disastrous policies
by Chris Burton
Published: May 21, 2008
On May 2, the world was witness as nature let loose its fatal power in Myanmar. Cyclone Nargis blew with wind speeds of up to 105-135 miles per hour to become one of the deadliest cyclones of all time. Today the death toll is still climbing but already some put it at over 130,000. Ten days after the fury of Nargis, on May 12, a massive 7.9 earthquake shook China. Centered in the southwestern province of Sichuan, the quake reduced the region to rubble. Homes, businesses, schools and hospitals collapsed. Today, as rescuers still worked to save the remaining survivors from the wreckage, the country paused to honor the estimated 50,000 killed.
In the midst of such tragedy, as millions still mourn, I find myself wondering why disasters of such magnitude have never touched America. Certainly we have had our own cyclones (we call them hurricanes), and being a native of Southern California, I am no stranger to earthquakes. However, the worst disaster in American history, Hurricane Katrina (with winds of 125 miles per hour as it made land at New Orleans, continuing into Mississippi, resulting in federal disaster declarations covering more than 90,000 square miles), had less than one-seventieth the impact on human life as cyclone Nargis. (Even so, many thought we should have done better and loudly criticized FEMA and other Federal responders.)
The three biggest earthquakes of my life were the 6.6 San Fernando quake of 1971 (I was still in utero, but my sister told me all about it), the 6.9 Loma Prieta quake (during the World Series) of 1989, and the 6.7 Northridge quake of 1994 (which felt like a train jumped its tracks and hit my house). There were dozens of others, most of which I slept through, and others measuring as large as 7.3. Yet all of the California quakes in my lifetime combined have had only about four tenths of one percent the number of fatalities as the China quake on May 12.
Why does nature’s fury seem to hit the developing world so much harder than America? Why does America survive the forces of nature (even those of comparable intensity) without the destruction as seen in so much of the world? The answer is simple: we’re rich. Our nation’s wealth has produced better engineering, stronger construction, faster local emergency responders, superior treatment facilities and vastly more numbers of surgeons and physicians, all of which save lives. In other words: More Money = More Lives Saved. Various solutions could be argued in the economic algebra of $X Million in national income = 1 more life saved, but whatever X comes to, having more Xs means more survivors.
It would seem then that the goal of every elected leader would be to increase our national income. Paradoxically, however, we are flooded with proposals for legislation and policies aimed at “protecting” us while costing national output many $X millions. If it saves only one (human or even polar bear’s) life, it’s worth the cost, they say. But examined in light of the recent disasters, is “one human life” saved worth the cost of another lost? Or seventy lost? Or 240? Policies that stifle economic growth don’t just cost our nation money. They cost us in the number of lives we could otherwise save.
In spite of this, the three major presidential candidates all favor legislation to fight global warming (never mind that we’re in our eighth straight year of global cooling), which will cost our economy not millions, but billions of dollars. All three favor health care legislation wherein the government picks up the cost of care (whether through a universal single-payer system or simply paying the premiums to a private insurance carrier) even though such legislation could cost trillions. They favor pouring more money into educational policies which include feeding the students (even though there are so few cases of children starving in the U.S. as to make the problem virtually nonexistant; rather, malnutrition has generally been replaced by over-nutrition: nearly one in three low-income children is overweight).
Please, senators, if it saves just one more child, if we can do better against the next cyclone, if we can improve preparation for the next big quake, can’t we rethink such wasteful, inefficient policies? Letting the market work not only saves money, it saves lives
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May 22nd, 2008 at 11:40 am
Shame on politicians for trying to feed the poor! You operate under the assumption that poor children are really overweight, which means they must be living a buffet lifestyle complete with ipods, suburban homes and two-parent households. I guess the ghetto I grew up in was just a figment of my imagination.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:07 pm
“All three favor health care legislation wherein the government picks up the cost of care…even though such legislation could cost trillions.”
Your argument here is quite weak. Well, yes, it would cost money (maybe even trillions). But health care is a direct factor in saving lives, and millions (millions!) of Americans don’t have health care, and it’s not because they’re lazy or because they don’t work hard. It is absolutely not a “wasteful, inefficient” policy. Health care is a much more direct method of saving lives than some vague promise that if we’re richer, we’ll be more likely to survive natural disasters that may or may not happen.
