Showing posts with label Social Inequality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Inequality. Show all posts
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Where Did Our Debt Really Come From
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=LcvLHHMC4iI&feature=player_embedded&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DLcvLHHMC4iI%26feature%3Dplayer_embedded
Right To Work and Social Inequality
The following chart outlines the "Right to Work" impact on the middle class.
Court Declares Raping an Unmarried Woman Isn't Rape
Taken from
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/01/04/court-declares-that-raping-an-unmarried-woman-isnt-rape/
Remember that scene in Revenge of the Nerds when one of the nerds pretends to be a cheerleader’s boyfriend and has sex with her? In the movie world of Hollywood, this is supercool and awesome. She even falls in love with the nerd because…I don’t know. Sex? Here in the real world, however, that’s considered rape.
Or at least it used to be.
A panel of California judges overturned the conviction of Julio Morales because the woman he raped thought that he was her boyfriend. The woman had been drinking and she and her boyfriend had gone to sleep after consciously deciding not to have sex for lack of a condom. At some point in the night, the boyfriend left without the woman’s knowledge. Morales sneaked into the room and, pretending to be the boyfriend in the dark room, had sex with the inebriated and half-asleep woman. She realized during the intercourse that she was having sex with someone who was not her boyfriend.
Had she been married, this would be an open and shut case (no tacky pun intended). But, due to a law passed in 1872 (yes, Eighteen Seventy Two), an unmarried woman is not protected. In other words, if an unmarried woman has sex with a stranger without her consent, then too bad for her. The misogyny and rape culture is so obvious that it simply defies description. This is the kind of parsing of rape that leads to “legitimate rape” and “forcible rape” and allows rapists to, in all seriousness, argue that it was “consensual sex.” That’s not so bad, right?
In this particular, the prosecutors put forth two arguments: one, that it was rape because she was sleeping, and, two, that it was rape because she was tricked. The panel wants to be sure that the conviction was based on the part of the law that defines sex with a sleeping victim as rape and not on the part where tricking an unmarried woman is not rape.
The decision handed down overturning Morales’ conviction and ordering a retrial also calls for an overhaul of the law to remove this egregious loophole. This will be scant comfort to the victim if her rapist goes free and, even if he is convicted for a second time, the trauma of reliving the rape hardly seems to be what we would call justice.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/01/04/court-declares-that-raping-an-unmarried-woman-isnt-rape/
Remember that scene in Revenge of the Nerds when one of the nerds pretends to be a cheerleader’s boyfriend and has sex with her? In the movie world of Hollywood, this is supercool and awesome. She even falls in love with the nerd because…I don’t know. Sex? Here in the real world, however, that’s considered rape.
Or at least it used to be.
A panel of California judges overturned the conviction of Julio Morales because the woman he raped thought that he was her boyfriend. The woman had been drinking and she and her boyfriend had gone to sleep after consciously deciding not to have sex for lack of a condom. At some point in the night, the boyfriend left without the woman’s knowledge. Morales sneaked into the room and, pretending to be the boyfriend in the dark room, had sex with the inebriated and half-asleep woman. She realized during the intercourse that she was having sex with someone who was not her boyfriend.
Had she been married, this would be an open and shut case (no tacky pun intended). But, due to a law passed in 1872 (yes, Eighteen Seventy Two), an unmarried woman is not protected. In other words, if an unmarried woman has sex with a stranger without her consent, then too bad for her. The misogyny and rape culture is so obvious that it simply defies description. This is the kind of parsing of rape that leads to “legitimate rape” and “forcible rape” and allows rapists to, in all seriousness, argue that it was “consensual sex.” That’s not so bad, right?
In this particular, the prosecutors put forth two arguments: one, that it was rape because she was sleeping, and, two, that it was rape because she was tricked. The panel wants to be sure that the conviction was based on the part of the law that defines sex with a sleeping victim as rape and not on the part where tricking an unmarried woman is not rape.
The decision handed down overturning Morales’ conviction and ordering a retrial also calls for an overhaul of the law to remove this egregious loophole. This will be scant comfort to the victim if her rapist goes free and, even if he is convicted for a second time, the trauma of reliving the rape hardly seems to be what we would call justice.
Anti-Union Push Leaves Workers Voiceless
Taken from Columbus Dispatch http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2013/01/02/anti-union-push-leaves-workers-voiceless.html
Wednesday January 2, 2013 5:32 AM
America lost one of its iconic brands last month when Hostess, maker of Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Wonder Bread and other staples of postwar Middle America, closed up shop.
