it can cause a lot of problems. I think one point to be taken from the study is that there is less economic friction if you already have wealth in the first place and that there is undue friction when you don't. Though I suppose it could be argued that the friction isn't undue at all, but that's another story.

I don't agree with that either. Conduct a similar survey with highest level education achieved and track income from 20 years after date of final graduation and I think you would see a similar spread. I'll bet if you did a survey based on the discipline four year degrees were awarded for, you would see a similar spread.

so this ludicrous sidebar concerning opinions about opinions on opinions and how differences in opinions about opinions about opinions are ruining america aside....

we still have the same refusals to engage from some folk on the right, and this despite the fact that the moves have been pointed out repeatedly in this thread: the premises for a data-based study do not conform to either the anecdotal experience or hunches of conservatives then the study must be wrong; arbitrary assertions of political biais---and i mean arbitrary in this case---transposed into assumptions transposed into a device to dismiss data that does not sit well with conservative predispositions, onto which is tacked yet another claim concerning what it is that's destroying america; attempts to dismiss the entire discipline of sociology; and lots of crying victim from conservatives when their gambits don't work.

what's lost in all this of course is the actual study.
so this study concludes that wealth---which they define quite exactly and which excludes house ownership, which no doubt would have made the results worse---is distributed in a radically unequal manner in the united states. that inequality--which is by far the worst in the industrialized world, and which is roughly compatible with that of guatemala--- sadly--and to our collective shame--runs along racial lines. so taken collectively, within a context that disadvantages ALOT of people, african-americans fare *far* worse than whites. period. full stop.

1. what are the motives that animate folk from the right to pretend this data--which is not out of nowhere, which does not break with previous data about the distribution of wealth in the united states once you look at reality as it is and not as conservatives would prefer to pretend that it is---what is the motivation behind pretending this data must be wrong?
what are you defending when you make that move?

2. what do you think are the *policy* explanations for this inequality in the distribution of wealth? what are the structural explanations for it?

aside:
conservative ideology don't allow folk who take it on to like the idea of structure--or history for that matter--this because structures are expressions of history, the histories of institutions, the histories of populations with respect to institutions---conservative ideology doesn't make it easy to think about the opacity of the world, the opacity of the present, the extent to which human beings are not transparent to themselves, the extent to which the present is conditioned by the past. the folk who buy into that ideology prefer to perform the effects of these relations entirely unconsciously because they prefer to pretend they are somehow extra-social beings, outside processes of conditioning or socialization and outside of history--all this because they can't see any of these factors and can't know them without a degree of abstraction. and because of the way the educational system operates and because of the unequal distribution of wealth and opportunities---which affects ALOT of people, but disproportionately african-americans--the capacity to work in or with abstractions and/or to correlate statistical information, isolate regularities or patterns of action or interactions and to interpret them tends to be a specialized affair.

and because alot of conservatives do not like what this sort of information says, do not like what it leads to, do not like the kind of reflexivity that knowing your actions are conditioned by history forces onto you, they prefer to act as though this kind of information is a weapon fashioned to persecute them, to disrupt their opinions man, to push them out of the smug reliance on some immediate common sense which is useful when you're figuring out what orange juice to drink or what's happening in your immediate surroundings on the relatively superficial level of the "present" but doesnt help at all to think about what conditions that "present" and still less to think about what conditions the "common sense" that lives in the superficial variants of the present...superficial because this present is seen as self-contained.

it isn't.

enough of that. i feel a little better for having said it like there's at least something of a response to the "i dont like it so it can't be true" responses.

the ludicrous opinion about opinions about opinions digression aside.

===

cimmaron: i'll get back to the argument you're building.

Maybe the average wealth for African-Americans is lower than whites. I'll take your word for it. Cities like Detroit have problems. Other inner city areas of large cities have problems.

What I don't buy is the claim this brief makes that the predominate reasons for this are unfair taxes and interest rates, especially to the exclusion of other reasons, some of which are self-imposed.

This chatter sounds like a solution looking for a problem. If there's enough chatter from the liberal camp about this poorly structured brief and others like it, that turns into an 'Oh my God, we have to do something to help those poor people' and my taxes go up. In the meantime, wealthy liberal hypocrites who think it's society's job to help the poor continue to accumulate their millions, or in some cases billions.


Seriously? I don't think the welfare programs helped much at all, with the problems of multi-generational welfare in the 70's and 80's, either the incentives for it to be easier for black males to walk away from their families, or the disincentives for them to stay married.

