Barley Literate: Inequality

The Industrial Revolution came to America as early as 1813, when the first water-powered textile mill opened in Waltham, MA. Within a few decades, mills and factories were sprouting along waterways everywhere, and workers streamed off the farms to join immigrants who were employed at low wages.

The ongoing abuses of child laborers were condemned (by unionized adults) as early as the 1830s. In the following decades, regulation of the working conditions for kids occurred piece-meal, state by state. By the end of the 19^th century, 28 states had enacted laws governing (but not outlawing) the working hours and conditions for children. Work by youngsters was finally outlawed in America when the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938.

In 1881 eight-year-old textile workers in Maine—some of them working for eight cents a day— started a strike when they discovered that kids their age at another mill were making a penny more per day. The three-day strike was partly successful.

Mill owners and factory owners and other 19^th century capitalists were forced, over time, to cease exploitation of poor kids on the shop floor.

Imagine that you work in a 19th century mill making textile products. Imagine that you take your eight-year-old son to work with you every day, so he can work for 10-12 hours for pennies in grimy conditions with poor lighting, breathing air filled with cotton lint and climbing barefoot on the huge humming machinery so he can replace the empty spindles.

Imagine that you need his paltry income to keep food on the table for your family.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Heard this one before?

Think back to the antebellum South, in 1850.

The census of that year shows that, of roughly 660,000 households in the southern states, the 1,000 leading households of the plantation elite received about $50 million in annual income.

The rest of the population earned only about $60 million annually.

Can you say “inequality”?

Any part of this sound familiar?

Source:

Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 1492-Present (1980; repr., New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005), 236.

What happened to the cream?

Where it's at

"...the commotions in America..."

Book review: The Witches: Salem, 1692

Book review: A Farewell to Arms

"...inter librorum copias" redux

Monday, September 12, 2016

“What’s for dinner, Mom?”

Aren’t you glad this isn’t what your kids think you mean

when you call ‘em and say “C’mon, kids, it’s dinner time!”

Public housing: less there than meets the eye

Expensive toilet paper

Arms around the world....

Early noodling about the Kindle

Word to the deniers

Pass it on....

Chautauqua, revisited....

....another 3rd grade tour

Before comic books there were....

"Blood-and-thunder" for only 10 cents

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Some people have too much money….(part 21)

The Citizens United decision opening up the money spigots for politicians was dangerous for America, and the danger grows every day.

Recently Yahoo.com reported that wealthy folks donated a total of $400 million to presidential candidates who DROPPED OUT during the primaries. You might think that’s money down the toilet, but of course those donors can still claim access and influence with those politicians, many of whom are still active.

Those wealthy donors have a vote, just like you and me, but they have the mega-simoleons to do what you and I can’t do: they can buy access to power and the powerful.

Some people have too much money.

Need a barf bag?

The way the "free market" works

Gee willikers, six miles an hour!

Women who pioneered electronic music

"...the peregrines..."

Software upload

Book review: The Bridges of Madison County

First black poet in America

Saturday, August 6, 2016

Trump’s economic advisers: the 1%

Trump announced his economic advisory team yesterday…I guess it reveals the real Trump.

He named 13 men—he couldn’t find a single woman with economic savvy?

They’re all rich, big time. Like Trump. No middle class economists in the bunch. And no union leaders, either.

These guys are bankers, hedge fund managers, real estate speculators….

They have the money and the motive to buy influence in Washington, in state governments….

Aren’t these some of the guys who love the big international trade deals that Trump loves to spit on?

Aren’t these some of the guys who run “the system” that Trump incessantly claims is rigged?

What part of America do they represent? Do they speak for the little guy who has fears about his livelihood, his family, his future?

No reasonable person can believe anything Trump says.

Fear....something new

Mindless media hype

A few words about convention coverage

Another look at some Bernie supporters

Another outlook on the presidential election

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Consider another point of view….

Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, has an unconventional and incisive point of view. He offers startling, lucid guidance on matters spiritual, contemplative, intellectual and personal. See his comments here at The Center For Action and Contemplation.

Recently he discussed “Community as Alternative Consciousness.” I’m not competent to summarize it, read it for yourself here if you wish.

