new study on inequality of wealth in the us... - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

roachboy · 05-17-2010, 03:18 PM

this article appears in tomorrow's guardian:

Quote:

A $95,000 question: why are whites five times richer than blacks in the US?

• Study finds gaping racial divide in household assets
• Economic policies blamed for growing inequality

A huge wealth gap has opened up between black and white people in the US over the past quarter of a century – a difference sufficient to put two children through university – because of racial discrimination and economic policies that favour the affluent.

A typical white family is now five times richer than its African-American counterpart of the same class, according to a report released today by Brandeis University in Massachusetts.

White families typically have assets worth $100,000 (£69,000), up from $22,000 in the mid-1980s. African-American families' assets stand at just $5,000, up from around $2,000.

A quarter of black families have no assets at all. The study monitored more than 2,000 families since 1984.

"We walk that through essentially a generation and what we see is that the racial wealth gap has galloped, it's escalated to $95,000," said Tom Shapiro, one of the authors of the report by the university's Institute on Assets and Social Policy.

"That's primarily because the whites in the sample were able to accumulate financial assets from their $22,000 all the way to $100,000 and the African-Americans' wealth essentially flatlined."

The survey does not include housing equity, because it is not readily accessible and is rarely realised as cash. But if property were included it would further widen the wealth divide.

Shapiro says the gap remains wide even between blacks and whites of similar classes and with similar jobs and incomes.

"How do we explain the wealth gap among equally-achieving African-American and white families? The same ratio holds up even among low income groups. Finding ways to accumulate financial resources for all low and moderate income families in the United States has been a huge challenge and that challenge keeps getting steeper and steeper.

"But there are greater opportunities and less challenges for low and moderate income families if they're white in comparison to if they're African-American or Hispanic," he said.

America has long lived with vast inequality, although 40 years ago the disparity was lower than in Britain.

Today, the richest 1% of the US population owns close to 40% of its wealth. The top 25% of US households own 87%.

The rest is divided up among middle and low income Americans. In that competition white people come out far ahead.

Only one in 10 African-Americans owns any shares. A third do not have a pension plan, and among those who do the value is on average a fifth of plans held by whites.

Shapiro says one of the most disturbing aspects of the study is that wealth among the highest-income African-Americans has actually fallen in recent years, dropping from a peak of $25,000 to about $18,000, while among white counterparts of similar class and income it has surged to around $240,000.

In 1984, high-income black Americans had more assets than middle-income whites. That is no longer true.

"I'm a pretty jaded and cynical researcher in some way, but this was shocking, quite frankly, a really important dynamic," said Shapiro. "This represents a broken chain of achievement. In the United States context, when we are thinking about racial equality and the economy we have focused for a long time on equal opportunity.

"Equal opportunity assumes that some people who have that opportunity are going to have pretty high achievements in terms of their jobs, their work, their income, their home ownership.

"The assumption in a democracy is that merit and achievement are going to be rewarded and the rewards here are financial assets. We should see some rough parity and we don't."

The report attributes part of the cause to the "powerful role of persistent discrimination in housing, credit and labour markets. African-Americans and Hispanics were at least twice as likely to receive high-cost home mortgages as whites with similar incomes," the report says.

Although many black families have moved up to better-paying jobs, they begin with fewer assets, such as inheritance, on which to build wealth. They are also more likely to have gone into debt to pay for university loans.

"African-Americans, before the 1960s, first by law and then by custom, were not really allowed to own businesses. They had very little access to credit. There was a very low artificial ceiling on the wealth that could be accumulated. Hence there was very little, if anything, that could be passed along to help their children get to college, to help their children buy their first homes, or as an inheritance when they die," said Shapiro.

Since the 1980s, US administrations have also geared the tax system to the advantage of the better off. Taxes on unearned income, such as shares and inheritance, fell sharply and are much lower than taxes on pay.

"The more income and wealth people had, the less it was taxable," said Shapiro.

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.

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?

Plan9 · 05-17-2010, 03:34 PM

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

Baraka_Guru · 05-18-2010, 06:30 AM

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?

roachboy · 05-18-2010, 06:41 AM

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.

Baraka_Guru · 05-18-2010, 06:48 AM

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.

Rekna · 05-18-2010, 06:51 AM

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).

Cimarron29414 · 05-18-2010, 07:03 AM

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

Baraka_Guru · 05-18-2010, 07:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414

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.

mixedmedia · 05-18-2010, 07:18 AM

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:

Quote:

"African-Americans, before the 1960s, first by law and then by custom, were not really allowed to own businesses. They had very little access to credit. There was a very low artificial ceiling on the wealth that could be accumulated. Hence there was very little, if anything, that could be passed along to help their children get to college, to help their children buy their first homes, or as an inheritance when they die," said Shapiro.

...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.

Cimarron29414 · 05-18-2010, 07:24 AM

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.

Plan9 · 05-18-2010, 08:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414

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?"

Baraka_Guru · 05-18-2010, 09:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plan9

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."

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.

roachboy · 05-18-2010, 09:51 AM

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.

RogueGypsy · 05-18-2010, 10:24 AM

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.

....

...

