The biggest civil rights violation you've never heard of

http://www.npr.org/2013/07/10/200644779/history-professor-kept-mexican-repatriation-alive
http://public.csusm.edu/frame004/history.html

"If we were rid of the aliens who have entered this country illegally since 1921, stealing in as burglars might enter our homes, our present employment problem would shrink to the proportions of a relatively flat spot in business." - J Quinn, LA Supervisor

CA and the US southwest have historically had a higher % of Latino residents due to proximity to Mexico and former Spanish-Mexican sovereignty. Since the first days the US settled the West, we have been importing cheap Mexican laborers. Some of those people had children here who were born US citizens, supposedly with full legal rights on paper. They didn't sneak in here... they were asked to come here and had families in accordance with US laws. They helped Americans survive and prosper, despite often being treated inferior.

The "Mexican Repatriation" under Hoover during the Depression was an outrageous response by a desperate nation to keep "American jobs in the hands of REAL Americans." Where have we heard that before? As if getting rid of Mexicans would have ended the Depression - it probably would have exacerbated it! Next there was the illusion of immigrants "sucking America dry" and living off the gov't teat. People of Mexican descent were only 12% of the welfare rolls, consuming on average $20/month of gov't assistance (and that assistance was passed on in the form of consumer spending, often to white businesses). Yet deporting them cost taxpayers $68/family. So what were we gaining? Some of the people we kicked out were taxpayers and "job creators" too.

During 1929-1944, over 2M people were deported under this program, and 1.2M of them (60%) were US CITIZENS. It's not like they got rid of all Latinos, so in some cases families were broken up in the indiscriminate dragnet and never reunited (like ICE's rounding up of illegals today). The social climate was so hostile to Latinos that many of them voluntarily left the US too, at the rate of 10K/month in 1931. Similar to the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Latinos who weren't rounded up were often blocked or intimidated away from gov't services and employment. So if US society wasn't letting them make a living, is it any wonder why some of them ended up on welfare? A self-fulfilling racist prophecy. The "we're getting rid of criminal Mexicans" myth was pervasive, but it was likely that more crimes were being committed against Latinos than by Latinos at that time (Latinos rarely reported crimes against them to authorities, and witnesses would rarely stick their necks out for them).

The program explicitly targeted Latinos, and I am sure they were dispossessed of their legal property like what happened to the interned Japanese-Americans (we often forget that they were US citizens too). It is a tragedy of our education system that me as a US-born citizen didn't learn of this until I was 34. Speaking of Japanese Internment, some speculate that the Mexican Repatriation was a "warm up" and learning experience for the US gov't so they were more able to efficiently handle the Japanese-Americans.

After what happened during the Depression, it is an amazing display of grace and forgiveness that Latinos still want to live here, especially when they have had to put up with similar shit over the decades (physical laborer and domestic worker abuse, prop 187, border fence, Arizona law, the Tea Party, etc.).

And here is the official US gov't response:

In February 2005, California State Senator Joseph Dunn (D-Garden Grove) introduced Senate Bill 670 to apologize for the "unconstitutional removal and coerced migration" of Californians during the Great Depression. Before "The Apology Act for the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Program" was passed on February 22, it had twice been vetoed by Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis. - C Frame, CSUSM

They were supposed to erect a plaque commemorating this tragedy, but so far nothing has been done.

How technology is affecting the American Dream

We talked about most of this already but it's a good take on the issue: http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/01/after-your-job-is-gone/

Also another take on the elites vs. rest idea (even Jay-Z, Obama, and Oprah are not spared!) - the author Packer was on Real Time tonight: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/29/books/the-unwinding-by-george-packer.html?pagewanted=all

An aside: L is right that Maher is an idiot and a psycho when it comes to security issues and Islam-bashing. He rightly trashes the 2nd Amend. yet proudly owns guns because "the other crazies are armed". He claims to be a true Libertarian, but supports all sorts of liberty-reducing actions that ostensibly prevent terrorism. It's funny... self-respect and humility often make us better people. But self-preservation and self-love make us pricks. No one wants or needs to die, but the world doesn't need us either.

I guess America's Great Society of the '60s and '90s socialism in Europe were the exception and not the rule. As the author said, most of the modern world resembles the pre-French Revolution "nobles and serfs" model. But it's sad because our generation in the US was brought up to believe that the Great Society was our birthright and if anything, we would make it even better in our lifetimes. Of course things weren't all rosy in the past (bigotry, ignorance, Cold War, etc.), but it's amazing that America of that time period had low unemployment, low wealth inequality, ample gov't services, and low deficits.