Here’s an excerpt:

“For instance, I've never once heard a sermon about the tenth commandment, "You shall not covet your neighbor's goods," because in our culture that's the only game in town. It is called capitalism. The individual is largely helpless and harmless standing against the system.”

Regarding capitalism, this is more a rhetorical statement than a conclusive definition. Nevertheless, he’s dealing with pith.

Here’s my own rhetorical whack at capitalism: not by its classic philosophical design, but in its inescapable effect, it’s a system that reinforces too many inequities and shields too many wrongdoers from accountability. Too many of us don’t fully understand this reality.

Who did it?

Soda consumption is still dropping

Anything sound familiar here?

A long wait for the perp walk....

Outsourcing: what's it all about?

Another take from Peter Drucker

Book review: American Crisis

The cod in "Cape Cod"

Saturday, March 12, 2016

Public housing: less there than meets the eye

Regardless of your political view of public housing, here’s a not-so-fun fact:

Most of the folks who qualify for public housing—because they can’t get decent housing privately with their own resources—don’t actually live in public housing.

Why?

The existing stock of public housing is only sufficient for 1 out of 4 of the families who are poor enough to qualify for it.

Three-quarters of the families who would think public housing is a step up can’t take that step, because there is no place for them to step up to.

Try to imagine what it’s like to live where they live now.

Matthew Desmond, in the March 6 Sunday New York Times, extends the perspective by asking this question:

“What if food stamps only covered one in four families?”

By the way, just for the record: there are more white (non-Hispanic) folks getting benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program than any single minority. SNAP administers the food stamp program. About 20 million white folks get food stamps. About 15 million black folks get food stamps. You get the picture.

Expensive toilet paper

Job security at Apple?

There are givers, and keepers

Really?

The bad news about the good news

Better off in North Korea?

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Expensive toilet paper

Inequality has its impact in so many ways, many big ways, many small ways….

Take toilet paper.

Of course you do. Everybody does.

It’s a classic commodity product: easily made, relatively inexpensive, easily transported, non-perishable, available everywhere, one size fits all, there is predictable universal need and predictable consumption, goes with any décor, more or less a unitary product (let’s not squabble about one-ply or two-ply).

Why do poor people spend more for toilet paper than their more affluent fellow citizens?

Hint: when was the last time you bought the 20-pack of toilet paper when the big sale was on?

Poorer folks—who are, inter alia, cash poor—don’t have enough ready money to buy the 20-pack when it’s on sale. They are more likely to repeatedly buy another roll or two when they have need. They are more likely to pay “regular” price.

Emily Badger of The Washington Post reports that poorer folks pay about 6% more for toilet paper.

One legal way the rich get richer is by filling the cart with t.p. when it’s on sale.

p.s. ditto for diapers, see this White House website

Job security at Apple?

There are givers, and keepers

Really?

The bad news about the good news

Better off in North Korea?

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Dark corner of history….

Here’s a despicable flashback you’ll wish you don’t have to believe:

May 30, 1922, the formal dedication of the new Lincoln Memorial in Washington.

The few black folks who were invited were forced to sit in a separate, roped-off section. Robert Moton, president of Tuskegee Institute—he was a featured speaker that day—was not permitted to sit on the speaker’s platform, and instead had to sit in the segregated section.

A reporter for the Chicago Defender, appalled by this flagrant display of racism, wrote “The venomous snake of segregation reared its head at the dedication…The conquered have become victorious."

Lest we forget....

Homework....think again....

Get crazy! Let your kids go outside and play

How many are enough?

"...ain't no protest song."

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Raise your hand if you paid for the bonus to Delta employees

If you flew on a Delta jet last year, you should feel proud. The airline just handed out $1.5 BILLION in bonuses to its employees to mark its record profits in 2015. You helped pay for it.

That’s the equivalent of a 21 percent pay boost for the “average” Delta employee. You can bet a big chunk went to Delta executives—for example, outgoing CEO Richard Anderson hauled in more than $17.5 million last year.

The thing is: airlines’ record profits last year were largely based on the steep decline of jet fuel prices. In 2014 jet fuel averaged about $2.70 per gallon, and that price dropped to an average of $1.52 per gallon last year—in fact, jet fuel was selling for about $1.09 in December, that’s 60 percent lower than the average 2014 price.

