It’s time for honest consideration of the problems facing Social Security but first, the good news. The Social Security Trust Fund, from which benefits are paid, has a balance of $2.9 trillion. The money that was deducted from our paychecks and the matching contributions from our employers built that bala Continue reading FUNDING SOCIAL SECURITY
Tag Archives: poverty
WILL YOU BE FIRED?
“Oh people, look around you. The signs are everywhere. You’ve left it for somebody other than you to be the one to care.” Jackson Brown wrote those lyrics to “Rock me on the water” (click to hear Keb Mo sing it) about 50 years ago. Today his words seem to haunt our future as much as they did our past.
There are more than 7.5 billion of us humans and our numbers continue to grow. Who cares about the unintended consequences of our collective actions? Our individual choices about economics, environment, health and other questions seem to be our personal business until we consider their collective effect. Continue reading WILL YOU BE FIRED?
THE ECONOMY MUST SERVE PEOPLE
“The economy must serve people, not the other way around.” That is the opening sentence of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ statement “The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers“. Regardless of your religious beliefs, I encourage readers to look it up on the internet. It’s easy to understand the values being taught but challenging to apply them in our lives, businesses and government. Continue reading THE ECONOMY MUST SERVE PEOPLE
Let’s start winning
Sister Jean-Delores Schmidt is a 98 year old nun who serves as a chaplain for the Loyola University basketball team and travels with them. Defying odds and expectations, the team earned a spot in the final four of the men’s basketball tournament. During the celebration, a reporter asked Sister Jean, “What did you give up for lent?” “Losing” she replied with a smile. Think about that for a moment. Continue reading Let’s start winning
WE CAN CHOOSE HOPE OVER DESPAIR
“There are people whose lives are so hard they break.” Those are the words of Eileen Crimmins, a professor at the University of Southern California. She wasn’t talking about Syrian refugees or undocumented immigrants. She was talking about a large subgroup of white American citizens.
The average life expectancy of white Americans age 25-54 declined between 1999 and 2014 because of a rapid rise in premature deaths from drug overdoses, suicides, and cirrhosis associated with alcohol consumption. The death rate from drug overdoses among 25 -34 year old whites was five times higher in 2014 than in 1999. It tripled among 35 – 44 year olds. By 2014, the overdose death rate among whites was double the rate for blacks or Hispanics. Although whites still live longer, the black-white gap closed considerably because of the premature white deaths.
The rising death rates are heavily concentrated among whites without college degrees. Rural areas and small towns of the Southeast, Southwest, and the Midwestern “rustbelt” have been especially hard hit.
Why are so many white Americans killing themselves with drugs, alcohol and guns? (Almost half of all American suicides are by gun.) The most common hypothesis among researchers is that these are “deaths of despair” among Americans who no longer have hope for a satisfactory future.
Economists, sociologists, psychologists and public health researchers are only beginning to study and understand this troubling trend. It’s clear that the problems of poverty, lack of jobs with good wages, and lack of education have existed at higher rates among black Americans than among whites for all of our history but it’s the white Americans who are killing themselves with drugs, alcohol and guns. Why?
One hypothesis is that this large group of white Americans have been taught to expect that, like their parents, they could support a family and live middle-class lives with a high school education. They counted on factory work, and semi-skilled labor to pay for necessities and a few luxuries. Those expectations have been shattered. They blame corporations, immigrants, government, and public policy (such as trade treaties) for their plight. They also point a finger at themselves and far too many turn to drugs, alcohol, and suicide as avenues of escape.
The white labor class may be suffering so much despair because they are just now experiencing what the black labor class, unprotected by labor unions and discriminated against by employers, have known from childhood. They can’t pay their way into the middle class. In many cases their marriages have failed and their families have shattered under the stress of economic pressures. Many lack the literacy skills, time and money to pursue better opportunities. They see little hope for themselves and their communities.
Our economy will use the least expensive combination of machines, computers, and people to produce goods and services. Then it will sell those goods and services in exchange for more money and repeat the process. In that environment, it is up to each individual to find a way to succeed. Otherwise, the economy will find you to be expendable.
Blame is irrelevant. The important question is, “What future will we choose to create?” The replacement of human work with automation and artificial intelligence has barely begun and no one knows how rapidly it will accelerate. A report by PWC, an international consulting firm, says that 38% of American jobs are at high risk of replacement by automation in the next 15 years.