As an aside, the victimhood of African-Americans is getting rather old after 50 years. Want to see to real victims? Check out the Native Americans. Been to places like northern New Mexico or northern Arizona anytime lately? Why don't we hear much about them?

You call it an aside, but:

This was the best part. It's spot on.

And unfortunately I empathize, simply because I was a bootstrappy liberal long before any education in sociology or the conditions of the past that make the conditions of the present and how we're not simply products of our immediate desire like the naiveté of ignorance would have us believe.

Again, who the fuck said that it is not alright to disagree with the study? The problem is when someone disagrees with the study without having even read what they are disagreeing with because they don't like the conclusions.

And if this is the position people are going to take, debate is useless, because then we are talking about faith and not science.

You don't agree with what? That there are tax advantages to you when you manage financial assets in certain ways? That by having few or no assets means you only have access to high-interest credit, loans, and mortgages? What exactly about that don't you agree with? Because these things do indeed cause the gap to widen. How do they not?

Can you explain this further? I'm not sure what you're getting at.

See in these cases... facts, studies and surveys are ALMOST ALWAYS open to interpretation and one side will bring in their facts/studies and surveys.... and the other side theirs and then it becomes a pissing match as to who's is more accurate... which leads us back to OPINION.

True debate is my saying I don't believe this and here's why. Then the other side says... ok but I disagree here and here and this is why. Then you exchange ideas look at facts/surveys/studies together and instead of putting the other down, you find a way to compromise to benefit all people.

That maybe pollyanna to some of you but up until Reagan, that was pretty much how things got done in Washington with respect and the Clinton years it just got totally out of hand and has gotten exponentially worse now to where it's all about getting power so that you can put forth your agenda without compromise.

But of course what do I know. I don't have the poli-sci doctorates that many on here seem to act as if they have. I'm just a guy with an opinion who was told it doesn't matter because I didn't qualify it and it has no meaning.

Again... you wonder why this forum (politics) is dying..... right there is your answer. There is no true debate or exchange of ideas it's a pissing match and probably always has been just it has gotten worse and worse because people are no longer allowed to share their views without having to qualify them. So keep arguing the same shit and playing the games and losing more and more people and believing you won. Sad thing about your winning... TFP loses a great part of it's whole.

Jesus christ pan, STOP CRYING VICTIM. I have never singled you out.

I agree that taxes and interest rates have an effect in some cases. I don't agree with the claims these are the predominate reason for the gap.

It just occurred to me to actually look up the federal tax rates on income and capital gains. Until your income exceeds $34K this year, your income tax rate is actually lower than the rate on capital gains taxes. Add in various tax credits and the rates are even lower.

Income tax rates:

http://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm

Capital gains tax rates

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital..._United_States

That doesn't look to me like poor people are paying higher tax rates.

What I'm suggesting is to track the incomes of people with high school diplomas, associate degrees, bachelor degrees, etc over 20 years and that you will see that those with lesser education don't fare as well as those with advanced degrees. The same idea that some disciplines result in more income growth over time than others.

Where did I say you singled me out? Where am I crying victim?I just answered you post with .... my opinion.

But see, you, and several others find that it is easier when you cannot debate or realize that you can't shut me up to start with this BS.

Again, where did I say you singled me out? Where did I do ANYTHING but reply to your comment to me?

Did YOU or did YOU not type the above quote^^^^?

I answered that with this:

It's not crying foul or victim.... it was just in reply to your saying unless I validate my opinion is meaningless.

Really pan, that's why it's dying, it has nothing to do with some people who go on emotional rants with no substance to back them up, then cry 'personal attack, personal attack' or 'quit degrading my view' at every opportunity when someone disagrees with them, or generally acts like a child and throws temper tantrums quite frequently when people don't agree with what they have to say, the funny part is you probably don't even see any of those being an issue or a problem, to you everyone else is the problem, 'oh I want true debate', yet how does true debate come from something like:
So you see pan, look in a mirror sometime, rather than thinking you know all about why this place is dying, you may just find yourself and your emotional rants and your victim act part of the problem.

But what do I know, I'm just some guy who's on your ignore list because he 'personally attacks pan', funny thing is, never even been warned for these apparent 'attacks', so I reckon all these others you imagine are just in your head as well.