Now the opposite is true, though our employment situation is much better than Europe's... and their society may be unraveling faster than ours.

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578386-euro-zone-desperately-need-boost-no-news-bad-news-sleepwalkers

But that is a little deceiving, because while US unemployment is down to like 7.5% now (much higher for young people though), the quality and security of most American jobs are not great, the social safety net is about depleted, and many are not counted as unemployed because they have taken the disability route instead (as we've discussed), or have just become the "permanent, uncounted, unhirables".

The change coincides with the rise of Si Valley, hyper-finance, and globalization. We can't be sure what caused what, but similar things happened during the Guilded Age, fueled by the tech bubble of the time - railroad, electricity, telco, etc. that Wall St. ate up. I guess disruptive tech always creates new winners and losers, but usually doesn't rewrite the labor map. Our new tech industry seems more extreme: highly paid jobs with specialized skills that are not accessible to the mainstream, emphasis on quick ROI rather than long term sustainable growth, and "virtual" products that create a ton of wealth for some but not many new jobs (or in fact replace old jobs). That could be called "progress", but the effects appear to be socially unjust too.

 Also here is a great interview on the issue with Moyers and Richard Wolff:

http://billmoyers.com/segment/richard-wolff-on-fighting-for-economic-justice-and-fair-wages/

European austerity has been an utter failure

http://www.npr.org/2013/05/31/187459762/e-u-eases-some-austerity-measures

NPR interviewed an economist from the AEI, and even he couldn't deny that European austerity hurt growth and what they needed instead was Keynesian stimulus.

This is no big news to those who have been following this issue, but it's good to see almost universal agreement that austerity was the main driver of Europe's double-dip and likely deeper current recession. Only head-in-the-sand EU officials are saying that austerity was necessary to "stabilize the financial markets" and give investors confidence to buy PIIGS bonds. But that is insincere, as it was likely the ECB's concurrent quantitative easing measures and "whatever it takes" declaration (after years of indecision and deliberation) that calmed the markets.

What is more tragic is a "lost generation" of productive young people in Europe who can't get work. They are talented and motivated, but austerity and other factors are literally ruining their futures. Honestly I am amazed we haven't seen a flood of European refugees (I guess it shows how much they love their homelands and families, and maybe how unwelcoming foreign immigration policies are). Some have taken menial jobs in Germany or other places within the EU with lower unemployment. But their extended exposure to these economic woes will likely have major health, psychological, and familial consequences. All because some old, rich fuckos in Berlin and Brussels hate debt and inflation. Well no one likes those things, but they are lesser evils than a lost generation.

I really hope that the EU example deters US conservatives from pushing hard for austerity here. But those folks don't exactly have great working relationships with data and reality, so we can't be sure. If they want austerity so bad, start with the defense industry and tax Wall Street more.

Disability coverage masks US labor force problems

http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/

Starting with the Bush I recession in 1990, the numbers of Americans on disability rolls has surged. The Great Recession has further accelerated the trend. Now disability spending > (food stamps + welfare combined), with 14M Americans participating (9% of the labor force).

Of course some people are truly disabled and need public assistance to survive, but many others suffer from the same "ailments" that working people have. I am not saying that these people are lazy "takers", and in fact there is a higher prevalence in southern Red states (and of course is correlated with education levels and local economic conditions). And that is kind of the point - due to structural changes in the US economy and labor force, tens of millions of Americans are now effectively unhirable in the 21st Century. Often they come from blue-collar non-desk jobs that are more physical, so it is likely that they have various pains and elements. So it is easy for a physician to approve many of them for disability. But the problem is that once they are approved and on the rolls, there is next to zero incentive for them to find a job and go through the effort of retraining. It's not like welfare and unemployment with a finite time span of benefits. And speaking of welfare - that is a driver too. "Reforms" under Clinton and Newt effectively shifted people on welfare to other programs such as disability, so it didn't really save the country much money or motivate the labor force. Probably America would get more bang for its buck if it invested in worker transition and retraining programs rather than just hide/relegate these people to the disability space (the US spends about $260B/year on the 2 major disability programs). I am not advocating kicking legitimate people off these programs, but I think it behooves us to at least perform a cost and impact analysis, and propose improvements/alternatives. Disability is just a band-aid to mask our larger labor and health care problems.