We shouldn’t even try to stop the trend, but we do need to prepare for it. Public education must be redesigned to prepare every student for life-long learning at the college level. Parents and communities must encourage and support it because jobs with good wages will require continuous learning at that level. Even if manufacturing returns to the US, the old jobs will not accompany it. There will be far more automation and the new jobs will require skills that few of us have today. In addition, minimum wage, healthcare, and other public policies must be sufficient to support viable families.
As we envision our futures, it’s good to remember Jackson Browne’s line, “You can dream but you can never go back the way you came.” We can create a good future, but it won’t be the same as our past. We must not sacrifice another generation of Americans by preparing them for a future that won’t exist. Instead, we should prepare them for hope and success.
References for further reading:
Commonwealth fund brief on white mortality trends
A CHRISTMAS NEWSLETTER
Instead of a Christmas column from me, I tried to imagine a message from someone far wiser.
Dear American Friends:
I’ve noticed that many of you send newsy letters about your families as part of your celebration of my birthday. This year I decided to try it myself by writing to all of you. Christians often call me Father, Son, or Holy Ghost – three different ways to see me. Today I’m writing as Son.
It’s been a disappointing year for Dad and me. H.G., my spirit partner, is sad because so few of you welcome her into your thinking and conversations. Many of you don’t seem to hear her.
Your wars in the Middle East have killed about four million people in the last 25 years. Most of them are Dad’s Muslim children. He loves them as much as he loves you and he wants you to quit killing each other.
You’ve been writing “In God we trust” on your buildings. Dad’s not impressed. If you trusted him, you’d be taking his advice about which things are most important. I explained that to you once when I said that all of Dad’s laws are based on just two things. Love him; and love your neighbor as yourself. Everything that his prophets said, the laws they gave, and all that I taught comes from those two instructions. Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. I know that’s sometimes difficult for you to do but it isn’t complicated.
Did you notice that when I lived on your planet, I tried to be a respectful friend of people regardless of their station in life or whether they agreed with me? I enjoyed time with Roman soldiers that invaded my country, tax collectors, prostitutes, and lepers. I ignored nationality and welcomed whoever came to me. When I saw injustice, I spoke up about it. Think about that when you’re deciding whether to deport people who came into your nation hungry, needy, and looking for work. You must love and respect people of all races and cultures, whether straight or LGBTQ. There are no exceptions to “love your neighbor”.
Back at the beginning of time, Dad put you in charge. In one of the books that your ancestors wrote about him, they called it “having dominion” over the whole earth. You sometimes call it “free will”. Dad lets you make your own decisions and then he lets you live with the consequences – good ones and bad ones.
You’ve learned a lot from your science. You can produce food, shelter, clothing and other things that you need. You know how to cure some of the illnesses that killed your ancestors. Those are great things and you should be proud of what you’ve achieved. You should apply my “love your neighbor” teaching to those things too. You have brothers and sisters who are starving. Here in your wealthy nation you often reserve your nearly miraculous health care for those who have money or insurance.
You’ve written your laws so that individuals and businesses get to own knowledge. Anyone who wants to use the knowledge to save a life has to pay whoever owns the knowledge. Such greed makes some of you angry at others. You need to do something about that.
You’re making a mess of the planet that Dad gave you. It’s getting warmer and you’re about to flood a lot of it. You already know that from your science but you’re not doing much about it. Is that because it would cost money? But won’t it cost more when the floods come? And wouldn’t the work to clean up the planet create jobs for people who don’t have a way to support themselves today?
Even though Dad and I are sad and disappointed we still want to help. When I tried really hard about 2000 years ago, people like you crucified me for my trouble. We’re not going to do that again, but Dad did send H.G. to help you find your way. Listen to her. Look inside yourself. She’s there and if you pay close attention to her you’ll discover how to love your neighbor; and then you will know what to do.
Thanks for reading this. Dad, H.G. and I will be thinking of you and wishing you a Happy 2017.
Your friend,
Jesus
What to do on the morning after?
The day after the election will be the first day of the rest of our lives. What should we expect of our elected officials? Will we help or undermine each other and elected leaders? If individuals, families and communities listen to each other’s ideas and agree on how to move forward together, we can invigorate the idea of “commonwealth”, a society that is organized to benefit all. Everybody wins. If, on the other hand, winners kick losers while they’re down in order to maintain dominance and if losers do all they can to stop winners from implementing their ideas then the republic will decline. Everybody loses.
