Income Gaps and OWS Gets Chilly

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Kevin S. Willis

Why am I a registered Republican? Because when I registered as a
Republican, I was at the height of my new-found conservatism, having been a liberal in my youth (as so many are). Also, because my disillusionment with liberalism (my own liberalism having been naïve) was so profound, I was taking the full pendulum trip to the other side.

I’m going to remain a registered Republican, although I become less enamored with the sorts of politicians the GOP puts forward (and are currently in office) every day. Income gap polling as an issue? Let’s try to own it!

Speaking of income gaps, Bridgeport, Connecticut is the city in the US with the biggest gap between rich and poor. It’s a blue city in a blue state, if we’re talking political affiliations.

In fact, it’s interesting that the same folks who repeatedly cited how blue states paid more in federal taxes, while red states received more in federal taxes, haven’t been interested in blue state/red state comparisons when it comes to the income gap. Perhaps it’s because states like New York—which is a fairly blue state—rank highest in wealth disparity.

Atlanta, Georgia has the highest income gap between 2005 and 2009. Aha, you say! Georgia is about as red as a state gets! Alas, Atlanta is a decidedly blue pocket in that red, red state.

Washington, DC is also a city with some of the greatest income disparity, according to latest census data.

Interesting, most of the cities with the highest income gaps are blue cities (in terms of both local government and who they tend to vote for in national elections) swimming in seas of red. Atlanta, Dallas, Gainesville, Baton Rouge.

Among the states with the most unequal income, we find California, Connecticut, New York, Louisiana, as well as Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama and D.C., if you want to count them as a state. What does that tell us? That even liberals and Democrats have a very hard time doing anything to effect the income gap, and that even fair progressive policies (such as those employed in California, New York, and Connecticut) don’t necessarily do much in regards to controlling income disparity. Also, that legalized gambling made a lot of people very rich in Mississippi.

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I have noted that I expect most protests to have a partying, here-for-the-babes-and-drugs type element. Well, those folks are going to be going home. When the weather starts freezing, the partying is over for the party-people.

Unemployment is higher for veterans. We apparently don’t do much for placement. Clearly, we can and should do better. We spend a great deal on defense, we can’t afford some time spent on placing folks exiting the service?

The gap between rich and poor foods is narrowing. Supposedly. I still think anybody can eat inexpensively with judicious shopping, and perhaps a little gardening. Fast food and restaurant eating (Chipotle? Really) is still, in my experience, a lot more expensive than smart shopping, clipping coupons, and owning a freezer.

Are more taxes and regulation the path to prosperity? Well, Maryland is going to find out, starting (but not stopping) with higher taxes on toilets.

Less regulations under Obama than Bush? But the problem is, Obama’s regulation are more onerous or expensive. Jeeze, you people are never happy.

Filed under: income inequality, Occupy Wall Street, OWS, regulations | Tagged: | 15 Comments »

It’s a Carnival

Posted on October 6, 2011 by lmsinca

I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for a post about “Occupy Wall Street” (jk). I’ve inserted a link here and there and have been looking for the best launching pad to begin a post of my own. I’ve read lots of comments making fun of the protesters or telling them to grow up, get a job, put down the pipe, you know, all the usual. That seems to be the reaction of some people on both sides of the aisle but I don’t think it’s very useful in understanding what’s going on. As these groups grow and spread out across the nation, assuming they do, I think it behooves us to understand what’s behind it and what, if anything, they’re trying to accomplish. I heard a young grad student speak to a local reporter last weekend here in LA and she said something that I’ve been thinking about ever since, which I loosely paraphrase as, we’re talking to each other and listening to each other. We don’t know if anyone else is listening or not and right now we don’t care. I thought that was really interesting for some reason and then this morning Matt Stoller authored a piece that explained what she meant without hearing her say it.

What do the people at #OccupyWallStreet actually want? What are their demands? For many people, this is THE question.

So let me answer it. What they want… is to do exactly what they are doing. They want to occupy Wall Street. They have built a campsite full of life, where power is exercised according to their voices. It’s a small space, it’s a relatively modest group of people at any one time, and the resources they command are few. But they are practicing the politics of place, the politics of building a truly public space. They are explicitly rejecting the politics of narrow media, the politics of the shopping mall. To understand #OccupyWallStreet, you have to get that it is not a media object or a march. It is first and foremost, a church of dissent, a space made sacred by a community. But like Medieval churches, it is also now the physical center of that community. It has become many things. Public square. Carnival. Place to get news. Daycare center. Health care center. Concert venue. Library. Performance space. School.

Few people, though an increasing number daily, have actually taken the time to go through a general assembly, to listen to what the people at #OccupyWallStreet actually want. General assemblies are the consensus-oriented group conversations at the heart of the occupations, where endlessly repeating the speaking of others is the painstaking and frustrating way that the group comes to make decisions.