There is even a cottage industry now ("disability industrial complex") to advise and help people to get approved for disability - similar to the folks who help kids get into college or help immigrants get their green cards (one firm took in $70M in fees in 2012 alone). And some families may now see their kids as "cash cows" too, by enrolling them and collecting additional benefits. The number of kids on disability has grown 4X since 1990. Clearly medicine has improved since then, and doctors are better able to diagnose disabilities, but it is pretty much impossible to attribute that huge rise to actual increases in disability diagnoses and incidence.

More on taxes and unemployment

Well, the WSJ is totally correct that extending unemployment will keep official unemployment higher than cutting it, but for a far more cynical reason.  We use U3 unemployment as the measure of official unemployment, and to qualify as unemployed under U3 a person has to be actively searching for a job.  There are plenty of folks who are only nominally looking for jobs: doing it because it's a requirement to collect the unemployment benefits.  If you cut the unemployment benefits, they'll no longer have a reason to search for a job, and they'll stop.  As soon as they cease looking for employment they cease to be counted in U3 unemployment.  Voila, lower official unemployment!

The fact that we use U3 unemployment as the measure of official unemployment fairly dramatically understates the actual labor slack in the economy.  Looking at a measure like U6 (which is U3 unemployment plus people who've stopped seeking work for economic reasons, people who would like a job but haven't looked recently, and people who are working part-time for economic reasons but want to work full-time), that measure of unemployment is up around 17%.  And the spread has increased.  3 years ago U3 was 4.7% and U6 was 8.5%.  Today it's 9.8% and 17.0%.  It's a lot easier to tell people they should care about austerity and so forth when you can claim unemployment is 9.8% than if you have to acknowledge it's at 17%.

Also, a pretty good graph of the effect of different kinds of economic stimulus, from Moody's a couple years ago when they were looking at this stuff the first time around: http://motherjones.com/files/legacy/news/feature/2009/01/bang-for-the-buck.jpg

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Very true, thanks J. Yeah U3 is a pretty limited metric and doesn't capture real labor market conditions. I don't know why more economists and politicians don't cite the U6 data - that should shock anyone that almost 1 out of 5 able-bodied people can't find work or can't find enough work. That's about 25.5M people, and many more if you include dependents. That is a critical mass for voting leverage. Well, the unemployment rate among white collar workers is quite a bit lower, and if they and the retired are doing most of the voting, well then we know what kind of economic policies we'll get.

"Managers and college grads still are more likely to be working than Americans overall. The unadjusted unemployment rate hit 8.5% in January, compared with 4.1% for management and professional workers and 3.8% for college graduates." (I'm assuming these %s are based on U3 from 2009).

http://www.jsonline.com/business/39650377.html

Haha, so all the tax cuts that the GOP loves (dividends/cap gains, Bush cuts, corporate cuts) deliver the least bang for buck, while all the spending they want to cut (food stamps, unemployment) are the best. When will America wake up to this? Good job to the GOP governors who refused stimulus money for infrastructure projects and such (and often those red states are the ones with the weakest economies and most crumbling infrastructure, like Gov. Jindal's Louisiana). Yeah it's totally ridiculous that companies get to report accelerated depreciation to the IRS but use more conservative depreciation measures for SEC filings. So they pay less tax and appear more profitable to shareholders?

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/09/131940665/Sen-Alexander-Tax-Deal-Will-Create-Jobs

NPR was interviewing #3 GOP Senator Alexander yesterday (who sits on the Appropriations, Budget, Health/Labor Cmtes. so he should understand this stuff) about the tax cut deal, and the host kept prodding him to explain why it's justified that high earners get a tax cut, and in fact a disproportionately expensive cut vs. lower earners (1/4 of the amount goes to the richest 1% of Americans). Instead of an intelligent response, he parroted the cliche "We are trying to create jobs and you don't raise taxes on anyone during a recession." Then why did they oppose Obama's stimuli, which included tax breaks for businesses that hire new workers? Isn't that better than giving every rich person money even if they don't preserve/create a single job?