The announcement was an occasion for wags to litter the Internet with jokes about the Twinkie, a pathetic industrial confection that couldn’t be more out of step with our artisanal, gourmet tastes. But there was another curious aspect to the story: Hostess workers still were represented by several labor unions, and one of them, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, had gone on strike. The failure of management and the bakers union to reach an agreement, it appears, precipitated the closing of the company and the loss of 18,000 jobs.
The Twinkie and the labor union, going down together — the story fitted perfectly into a pat journalistic narrative in which unions have done their work (thanks for the eight-hour day, folks!) but now must exit the historical stage.
Unfortunately, reality is not quite so simple. Recently, we learned — from The Wall Street Journal, no less — that the company had diverted payments it was supposed to make to the employee pension fund into other operating accounts. This at a time when finances were tight and management nevertheless decided to give itself more bonuses and salary raises.
Genius.
This is the new America: Bonuses and stock options for the top brass, pink slips and blame for the working class. Most Hostess employees had taken steep pay cuts over the past few years. One of the major reasons the bakers union went on strike was that the company was not honoring prior pension agreements.
The version we got from the headlines was a little different: Union refuses to negotiate, forces 80-plus-year old company to shut down.
Don’t be mistaken. What happened at Hostess is part of a long, protracted shift in the American workplace. Companies use any means at their disposal, including bankruptcy reoganization, to get rid of unions. Meanwhile, right-wing think tanks and pundits demonize union members as freeloaders and thugs. It has been a decades-long project, and it’s been incredibly successful.
Look at Michigan. With a law signed recently by Gov. Rick Snyder, it became the 24th state in the nation where a person can accept a job, along with the benefits negotiated by union contracts, and opt out of paying union dues. In time, this will undercut the unions — and their ability to negotiate with employers.
That Michigan could become a “right to work” state is a testament to the power of the anti-union narrative. This is the very state where the once-powerful United Auto Workers was birthed. But notice how this event is covered. Some in the media present this as a sad event — it’s always sad when Middle Americans lose out. Others tout it as a victory for freedom. But nobody in the media is permitted to register this in outrage, to decry this as systematic rigging of the system in favor of employers at the expense of employees.
The only outrage permitted is Fox News’ incessant coverage of the “thug” angle.
We also saw this in the coverage of the Chicago teachers strike — indeed, in any discussion of education reform. We are to understand that all blame for the problems of public education in this country can be hung around the necks of the teachers unions. They protect bad teachers, undercut efforts at reform and fight all measures to hold them accountable for performance.
The troubles of public education are legion. Yet other factors that also affect educational quality receive far less reflection. Matters such as how districts are funded, and the additional difficulties that come with educating impoverished children in high-crime neighborhoods.
Then there is the issue of public employee compensation, which is said to be bankrupting states. Of course, union scolds never pause to ask why legislatures love to underfund pension funds — that is, to fail to live up to the contracts the states have negotiated with public employees in the first place.
The National Labor Relations Board has determined that Hostess didn’t play fair in the negotiations with the bakers union. This news was no doubt met with smirks by those who regard the board as just another government entity standing in the way of big business.
Yet for all the bluster about makers and takers, job creators and moochers off of society, one group is habitually left voiceless. They are the blue-collar employees. They operate forklifts, stand on assembly lines, drive trucks and, yes, put sugary cream into yellow cakes.
Mary Sanchez is a columnist for The Kansas City Star.
msanchez@kcstar.com
Wednesday January 2, 2013 5:32 AM
America lost one of its iconic brands last month when Hostess, maker of Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Wonder Bread and other staples of postwar Middle America, closed up shop.
The announcement was an occasion for wags to litter the Internet with jokes about the Twinkie, a pathetic industrial confection that couldn’t be more out of step with our artisanal, gourmet tastes. But there was another curious aspect to the story: Hostess workers still were represented by several labor unions, and one of them, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, had gone on strike. The failure of management and the bakers union to reach an agreement, it appears, precipitated the closing of the company and the loss of 18,000 jobs.
The Twinkie and the labor union, going down together — the story fitted perfectly into a pat journalistic narrative in which unions have done their work (thanks for the eight-hour day, folks!) but now must exit the historical stage.
