Saturday, December 22, 2012

Inequality Growing in the US

The Unequal State of America: Why America is more unequal than most By Reuters
21 December 12
 http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/12/20/uk-equality-indiana-oecd-idUKBRE8BJ0IY20121220
[Excerpted] America has a higher degree of income inequality than almost any other developed country. Only three of the 34 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development rank higher - Chile, Mexico and Turkey.

So why is the U.S. so much more unequal than its peers? The U.S. Congressional Research Service cited several potential reasons in a report earlier this year.

One is that most other rich countries spend a bigger share of their national output on social programs, which tend to lessen income inequality. 

Majia here: The article states that Germany spends 27.8% of its GDP (in 2009) while the US spent 19.2 % of its GDP on social spending.

The article also cites the tax systems and the division of earnings as factors producing inequality.

I think one of the most significant findings is the growing lack of class mobility.  Born poor or working class in the US and you are likely to stay that way.

The "dispossession" of the population through risk shifts and austerity programs has been an ongoing concern of mine, and the subject of a book project I've been developing.

Its my belief that this dispossession is being driven by a shift in capital production. Advanced financial capitalism has little need for labor so elite economic interests are attempting to scale down the economic investments in the majority of the populace, leading to lack of support for infrastructural investments in education and social welfare.

At the so called end of history we have emerging scarcity, rather than universal opulence.

Dec 21, 2011
The Dispossession of the Population. Democratic governments find their legitimacy in their "service" to their populaces. I've argued that the US and most purportedly democratic governments are shedding the last vestiges of ...
 
Jun 09, 2011
Those growing populations living in urban slums are particularly vulnerable to this cycle of dispossession and utter impoverishment. The next 1 billion in population growth over next 12-15 years projected to occur in urban ...
 
Jan 02, 2012
[i] Instead, this project focuses on the consolidation of wealth and power and the amplification of economic and political dispossession in the wake of the financial crisis that began in 2007. Emerging in the aftermath of the ...



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