He also stressed that this was not a tax cut, since the taxes are currently low but are scheduled to increase. So letting the cuts expire would actually be a tax hike (I guess if the Dems let the cuts expire, the GOP plans to blast them for "raising taxes"). But that is ridiculous logic. It was a temporary tax holiday all along (since Bush and the GOP in 2000 didn't have the votes to make it permanent); the regular tax rate is the higher one. That's like me taking a vacation from work, and when I return, I complain to my boss that he's increasing my hours! I guess Alexander realized that he couldn't give a good answer to the question, so might as well kill the conversation with some misdirection. He is a lawyer after all.

It's just sad to see Obama and Summers defending this tax cut BS so fervently, and to their fellow Dems to boot. I don't really blame Obama for his actions considering the circumstances, but stop trying to polish a turd. They are actually saying that if we extend the tax cuts, we'll certainly avoid a double-dip recession. I guess the GOP isn't the only party engaged in fear-mongering.

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I think the attached chart pretty much lays out the answer to your question as to why there's such intense pressure to ditch the unemployment insurance and extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. (as you might imagine, education and income are pretty highly correlated)

I was just reading a paper the other day about how much more pro-poor the US would be if elections were held on the weekends (most poor people can't get off time to go vote on weekdays like high-income people can). It's no surprise that the most conservative states often have the shortest voting hours and the most onerous voting registration requirements.

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Thx, A. I wonder why community organizers don't try to mobilize the urban poor more during elections. Maybe since most cities vote liberal anyway, and minorities/lower income folks are more likely to be Dems, less of a need? I know there were allegations of people getting packed into buses from the ghetto and whisked to the polling stations, but I'm not sure if it was just propaganda, and also not sure if there's anything wrong with that.

As you said, our voting system is the most inaccessible of all modern, developed democracies. In France I believe the window to vote is several days if not weeks, India too (due to people living in remote areas maybe). In other nations voting occurs on weekends or national holidays. There is absolutely no damn reason to have an election on a work day, especially when the working poor can't get paid time off and may work 12 hours a day over multiple jobs. Plus in other nations there isn't so much red tape for registering. In many cases a voter can "register" (or whatever equivalent) on election day. Hell, even in Iraq the polls stay open Fri-Sun. But all those scenes of Americans waiting in lines all day to vote in inner-city areas is just unacceptable. Voting shouldn't be such a sacrifice, unless the system is designed to prevent those people from participating. Making voting nearly impossible for the lower class is one thing, but how do we control the influence of the rich in politics? The 1st Amend. seems to protect an individual, org, or corporation's "right" to basically contribute limitless cash to political causes, and the Supreme Court seemed to affirm that last year.

In Australia and Belgium (among others), voting is mandatory with small fines for absentees. Maybe that wouldn't fly here, but I know Arizona passed a bill to include a cash lottery as incentive to get people to the polls. We'll see how effective it will be. I wonder if even mail-in or online/phone voting would help the poor that much (Wikipedia says internet voting is already in place in the UK, France, and Switzerland, but I haven't been following that). Oregon, which has a fully mail-in voting system, is slightly better than the US average for turnout (US avg. for 2008 pres. election was 62%, OR was 67%).

http://www.slate.com/id/2108832/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout#International_differences
http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2008G.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/17/us/17voter.html?ex=1310788800&en=9626060428eeb1ed&ei=5088

More on the tax compromise

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20101209/ts_yblog_thelookout/jobless-benefits-cut-unemployment-rate-fed-economist-confirms

More data to refute the GOP's BS economic beliefs. Of course the GOP and conservative WSJ/Bloomberg Businessweek used Fed data to calculate that if Obama's request to extend unemployment benefits goes through, it will result in 0.4-0.8% higher unemployment during the duration of coverage vs. if the benefits expired. We know that "handouts" are disincentives to find work. But there is another side of the coin. The Fed study's authors state that a "second stimulus" is created due to unemployment benefits, but I guess the sophisticated business press overlooked it. The recipients are more likely to stay afloat (thereby averting some of the social costs of unemployment), and they are very likely to spend most or all of their benefits to survive, which injects more cash into the economy, which in turns spurs investment, hiring, growth, and deficit reduction (all the things that the GOP claims their policies promote). The Fed estimates that some 700,000 new jobs can be created from the benefits being spent. Spending by people on unemployment will also trickle to small business owners who are not eligible for unemployment insurance, and therefore depend on revenues to keep their operations going, so it's fairly egalitarian. Unemployment assistance is as big of a win-win as you can find these days, yet of course that is precisely what the GOP opposes and wants to cut. Why anyone who earns less than $150K/year and isn't an extremist Christian would support the GOP these days is beyond me. I'm not saying we all should be Dems, but at least quit the party that doesn't give a shit about you and all the hard-working, honest folks who are getting crushed by economic forces out of their control.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/12/tax_cuts