Think about Delta’s ticket pricing last year. Did you see any big price reductions? A big chunk of what you paid for your flight went into that $1.5 billion bonus pool.

Did you get any free peanuts or anything? How about the leg room, everything OK there?

"Simplify" the tax code?

The payoff to Big Oil

The yin and yang of productivity

"Free market" at work

The way the "free market" works

Friday, February 12, 2016

Massive stock buybacks: it’s a shame

Big companies are squandering their cash reserves to prop up their stock prices.

The stock market dropped almost 9.5% in January, its worst start of any year on record.

Of course, every time a stock is traded, there’s a buyer and a seller. So, who was buying in January when the sellers were pushing prices down?

Goldman Sachs Group says U.S. companies were buying their own shares with corporate cash reserves, accounting for about 20 percent of market volume last month.

That’s stunning. American companies have a couple trillion dollars sitting in their cash accounts, and they can’t think of anything better to do with it. The money could have been used for new product development, expansion and job creation, training and productivity enhancements or other productive purposes.

Yahoo Finance says hundreds of S&P 500 companies have lost $126 billion in the past three years by investing in their own shares and then watching the share price go down. Some of these firms actually borrowed money to cover their share repurchases. By the way, the stock market overall was up 39 percent in the same period.

Why are all these companies using their cash with such awful results? The standard wisdom is that companies buy their own shares when the stock price is “cheap,” below their actual value as determined by the company. This reduces cash outflow for dividends, and makes more shares available for stock grants and options as part of executive compensation plans.

Another result is that earnings per share (EPS) are increased when there are fewer outstanding shares, and this looks good in corporate reports and also may boost executive compensation.

Let’s call the spade a spade, here. Corporate directors and CEOs are spending their hoarded cash to try to prop up share prices—often for their own benefit—instead of using the money for constructive corporate purposes that would preserve and expand jobs.

Shame on them.

We're cooking the planet (part 13)

Eight-year-old kids go on strike

Social Security....not for everyone

"Simplify" the tax code?

The payoff to Big Oil

The yin and yang of productivity

"Free market" at work

Monday, February 1, 2016

Book review: America Ascendant

Stanley B. Greenberg, America Ascendant: A Revolutionary Nation’s Path to Addressing Its Deepest Problems and leading the 21^st Century

New York: Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, 2015

406 pages

Doubtless you’ve been wondering what’s going on in American politics, our Congress, our state governments and the Republican Party. Greenberg offers many answers in America Ascendant.

He expects we are witnessing the slow unraveling of what ails our body politic: civil dysfunction, the concentration of greed/power/wealth, the conspicuously parochial Republican/conservative/rightwing points of view, and the blatant bigotry that too often masks itself with dissembling, righteous talk of “traditional” American “values” like self-reliance, commitment to family, Jeffersonian “small government” and religious faith. Greenberg expects that better days are coming, but he cautions that the process will be achingly and devastatingly slow.

His essential message is that America is inexorably becoming a less white and more diverse nation—most abundantly, a nation of immigrants, and a nation undeniably represented by young generations of folks who are tolerant and happy to live their lives with culturally and racially and sexually diverse friends, lovers, marriage partners, neighbors and coworkers—the folks who consciously wish to live their lives unfettered by the domination of a select few with great wealth and great power.

To those of us who have struggled to understand the motivations and fears and dreams of the folks who support the divisive and hurtful and dangerous and self-interested antics of so many politicians, America Ascendant offers much more understanding than I have encountered from any other source.

What Greenberg says is not pretty. His book suggests that a good outcome is possible.

I want to believe his message.

I didn't bother on Thursday night

Ring the bell

Stones and bones

Worse than Fahrenheit 451

Donkey and elephant enter politics

Friday, January 15, 2016

Eight-year-old kids go on strike

The abuses of child labor are no longer a big issue in America. Child labor was a big deal in the latter part of the 19^th century.

The ongoing abuses of child laborers were condemned (by unionized adults) as early as the 1830s. In the following decades, regulation of the working conditions for kids occurred piece-meal, state by state. By the end of the 19^th century, 28 states had enacted laws governing (but now outlawing) the working hours and conditions for children. Work by youngsters was finally outlawed in America when the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938.