It’s happened in great societies throughout history and it’s especially clear in the Bible’s Old Testament. When those in power dominate and abuse the powerless, everybody loses and the society fails. When the principle of commonwealth guides decisions, the society blossoms.
Poverty, income inequality and homelessness are at crisis levels in many places. Rural America has depended on agriculture and manufacturing to provide family incomes and property tax revenue for local governments. Both of those economic sectors now produce more goods with fewer people than ever before. At the same time that rural employment opportunities paying middle class wages have become scarce, the tax revenues of rural communities have stagnated. Budgets for public education, safety, and human services are under severe stress at a time when they are critical to redevelopment of communities. The plight of rural America has much in common with high poverty neighborhoods of urban America. Low incomes and insufficient resources have similar effects in both places.
Will legislatures reconsider how public services are funded and which tax revenues are available at local, state and federal levels? Will high poverty areas have funding for education, high-speed internet, water, sewer, quality of life, health and other priorities at a level that is proportionate to wealthy areas? If not, will their future be inter-generational poverty and emigration of successful residents to more desirable areas? Will legislators work at solving the underlying problems or will they pit urban vs rural and white vs black vs Hispanic for partisan gain?
What about the sanctity of human life? Will we expect our congress, legislatures and executives to behave as if “all lives matter”? Does someone who wants a gun have the right to own an assault rifle designed for mass killing? Does a woman have the right to remove a fetus from her body? In which decisions should government have a role?
Conflicts between personal and constitutional values will not be fully resolved but can we make progress for the common good? Could we agree to reduce the demand for abortion by providing free birth control, better access to pre-natal care, simple and inexpensive adoption procedures, and by solving our income inequality problems? Will we expect legislators to find ways to preserve gun ownership for self-defense and recreation while getting weapons designed for mass killing out of circulation and screening gun purchasers to rule out suspected terrorists and known criminals? Or will we reward leaders for continuing to insult each other?
The Republican controlled Senate has refused to consider President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court. They hope to win the Presidential election and get a conservative-leaning nominee. Senators Richard Burr and Ted Cruz have made the radical statement that if Hillary Clinton is elected, they will refuse to confirm nominees and let the court shrink. That abrogation of a senator’s constitutional responsibility would invite similar behavior from Democrats toward a Republican president. Will we insist that senators fulfill their constitutional duties?
Differences of race, wealth, religion and philosophy divide us on a long list of issues: immigration, transpacific partnership, climate change, war, taxes, LBGTQ rights, health care, and more.
We’re not all going to miraculously agree after the election. Continued success for our republic will require two things of us. First, we must look honestly at facts. Second, we must engage each other in ongoing conversation (listening more than arguing) about the principle of commonwealth – making decisions and laws that create opportunity and peace for all of us.
Our legislators are capable of that, but they will do it only if they know that we voters expect it, demand it, and that we’re doing it ourselves.
We can start on November 9.
We can do well while doing good
The ongoing debate about the economic impact of HB2, North Carolina’s “bathroom law” seems both sad and laughable because its effect is so small when compared to another foolish decision made by the state’s Republican legislature. The economic and human damage done by the decision to reject expansion of the Medicaid program is greater by far.
Republican friends, before you disagree, do your homework and discover the facts for yourselves. Bring truth to the debate and then see how your legislature’s decisions look under that bright light. Before considering human impact, let’s examine some raw financial facts.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute have collaborated on research to understand the economic impact on states that rejected Medicaid Expansion. They found that health care funding in North Carolina would be increased by $41 billion in the decade from 2017-2026 if the state accepts Medicaid expansion. That would require $4.9 billion of state funding and would bring $36.1 billion in federal funding. Do the math. $36.1 minus $4.9 equals $31.2 in net gain. Another way to look at it, suppose someone offered you $36.10 in exchange for $4.90. Would you accept it? That is one billionth of the deal that Republicans rejected. The legislature knew this information when it rejected the Medicaid expansion.
Some will argue that our state budget is too large and we shouldn’t increase it further by expanding Medicaid. That is a reasonable concern, so let’s look at Medicaid expansion in the context of other government spending.
Most federal highway grants require a 20 percent state match. State funding of $4.9 billion would produce a federal highway match of $19.6 billion. That is $16.5 billion less than we would get if we spent the money on Medicaid expansion. Therefore, if one accepts purely financial justification for not expanding Medicaid, the state would be better off by $16.5 billion to reject the highway match and use the money to fund Medicaid.