Also, those on unemployment benefits will probably spend all of their assistance because it is only a fraction of their former salaries, and they may have already been living month-to-month even while fully employed. Changing gears a bit, the poor spend all of their tax credits, and then some (according to this Economist piece), because they often don't own real estate and have less incentive/ability to save. Remember in 2008 how Dubya gave a $300 stimulus check to each taxpayer, regardless of income? The poor (earning <$32K) increased their spending by $384 on average, and the rich (earning >$75K, though in parts of America $75K is hardly rich) increased by only $231. So that means the economy gets more help from aid to the poor than to the rich. And the rich will get theirs anyway, since extra spending by the poor will improve earnings, dividends, and stock values for the consumer firms that the rich own/invest in. The rich may not even notice the extra bit in their paychecks, and it's such a small fraction of their disposable income anyway, so they just pocket it or let it earn an investment return. Ironically, the middle earners (between the 2 groups) spent even less of the stimulus. The author hypothesizes that this is due to many middle class Americans having mortgages and credit card debt that they would rather help pay off than spend on new purchases (I think there were news reports on this at the time). But still, that is economically sound because it reduces their risk of foreclosure, dings to their credit rating, and wasted money on exorbitant interest rates. We get the least bang for our buck by helping the rich, which is pretty much obvious to everyone but 41 senators it seems.

I see now that the Dems are revolting against Obama's tax compromise and are crafting new legislation in response. I understand some of the anger against Obama, but the real culprit is the abuse of the filibuster. I know they don't have the votes for filibuster reform either (and the Dems may not want to take that weapon off the table, because they are bound to be the Senate minority many more times in the future), but at least point the finger at the right culprit.

How unemployment is destroying a generation (or two)

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/201003/jobless-america-future


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123974560

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122455219391652725.html



The current US unemployment situation is most drastically affecting white Midwest manufacturing workers and "trophy kids" from the Millennial Generation, which we've already discussed a bit: http://worldaffairs-manwnoname.blogspot.com/2009/02/welcome-to-recession-spoiled-brats.html



Self-esteem without basis encourages laziness rather than hard work... The ability to persevere and keep going [is] a much better predictor of life outcomes than self-esteem...There’s an element of entitlement—[Millennials] expect people to figure things out for them.

- Jean Twenge, psychology prof. at SDSU



It's foolish to generalize an entire generation, but new graduates born between 1980 and 1991 grew up with comfort, security, and high expectations. As suburban Boomers had fewer kids and bigger incomes, they doted on their children and taught them to believe that they were special and destined for great things of their choosing. But with that mindset, if things don't go well for them, it can't be their fault, right? They're perfect; what are Harvard and Google smoking to reject them? Something must be wrong when 74-79% of Millennials surveyed thought of themselves as physically attractive and very intelligent. It can't be all grade inflation and TV. More Millennials think that they will have postgraduate degrees and high-paying jobs versus previous generations too. Maybe even scarier, more Millennials think that they will be able to earn a living as entertainers and artists versus their predecessors. Good luck.



But it's not all their fault; sometimes "society" and timing are to blame too. Studies of the 1980 and 1990 recessions showed that for every 1% the unemployment rate rises, new graduate salaries drop 7%. So similarly skilled people who entered the job market during a boom may enjoy 25% higher pay than those who entered during a bust, which will haunt them their entire careers (by cursing them to a lower baseline). The number of graduating seniors given job offers was down 21% from 2008 to 2009. An American's first job has huge impact on his or her career potential too. Recent graduates stuck with a less glamorous job out of desperation are handicapped for future promotions or job transitions, because employers write them off as low achievers (in general, but of course there are exceptions with a few truly talented young workers getting ahead). So maybe the Millennials who shun boring, subsistence jobs and prefer to spend a year or two "finding themselves" and living off their parents are on to something (and the clingy, enabling Boomer parents are complicit in this for another precious opportunity to dote and feel life in their homes again). But they can't wait too long, as the younger crops of grads with more current skills, more fire in their bellies from spending their teen years in a recession, and no "gaps in employment" will be breathing down their necks.