There’s no electronic amplification allowed in Zuccotti Square. So the organizers have figured out an organic microphone system. A speaker says a half a sentence, everyone in earshot repeats, until the whole park can hear that half a sentence. Then the speaker says another half a sentence.

I felt completely included as part of a community forum even though I had not been a speaker. But what I realized is that the act of listening, embedded in the active reflecting of what the speaker was saying, created a far richer conversational space. Actually reflecting back to one another what someone just said is a technique used by therapists, and by pandering politicians. There is nothing so euphoric in a community sense as truly feeling heard. That’s what the general assembly was about, not a democracy in the sense of voting, but a democracy in the sense of truly respecting the humanity of everyone in the forum. It took work. It took patience. But it created a communal sense of power.

The premise of their politics is that #OccupyWallStreet isn’t designed to fit into your TV or newspaper. Nothing human really is, which is why our politics is so utterly deformed. It’s why they don’t want to be “on message” – what kind of human society can truly be reduced to a slogan? I’m not sure I agree with their political premise. But in the carnival they have created, in the liveliness and beauty and art and fun and utter humanity of it all, they make a damn good case.

Filed under: democracy, Occupy Wall Street | Tagged: , | 42 Comments »

Wall Street vs. The Kids (Sun. Open Thread)

Posted on October 2, 2011 by lmsinca

Well, it looks like “Occupy Wall Street” is finally getting some media attention. I’ve been following the story a little and I’ve read commentary that they need both a defined message and a goal to get anywhere with their protest, and I’ve also read others stating their lack of those is part of the message itself. I do know it’s spreading to other cities and the number of protesters seems to be growing. Yesterday more than 700 were arrested after a confrontation with police on the Brooklyn Bridge. Protesters are using social media to attract people to the ill defined cause. That sounds familiar.

NEW YORK (AP) — More than 700 protesters demonstrating against corporate greed, global warming and social inequality, among other grievances, were arrested Saturday after they swarmed the Brooklyn Bridge and shut down a lane of traffic for several hours in a tense confrontation with police.

“I don’t think we’re asking for much, just to wake up every morning not worrying whether we can pay the rent, or whether our next meal will be rice and beans again,” Larkins wrote in an email to The Associated Press. “No one is expecting immediate change. I think everyone is just hopeful that people will wake up a bit and realize that the more we speak up, the more the people that do have the authority to make changes in this world listen.”

Nicholas Kristof had a few suggestions for them in the way of demands. It’s doubtful any of this will ever come to fruition or if it does, I’m sure the financial wizards will figure out a way around it. These ideas, while reasonable in my view, seem a little naive coming from someone like Kristof.

*Impose a financial transactions tax. This would be a modest tax on financial trades, modeled on the suggestions of James Tobin, an American economist who won a Nobel Prize. The aim is in part to dampen speculative trading that creates dangerous volatility. Europe is moving toward a financial transactions tax, but the Obama administration is resisting — a reflection of its deference to Wall Street.

*Close the “carried interest” and “founders’ stock” loopholes, which may be the most unconscionable tax breaks in America. They allow our wealthiest citizens to pay very low tax rates by pretending that their labor compensation is a capital gain.

*Protect big banks from themselves. This means moving ahead with Basel III capital requirements and adopting the Volcker Rule to limit banks’ ability to engage in risky and speculative investments. Another sensible proposal, embraced by President Obama and a number of international experts, is the bank tax. This could be based on an institution’s size and leverage, so that bankers could pay for their cleanups — the finance equivalent of a pollution tax.

Much of the sloganeering at “Occupy Wall Street” is pretty silly — but so is the self-righteous sloganeering of Wall Street itself. And if a ragtag band of youthful protesters can help bring a dose of accountability and equity to our financial system, more power to them.

And then there’s this, two of my favorite lefties, David Dayen and Kevin Drum think BofA’s announcement to charge a $5 fee on debit cards is actually a good move for consumers. At least now we see the fees up front, they’re no longer just added into other banking fees or services, and we can choose to not pay it by taking our business elsewhere.

All along, banks have had the option of reforming overdraft fees to make them fairer and more transparent. They had the option of allowing merchants to charge customers for swipe fees or not as they preferred. But they didn’t. That’s because hidden fees, on average, are more lucrative. But hidden or not, we’re all still paying them.

The new fees are annoying, but that’s a feature, not a bug: they’re right up front in black and white, which means that consumers will see them and can be properly outraged (or not) by them. This in turn means that the free market has a chance to actually work: consumers will abandon Bank of America if their fees are too high and force them to charge less. Likewise, other banks will compete openly on the size of their fees. In the end, this competition will force fees down to the lowest possible profitable level, which is exactly what competition is supposed to.

Filed under: Occupy Wall Street | Tagged: , , | 43 Comments »