In addition to providing health care to uninsured North Carolinians, the Medicaid expansion would create thousands of new jobs in health care to replace those lost in other industries.
The argument that “we can’t afford it” doesn’t hold water when made by legislators who spend money on items that yield a far smaller return on investment. It’s a matter of priorities, and this legislature obviously sees other spending as more important than keeping poor people alive and creating jobs.
What about the human effect of the decision? The Medicaid expansion was designed to provide coverage for the working poor, many of whom have jobs (sometimes more than one job) but who are paid so little that they can’t afford insurance even with the help of the Affordable Care Act. Whatever became of that right wing mantra “take a bath and get a job”? As cynical as it sounds, the Medicaid expansion is designed to support exactly that behavior. It provides health care for people at the bottom of the economic ladder so that they can stay healthy enough to work and support themselves.
Instead of supporting a program that fits with their own traditional philosophies, Republicans rejected the expansion. That leaves us with a law that requires hospitals participating in Medicare and doctors with privileges to practice there to provide emergency and obstetrical care without regard to a patient’s ability or willingness to pay. The cost of that is invisibly built into the prices paid by everyone else. As a result, North Carolinians will pay for surgery to add a few months of life for an emergency patient diagnosed with advanced colon cancer. But we won’t expand Medicaid to pay for the colonoscopy that could have prevented the cancer from forming in the first place. The result of Republican policy is higher cost and a dead patient.
Yes, HB2 is a foolish law that should be repealed. Yes, the cancellation of concerts and sports events has an economic impact on hotels, restaurants and tourism. Yes, the law unfairly discriminates against a largely defenseless class of citizens. Yes, it should be repealed. But so far no one has died as a result of HB2 and the economic impact is microscopic compared to the rejection of Medicaid expansion.
It’s a fabulous opportunity when the right thing to do is also the profitable thing to do. We have two such opportunities at the moment. Accept the Medicaid expansion. Repeal HB2. Everybody will win.
Republican friends, the facts don’t support your policies. It’s time to change your minds.
IS THE SYSTEM RIGGED AGAINST YOU?
Try Googling “Is the system rigged?” I found: “FBI Director Comey: I need the American people to know the system is not rigged” “Trump on Clinton FBI announcement: The system is rigged” “71% of Americans believe economy is rigged” “The System Didn’t Fail Eric Garner. It Worked How a Racist System Is Supposed to”
The stories shared two disturbing qualities. 1) Each is about an American institution. 2) Each contended that some “system” is rigged. Those headlines introduce angry stories that are backed by at least a few grains of truth.
The people who brought down our financial system avoided prosecution and most of them kept their ill-gotten gains. There is energy for deporting undocumented immigrants and their children but very little for prosecuting employers who hire them without mandatory benefits and wages.
The FBI Director didn’t recommend prosecution of a Secretary of State who was careless with national security information because, he says, she didn’t intend to break any law. But when I unintentionally made an illegal right turn because I didn’t see the sign prohibiting it, I paid a fine.
We’ve seen people of African descent unjustifiably killed by police and the killers walked away. Black youth are arrested for possession of marijuana in convenience store parking lots but campus police don’t arrest white college students for the same offense.
“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” That one-liner isn’t funny anymore. Unfairness, whether real or imagined, is a great danger because our freedom and democracy work well only when the great majority of us support the system and see it as fair.
It is the need for fairness, not fear of violence, that should drive our national conversation about these issues. The violence often comes from one deranged soul (lone wolf) not from Advocacy organizations. One enraged man (not associated with the Black Lives Matter movement) used their Dallas demonstration as an opportunity to kill five police officers. One Christian extremist (not associated with the Right To Life movement) shot five officers and six civilians at a Colorado Planned Parenthood Clinic. The movements express the concerns of substantial numbers of Americans about laws or institutions that they see as unfair. Most don’t promote violence.
During a previous era of dramatic social and economic change, when family farms and the shops of cobblers and blacksmiths were giving way to mechanized industries, America saw similar unrest and even greater violence. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act banning all Chinese immigration because their cheap labor was perceived as driving wages down. In 1887 there was a labor demonstration (The Haymarket Affair) in Chicago supporting an 8 hour work day. Someone threw a bomb. Gunfire followed. Seven police and at least four civilians died. In 1901, President McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist who blamed his unemployment on government policies. In 1920, Wall Street was bombed, apparently by an activist who believed that the financial system was rigged against him.