Sorry for the threadjack, just getting tired of every thread pan posts in turning out to be about himself, and how much of a victim he is, I've seen that movie, know how it ends, but maybe the ending will change someday.

dogzilla:
again with the phantasms. again with the victimization. again with the reconstruction period politics of petit bourgeois white resentment. the lynchpin of the politics of resentment (to be polite about it) during the reconstruction period (you know, just after the civil war) was aimed at the attempts on the part of the federal government to provide some sort of compensation or head-start or transition from slavery into "freedom" (in quotes because, well, you know this is capitalism and freedom is mostly formal unless there's something like equality of condition)...which alot of white petit-bourgeois saw as taking something from them. this resentment was only racist in its consequences except when it was racist in its form and content. the line was often floaty. i suppose it would have depended on the question, on who you asked and how you asked them.

anyway, it's the same thing with contemporary politics of petit-bourgeois resentment. any attempt to redress structural problems with the american social arrangement, problems which are reflected in massive inefficiencies, labor market incoherences, stifling of innovation, a collapse of any meaningful democratic process behind the weight of an entirely anti-democratic social arrangement, which could not be otherwise because the inequality in the distribution of wealth translates in spatial segregation translates into wildly uneven access to educational opportunities translates into multiple levels of effective citizenship translates into an enormous squandering of human potential, one that has to be visible even at the rah rah america level, or would be were the rah rah america types not so sure that the problems are the fault of the people squeezed through this ridiculous, untenable, unethical stratified system---it's reflected in levels of social violence (and ultra-right gun fetishism is perhaps a recognition of it, but one routed through a refusal of the social and flipped onto an illusion of Heroic Individualism)--its reflected in health problems--and it's reflected in the fading of american empire because a dysfunctional system cannot hold itself together by exporting its pathologies for long...

but hey, no problem is so great that it justifies raising your fucking taxes.

Well since I looked up federal tax rates and see that the lowest income tax bracket, for those earning less than $34K is lower than the capital gains tax rate, and low income tax credits offset that even more, the argument that poor African-American's taxes are too high is nonsense.

Since wealthy liberals are bound and determined to hang onto their wealth instead of using to solve a problem they seem to think is so important, I'll join them in holding on to what wealth I have.

Since there's many other reasons for being poor besides high taxes and interest rates, the other main argument of this brief is nonsense.

Since I don't believe the government has any business redistributing wealth, they can keep their hands out of my pockets, especially for a non-problem.

so for you there's no need to engage with any data about unequal distribution of wealth or think about the consequences of the existing inequalities in the united states---which are very considerable and which affect you----because you work with an a priori assumption that the state has no business redistributing wealth.

and the enormous list of services that you are likely to support, from a standing military to roads, all of which rely upon a redistribution of wealth....?

or are things ok but not people?



what's clear is that you don't like taxes. but that's not really a politics, any more than my saying i don't like marzipan is. it's an aesthetic preference.

rb - I guess my biggest challenge is understanding whether there is any room in your position for exploring some other influences. How much of the current disparity do you attribute to government/business policy and how much do you attribute to internal cultural influences? Obviously, this takes it to antecdotal realm and there has been a lot of strife in here surrounding opinions and facts and such. So, if you'd prefer not to go here, I'm fine with that. In reading through your posts, they present almost as if you are suggesting "If we just throw more money at the problem, it will go away." I don't think you believe that, so perhaps some insight would clear up my confusion. Thanks

If the problem were entirely caused by cultural behavior and poor people simply being terrible at managing their finances, would it make it less of a problem? The trend here seems to be that it's simply not a problem, not that it is a problem but there may be different ways of solving it.. dog has made it clear in his position, at least, that it's a non-issue (for him) and so no solution is necessary.

I for one am shocked to hear someone with privilege talking about how problems for people with less privilege are simply not his concern and/or simply not issues. /s

first off, cimmaron, spare me retro-cliches like this:

which has nothing to do with anything that i actually have said in this thread.
when i made this, the last thing i would have expected is to find myself 80 posts in having spent alot of time fighting of conservative phantoms and/or boogeymen and almost none talking about the actual topic.
so forgive me if i'm a bit tired of it and want to make that move stop.


i think the core of the problems, the space from which most depart and one way or another seem to return to, lay with the history of the united states since the reconstruction, in the fights that were waged against federal attempts to redistribute land, for example, to the african-american population after the end of the civil war. this was at the origin of the southeastern right's obsession with states as a theater of conflict. knowing that their often racist politics would get shot down at a national level even in 1870... so it lay in a regressive-to-racist politics in the southeast triggered by apparent status anxiety by petit bourgeois whites.