Here's more reason to feel for the Millennials: studies have shown that prolonged unemployment during the post-high-school-to-age-30 years increases the risk for lifetime alcohol abuse, poor health, and depression, even when controlling for people's psychological background, exposure to alcohol, and socioeconomic situation. So maybe all those years of being praised as wonderful (when they were always just average) makes the let-down of "you're not even good enough to get a job" all the more bitter. This is another reason why it may do more harm than good for parents to coddle and overly inflate their kid's self esteem.



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“A man is not a man without work.”

“During the Depression I lost something. Maybe you call it self-respect, but in losing it I also lost the respect of my children, and I am afraid I am losing my wife.”

“I still love him, but he doesn’t seem as ‘big’ a man.”

Quotes from people who lived through unemployment during the 1930s.



And now for the older folks: 3/4 of recent job losses were incurred by men, since male-dominated construction, manufacturing, and finance have had the most layoffs, while female-oriented service, health, and education jobs have fared better. For the first time ever, women may comprise the majority of the US workforce by mid-2010. But unless the woman earns significantly more in a non-traditional household, an unemployed father/husband has disasterous effects on the family. Besides their financial contributions, men are less likely to help with household work while unemployed (maybe in rebellion against their loss of manhood from unemployment), and being out of work affects them more psychologically (self worth, mood, treatment of others, turning to destructive behaviors).



Only a death is more traumatic to a family than male unemployment. The likelihood of divorce increases drastically when the man is out of work, especially for over 6 months, which is now the average duration of American unemployment (the longest period since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started the measurement in 1948). All the divorces and unstable households will have terrible impacts on the children and America' future. Despite some arguments that children can still excel from single-parent homes (like Obama), statistics show the opposite. And more unmarried, unemployed men on the streets causes social problems. Married men are less likely to be involved with gangs, crime, and drugs, since they are spending more time doing wholesome family activites (in theory). This point applies more to poor blacks than whites or Latinos, but all races are affected. People are still having kids at normal rates (which is expensive and can negatively impact work performance), but fewer people are deciding to marry during this recession too (as in the past), which makes sense due to the exorbitant costs of the "ideal marriage" played up by the wedding industry, and shifting priorities during hard times.



All this has been going on in predominantly white communities from the Rust Belt to Buffalo even before the recession began. And the jobs lost there will never come back, despite what the politicians may promise and what the people may hope for. If they want to return to the workforce, they may need complete retraining, which is expensive, time consuming, and maybe not practical for many of them. Plus they will be competing with more qualified and experienced urban folks for new jobs. We've already seen the effects of this phenomena in urban black blue-collar communities in the 1970s. As the jobs left, those African Americans had difficulty transitioning to other employment, due to cultural and racial barriers. A macho steel worker can't become a courteous customer service rep overnight. So instead of joining the urban service sector as women and immigrants did, blacks languished and turned to depression and crime. I don't know if Rust Belt white communities are heading down that same path, but it's possible.



And on a societal level, recessions and tough times can make people meaner, less progressive, and less tolerant (against those who get blamed for the harships of the masses, namely immigrants). Politicians say that they draw inspiration from the American spirit of good people helping each other, working together to deal with hardships, and getting back to basic values. Like those Allstate commercials and whatnot. In some cases, recessions do make people more compassionate and grounded, as class tensions and wealth gaps shrink. But in the current recession, the rich-poor gap has actually increased (thanks, Goldman Sachs). Anger against the rich (and by extension, our leaders) has spiked, as we've seen with the Tea Parties and populist backlash. White lower-income Americans are increasingly feeling left out of the American promise (blacks and Indians are saying, "Welcome to our world!"), and are raging against that.



To close, I'll leave you with this statement from The Atlantic's Ron Peck:



In The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, the economic historian Benjamin Friedman argues that both inside and outside the U.S., lengthy periods of economic stagnation or decline have almost always left society more mean-spirited and less inclusive, and have usually stopped or reversed the advance of rights and freedoms. A high level of national wealth, Friedman writes, “is no bar to a society’s retreat into rigidity and intolerance once enough of its citizens lose the sense that they are getting ahead.” When material progress falters, Friedman concludes, people become more jealous of their status relative to others. Anti-immigrant sentiment typically increases, as does conflict between races and classes; concern for the poor tends to decline.