The rich get richer, the poor pay more, lobbyists win, lawyers and politicians f**k up social programs!
"Six people who prove capitalism is broken in America"
Over the last few years, the Guardian talked to many people for whom capitalism isn’t working – here are a few of their stories
Lauren Aratani Thu 2 May 2019 08.21 EDT
USA "democratic capitalism," or "liberal capitalism," whatever you wish to title it, is a rigged capitalism favoring the rich.
"Martin Wolf: why rigged capitalism is damaging liberal democracy"
Economies are not delivering for most citizens because of weak competition, feeble productivity growth and tax loopholes
By Martin Wolf September 18, 2019
https://amp.ft.com/content/5a8ab27e-d470-11e9-8367-807ebd53ab77
"“While each of our individual companies serves its own corporate purpose, we share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders.”
With this sentence, the US Business Roundtable, which represents the chief executives of 181 of the world’s largest companies, abandoned their longstanding view that “corporations exist principally to serve their shareholders”."
OK, now what? A more fair capitalism would be a good start; get rid of tax breaks that favor rich companies and richer people.
"We need a dynamic capitalist economy that gives everybody a justified belief that they can share in the benefits. What we increasingly seem to have instead is an unstable rentier capitalism, weakened competition, feeble productivity growth, high inequality and, not coincidentally, an increasingly degraded democracy. Fixing this is a challenge for us all, but especially for those who run the world’s most important businesses. The way our economic and political systems work must change, or they will perish."
Sadly, I do not believe this will be a tipping point for change. Americans like their stuff more than they like each other.
"The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem"
The U.S. Can No Longer Hide From Its Deep Poverty Problem
By Angus Deaton
Jan. 24, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/opinion/poverty-united-states.html
Counterpoint? Maybe the numbers don't add up?
"Examining Extreme and Deep Poverty in the United States"
February 20, 2018 Authors: Jamie Hall and Robert Rector
"Claims of extreme poverty and widespread deep poverty are based on faulty information. These unfounded claims promote alarmism that generates pressure to increase welfare spending and benefits. Sound public policy cannot be based on misinformation. Even worse, misinformation distracts from the real issues facing the welfare state: the prevalence of self-defeating and self-limiting behaviors such as low levels of educational attainment, low levels of marriage and work, criminal activity, drug and alcohol abuse, and poor home environments for children. These conditions generate a need for welfare assistance in the first place and undermine human well-being. "
The words above for the Heritage Foundation, by Jamie Hall and Robert Rector, reflect uneducated/prejudiced assumptions, miscalculations of data, incomplete analysis, racial injustice, and stereotypes we see in this kind of conservative monologue.
"Key Takeaways
- Welfare reform significantly reduced deep poverty as measured by 50 percent of the annual official poverty income threshold.
- Third World poverty as measured by persons having expenditures of less than $4.00 per person per day is nonexistent in the United States.
- Conventional government statistics on poverty and inequality are highly misleading because almost the entire welfare state is excluded from the count of income."
Where will this take us? is it valid?
" . . . analysis of government data on households’ self-reported spending shows that the share of the population living on resources below half of the federal poverty threshold has trended downward over the past three decades, falling from roughly 2 percent to less than 0.5 percent of the total population. The greatest improvements occurred among the group directly affected by welfare reform: single-parent families."
How are these "improvements" measured?
"As for Angus Deaton’s claim that over 5 million Americans (or 1.7 percent of the population) live on less than $4.00 per day, this too is wrong. Examination of government household consumption data shows that the number of individuals living on less than $4.00 per day is effectively zero. Since 1980, the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) has reported on the annual consumption expenditures of 222,170 households. Of these 222,170 cases, 175 reported spending less than $4.00 per person per day. That is one household in 1,270. Rather than 1.7 percent of the population living in deep poverty, expenditure surveys show that the figure is only 0.08 percent."
"Poorest Children in Single-Mother Families Got Poorer Under Welfare Reform"
By Danilo Trisi Senior Research Analyst August 25, 2016
https://www.cbpp.org/blog/poorest-children-in-single-mother-families-got-poorer-under-welfare-reform
So from 2012 to 2018 the status of single-mother families got better? How?
"Our analysis found:
Incomes fell by 18 percent for the poorest tenth of children of single mothers between 1995 and 2005.
The poorest single-mother families recouped some of these losses after 2005.
The income declines for the poorest children reflect a shift toward a work-based safety net that helps those somewhat higher on the income scale. The safety net has shifted away from helping the very poorest children (particularly through TANF) and toward helping those modestly higher on the income ladder (particularly with tax credits for working families, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit)."
Like indentured servants, if you work, you get to eat.
"How welfare reform has had a negative effect on the children of single mothers"
New research shows that the success of Bill Clinton’s landmark reform came at a price
Feb 25th 2019by C.K. | WASHINGTON, DC
"The critics were wrong: Welfare reform has delivered for single moms"
By Kay Hymowitz September 13, 2019
https://nypost.com/2019/09/13/the-critics-were-wrong-welfare-reform-has-delivered-for-single-moms/
"US inequality gap grew larger between 2017 and 2018"
By Associated Press September 26, 2019
https://nypost.com/2019/09/26/us-inequality-gap-grew-larger-between-2017-and-2018/
I walk thru a grocery store in a small Massachusetts town and the things I see say there is something wrong when people argue things are fine for lower income people, and people who do not work do not deserve help. Sometimes you have to go with your gut which has 44 years of work experience and study of the human condition.
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