Jinn · 05-18-2010, 11:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RogueGypsy

To which I say "Pull up your boots bitches and fix your own problems, quit wasting everyone's time worrying what others are doing."...

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.

kutulu · 05-18-2010, 12:29 PM

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by RogueGypsy

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?

Putting family first. What a travesty.

pan6467 · 05-18-2010, 12:40 PM

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).

Jinn · 05-18-2010, 12:48 PM

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?

Baraka_Guru · 05-18-2010, 01:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pan6467

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.

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?

dogzilla · 05-18-2010, 01:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kutulu

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

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kutulu

Putting family first. What a travesty.

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 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

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

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 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

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:

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.

roachboy · 05-18-2010, 02:00 PM

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.

Jinn · 05-18-2010, 02:07 PM

Quote:

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

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?

dogzilla · 05-18-2010, 03:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jinn

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.

Derwood · 05-18-2010, 03:26 PM

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

dogzilla · 05-18-2010, 03:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derwood

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.

Baraka_Guru · 05-18-2010, 03:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dogzilla

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?

filtherton · 05-18-2010, 03:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dogzilla

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.

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.

roachboy · 05-18-2010, 03:59 PM

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

rahl · 05-18-2010, 04:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dogzilla

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.

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.

Derwood · 05-18-2010, 04:22 PM

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

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

Jinn · 05-18-2010, 04:35 PM

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.

CandleInTheDark · 05-18-2010, 04:38 PM

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?

dogzilla · 05-18-2010, 04:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derwood

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

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

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.

roachboy · 05-18-2010, 05:00 PM

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.

guy44 · 05-18-2010, 10:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

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.

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.

RogueGypsy · 05-18-2010, 10:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kutulu

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

Putting family first. What a travesty.

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 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jinn

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.

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.

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.

filtherton · 05-19-2010, 03:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RogueGypsy

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

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.

dippin · 05-19-2010, 07:48 AM

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.

Jinn · 05-19-2010, 07:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dippin

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..

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jinn

...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.

roachboy · 05-19-2010, 08:13 AM

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.

05-17-2010, 03:34 PM	#2 (permalink)
Plan9 I Confess a Shiver	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 __________________ *Whatever you can carry.* "You should not drink... and bake." Last edited by Plan9; 05-17-2010 at 03:54 PM..

05-18-2010, 06:30 AM	#3 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	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? __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

05-18-2010, 06:41 AM	#4 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	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. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-18-2010, 06:48 AM	#5 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	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. __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

05-18-2010, 07:03 AM	#7 (permalink)
Cimarron29414 Still Free Location: comfortably perched at the top of the bell curve!	I'm not touching this with you guys. I'll read what you say, though. Have fun. __________________ Gives a man a halo, does mead. "Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

05-18-2010, 06:51 AM	#6 (permalink)
Rekna Junkie	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).

05-18-2010, 07:24 AM	#10 (permalink)
Cimarron29414 Still Free Location: comfortably perched at the top of the bell curve!	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. __________________ Gives a man a halo, does mead. "Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

05-18-2010, 09:51 AM	#13 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	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. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-18-2010, 10:24 AM	#14 (permalink)
RogueGypsy Insane Location: The Great NorthWet	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. .... ... __________________ Methods, application and intensity of application vary by the individual. All legal wavers must be signed before 'treatment' begins. Self 'Medicating' is not recommend. However, if necessary, it is best to have an 'assistant' or 'soft landing zone' nearby. Any and all legal issues resulting from improperly applied techniques should be forwarded to: Dewy, Cheatum & Howe, Intercourse, PA 17534. Attn: Anonymous.

05-18-2010, 12:40 PM	#17 (permalink)
pan6467 Lennonite Priest Location: Mansfield, Ohio USA	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). __________________ I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

05-18-2010, 12:48 PM	#18 (permalink)
Jinn Lover - Protector - Teacher Location: Seattle, WA	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? __________________ "I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel Last edited by Jinn; 05-18-2010 at 12:50 PM..

05-18-2010, 02:00 PM	#21 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	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. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 05-18-2010 at 02:03 PM..

05-18-2010, 03:26 PM	#24 (permalink)
Derwood Who You Crappin? Location: Everywhere and Nowhere	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 __________________ "You can't shoot a country until it becomes a democracy." - Willravel

05-18-2010, 03:59 PM	#28 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	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 __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

05-18-2010, 04:22 PM	#30 (permalink)
Derwood Who You Crappin? Location: Everywhere and Nowhere	So one person's experience is more valuable than 100 surveys worth of data? You failed Statistics 101, didn't you..... __________________ "You can't shoot a country until it becomes a democracy." - Willravel

05-18-2010, 04:35 PM	#31 (permalink)
Jinn Lover - Protector - Teacher Location: Seattle, WA	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. __________________ "I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

05-18-2010, 04:38 PM	#32 (permalink)
CandleInTheDark Addict Location: Where the music's loudest	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? __________________ Where there is doubt there is freedom.

05-18-2010, 05:00 PM	#34 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	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. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 05-18-2010 at 05:05 PM..

05-19-2010, 07:48 AM	#38 (permalink)
dippin Crazy, indeed Location: the ether	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.

05-19-2010, 08:13 AM	#40 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	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. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite