| Number 228 | October 31, 2003 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, J.D., the fabulous webmaster for Nygaard Notes, is going out of town for a few weeks. And I, despite my apparent sophistication in all matters of mass communication (HaHa), am as yet unable to manipulate my sterling prose in the ways necessary to get it onto my own website. The result? The Nygaard Notes website will be a trifle out of date until J.D. returns. I hope this doesn’t impose undue hardship on anyone. I can’t imagine it will. I’ve been spending a bit of time out on the picket lines at the University of Minnesota over the past 10 days. I wrote in Notes #225 that this is exactly the kind of struggle that may be setting the precedent for all of us who work for a living. As this goes to press, it has just been announced that the University has agreed to return to the negotiating table, with sessions set for Sunday, November 2. Hopefully, a fair contract will be offered and the strike will be settled. If not, please try to support the continuing strike. One of the best things you can do is donate money to the Strike Fund. Donate online at http://www.afscme3800.org/ or mail a check to AFSCME 3800, 1313 5th St SE #121B, Minneapolis, MN 55414. It’s another double issue this week. I know some of you prefer the usual, shorter version of the Notes. But I’ve got such a backlog of subjects and ideas to cover, I can’t seem to stop myself. Well, on the bright side: You’ve got a whole week to digest this issue before the next one hits your mailbox. I can hardly wait! See you then, Nygaard |
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From the Executive Summary of The Social Report 2003: A Different Look at America:”
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This is the last week of the Fall 2003 Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive (I hope). If you haven’t yet contributed to the Notes, I must ask you one more time to consider doing so. I am quite sincere in saying that no reader of the Notes is required to donate—I insist that this community resource be available to anyone who wants to read it. However, I really do need as many of you as possible to donate some amount of money to support me in doing the research, talking, thinking, networking, and writing that makes it possible to produce something like the Notes. What is Nygaard Notes? Is it good journalism? Is it “alternative” journalism? Is it journalism at all? Maybe it’s a journal of critical thinking? It could be called an aggravating but provocative source of new ideas. Maybe it’s no more than a kind of a funny, idiosyncratic take on the issues of the day. Maybe all you know is that it’s a good way to start your Monday (or Saturday, or Sunday) morning. It doesn’t matter; here you are reading it. Whatever Nygaard Notes may be, it takes a lot of work to put it together. As I never tire of saying, the continued existence of Nygaard Notes depends entirely upon the generosity of you, the readers. And what does your contribution pay for? A little portion of it goes to pay for my internet connection, and stamps, and office supplies. But mostly it pays me a small wage. So small, in fact, that I have to work at a few part-time jobs in order to pay my bills while I put out the Notes. Soon, I hope, the readership will grow to the point where I won’t have to do that. Your contribution will make that day come sooner rather than later, since every donation frees up just a little more time that I can use to develop the subscription base for this humble newsletter. It’s hard to do, since I prefer to spend all my time actually researching and writing. But your donations make it possible for me to do the business-y work that any project of this sort requires. Inspiring Quotations Since it’s the final week of the 3-week Nygaard Notes Pledge Drive, it seems like a good time to offer some inspiring quotations from readers of the Notes. That way, when you give your donation, you’ll know you’re not at all alone in your appreciation of this project. A reader in Washington State has his own email list serve for activists. Here’s what he told his readers this past August (sent to me by another reader who is also on his list):
The month before that, a reader dropped me a line to say:
Also in July, a reader passed on the following comment that she heard from her husband (who apparently gets the Notes at work):
Say, that could be my slogan: “Nygaard Notes: A Voice of Sanity In Your Cubicle.” I like it! If you support this voice of sanity—in your cubicle, in your bedroom, in your bathroom, or wherever you read it—NOW is the time to send in your pledge of financial support for Nygaard Notes. Remember, the readers of the Notes are the ONLY source of income for this project. |
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I reported some mind-boggling numbers last week about income and wealth in the United States. Numbers are numbers, of course, and are usually impossible to understand unless placed in context. It’s a truism in the propaganda world that statistics can be used to “prove” just about anything. The numbers I gave last week are just facts. Here is a little context for those facts about income and wealth in the United States in 2003: Start off with a little perspective: Between 1979 and 2000, the average after-tax income of the bottom fifth of the population rose 9 percent, or $1,100, to $13,700. The average after-tax income of the top one percent—yes, one out of one hundred—of the U.S. population rose from $286,000 in 1979 to $507,000 in 1989 and then to $863,000 in 2000, an increase of 201 percent. 9 percent, 201 percent. Get it? Wealth and Race As always, we need to break these numbers down by race to get a fuller picture of how wealth is distributed in this country. The median income for “white” households last year was $46,900. For “hispanic” (Census term) households, the median income was 30 percent less, or $33,103. For “black” households the median income was $29,026, or 38 percent less than “white” households. The wealth figures are worse. Using figures from 2001 (the most recent available), we see that the typical “white” family had seven times as much wealth as the typical black family, at $120,900 to $17,100. >From 1995 to 2001 typical families of color saw their net worth fall 7%, while typical “white” families’ net worth grew 37%. For most United Statesians, the majority of their wealth takes the form of the home they own. In 2001, 74% of “white” families owned their homes, while only 47% of black families were homeowners. 11% of African American families had a net worth lower than zero (more debts than assets), compared with only 6% of “white” families. At the other end, 18% of “white” families had a net worth over half a million dollars, compared with 2% of black families. Typical African American families had debt of 30% of their assets, while the debt of typical “white” families was 11% of their assets. All of these figures are courtesy of United for a Fair Economy’s “Racial Wealth Gap Education Project,” found at http://www.ufenet.org/econ/RWG/. Inequality In the Media Sometimes the context needed to understand the social realities of income are reported in the media. For example, the fact that income and wealth inequality is getting worse, and has been getting worse for a long time, is not a secret in the media. The New York Times (“All The News That’s Fit To Print”) of September 25th ran a headline “U.S. Income Gap Widening, Study Says.” True, you had to look on the second page of the “Business” Section to find it, but the facts were fairly clear, as the following quotations will illustrate: Lead Paragraph: “The gap between rich and poor more than doubled from 1979 to 2000, an analysis of government data shows. The gulf is such that the richest 1 percent of Americans in 2000 had more money to spend after taxes than the bottom 40 percent.” Paragraph 3: “The figures show 2000 as the year of the greatest economic disparity between rich and poor for any year since 1979, the year the budget office began collecting this data...” Paragraph 10: “[A National Bureau of Economic Research] study found that in 2000, the top 1 percent income group had the largest share of before-tax income for any year since 1929.” Paragraph 22: “Federal tax burdens for most Americans had declined over the previous two decades, and not risen as some conservative policy experts have asserted...” |
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It is true that “We measure what we treasure.” When it comes to social and economic equality, I’m not sure where we stand. There are lots of groups that do research and report on these issues, as I find out every time I do research on income and wealth. In preparing this issue and the last one, for example, I found far more information on wealth, income, poverty, and inequality than I could possibly report without devoting the next several months exclusively to these subjects. If you looked for information on these subjects only in the Mainstream Corporate For-Profit Agenda-Setting Bound Media, however, you would get only a fragmented and indistinct picture of the state of our nation. That’s why I periodically make my plea for a national commitment to report this stuff in an ongoing way, in all the media. The idea is that the social realities of our nation should be accessible and well-known to all citizens, not just to the maniacs like myself who have decided to make it our job to ferret out this sort of stuff. With the awareness that my abbreviated reports may motivate some readers to delve a little more deeply into these subjects, here are just a few of the organizations that study and report on income, wealth, poverty, and inequality in this country. The two best original sources of data, I think, are the federal Census Bureau Income 2002 report, at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income02.html and the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances, at http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/2001/scf2001home.html. The problem with these is they are mostly just data, with little interpretation, and thus make for pretty heavy slogging. This stuff is mostly just for journalists and scholars, I think. For more accessible reports, check out the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. They just put out a great report called “The New, Definitive CBO Data on Income and Tax Trends.” Find it at http://www.cbpp.org/9-23-03tax.htm. While you’re there, visit their home page for all kinds of great reports that don’t get widely reported. Another group that monitors and studies economic issues and reports them in a clear and accessible way is the Economic Policy Institute, at http://www.epinet.org/. For good research, good information, and good activism, check out the site of United for a Fair Economy at http://www.faireconomy.org/. The National Center for Children in Poverty puts out lots of reports, and they have a listserv, too. They’re at http://www.nccp.org/. The Children’s Defense Fund has all kinds of information and resources, and their “Fair Start” program focuses on family income issues. Find them at http://www.childrensdefense.org/. OK, that’s enough for now. There are lots more. |
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Earlier this year the Fordham Institute for Innovation in Social Policy released their annual Index of Social Health for the United States, as a part of their publication “The Social Report 2003: A Different Look at America.” They report that people in the United States are worse off now than they were in the 1970s—a lot worse off. “Between 1970 and 2000,” the Report tells us, “the social health of America declined by 29 percent. In 1970, the Index stood at 73.8 out of a possible 100; in 2000 it fell to 52.5.” The Social Report 2003 uses figures that are mostly drawn from the year 2000, which are the most recent data available. That, right there, tells you something about the value our society places on human welfare. When it comes to corporate economic performance, most of the figures are available within weeks or months, if not hours or minutes. Further evidence of how little our social welfare means in this culture is the fact that this headline-worthy report on the decline in well-being was mentioned in exactly one article in U.S. newspapers, according to a Lexis/Nexis database search I did for 2003. And that one article appeared not in a news report, but in a bi-weekly column on the local economy in the New York Times, entitled “What the Economic Indicators Miss.” I referred to this failing a couple of weeks ago in my essay “A Fantasy About a Change in Values.” Three years before that fantasy was published, in Nygaard Notes numbers 84-86, I wrote about the need for a “National Social Report” and the history of the idea and development of such reports. I pointed out that there is a small but energetic “Community Indicators