Also, I can’t believe there are still people who think global warming is a myth. http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1011, among many, many other Web sites, states some facts associated with global warming. Look a few of those up before insisting that global warming policies are “wasteful” and “inefficient.”
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:23 pm
“All three favor health care legislation wherein the government picks up the cost of care…even though such legislation could cost trillions.”
As opposed to a war in the Middle East? Hmmmmm, healthcare for Americans or bombs over Baghdad? I can’t stress the importance of priorities more…
Eighth straight year of global cooling? Where, on Neptune? You must head WAYYYYYYYYY up North in the summertime!!! I thought they only hired informative writers?
And eigth straight year of global cooling?
May 22nd, 2008 at 4:59 pm
The question is whether humans are really causing the global warming. And as far as that is concerned, there isn’t a group of reports, stories or links that could in any way conclusively show that humans are or have caused it.
The planet has been through cycles LOTS more extreme than what is being discovered today. And there weren’t suvs and station wagons back then to blame. I guess it might have been extraordinary amounts of dinosaur flatulence…
May 23rd, 2008 at 5:34 am
Call me crazy but winter this year was unusually long and harsh. I thought “human-led global warming” with rising CO2 levels meant shorter winters and no significant dip in the mercury? Was this winter an exception to the rule or is it simply following a trend?
Here are some inconvenient facts that may contradict the dogma of the democratic party (isn’t science annoying?). Studies conducted by “skeptic” scientists reveal that global warming is waning.
• Satellite measurements available since 1979 show no warming in the southern hemisphere and the trend in the northern hemisphere appears to have waned since 2001.
• In August 2007, the UK Met Office acknowledged that obvious global warming had stopped.
• Paleo-climate scientist Bob Carter testifying before the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has noted that the accepted global average temperature statistics used by IPCC show no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998.
• Research led by David Bromwich, Professor of Atmospheric Science in the Department of Geography at Ohio State University and researchers with the Byrd Polar Research Centre at Ohio State University shows that during the late 20th century, the temperature in Antarctica did not rise to the level predicted by many global warming models.
• According to UN scientist Madhav L. Khandekar, a retired Environment Canada scientist and an expert IPCC reviewer in 2007, the recent worldwide analysis of ocean surface temperatures shows that sea surface temperatures over world oceans have been slowly declining since mid-1998.
As for humans being responsible for climate change:
• Even though CO2 levels are steadily rising from 280 ppm and might reach 560 ppm by 2100 as predicted by IPCC, the world’s average temperature, instead of following a steep upward gradient, is actually plunging after a period of upward trend.
• A study by researchers of the Atmospheric Science Group, Department of Mathematical Science, at the University of Wisconsin, found that global warming in the last century was linked to natural causes.
• The Royal Meteorological Institute at Brussels in its report last year said that not CO2 but the most important greenhouse gas was water vapor; it was responsible for 75 per cent of the greenhouse effect. According to Belgian climate scientist Lu Debontridder, the warm winters of the last few years in Belgium are simply due to the North-Atlantic oscillation that has absolutely nothing to do with CO2.
• A study published in Science last September found that contrary to past inferences from ice core records, CO2 did not cause the end of the last ice age. According to the same study, deep-sea temperatures warmed about 1,300 years before the tropical surface ocean and well before the rise in atmospheric CO2. USC geologist Lowell Scot, the lead author of the study, said that the climate dynamics are much more complex than simply saying that CO2 rises and the temperature warms.
And here’s the kicker: the IPCC climate model predicting global warming is based on the assumption that increased warming causes more rainfall which in turn produces more clouds in the higher reaches of the atmosphere (and since high clouds have a net warming effect this would cause more warming, more rainfall and the cycle continues). The positive feedback necessary in this assumption is what prompts the prediction of a temperature rise in the range of 2.5 - 4.7 degree Celsius due to rise in the level of CO2 to 560 ppm. However, Dr Roy Spencer along with researchers at the University of Alabama Huntsville and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, after observing the temperatures, clouds and rainfall, reported that warming is actually associated with fewer high clouds. There is no data to support the theory that more rainfall will produce more high-altitude clouds.
Based on facts, then, Al Gore’s movie notwithstanding, I say global warming is a myth.
