What are the chances of escaping poverty?

Protesters took these pictures at the home of the ousted Ukrainian president.  That's where their money had gone.  
The powerful members of government and industry consumed most of everything while regular folks struggled  
to feed their families and stay warm in the brutal winters.  Power corrupts rather spectacularly.    

In the Ukraine, rigged elections and government corruption brought the Orange Revolution ('04), Euromaidan and the 2014 Revolution.  There, as elsewhere, the rich were well served while the common folks provided the productivity with little benefit to themselves.  The country continues in political and economic turmoil, and it will be a decade or more before their governance and economy stabilize.  Their poverty rate is about 10%.  They're not the only example, of course.  Poverty in the U.S. is around 14% (20% for children).


So what are the chances of escaping poverty?  In the U.S. and in India, chances are about the same; they're somewhat better in the Ukraine.  That's a bit of a surprise.  Social and economic mobility, the chance to provide a better life for your children, that's been the reachable American dream in the past; now not so much.  Mobility here has been in a slow decline for many years as the GAP widens, and we see results similar to the caste system in India.

We're not alone.  Inequality plagues much of the world as the marketplace extracts more wealth exclusively for the wealthy.  In the U.S., virtually all of the gains in productivity for the last forty years have gone to the top 10%.  Their wealth accumulates rapidly while income for the rest has stagnated.

There are discussion about 'free trade' vs. 'fair trade'; is there a problem when one country extracts wealth from another without providing some equal benefit in return?

... or, when one segment of the population extracts wealth from the others without providing a fair return in exchange?

... or, when one works and his productivity benefits only the employer and not himself?

When does the imbalance become unfair and abusive?  At what point does it equal indentured servitude?

In the 70's, you could pay for college with about 800 hours of minimum wage work, about a summer's worth.  Higher education is needed more than ever by young folks if they're going to do well, but costs have risen disproportionately, faster even than the rise in healthcare costs.  You'd have to work more than full time all year to cover the costs.  Indebtedness is the offered solutions, and student loans now exceed credit card debt and automobile loans.  It was $1.2 trillion in 2016.

Even before college, a good education is hard to get if you're in the lower economic strata.  Life is different.  Struggling parents have little time for helping their kids with schoolwork.  Poorer neighborhoods intrude in a child's life with violence and drug culture.  Nutrition, healthcare, and social development are difficult to manage.

Here's some insight from a young lady in New Jersey ...

You know, as someone that grew up in the suburbs to white parents (white step dad, but essentially my dad). I played sports and instruments and went to an amazing school where they knew my parent's first names w/o having to check my file.                                                                  I rebelled at 14 and decided to live with my black bio dad in, let's face it, the hood. I was suddenly surrounded by drugs and gangs and thieves, and girls that wanted to fight me for no reason.  My English teacher, most notably, was so amazed that I could read without help, as every other kid stuttered and stumbled over the simplest words when we were reading out loud. This is in HIGH SCHOOL.  These kids in the ghetto aren't taught that they can compete against white kids, they're taught that school isn't important and all they need to learn is survival in the jungle.

I know most people don't get a taste of both worlds, so maybe they don't understand, but going from a white school where they told me I could be president, or a rocket scientist, or whatever I wanted, to a school where they're like "omg you can READ", I truly understand how so few people can actually make it out of the hood. Their only role models are drug dealers and basketball players. I watched all my white friends prepare for college worrying about AP classes and SATs while my black friends were smoking weed and skipping class. You couldn't understand if you haven't seen it firsthand.                                                          I know this is long-winded but so many people truly don't understand how much harder it really is for people to make it out of an underprivileged situation.  I went from a straight A over achiever to a drop-out within a year of being in the hood because I couldn't take the violence, the feelings of hopelessness, the harassment for "sounding too white" and having long hair.  It's not as easy as some might believe.

So what are we doing today to address the inequality?  What policies are in the queue to make a difference?

Fruit to Nuts

The farther up the ladder one climbs, the less connected one becomes to the real world of regular folks.

Moving up changes your worldview to that of the elite, and priorities change to match.  Influence on your thinking comes from that same echelon, and the voices from far below become faint and not really worth considering.  Some of what you do will be beneficial to others, and much may be harmful.  The process of change during the climb is perhaps gradual and unintentional, but the end is simple; you're nuts.

The fruit of a good heart and right thinking is unselfish concern for others, real joy, inner peace, patience (not the ability to wait, but how we act while waiting), compassion, integrity, dependability, restraint, and a life by thoughtful choice.