Unfortunately, reality is not quite so simple. Recently, we learned — from The Wall Street Journal, no less — that the company had diverted payments it was supposed to make to the employee pension fund into other operating accounts. This at a time when finances were tight and management nevertheless decided to give itself more bonuses and salary raises.
Genius.
This is the new America: Bonuses and stock options for the top brass, pink slips and blame for the working class. Most Hostess employees had taken steep pay cuts over the past few years. One of the major reasons the bakers union went on strike was that the company was not honoring prior pension agreements.
The version we got from the headlines was a little different: Union refuses to negotiate, forces 80-plus-year old company to shut down.
Don’t be mistaken. What happened at Hostess is part of a long, protracted shift in the American workplace. Companies use any means at their disposal, including bankruptcy reoganization, to get rid of unions. Meanwhile, right-wing think tanks and pundits demonize union members as freeloaders and thugs. It has been a decades-long project, and it’s been incredibly successful.
Look at Michigan. With a law signed recently by Gov. Rick Snyder, it became the 24th state in the nation where a person can accept a job, along with the benefits negotiated by union contracts, and opt out of paying union dues. In time, this will undercut the unions — and their ability to negotiate with employers.
That Michigan could become a “right to work” state is a testament to the power of the anti-union narrative. This is the very state where the once-powerful United Auto Workers was birthed. But notice how this event is covered. Some in the media present this as a sad event — it’s always sad when Middle Americans lose out. Others tout it as a victory for freedom. But nobody in the media is permitted to register this in outrage, to decry this as systematic rigging of the system in favor of employers at the expense of employees.
The only outrage permitted is Fox News’ incessant coverage of the “thug” angle.
We also saw this in the coverage of the Chicago teachers strike — indeed, in any discussion of education reform. We are to understand that all blame for the problems of public education in this country can be hung around the necks of the teachers unions. They protect bad teachers, undercut efforts at reform and fight all measures to hold them accountable for performance.
The troubles of public education are legion. Yet other factors that also affect educational quality receive far less reflection. Matters such as how districts are funded, and the additional difficulties that come with educating impoverished children in high-crime neighborhoods.
Then there is the issue of public employee compensation, which is said to be bankrupting states. Of course, union scolds never pause to ask why legislatures love to underfund pension funds — that is, to fail to live up to the contracts the states have negotiated with public employees in the first place.
The National Labor Relations Board has determined that Hostess didn’t play fair in the negotiations with the bakers union. This news was no doubt met with smirks by those who regard the board as just another government entity standing in the way of big business.
Yet for all the bluster about makers and takers, job creators and moochers off of society, one group is habitually left voiceless. They are the blue-collar employees. They operate forklifts, stand on assembly lines, drive trucks and, yes, put sugary cream into yellow cakes.
Mary Sanchez is a columnist for The Kansas City Star.
msanchez@kcstar.com
Inequality is Costing Americans Their Happiness
Taken from http://www.livescience.com/14638-income-inequality-costing-americans-happiness.html
CREDIT: © Alexander Makarov | Dreamstime.com
Americans are happier in times when the gap between rich and poor is smaller, a new study finds.
The reason, according to research to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, is that when the income gap is large, lower- and middle-income people feel less trusting of others and expect people to treat them less fairly.
The study also provides a potential explanation for why American happiness hasn't risen along with national wealth in the last 50 years.
"Income disparity has grown a lot in the U.S., especially since the 1980s," study researcher Shigehiro Oishi of the University of Virginia said in a statement. "With that, we've seen a marked drop in life satisfaction and happiness." [Read: Does Big Government Make People Happier?]
Unequal income
The results apply to about 60 percent of Americans, or those in the low- and middle-income brackets. For wealthier Americans, the size of the income gap had no effect on happiness.
Economics researchers have long documented growing income inequality in the United States, which they measure using an index called the Gini coefficient; the larger the number the greater the gap between rich and poor. During the 1960s and '70s, the researchers wrote, the U.S. Gini coefficient was on par with many European countries and lower than France's. According to the United Nations Development Program, the U.S. Gini coefficient between 1992 and 2007 was 40.8, higher than France's 32.7. Traditionally happy Scandinavian countries, such as Finland, have Gini coefficients in the mid to high 20s.