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:12 am
p.s. I guess being in the republican column makes me responsible for Iraq. However, in my article I used as examples only those issues on which all the candidates more or less agree.
As for Brittany’s claim that govt health care is not wasteful and inefficient: ever heard of the rat and mold infested Walter Reed Army Medical Center? Since that fiasco, vets can now go to private (profit driven) hospitals as an alternative to VA hospitals, and guess what? It costs less! And how about prescription drugs and the deal congress made for seniors on Medicare? Yet (evil, profit driven) Wal-Mart sells $4 generics. Meanwhile, be sure to keep your eye on Massachusetts: almost three times over budget already, how long will it be before Massachusetts care goes bankrupt?
Lastly, for Danny: facts are facts. We don’t have a starvation problem in the U.S., but obesity is becoming epidemic, especially among the poor. Sorry.
May 23rd, 2008 at 7:30 am
We could sit here all day and go back and forth with scientific opinions (or lack of) all day long, but that hole that is forming in the o-zone layer isn’t shrinking whatsoever. Even if your sources are credible and accurate and the planet hasn’t been heating up since 1979, that doesn’t change the fact that we’re polluting the planet severely. How could anyone be so naive to think that all of our emissions through various sources have no effect on the world around us? The planet definitely takes its own course of climate change, but that’s not to say that we don’t assist this. If you sit by a coal factory and watch the smoke pour out, where do you think it goes? To say that it has no effect on the environment is completely naive. I don’t need a scientist to tell me that it hurts the planet, I can see it with my own two eyes!!! It comes down to responsibility. Some people want to go about their lives in a manner they think they are untouchable, and these ver same type people live with disregard to everyone around themselves and the generations that will follow. Maybe the planet is warming, maybe it’s not…either way, we’re slowly destroying it piece by piece - that acid rain that burns through the leaves of the beautiful trees up in my Blue Ridge Mountains didn’t just appear on it’s own. It’s sickening that people stand idly by and defend a principle that’s so devastating to the world around us.
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Actually, Justin, due to reductions in CFC emissions, “that hole” in the ozone layer is “shrinking,” which is to say, the concentration levels of ozone in the lower stratosphere are rising. But that is completely different from global warming, as is pollution.
I oppose the cost of $Billions to our economy, imposed by an over-reaction to a scientific myth. For example, congress mandated ethanol production, which cost $1.25 to create a dollar’s worth of energy, at the same time raising the cost of fuel and groceries. If it’s worth all that, why can’t I buy it anywhere!?! The policy is wasteful and inefficient.
That doesn’t mean I dream of the days when everyone will breathe pure smog. Of course I oppose pollution (to a point). The fact is, we’re doing better. (I disagree, by the way, that we’re slowly destroying [the planet] piece by piece.” And why are we calling CO2 pollution? Studies show it’s not having the earth shattering effects we once thought it might. Can’t we just call it “plant food” instead?
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:54 pm
I wish I could make a blanket statement like, “The number of scientists that would disagree with every point you’re making outweigh the minute number that would agree with your conclusions,” but there’s no real way for me to prove that. However, I can say that there are thousands of scientists that would say the o-zone is still deteriorating and global warming does in fact exist and is becoming more and more of a problem each waking hour. This argument will always have a foundation as long as there are discrepencies within the scientific community. How do you solve that problem? Well, there’s no solution as long as private industries sponsor these studies to come up with the result they’re looking for.
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Justin, let’s start with the basics. First, ozone is the name for the chemical O3 (three oxygen atoms forming a single molecule). It’s not the “O” zone (as in the “A” zone or the demilitarized zone). Next, ozone is toxic and is bad for us. Cars create it (among other harmful gases). However, in the upper reaches of our atmosphere (the lower stratosphere) it serves to absorb UV and harmful radiation. Normal concentrations are just a few parts per million. The problem is that over Antarctica the ozone depletion has become severe enough that some call it a “hole.” Still, as I said earlier, due to a reduction in CFC and Halon emissions, the depletion of ozone is reversing. For heaven’s sake, Justin, even Al Gore admits that. Why argue the point?