How difficult it must be to climb the ladder of wealth and power without forfeiting every good thing.

Galatians 5:22-23

There are things you can see and things you can't.  It's a continual battle.

What you can see and what you can't

Rich people never go hungry, of course.               

Where you live on the money scale determines what you can see and what you can't.

If you work fulltime at $10/hour, you're in the richest 5% of folks in the world.  That $20,000 per year places you in the 400 million richest people on earth by income, and there are 7 billion people poorer than you.  Your income could pay the salaries of five doctors in Pakistan.

From your lofty $20K per year balcony, those far down the scale from you seem like ants to you.  You have no idea what their world is like.

Now consider the household with $200K annual income.  They have the same problem of perspective, and they can't see you either.

Now consider the country in which you live.  The top 1% and above ... those are the ones in political office, in corporate offices, and on Wall Street.  They're the influential, the decision makers.  They have little insight into the lives of regular folks.  (In the business world, employees are just a resource.) Those up above don't see their own actions clearly in terms of how they affect people below their own bracket.  Those down there are just the masses, not individuals.

Too, the GAP between rich and poor is widening in the U.S. (see the chart, right) and elsewhere due to globalization and our influence in the world marketplace.  We can look up at those mega-wealthy maggots sucking the life out of the world in disgust, and be reminded, that's us as seen from the next quintile below.

Such economic abuse is inhumane, unethical, and immoral by every standard, but if you can't see it clearly, you don't feel particularly guilty.  In fact, if you've read this far, you're likely to be either angry, dismissive, or heartbroken.

To be unmoved perhaps says something.  An interesting story is told about Adolph Hitler; a boxcar of seriously wounded, exhausted, and starving German soldiers returning from the disastrous siege of Stalingrad stopped next to Hitler's dining car where he sat in luxury, eating his meal, visible through the window.  As the stunned soldiers stared, Hitler reached across to the window and pulled down the shade, then returned to his meal, unmoved.

There's only one way for a tiny group of people to become obscenely wealthy...
So now what do we do with what we know?

Fact Check - the Crash

The Great Recession wasn't all that great for most of us.  Which of the following facts are true?

• the stock market crashed (9/2008), 

  

  Continued into 2016 for most states; jobs recovered were,
  on average, less hours, pay, benefits than the ones lost.

• the auto industry was in chaos and bankruptcy (bailouts for Ford, GM, Chrysler), 
• the real estate market collapsed and home equity dropped, foreclosures rose immediately,
• the banks were collapsing ($4.6 trillion bailout)(The FDIC closed 465 failed banks in the five years following the crash compared with just 10 in the preceding five year period.), 
• unemployment was on its way to 10%, 
• retirement plans lost 25% on average, 
• oil went from $25 to $130+ per barrel, 
• As the recession effects circled the globe, hundreds of thousands of economically vulnerable folks were pushed below the survival line and died.

All true.  These were not momentary events, not hiccups in our daily routine.  These were long-path decision results, emplaced by political maneuvering and unbalanced influence.

“That economic wreckage can still be seen from coast to coast in unemployment, foreclosed and underwater homes, lost retirements and educations and so much more.” ~Dennis Kelleher, CEO of Better Markets

Update: The industry is not afraid to do it again.  They know no one goes to jail, and the government will bail them out.  Those we had to bail out because they were too big to fail, those are bigger now.  The total cost of the recession in the U.S. alone exceeds $22 TRILLION according to the Government Accountability Office (gao.gov) report.

It all happened from failure of government regulation and oversight of a known high-risk, unconstrained industry. Government fell prey to monied influence, and the bottom 90% of the world bore the extraordinary financial loss, lost years, and lost lives.

So, let's blame someone.  If we mark the spot of the crash, we might blame just President G. W. Bush. Things go farther back and farther afield, though.  So do we blame the Republicans or the Democrats, the President(s) or Congress? Check the timeline ...