But it's tough to compare happiness between countries, since Argentina (a country with a large income gap) differs from Finland in many ways other than economics. To get rid of some of those variables, Oishi and his colleagues used the U.S.-only General Social Survey, which questioned 1,500 to 2,000 randomly selected Americans every year or every other year between 1972 and 2008. More than 48,000 people answered questions on how happy they were, how much they trusted others, and how fair they thought other people were.
Explaining unhappiness
The results showed that during times when the income gap was large, Americans in the low- and middle-income groups were less happy than during times of lower income gaps. (For wealthier people, the income gap made no difference either way — though another study has found that giving away money, which would seem to lessen that gap, can be very rewarding.) Changes in total household income weren't related to the happiness ups and downs.
The results are correlational, so researchers can't be sure that the income gap directly caused unhappiness, but a little more digging turned up a possible explanation. When the income gap grew, low- and middle-class people became increasingly distrustful of their fellow Americans. They were also less likely to believe that fair treatment from others was the norm. This social fracturing could explain the drop in happiness during these times, the researchers wrote.
If the results hold, the authors wrote, they explain why countries with lower income gaps, including Denmark, France and Germany, have become happier as their wealth has grown, while Americans have not.
"The implications are clear," Oishi said. "If we care about the happiness of most people, we need to do something about income inequality."
CREDIT: © Alexander Makarov | Dreamstime.com
Americans are happier in times when the gap between rich and poor is smaller, a new study finds.
The reason, according to research to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, is that when the income gap is large, lower- and middle-income people feel less trusting of others and expect people to treat them less fairly.
The study also provides a potential explanation for why American happiness hasn't risen along with national wealth in the last 50 years.
"Income disparity has grown a lot in the U.S., especially since the 1980s," study researcher Shigehiro Oishi of the University of Virginia said in a statement. "With that, we've seen a marked drop in life satisfaction and happiness." [Read: Does Big Government Make People Happier?]
Unequal income
The results apply to about 60 percent of Americans, or those in the low- and middle-income brackets. For wealthier Americans, the size of the income gap had no effect on happiness.
Economics researchers have long documented growing income inequality in the United States, which they measure using an index called the Gini coefficient; the larger the number the greater the gap between rich and poor. During the 1960s and '70s, the researchers wrote, the U.S. Gini coefficient was on par with many European countries and lower than France's. According to the United Nations Development Program, the U.S. Gini coefficient between 1992 and 2007 was 40.8, higher than France's 32.7. Traditionally happy Scandinavian countries, such as Finland, have Gini coefficients in the mid to high 20s.
But it's tough to compare happiness between countries, since Argentina (a country with a large income gap) differs from Finland in many ways other than economics. To get rid of some of those variables, Oishi and his colleagues used the U.S.-only General Social Survey, which questioned 1,500 to 2,000 randomly selected Americans every year or every other year between 1972 and 2008. More than 48,000 people answered questions on how happy they were, how much they trusted others, and how fair they thought other people were.
Explaining unhappiness
The results showed that during times when the income gap was large, Americans in the low- and middle-income groups were less happy than during times of lower income gaps. (For wealthier people, the income gap made no difference either way — though another study has found that giving away money, which would seem to lessen that gap, can be very rewarding.) Changes in total household income weren't related to the happiness ups and downs.
The results are correlational, so researchers can't be sure that the income gap directly caused unhappiness, but a little more digging turned up a possible explanation. When the income gap grew, low- and middle-class people became increasingly distrustful of their fellow Americans. They were also less likely to believe that fair treatment from others was the norm. This social fracturing could explain the drop in happiness during these times, the researchers wrote.
If the results hold, the authors wrote, they explain why countries with lower income gaps, including Denmark, France and Germany, have become happier as their wealth has grown, while Americans have not.
"The implications are clear," Oishi said. "If we care about the happiness of most people, we need to do something about income inequality."
Friday, January 4, 2013
Homeless LGBT Youth Represent Up To 40 Percent Of Those On The Streets
Homeless lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth may represent a disproportionate number of people living on the streets and in shelters –- but despite this fact, they are not alone.
A number of advocates and young LGBT people who’ve experienced homelessness firsthand appeared on HuffPostLive to talk about the unique problems facing that segment of the community in particular.
“You have the classic situation where a young person comes out and gets kicked out,” said Kate Barnhart, director of New Alternatives, a homeless LGBT youth advocacy organization in New York. “But then you also have a fair number of young people who become homeless for socioeconomic reasons.”
View the video at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/04/homeless-lgbt-youth_n_2411884.html
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