Next, it’s a good thing to have debates in science, but science is not a democracy: we can’t just have everyone in a white coat vote on it. Facts are facts. And don’t be so naïve as to believe that only scientists with private funding have a reason for bias. During the energy “crisis” of the 1970s, for example, a government report showed that, at the current rate of usage, the U.S. had enough natural gas to last 4,000 years! The Carter Administration, however, dumped the report and had a new study begun, one which reached more politically acceptable results (see Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell, p. 208 for a reference on that). So what do you figure the bias of all the liberals who treat global warming like a religion is? I have my ideas on that, but I’ll save them for a future article.
Finally, I love to argue, and bang out ideas. Let’s just make sure we’re still friends at the end of the debate.
May 24th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
If it’s alright for me to sidestep this global warming debate I don’t feel that I’m informed enough to argue effectively in–aside from conceding to both sides 1) About every well informed environmental scientist I know says that global warming is a problem, but a very, very small one that’s become overly politicized 2) Regardless of that, its good that eco-tolerant practices are resulting from this hype–I sort of want to question your original premise.
Simply having money doesn’t reduce fatalities in natural disasters. Most definitely spending on our infrastructure, training of national guard and having medical facilities are resultant of living in a fairly prosperous nation (though not what it used to be). But to say government spending props us up for a level of disaster felt by the residents of Sichuan is a stretch and may actually be the opposite.
Mostly, if you’ve been in the region, we’re not talking about wasteful spending problems (Though corruption does play a huge role), we’re talking about immense poverty and incredible populations. There are cities in China which most people outside the country have never heard of that house millions of people. Many live in quickly, inefficiently constructed apartment buildings jammed close together to maximize space.
UN Sec. General Ban Kai-Moon toured the region and said that CHina’s relief efforts have been impressive, but still the death toll rises not because a lack of cash on hand (certainly not with the Chinese economy still rising), but because the *lack* of government spending.
Also–not to dispute your reference claimed, but merely in amazement at it–if we have enough natural gas on hand to last 4,000 years, why am I paying to heat my house in winter? Where is this gas? Are we keeping it in Russia? That’s a bad place to keep it if we are.
May 24th, 2008 at 11:53 pm
Max, I agree that “simply having money doesn’t reduce fatalities in natural disasters,” if by “money” you mean green paper bills. I do believe that having real wealth (by which I mean infrastructure, highly trained personnel, medical facilities, etc.) does save lives. (And let me clarify that in having wealth, I mean private ownership of wealth.) In a private economy, the federal government is not reason we quake-proof our buildings. It’s the owners of the buildings who want to preserve their investment. There are no laws mandating that buildings must be insured against earthquake damage, but owners buy the insurance anyway. Likewise, prosperous communities invest in training professional emergency personnel (while smaller towns still operate with volunteer fire departments). People operating with a profit motive build treatment facilities (i.e. hospitals); others study to become physicians and surgeons. While the government may get involved, it is not the government that initiates any of these things. It is the level of wealth we have accumulated, and the desire to protect it which makes all of this possible.
In regions such as Sichuan, at least two factors work against like preparations. First, earning only a subsistence level of income, there is nothing left over to invest on emergency preparedness. Second, without private ownership, such preparedness goes materially unrewarded, so there is little or no incentive to invest such resources as exist. Talk of the rising Chinese economy and the availability of cash on hand should correlate to the prosperity of China’s citizens. Instead you speak of the immense poverty. “Government spending” is called for in such cases, but it won’t solve the problem because governments can only spend what they take from their citizens. Where the people already have nothing, government spending will only further impoverish them.
The solution is for government to encourage (allow) private ownership and wealth. Then, given time, the desire to preserve it will do the rest.
p.s. The natural gas mentioned above is still in the ground. The point of the study referenced was that we won’t be running out of it anytime soon.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Ah, but you’re underlining the key problem. In your model infrastructure is built not by governments, but by private interests. Which works, under the competitive model. However with the competitive model there are winners and losers, more precisely the allocation of wealth is unequal.
Now to your typical laissez-faire conservative this is the heart of a capitalist society and so much the better (pull up by one’s own bootstraps yadda yadda). However these pockets of wealth open other certain areas of the nation up to disaster, which is where governments should come in.
