The Blue Voice

«Home | Next: When the Rapture Comes, Can I Grab Onto Your Shoe?»

Thursday, September 15, 2005

The American Caste System

As images of thousands upon thousands of poor, mostly black victims of hurricane Katrina streamed into our homes, I had hoped that it might foster more discussion about our rigid class system. Instead the mainstream media nearly acted with surprise to discover that so much poverty existed in New Orleans and other areas of the Gulf Coast. It was almost as if Katrina had uncovered a huge area of poverty that nobody seemed to know about.

Unfortunately for many of the people there, their poverty has been no secret at all. It's just something we don't talk about in this country. On the nightly news you will hear the Dow Jones report, which is essentially meaningless to 90% of Americans. But do we ever hear the "Doug Jones" report? The Doug Jones report is an idea by Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower that we should have a report on the nightly news letting us know how the average American is doing. Is he up? Is he down? Is he working?

As I have shown in previous posts, the elite have been quick to cast the poor in a shameful light. As good Americans it is our duty to believe that poverty is the result of laziness and ignorance. We all know--or at least think we know--that if we work hard, study hard, and work diligently for our wage-master we will be rewarded handsomely.

There is, however, a small problem with this belief: reality. Nearly 50 million Americans have no health insurance; that figure rises to something like 80 million Americans who have no health coverage for part of the year. Over 12% of Americans live in poverty. Millions of Americans are homeless on any given night, with a large percentage of them being former military veterans. And while there have been huge gains in productivity in the past thirty years, almost none of those gains have gone to the workers.

But does that really mean that our dreams of becoming the next Bill Gates are futile? In and of itself, no. But this is just a small piece of the pie. A recent story from the Economist expands our view a bit more:

The past couple of decades have seen a huge increase in inequality in America. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think-tank, argues that between 1979
and 2000 the real income of households in the lowest fifth (the bottom 20% of earners) grew by 6.4%, while that of households in the top fifth grew by 70%. The family income of the top 1% grew by 184%Âand that of the top 0.1% or 0.01% grew even faster. Back in 1979 the average income of the top 1% was 133 times that of the bottom 20%; by 2000 the income of the top 1% had risen to 189 times that of the bottom fifth.

It's become a cliche but the rich do keep getting richer while the poor get poorer. Back in 1980 the average CEO of an American corporation made about 40 times what his average employee made. The most recent figure I heard was that the average CEO is now making nearly a 1000 times what his employees make. In a very real way we are heading back to the 1880s, the days of Robber Barons andLazafairee Capitalism.

We have a very rigid class system. As the piece in the Economist points out, a great place to see this is our political sphere:

The most vivid evidence of social sclerosis comes from politics. A country where every child is supposed to be able to dream of becoming president is beginning to produce a self-perpetuating political elite. George Bush is the son of a president, the grandson of a senator, and the sprig of America's business
aristocracy. John Kerry, thanks to a rich wife, is the richest man in a Senate full of plutocrats. He is also a Boston brahmin, educated at St Paul's, a posh private school, and Yale where, like the Bushes, he belonged to the ultra-select Skull and Bones society.

The elite exist. They are the people who are trying to convince you that thet Estate Tax is a "Death Tax." They are the one's who convinced Americans that the Trickle Down Theory of economics really works, i.e., the more money we give the rich, the bigger the scraps they will throw from their lush tables. It is the elite who control the media in this country, and it is clearly the elite who control our government: both parties. This was, of course, always the plan. As James Madison put it, "The purpose of government is to protect the minority of the opulent from the majority." And our government does just that.

The verdict is not unanimous among social scientists but more and more research is showing that social mobility is declining:

Some researchers claim that social mobility is actually declining. A classic social survey in 1978 found that 23% of adult men who had been born in the bottom fifth of the population (as ranked by social and economic status) had made it into the top fifth. Earl Wysong of Indiana University and two colleagues
recently decided to update the study. They compared the incomes of 2,749 father-and-son pairs from 1979 to 1998 and found that few sons had moved up the class ladder. Nearly 70% of the sons in 1998 had remained either at the same level or were doing worse than their fathers in 1979. The biggest increase
in mobility had been at the top of society, with affluent sons moving upwards more often than their fathers had. They found that only 10% of the adult men born in the bottom quarter had made it to the top quarter.

The Economic Policy Institute also argues that social mobility has declined since the 1970s. In the 1990s 36% of those who started in the second-poorest 20% stayed put, compared with 28% in the 1970s and 32% in the 1980s. In the 1970s 12% of the population moved from the bottom fifth to either the fourth or the top fifth. In the 1980s and 1990s the figures shrank to below 11% for both decades. The figure for those who stayed in the top fifth increased slightly but steadily over the three decades, reinforcing the sense of diminished social mobility.

This American caste system is real. The horrors of Katrina were visited mainly upon the poor. And it is upon the poor that the wealthy depend: wealth creates poverty. Want an interesting statistic? Take a look at the number of billionaires in this country and you will find a direct correlation between the number of new billionaires and the number of people living in poverty.

The caste system is real. But it's not inevitable. Bill Gates does not create wealth: the workers of Microsoft create wealth. And with all industry, it is the workers of the world who create wealth; and it is the capitalist parasites that steal our wealth. Our only real solution is organize: United we stand; divided we fall. The only way we'll ever end this disgusting caste system is to join the labor movement: What are you waiting for?

posted at 11:34:00 PM by David Buccola

| +Save/Share | |