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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNo class warfare, please. We're Americans
http://www.alternet.org/media/no-class-warfare-please-were-americans?paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark...originally posted on Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting's website.
In a year that has featured increased coverage of rising economic inequalityhelped along by President Barack Obamas call to rebuild the economy from the middle out, and New York mayoral candidate Bill de Blasios campaign focus on a tale of two citiesone of the biggest flurries of attention came in late July, when four professors from Harvard and Berkeley released a study (NBER, 7/13) of economic mobility in the United States. Their finding: People hoping to lift themselves from the bottom of the income scale into the middle class or above face much longer odds in certain parts of the country, particularly the Deep South.
...The mobility study was indeed important newsthough it was the rare story that mentioned that if the ability to rise in economic class is your main criterion, the American dream is far more alive in Denmark and the United Kingdom that anywhere in the United States (Guardian, 1/17/12). But in focusing solely on whether some poor Americans can swap places with those in the middle or upper classesand pinning the blame for those who cant on poor education or single moms, things that the Harvard/Berkeley study, which focused solely on the role of regressive state tax systems in decreasing income mobility, didnt addressmedia coverage skirted the larger issue: the growing distance between top and bottom earners.
...Indeed, social mobility has become the preferred term for politicians of all stripes when discussing problems of economic class. For conservatives, lack of mobility conflicts with the premise that anyone can be rewarded for their effort, as when Rep. Paul Ryan noted: Upward mobility is the central promise of life in America. But right now, Americas engines of upward mobility arent working the way they should.
...the bottom 98 percentthats everyone making under $350,000 per yearwhose wages, according to Saezs figures, fell by 1.8 percent in real terms during that time, and more than 10 percent over the previous decade. (The top 10 percent saw their incomes rise 17 percent from 20022012, and the top 1 percent by 35 percent.) Those numbers, though, didnt make the Times report.
...more at the link. a good read.
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No class warfare, please. We're Americans (Original Post)
RainDog
Nov 2013
OP
pansypoo53219
(20,906 posts)1. they only decry it when we fight back.
what has reaganism + grover norquist if not class warfare?
RainDog
(28,784 posts)2. But you're not allowed to say that
because it might offend someone.
and heaven forfend that we talk about the actual causes of so many of the problems that exist.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)3. k&r for exposure. n/t
-Laelth
RainDog
(28,784 posts)5. good ones! n/t
CFLDem
(2,083 posts)6. But they started it first
when they busted unions and outsourced jobs. Now the whole system is so stacked against the lower classes that it threatens the well being of the nation.