Looking at Katrina, we see the disproportionate rate of death in higher poverty areas which is the natural conclusion of this model. Again, if anything (besides the terrible problems with the chain of command), it was the lack of public development of infrastructure and insufficient allocation of resources which led to disaster.
China’s a pretty good model to demonstrate this, once you cut through the mist a bit. Its “socialism with Chinese characteristics” really doesn’t include any aspect of socialism anymore, which means this dichotomy. Especially with the vat of corruption poisoning the use of capitalism.
There is wealth in the country but its concentrated in the hands of the few, who remain isolated and safe.
Really what you have is one really good house, the product of vast personal wealth, surrounded by thousands of shabby tenements. The private house has access to private firemen, police (sometimes public officers made so by virtue of bribes) and doctors. The tenements burn.
Encouraging private ownership (which I’m not denying isn’t great) can only be beneficial in strengthening their infrastructure if it is accompanied by a near-universal increase of wealth. Nations are all in theory states united within.
May 25th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
And I looked into the world gas reserves. There’s so much of it!
May 25th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Max writes that “with the competitive model there are winners and losers, more precisely the allocation of wealth is unequal.” My response is: so what? Let each earn according to his ability. Some earn less than others, but as their value (e.g. skills, education, and experience) increases, so does their income. Take another look at China, for example: until his death in 1976, Chairman Mao ruled over what was called the “iron rice bowl” (an egalitarian system where everyone shared a government-guaranteed, poverty-level income). The new leader, Deng Xiaoping, in an effort to raise the economic level of the country as a whole, announced a new policy, saying: “Let some people get rich first.” By experimenting with economic incentives and allowing them to operate (in certain regions) as they do prosperous capitalist countries, China’s economy grew by an astonishing 9 percent per year between 1978 and 1995. With a growing pie (economy), there’s room for some to take a bigger slice (become rich) without forcing others to share smaller slices. True, we see a growing inequality between the haves and have-nots, but the alternative is for everyone to remain poor, as they were before. Given time (assuming the capitalist experiment is allowed to continue and spread), as people become more productive in response to changing incentives, the newfound prosperity will raise the economic level of the nation overall.
Max writes that “these pockets of wealth open other certain areas of the nation up to disaster, which is where governments should come in.” I disagree. The whole nation was open to disaster before. Where wealth is created, it doesn’t put other regions at any greater risk than existed prior. The government can only “come in” by taking one region or group’s money and giving it to another, which reduces the idea of private ownership to a myth and weakens any incentive to grow and preserve wealth. Of course, this redistribution of wealth is worth it, liberals say, if it saves just one more life. Who’s life? Are the lives in region B more valuable than those in region A from which the money was taken?
Max writes that “looking at Katrina, we see the disproportionate rate of death in higher poverty areas which is the natural conclusion of [the capitalist] model.” Sure. In Myanmar and China we see even greater destruction. That was my point. Wealth protects us. Then Max blames “the lack of public development of infrastructure and insufficient allocation of resources.” O.K. Maybe New Orleans should have invested in better levies. I agree. And maybe if they weren’t busy feeding a population battling obesity, paying for Medicaid patients to visit the E.R. for every cold and sniffle, and funding a thousand other wasteful and inefficient projects, they could have allocated their resources more wisely. But I have a feeling that Max would rather take the resources from California, even though Californians didn’t choose to build New Orleans below sea level, and even though taking the money from California will diminish the wealth and number of potential lives that might be saved there.
Max sums up his argument saying that “encouraging private ownership … can only be beneficial in strengthening their infrastructure if it is accompanied by a near-universal increase of wealth.” While that is an admirable goal, it will never happen all at once. However, again I say as market reforms spread and people become more productive in response to the changing incentives, prosperity for the country as a whole will be the result (as seen already in certain regions in China, India and many other nations). It may take years and the inequalities seen in the meantime may be severe, but the alternative is egalitarian stagnation in poverty.
Max, I sense much good in you. Leave the dark side. Join us in creating a better world.
May 26th, 2008 at 10:05 am
“Maybe if they weren’t busy feeding a population battling obesity. . .they could have allocated their resources more wisely.” Chris, Chris, Chris. These oft quoted lines entirely miss the issues that the impoverished face.