it lay in the development and repetition of patterns of spatial segregation by class and race, a pattern that repeated across several reorganizations of capitalism and so is more a quirk particular to the us. spatial segregation is a real problem: what you don't see doesn't exist, yes? that's the "common sense" approach. spatial segregation coupled with local control over school funding has generated enormously bad results for a whole spectrum of people---but folk prefer to pretend somehow that the educational system in the united states is a meritocracy---and conservatives who have some Problem with the notion of the public just as they have a problem with the social and a problem with history pretend that privatizing the problem will solve it. but that's about diminishing the quality of education in order to produce more conservatives, in my view, all this "voucher" shit.

it lay in long-term patterns of discrimination as to credit and ownership, long term policies aimed at treating the african-american population as a management issue.

so we collectively, socially, reap what we sow.

the insistence on trying to locate some "internal cultural factors" disconnected from reference to the history that shaped them, that they repeat, is just an attempt to blame the population for the effects of the policies that have conditioned them as a population--in other words, the same old conservative nonsense.

i have tended for a long time to find the message of people like malcolm x a whole lot more coherent than that of mlk---without substantive economic reorganization, the united states is an oligarchy in which people walk around bragging about how free they are by centralized command. so i think to address these problems--the general problem of the inequalities in the distribution of wealth and the disproportionate effects of this inequality on african-americans, will require a significant socio-economic reorganization.

which would start with a wholesale rejection of everything about neoliberal ideology.

i'm at work, so this is a kind of preamble. i doubt i'm the only person who thinks along these lines tho, so feel free to add stuff or change stuff or write something else.

No need to add any more on my account.

well, that's interesting isn't it.

undoing the effects of material history is far more difficult than undoing the effects of some set of shared dispositions which, if they exist, don't come from anywhere outside the group to which they're attributed. it gets ugly, difficult, problematic.

and you should perhaps know that if the above is correct and structural characteristics that shape the material situation outlined in the report that's way back there in the op derive from history, they also derive from particular internalized relations to that history, internalized relations which are generated by contexts, by the educational system, by opportunities which may or may not exist (spatial segregation makes it hard to talk in general terms...spaces differ one from the other)

in my more residual left moments, i would say that alot of what the right would attribute to essence i would be inclined to attribute to domination, an effect of domination. what that would lead to would be an idea that this domination could be reversed to the extent that its consequences or effects could be recognized and the chain of repetitions potentially broken. but i don't know whether that's naive or not.

to go much further would require going back through the brief again to look for the specific features it references and think about what might be done to alter them. as if it were up to me to fashion alternatives. fact is that no alternative would happen all at once. nothing happens all at once--everything is a process & every process changes with the environments they interact with. so pragmatically it should be enough to agree politically that this unequal distribution of wealth is a problem, something important enough to address, and to fashion attempts to deal with it and put them into motion.

but it seems everyone is so timid these days, so worried about the way things play on a tv news cycle temporality--so policies become like toasters and problems something you stick inside that toaster and something either happens or it doesn't. but that's itself part of the problem, yes? this tiny time-frame people work with that reduces processes to objects and being to having...

but i digress.

ok cimmaron: your turn.

rb - I've added some material to expand the discussion, I've asked for some clarification of points/positions. I'm not getting involved beyond that. Sorry.

So I take it that you tell the government "thanks, but no thanks" every time they provide you something that's paid for with rich people's tax money, right?

He paves his own street and built his own school, fire department and post office, thank you very much.

What privilege? As I posted earlier, I started my career at the lower end of the income scale. Not once did I get any kind of government assistance. After working a few years an opportunity to switch jobs occurred and I took the chance. Between on the job training and my own time learning new technology and keeping my job skills current (not one day in a university classroom in the last 20 years), I busted my butt to make myself valuable to my employer. The fact that I have been employed thru several recessions since 1974 and a number of layoff cycles at my employer in the last 20 years means I have some value to my employer.

So, unless you have some kind of disability that prevents you from working, I don't owe you a penny. If you made a career choice that you wanted to do something that you enjoyed but didn't pay well, that's an honorable lifestyle choice. But you made your choice and I don't owe you a penny.

---------- Post added at 05:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:37 PM ----------

Actually, being one of the 54% in this country that pays income taxes, I have paid for the roads, etc. It takes me until sometime around the beginning of April each year to pay my federal, state and local taxes. That's 1/4 of my paycheck. Now do you see why I have a problem with paying for people who think the government has to redistribute income?