1 • 1978, Supreme Court allows banks to export the usury laws of their home state nationwide and sets off a competitive wave of deregulation, resulting in the complete elimination of usury rate ceilings in South Dakota and Delaware, among others.
2• 1980, Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act – Legislation increases deposit insurance from $40,000 to $100,000, authorizes new authority to thrift institutions, and calls for the complete phase-out of interest rate ceilings on deposit accounts.
3• 1982, Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act – Bill deregulates thrifts almost entirely, allowing commercial lending and providing for a new account to compete with money market mutual funds. This was a Reagan administration initiative that passed with strong bi-partisan support.
• 1987, FSLIC Insolvency – GAO declares the deposit insurance fund of the savings and loan industry to be insolvent as a result of mounting institutional failures.
4• 1989, Financial Institutions Reform and Recovery Act – Act abolishes the Federal Home Loan Bank Board and FSLIC, transferring them to OTS and the FDIC, respectively. The plan also creates the Resolution Trust Corporation to resolve failed thrifts.
5• 1994, Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act – This bill eliminated previous restrictions on interstate banking and branching. It passed with broad bipartisan support.
6• 1996, Fed Reinterprets Glass-Steagall – Federal Reserve reinterprets the Glass-Steagall Act several times, eventually allowing bank holding companies to earn up to 25 percent of their revenues in investment banking.
• 1998, Citicorp-Travelers Merger – Citigroup, Inc. merges a commercial bank with an insurance company that owns an investment bank to form the world’s largest financial services company.
7• 1999, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act – With support from Fed Chairman Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Rubin and his successor Lawrence Summers, the bill repeals the Glass-Steagall Act completely.
8• 2000, Commodity Futures Modernization Act – Passed with support from the Clinton Administration, including Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, and bi-partisan support in Congress. The bill prevented the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating most over-the-counter derivative contracts, including credit default swaps.
• 2004, Voluntary Regulation – The SEC proposes a system of voluntary regulation under the Consolidated Supervised Entities program, allowing investment banks to hold less capital in reserve and increase leverage.
• 2007, Subprime Mortgage Crisis – Defaults on subprime loans send shockwaves throughout the secondary mortgage market and the entire financial system.
• December 2007, Term Auction Facility – Special liquidity facility of the Federal Reserve lends to depository institutions. Unlike lending through the discount window, there is no public disclosure on loans made through this facility.
• March 2008, Bear Stearns Collapse – The investment bank is sold to JP Morgan Chase with assistance from the Federal Reserve.
• March 2008, Primary Dealer Facilities – Special lending facilities open the discount window to investment banks, accepting a broad range of asset-backed securities as collateral.
• July 2008, Housing and Economic Recovery Act – Provides guarantees on new mortgages to subprime borrowers and authorizes a new federal agency, the FHFA, which eventually places Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into conservatorship.
• September 2008, Lehman Brothers Collapse – Investment bank files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
• October 2008, Emergency Economic Stabilization Act – Bill authorizes the Treasury to establish the Troubled Asset Relief Program to purchase distressed mortgage-backed securities and inject capital into the nation’s banking system. Also increases deposit insurance from $100,000 to $250,000.
• Late 2008, Money Market Liquidity Facilities – Federal Reserve facilities created to facilitate the purchase of various money market instruments.
• March 2009, Public-Private Investment Program – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner introduces his plan to subsidize the purchase of toxic assets with government guarantees.

There has been plenty of involvement on both sides of the aisle, and plenty of opportunity to correct the errors. Republicans have perhaps encouraged the laissez-faire policy of letting business run unfettered, but there were democrats in the process as well.  

Over-regulation does, in fact, inhibit successful business.  Ideally, a business will succeed or fail on its own in a competitive market, and it needn't have other constraints. That's fine for small businesses, perhaps.  But when corporations are bigger than countries, economic warfare emerges and actual civilian casualties escallate. 

Do we still face risks, unethical practices, and criminal behaviors in the finance industry?  Of course. Do we now have good governance to preclude another catastrophe?

Side note: through it all, HSBC bank was laundering money for Mexican drug cartels to the tune of $881 billion according to the Justice Department. The penalty for this criminal activity was $1.9 billion, a small fraction of their profits (and the New York Times laments that HSBC was too big to indict). HSBC was just one of many out-of-control organizations, yet nobody went to jail at a time when an unemployed person gets 10 years for robbing a minute mart. Barclays and Swiss UBS were among the banks identified in the Libor rate manipulation scandal. Wells Fargo was recently discovered to have opened millions of accounts without customer permission.  Deutsche Bank was later discovered to be a participant in the Libor scandal; they agreed to a combined US$2.5 billion in fines.  What kind of leadership do we need in business and government to rein in the unethical behavior and reduce the risk to our national economic health?

Extremist ... News

This is a lie offered as journalism.

The inflammatory headline here is a misrepresentation; she didn't say

that. She does offer a thoughtful review of religious extremism and

appropriate response. Watch the video; it's short and reasonable,

and it doesn't agree with the write-up offered by the website.

First, some thoughts on the perhaps larger issue.