To begin with, quantity of food isn’t the issue with our poor, it’s nutrition. The fact that many can only afford to be a dollar menunaire is leading to great incidents of malnutrition and a rise of heart problems. And to portray medicare/caid as being overly generous is ludicrous. I’ve seen people without a dime who get hit by a car and just have to endure their cracked ribs because they can’t penetrate the system. The image created of the poor man leeching off the system is not the norm–though he does exist in abundant supply– people living in poverty deal with psychological and practical obstacles that the mantra of “Chin up, work hard” doesn’t do it.
Now in China–where once the promise of the iron rice bowl promised job security, education for children and help for the sick, but didn’t always deliver due to immense corruption and the disastrous Great Leap Forward–we are seeing people getting wealthier. Places which had never heard of a TV twenty years ago have one for every three people. There is a lot of good coming from the reforms, I’m not a proponent of authoritarian communist rule either, but they are also experiencing the problems that come from the complete removal of the iron rice bowl.
While the coast is thriving, the rural regions are undergoing exodus as a Shanghai begger is able to make 10 times what a farmer is. Poor people set themselves on fire to make an extra buck and infanticide (particularly of young girls) is extremely high. Schools are unafforadble adn the entire enterprise is setting itself up for a peasants’ revolt.
These problems exist in the US as well, Chris writes: “Let each earn according to his ability. Some earn less than others, but as their value (e.g. skills, education, and experience) increases, so does their income.” However, this is just the problem. Poverty is self-sustaining. The average graduate of a low-income school graduates with the reading level of an 8th grader in a middle-income school. While one may pull themselves out of this, it is the exception to the rule.
So would I take a small percentage of the income of a Californian, or a Michigander or a New Yorker to help the devastation in Louisiana? Of course! That’s the entire purpose of society. People did not band together into tribes and towns and communities in order to regulate currency, they did so to provide mutual security for when times get rough. To say “Wealth protects us” is to **** those without.
Certainly tax breaks build industry and has led to great corporate development and well-polished gated communities, but what’s it all worth when even within our own borders we have 14 million children living in poverty?
I will grant you that we need better policies, but I don’t agree that we should simply abandon great tides of our own citizens to the vague hope of the beneficent upper classes. The Statue of Liberty would bow her head in shame. And she should know the dangers of supporting an upper class over an expanding body of poor and underprivileged, she’s French.
May 26th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Max, your arguments simply don’t match the facts. Poverty is not self-sustaining. In speaking of the “Rich” and “Poor” you mistakenly assume that these are separate classes of people. However, more often than not they are the same people at different stages in life. The 1995 Annual Report of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, in discussing income data from 1975 to 1991, showed that the ABSOLUTE MAJORITY of those who started in the bottom 20% of income earners not only moved up, but moved to the TOP 20% of income earners at some point in the next 16 years. This isn’t unique to America, either. We see similar results from studies in Europe and Australia, and in recent decades in India as we have seen the economic shackles taken off its citizens and the resultant class mobility.
And a comparison of this country’s problems to the poverty in China is ridiculous. At the end of the 20th century, for example, more people in America were connected to the internet than were connected to the water supply at the beginning of the century. “Poverty” in America doesn’t begin to approach the immense poverty in the rest of the world.
Still, Max, I sense your goodness and beg you: leave the dark side. Join us on the Right.
May 28th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
Sorry for the delay, I had to read that Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas article (http://www.dallasfed.org/fed/annual/1999p/ar95.pdf) and do a little outside research. Having done so I want to make one correction and one educated theory to the above comment. The fact that the report is part of a series of conservatively-biased economic position papers aside, I found it quite helpful. Besides which, i admire the optimistic tone of all the papers, far too much pessimism where economics is concerned.
First, Chris mistakenly quotes “the ABSOLUTE MAJORITY of those who started in the bottom 20% of income earners not only moved up, but moved to the TOP 20% of income earners.” Took me a moment to sort out the data in the numerous tables, but what we come away with is that indeed a majority (60%) did rise to the top 60% of income classes, but only 29% made it to the top for one year or more (see pages 6, 8 of the in-text numbering also note throughout the article that 89% of the top earners remained in the top 40%). But 29% is nothing to sniff at. In fact, only 5% in the lowest bracket didn’t move. That’s quite substantial.