In 1881 eight-year-old textile workers in Maine—some of them working for eight cents a day-- started a strike when they discovered that kids their age at another mill were making a penny more per day. The three-day strike was partly successful.

Mill owners and factory owners and other 19^th century capitalists were forced, over time, to cease exploitation of poor kids on the shop floor.

Imagine that you work in the Cabot Mill (see right) making textile products. Imagine that you take your eight-year-old son to work with you every day, so he can work for 10-12 hours for pennies in grimy conditions, with poor lighting, breathing air filled with cotton lint and climbing barefoot on the huge humming machinery so he can replace the empty spindles.

Imagine that you need his paltry income to keep food on the table for your family.

Amos 'n' Andy: good stuff

Take a nap with a friend

Pillow talk

Book review: Lafayette

Mr. Kite et al.

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Social Security….not for everyone

Social Security is with us for the long haul.

I think it’s a vital foundation element of a reasonably secure society. I think high-income earners should pay a lot more in Social Security taxes (we should raise the maximum for taxable earnings). I think the full-benefit retirement age should be raised.

One of the reasons for the parlous state of Social Security finances is that people are living a lot longer than any politician or policy maker could have imagined in 1935.

The average life expectancy of folks being born now is about 79 years. Thus, the average newborn can expect to collect Social Security benefits for quite a few years under current law.

In 1935, when the Social Security Act was signed into law, the average life expectancy for newborns was about 61 years.

The act provided for benefits to be paid starting at age 65. Thus, the average person born that year wouldn’t live long enough to collect anything.

Think about that.

The official assumption was that a majority of the folks who lived all their lives with an anticipation of Social Security benefits would never get a dime.

The increase in longevity in the last 80 years has been spectacularly greater than any scientist or statistician or politician imagined during much of that time.

Another footnote in Social Security history:

Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, VT, received the first monthly benefit on January 31, 1940. During her work career she paid a total of $24.75 in Social Security taxes. She died when she was 100 years old after collecting total benefits of $22,888.92.

Think yin and yang.

Dance in the night

"...all thy might..."

Is it properly chilled?

Doing the right thing....

"See the [segregated] USA, in your Chevrolet..."

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Wave goodbye to the “middle class”

“Middle class” means a lot of things in America, in social, economic and political terms.

A strange thing is that lots of people think of themselves as “middle class” even though their financial circumstances place them outside that politically-charged category.

It’s not so strange to take note of this new report from the Pew Research Center that says, simply, the “middle class” no longer includes a majority of Americans.

About 45 years ago the “middle class” constituted 61% of adults, and now their share is a bit less than 50%.

Middle class house, 45 years ago

The “upper class” has become a lot richer in that time, and trickle-down poverty has put a lot more folks in the “lower class” group.

The “uppers” are 21% of the adult population and they collect almost 50% of all household income. The ‘middles” are 49.9% of the population, with about 43% of income, and the “lowers” are 29% of adults with only 7% of all income.

You think you’re “middle class”?

If you live in a three-person household and your family income is at least $41,900, you’re in. If your family income is at least $125,600, you can claim “upper class” status.

If you live alone, the numbers are $24,200 and $72,500. For two people, $34,200 and $102,600.

Umm, that’s before taxes.

Why the sky is blue

"...there are only endings."

"The Singing Nun," remember?

Book review: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

"Music in my own house? Wow!"

Barley Literate

Sunday, December 25, 2016

Abraham Lincoln, the visionary....

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Eight-year-old kids go on strike

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Heard this one before?

Monday, September 12, 2016

“What’s for dinner, Mom?”

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Some people have too much money….(part 21)

Saturday, August 6, 2016

Trump’s economic advisers: the 1%

Saturday, May 28, 2016

Consider another point of view….

Saturday, March 12, 2016

Public housing: less there than meets the eye

Thursday, March 10, 2016

Expensive toilet paper

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Dark corner of history….

Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Raise your hand if you paid for the bonus to Delta employees

Friday, February 12, 2016

Massive stock buybacks: it’s a shame

Monday, February 1, 2016

Book review: America Ascendant

Friday, January 15, 2016

Eight-year-old kids go on strike

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Social Security….not for everyone

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Wave goodbye to the “middle class”

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