Presumably you attended a public school? travelled by road to and from said school? Slept soundly through the night with the benefit of police protection? Didn't have to worry about fire destroying your whole block?

There are others, but I believe those sufficient to make my point, which is: What are those things if not government assistance?

That doesn't sound much like privilege to me. Pretty much everyone in the US has access to all of these, which fall within the basic responsibility of the government, basic education, public safety and national defense. Roads and such should be covered by use fees. If some service is not sustainable, it goes away.

I'm not sure you know what 'privilege' means. No fault to you, based on your self-described history, but it's far more than warm meals and beds to sleep in.

Make it through this, if you can. It's an excerpt based on the timeless essay by Peggy McIntosh..

Alas, a blog The Male Privilege Checklist

This is simply male privilege. There are a number of privileges associated with being white, too.

Think about it sometime. Privilege is the counter-point to 'bootstrappy' conservatism, but it's unfortunately largely ignored by those who'd benefit most from understanding it.

McIntosh's "Invisible Knapsack" if you're interested: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html

All of these things contribute to socioeconomic status, whether we like it or not. It's par for the course to excerpt individual points and say "ooh, but *I* didn't have *that* privilege" to discredit it, but understand that privilege acts on a society-wide level, and your individual experience does not a case against systemic inequality make.

I didn't mean to say it was privilege and perhaps should have removed that part of the quote as well. My point is that you did, in fact, receive government assistance in the form of schooling and public safety (etc.). It's pretty blindingly obvious that nearly everyone does in some combination. What I presume you're against is unfair or unwarranted governmental assistance, which I also suppose everyone is against.

So then the question moves on to the idea of whether or not certain social programs do or do not provide unfair (or unequal) assistance. Certainly they do, and one of the ways they divide up the assistance unequally among children is through education and access to quality public schools. Lower class children have less access to quality education, lower quality of education leads lower class adults which, naturally, have lower class children.

I have more thoughts on this, but they can wait until morning.

I guess it's about time to get around to finishing my thought...

Children do not receive equal opportunity growing up. There are differences public safety, education, financial resources, etc. Which I suppose I could support if the results were solely as a result of the affluence of the parents, but it isn't. The system is set up in such a way that the assistance government provides reinforces the advantages of affluence. Kids of affluent parents in the burbs get safer, higher quality schools that provide more services in the form of extracurricular activities. The also get safer neighbourhoods, better parks etc.

As for connecting this back to the OP, given the history of blacks in this country it is unsurprising that they should have considerably less wealth and assets than whites. A mere two generations ago the entire population was dumped into the very lowest class and then through structural reinforcement the vast majority then remained there (as most of their white counterparts in the lowest class did as well).

What is interesting, which I don't currently have an explanation for (other than racism is alive and well) is why the gap is maintained within the same class.

I can't seem to find it now, but whoever posted that we should have mandatory financial education in school hit the nail right on the head.

This is the problem - people don't know what the fuck to do with their money when they have it, even if they only have a little. I don't represent 2000 families studied from 1984 to the present, so take this as you will - but I've seen in my own experience many many examples of people with "a little bit" of money, say five hundred bucks, go out and buy a new TV or something rather than use it in a more constructive way such as investments or groceries. Then, when they've got the "thing" that they wanted, they're back to zero. Anyone else know anyone in this situation? They call it "living paycheck to paycheck."

It's easy to say that parents should teach their own kids about finances. Well that's fine, if your parents are financially-savvy and not poor and destitute. Clearly if you are not good at something you shouldn't teach someone else how to do it and expect them to succeed. Hell you could say that parents should teach their own kids about history, or math, or science, also, but many parents don't know much about those subjects either, that's why we have school.

Mandatory financial education would go a long way towards closing the gap. Wouldn't change things overnight, but it damn sure would make a difference in the long run. Hell, in my own life, it wasn't until after I started seeking financial education that I was able to put together a plan to increase my wealth and stop being a poor, in-debt and frusterated.

The mandatory financial education thing isn't a one-size fits all fix.

It think an issue for many people that's becoming more prevalent is that post-secondary education is becoming a kind of "golden straightjacket." Many people need to take on a huge debt load just to get a required education for a desired career. The cost of education has spiked quite astonishingly over the past 20 years.

I guess my point is that the problem may not be as simple as we might think.

In my own case, I'm widely knowledgeable about money and how it works on a personal level. You might be surprised by what I get by on. The problem? I have a low income and a high debt load. I'm one of the educated poor.