However, there is a handy little chart on page 10 which (though the connection is not made in the article) provides a reasoning for this class jump. In the chart it shows that the lowest earners in 1975 were those with college and post-graduate degrees. Well while we still had domestic manufacturing which made our own little iron rice bowl, that’s understandable. Heck, some factories even paid for kid’s educations.
Then of course, the emphasis in our country changed and who are the high earners today? Well, those same folks at the bottom of the ladder. This doesn’t seem to provide a case for cyclical economic status so much as a radical change in the nature of our economy.
But even so, even if once a generation the poor and the rich were to swap places, why shouldn’t we live in a nation which does not continue to look out for those who are going through rough times. Not coddle them, but merely give them a leg to stand on.
According to the USDA in 2000, 20 million adults and 13 million children liven in households that were “food insecure” because of lack of resources. That means households with enough calories but not enough nutrition. A third of these were measured as “hungry.”
It’s hard being hungry, and harder still when no one wants to help you. While in many communities under-funded, under-staffed, private support shelters arise, but why should our American citizens rely on the kindness of strangers when they live in the strongest nation on Earth?
Chris, you are a worthy adversary, but your passion clouds your judgment, I fear. With time I hope you’ll come to see such.
P.S. “the worst disaster in American history, Hurricane Katrina . . . had less than one-seventieth the impact on human life as cyclone Nargis” . . .”a comparison of this country’s problems to the poverty in China is ridiculous.”
I agree.
June 1st, 2008 at 8:41 pm
Max, kudos to you for doing your research.
“The ABSOLUTE MAJORITY [57%] of those who started in the bottom 20% of income earners not only moved up, but moved to [the level of] the TOP 20% of income earners at some point in the next 16 years.” That is a fact and is summarized in exhibit 8 (last column of the graph) on page 14 of the report. The authors of the report summarized it this way: “Almost three-fifths of the people in the bottom fifth made it to the top at least one year during the period from 1976 to 1991.” (p. 14) The data you cite from page 8 shows only the differences between 1975 and 1991.
And I’m afraid you misread the chart on page 10 which shows income only for those aged 20-24 in 1975. The majority of those with college and post-graduate degrees WOULD STILL HAVE BEEN IN SCHOOL in 1975, living off stipends, loans or working only part-time. It makes sense that those who were students in 1975 were also in the bottom quintile of income earners in 1975. The same was true in 1995 and will be true in 2025.
Further, despite your lament at the loss of “our own little iron rice bowl,” the report acknowledges the changing nature of our economy (see p. 16), and the result of moving away from an industrial/manufacturing economy toward an information based economy is that most workers are earning more money for more years over their careers.
As for the poor and the rich swapping places… Max, you missed the whole point of the report which was that practically everyone, the rich and the poor, are moving up the economic ladder. Very few are moving down and those few are usually leaving the workforce (e.g. retirement).
Now, Max, I can see you have a good heart, and I agree that we should “look out for those who are going through rough times… [and] give them a leg to stand on.” I just don’t want the government doing it. At the risk of boasting, according to my 2007 Individual Tax Return, I gave more than 15% of my income last year to charitable organizations. I gave an additional 2% to extended family members who were in need. My own family had its own share of expenses (I have four children, three of whom are triplets still in diapers; we experienced over $5,000 in medical bills—not counting insurance premiums; my oldest goes to private school). We live on one income (mine), and lamentably we aren’t top quintile earners (yet). We don’t get help from the government. And we give what we can. So should you. However, this is a free country and if a person wants to keep what he earns, I support that. It’s O.K. to be a jerk in this country. But please don’t be a fascist and try to force your socialist “rice bowl” on me.
Finally, Max, that post-script on your last comment was just plain smart-alec-ey. But never one to duck a challenge, let me explain the difference in the two quotes: One contrasts the differing death-tolls from comparable natural disasters. The other refutes the idea that “poverty” in America is comparable to the abject poverty in China (whose official poverty line is 680 yuan (or US$85) per capita net income per year).
I admire your spirit, Max. Don’t let this little dual of words discourage you. I’ve had more years to hone my skills. Given time you will be formidable. But I urge you to examine carefully which side you’re fighting for. I call on you to choose freedom and opportunity over a false equality. I exhort you with all that is in me to Choose the Right!