Movement” in the U.S. that is working to produce and put into wide use various sorts of “social report cards” that would help us to understand how we are doing in terms of the health and well-being of our citizens. Right here in Minnesota, for instance, we have something called “Minnesota Milestones,” which tells a lot. Seven other states, and many cities and counties, have “indicator” projects, as well. Around the world, there are social reports produced in dozens of nations, but the United States doesn’t have one, at least not an official one. So, I’ve decided to summarize Fordham’s Social Report, which I consider the best non-governmental report we have. The Social Report is not without problems, some of them quite serious. For example, while it includes data that show some of the ways in which many of the 16 indicators it uses differ by race or sex (which is in itself a telling “indicator” of our “social health”), it doesn’t emphasize this point. It doesn’t look at environmental issues, either, a huge shortcoming. Other reports do look at environmental issues, but most of them have even more serious problems, so what’s a journalist to do? I reported on a few of the various reports in my series in 2000 (specifically, in Notes #86). Still, I think the Index of Social Health is the best attempt in this country, so far, to produce a “social report card” for the U.S. of A. In any case, if we had a culture that really cared about social well-being, there would be an ongoing and energetic public debate about just how to go about measuring and reporting on “how we are doing.” Such a debate would result not only in improvements in whatever reports we used on social health, but would undoubtedly bring about improvements in our understanding of the very idea of “social health.” Such an understanding would, in turn, help to create the political will to actually address the issues raised by our enhanced understanding. So much for the overview. In the next article, and in a follow-up next week, I break down the index and report on each of the 16 indicators that go into it. |
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The last time I reported on the Index of Social Health (ISH), the U.S. scored a 46 out of a possible 100. In 2000 we stood at 52.5. There have been three “phases” since 1970, the first year for which the ISH was calculated. The first phase was a phase of record high scores, lasting from 1970 to 1976. The best year was 1973, with a score of 78. The second phase, from 1977 to 1983, was one of “rapid decline,” with the low point coming during the recession of 1983. The average ISH score in the 1970s was 70; the average in both the 1980s and 1990s was 44. The worst single year was 1993, at the end of the Reagan/Bush years, with a score of 37. Up until the mid-1970s, the pattern of economic growth (as measured by gross domestic product, or GDP) and social health (as measured by the ISH) was a pattern of convergence. In other words, as the economy grew, social health improved. Starting in 1977, however, the two began to diverge; while the economy continued to grow, social health began to decline. Overall, the GDP has grown by 158 percent since 1970, while social health has worsened by 29 percent. So, increasingly, the oft-cited saying that “a rising tide lifts all boats” is not true in this country. Or, as the Fordham study puts it, “While it was once safe to conclude that economic growth would be accompanied by an improvement in social health, long-term trends indicate this is no longer the case.” The picture isn’t entirely bleak. Out of the 16 “indicators” that make up the overall Index, six have actually improved since the 1970s. Those are: infant mortality, number of high school dropouts, poverty among the elderly, unemployment, alcohol-related traffic deaths, and homicides. Breaking It Down The nature of these sorts of rankings is that they are crude and rely on all sorts of assumptions. For example, does a “failure” to graduate from high school necessarily mean one is worse off than one who did graduate? Maybe not for an individual, but as a society it probably tells us something. Like I said, the ISH is not a perfect indicator. Still, there are some important things to be seen here. Here are the things that have improved: Infant Mortality: In 1970, 20 out of every 1,000 kids born in the U.S. died before the age of one. In 2000 that was down to only 6.9. Number of High School Dropouts: We did better here than in any year since 1970. In that year, 17.3 percent of all 18-24-year-olds had not completed high school. In 2000, only 12.4 percent had failed to graduate. Poverty among the Elderly: This has steadily improved since 1970, from a rate of 24.6 percent in that year to 10.2 percent in 2000. “This is one of the best performing indicators in the Index, largely because of the cost-of-living adjustments that were added to the Social Security program in the 1970s.” (We still have 3.4 million oldsters living in poverty, so the celebration should be muted, I think.) Unemployment: The ISH uses 2000 statistics here, which was at the very end of the years-long economic expansion of the 90s. At that time the unemployment rate stood at 4 percent. That was the lowest rate in 31 years at the time. As of last month (September 2003), as we proceed through our so-called “jobless recovery” from the recent recession, the unemployment rate stands at 6.1 percent. So, this is a mixed indicator: the rate has been higher, and it has been lower, over the past 33 years. It’s always good to remember, as well, how limited and flawed are the official statistics regarding employment. By way of comparison, the unemployment rate in 1929 was 3.2 percent, and descended during the depression to a low point of 25 percent in 1933. Alcohol-related Traffic Deaths: The proportion of traffic deaths that involve alcohol has decreased by 13 percent since 1970. Reasons include “the lowering of speed limits in some localities, increased use of seat belts, and stricter enforcement of drunk-driving laws,” says the Report. Homicides: Contrary to the impression many seem to get from the media, there were fewer murders in the U.S. in 2000 than in any of the past 31 years. There were 7.9 murders per 100,000 people in 1970, and only 5.5 in 2000. Ten social indicators have worsened since the 1970s:
Next week I’ll break these down and, hopefully, give some other salient details about the state of our social health at the beginning of the 21st century. |