The majority of those fighting against Muslim extremists are Muslim. Is Islam at war with itself? Hardly. Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, and others are Islamic militants, and their terrorist acts are openly condemned by Islamic leaders. They are opposed by Islamic nations and religious leaders. Volunteers from Iraq and Iran deploy to defend their towns and people against ISIS. We see the same in Djibouti, Kenya, Nigeria, and Egypt, whom I know, and beyond.

As for Ayaan Hirsi Ali*, the former Muslim quoted here, it's perhaps possible that being raised as a Muslim in Somalia among the most violent of religious extremists, she has in fact seen the worst of it. Right next door in Kenya, Christians and Muslims living peacefully together might serve as a counterpoint to that perspective. In Egypt, Muslims and Coptic Christians banded together in demonstrations and mutual protection against terrorist activity.

The solution this 'news' articles suggests is ... what?  Ostracize and deport all Muslims? 

Muslim extremists are a threat, much like Aryan supremacists in years past, perhaps, or like the Inquisition of the middle ages. White supremacists of western history were similarly intolerant and wickedly murderous. Each claimed legitimacy for their inhumanity, hatred, and violence. They did not represent the broader world over which they hoped to rule.

Is Islam the threat? Or is it perhaps extremism and intolerance such as we've seen so often in history, with religious words providing a framework for discrimination and violence against others.

Second, there are these overtly exaggerated interpretations of the news.
The anti-Islamic message of that particular site (yesimright.com) and others like it is troublingly similar to the anti-Semitic propaganda from the early Nazi years.  Identical, actually.  Identical.  

So why would they deliberately misrepresent the truth like that?  What's their goal?

And that perhaps, is the larger issue; extremism in any form tends to destroy rather than solve.  Extremism, radicalism, fundamentalism, and fanaticism, all have deadly histories.

*Note:  In 2005, Hirsi Ali was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
An opponent of all religions, Hirsi Ali has been a critic of Islam, calling for a reformation of the religion. In 2004, she collaborated on a short movie with Theo van Gogh, entitled Submission, a film about the oppression of women under Islam. The film sparked controversy and death threats against the two; Van Gogh was assassinated later that year by Mohammed Bouyeri. In a 2007 interview, she described Islam as an "enemy" that needs to be defeated before peace can be achieved.  Her personal biography, Infidel: My Life, published that same year describes her story of exile from her clan through war, famine, arranged marriage, religious apostasy and the shocking murder on the streets of Amsterdam of her collaborator, Theo van Gogh. In her latest book Heretic (2015) she has moderated her views of Islam and now calls for a reform of the religion by supporting reformist Muslims.

Wealth, political power, and influence

The concentration of wealth, political power, and influence go hand in hand and are mutually reinforcing. 

The rest of humanity has little voice in their world.

As the United Nations Human Development Report stated nearly a decade ago: “Disadvantaged groups – poor people, women, rural populations, indigenous communities – are disadvantaged partly because they have a weak political voice, and they have a weak political voice because they are disadvantaged. Where political institutions are seen as vehicles for perpetuating unjust inequalities or advancing the interest of the elites, that undermines the development of democracy and creates conditions for state breakdown.”

When entities become so large that they spend more on lobbying
the congress than they do on advertising and good work, they
 have become agents of domination rather than service.

An individual citizen's right to speak, to assemble, to participate in government has been overwhelmed by louder voices in recent decades.   Corporations are people now, and super PACs are unrestrained.   

Super PACs play an interesting role.  Technically known as independent, expenditure-only committees, super PACs may raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations, and individuals, then spend unlimited sums to overtly advocate for or against political candidates, but they may not contribute to or coordinate with the candidates. Update: 2000+ super PACs took in $1.79 billion for the 2016 election cycle.  PACs and super PACs; good or bad?  Read the list and give it a little thought, perhaps.

When the U.S. was young, there were few eligible voters; only 38,000 voted in our first presidential election.  Today there are 230+ million voters registered.  Does that change things?

Updates needed?  

• Term limits for Congress, perhaps.  
• Some transparency for corporate lobbyists would be interesting.  
• A restatement of constitutional values beginning with the 'equal' issues and an analysis of how well (or poorly) we're doing in that arena would be enlightening.  
• Full accountability for influence would be extraordinarily valuable.  
• And lying to us; how about laws against government lying to the public, deliberately stating as fact things they know are untrue.  Those would be particularly encouraging.  
• Among my personal favorites, mandating a breakup of the 'too big to fail' financial behemoths would be a big step in the right direction, too.  I hope I understand the issues adequately.

Whatever we do to be involved and represented, it's perhaps going to have to be different.  The way it used to work is pretty much obsolete.