Recent events are strikingly similar to our history. Activists and political candidates promise to fix rigged systems with simplistic ideas: Exclude immigrants. Build a wall. Block trade treaties. Hold police accountable. Enforce law and order. Many Americans believe that “other” Americans are rigging our institutions (the system) against them, and that does not bode well for our future.
Our nation’s systems for finance, justice, law enforcement, health care, education and others that compose our national identity must be perceived as fair for all of us. We’ll need genuine improvements in fairness, not just slogans and polite listening. Otherwise we will continue to experience demonstrations and rage from those who believe that systems are rigged against them.
After successful efforts to pass civil rights and voting rights laws, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. shifted his attention toward economic justice by addressing financial and wage issues affecting Hispanic and white workers as well as blacks. At the time of his assassination he was in Memphis supporting a strike for higher wages by public sanitation workers. Nearly half a century later many issues of economic and racial justice have not yet been addressed. Now is the time to improve, not because of fear but because our national sensitivity to fairness has been raised. It is said that “Most people don’t read the writing on the wall until their backs are up against it.” I can feel the wall now.
Radically Practical Ideas for 2016
As I listen to friends of varied political persuasions, it seems that we all want 2016 to be a better year than the one we just completed; but many of us are predicting a miserable future. Being dissatisfied and angry won’t fix problems. Neither will arguing about who to blame. Instead, it is time to stop “predicting” the future and begin “creating” the one that we want. We can do that by shifting our attention from all that is wrong to improving our nation with practical ideas that a majority of us can agree on. Here are a few possibilities.
CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM: We need to reduce the influence of big money without limiting free speech. One solution is to create a national or state election website with a page for every elected office. Only registered candidates for office would be allowed to post on the website. Anything they post would remain until after the election, so any changes of position would be apparent. Voters could see and judge whatever the candidates themselves say about issues and about each other. Candidates could post written messages, photos, audio or video clips. Their words would be unfiltered by Super-PACS, advertising or news media. This is an inexpensive and easy way for candidates to campaign. It would reduce the need for big advertising budgets. And since everyone who is interested would have instant access to the candidates’ messages, there might even be fewer robo-calls.
INCOME DISPARITIES AND LACK OF OPPORTUNITY: An economic map of America will show that extreme poverty persists across multiple generations within well defined geographic areas – some of them urban and others rural. One solution is to make whatever government funded financial assistance we provide for housing portable so that people can use it anywhere. Rather than building public housing, we could let those receiving assistance use housing subsidies to choose whatever private sector housing best meets their needs. This change will allow them to migrate to places with jobs, grocery stores, good schools, public transportation and good public safety. Families are much more likely to break out of the generational cycle of poverty if they are not confined to communities devoid of opportunity and surrounded by underemployment, crime and other social ills. This idea could be tested by gradual implementation to assure that it works as intended. If it does, then we could expand it and eventually sell existing public housing for private use or re-development.
TAX REFORM: Corporations are, at best, tax collectors, not tax payers. All of the taxes that they pay are passed on to customers. We might be better off treating their profits and losses as a per share pass-through of ordinary income to shareholders whether the actual cash is distributed or not. This will have the effect of reducing the cost of American-made products and services in international markets, increasing exports and creating jobs. By taxing corporate profits as income to the owners of the corporation, we could maintain or increase the tax revenue that the government receives from corporate taxes. Since our income tax is already graduated, the revised tax burden will be greater for the wealthy than for middle and low income families. The only part of this idea that might become complicated is creating a mechanism to document profits to Americans from foreign corporations.
We could also create a small national sales tax (one half of one percent or less) on all financial instruments including stocks, bonds ETFs, credit default swaps, etc. This tax would be only a modest burden to long term investors, including those saving for retirement but it would deter the high-frequency trading that creates wild swings in the value of our investments. It would also bring in revenue to help us toward a balanced budget.
There is good news about America that we too easily forget: We don’t have to agree on everything in order to improve. We only have to begin seeing our problems as opportunities for improvement. If we will do that, we will find radically practical ideas – if not mine then perhaps yours or someone else’s – to improve our lives. In 2016 let’s resolve to build on our areas of agreement while we continue to debate our differences.