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HOUSING PROGRAM CUTS WILL DEVASTATE THE POOR
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- D. INCOME INEQUALITY WILL DESTROY AMERICA 1. U.S. IS ON BRINK OF INCOME INEQUALITY DISASTER
- 2. PORT CITIES HAVE HIGHEST INCOME INEQUALITY
- 3. THE RICH HAVE TOO MUCH POLITICAL POWER
- 4. INCOME INEQUALITY PERPETUATES POVERTY
- 5. INCOME INEQUALITY KILLS THOUSANDS
- 6. INCOME INEQUALITY STUNTS ECONOMIC GROWTH
- 7. INCOME INEQUALITY PRODUCES A HOST OF SOCIAL ILLS
- 8. SURVIVAL OF U.S. CAPITALISM IS IN JEOPARDY
- SK/N229. SEABED MINING: Solvency 1. INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY IS UNRELIABLE
- 2. IT WILL PENALIZE U.S. CORPORATIONS
5. HOUSING PROGRAM CUTS WILL DEVASTATE THE POOR a. SEQUESTER DEVASTATED LOW-INCOME HOUSING SK/N228.30) Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 23, 2014, p. SR12, LexisNexis Academic. The sequester seriously damaged the Section 8 housing program, which subsidizes rents for more than two million of the nation's poorest families. Local housing authorities reacted to the across-the-board cuts by tightening the screws on this voucher program. They ceased to issue new vouchers that would ordinarily have gone to homeless or needy families and even recalled vouchers that had been issued but had not yet been committed to landlords. SK/N228.31) Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 23, 2014, p. SR12, LexisNexis Academic. The sequester also hurt the long-neglected public developments that house about 1.1 million of the country's most vulnerable families. These developments had been staggering along under ever-shrinking operating budgets -- and a $26 billion backlog in repairs -- even before the sequester. SK/N228.32) Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 23, 2014, p. SR12, LexisNexis Academic. As if all that wasn't enough, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, federal housing officials have estimated that sequestration cuts to homeless assistance grants “led states and localities to remove 60,000 formerly homeless persons from housing and emergency shelter programs.” All this comes at a time when record numbers of families have been caught in the squeeze between rising rents and falling wages -- and are at greater risk of homelessness. In other words, this is the worst possible time for Congress to let affordable housing programs go begging. b. REVIVING SEQUESTER WILL MAGNIFY THE HARM SK/N228.33) Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 23, 2014, p. SR12, LexisNexis Academic. The December budget deal that ended sequestration will allow housing agencies to replace less than half of the 70,000 vouchers lost in 2013. Given the pressing need, it should come up with the money to restore the rest. D. INCOME INEQUALITY WILL DESTROY AMERICA 1. U.S. IS ON BRINK OF INCOME INEQUALITY DISASTER SK/N228.34) Robert H. Frank [economics professor, Cornell U.], THE NEW YORK TIMES, January 12, 2014, p. BU-3, LexisNexis Academic. Inequality in the United States has been increasing sharply for more than four decades and shows no signs of retreat. SK/N228.35) Annie Lowrey, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 2012, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. Income inequality has soared to the highest levels since the Great Depression, and the recession has done little to reverse the trend, with the top 1 percent of earners taking 93 percent of the income gains in the first full year of the recovery. SK/N228.36) Annie Lowrey, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 2012, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. Since the 1980s, rich households in the United States have earned a larger and larger share of overall income. The 1 percent earns about one-sixth of all income and the top 10 percent about half, according to statistics compiled by the respected economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley and Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics. SK/N228.37) Annie Lowrey, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 2012, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. The recession seems to have cemented the country's income and wealth inequality, not reversed it. The top 10 percent earn a larger share of overall income than they have since the 1930s. The earnings of the top 1 percent took a knock during the recession, but have bounced back. In contrast, the average working family's income has continued to decline through the anemic recovery. SK/N228.38) Annie Lowrey, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 2012, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. A new study by the left-of-center Economic Policy Institute, a research group in Washington, has found that the top 1 percent of households now hold a larger share of overall wealth than the bottom 90 percent does. SK/N228.39) Mark Trumbull, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, January 7, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. The income gap between rich and the middle class or poor has widened during the past three decades. CE pay has surged. And it's also true that millions of Americans who view themselves as middle- or working-class are struggling financially in the current economy. SK/N228.40) Eduardo Porter, THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 14, 2014, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. The income of a typical American family has barely risen since the 1970s. The share of national income captured by the richest 1 percent of Americans is even higher than it was at the dawn of the 20th century. SK/N228.41) Mark Trumbull, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, January 7, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Compared with other advanced nations, the US has higher inequality of incomes, and inequality in the US has been rising a bit faster than in those other countries. The so-called Gini coefficient, a measure of inequality on a spectrum where "0" means all incomes are equal and "1" means one person has all the income, finds America with a 0.38 reading. That compares with 0.316 for the 20 founding nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, according to OECD data for 2010. (The founding nations are all from the West and heavily European.) 2. PORT CITIES HAVE HIGHEST INCOME INEQUALITY SK/N228.42) Annie Lowrey, THE NEW YORK TIMES, February 20, 2014, p. B3, LexisNexis Academic. If you want to live in a more equal community, it might mean living in a more moribund economy. That is one of the implications of a new study of local income trends by the Brookings Institution, the Washington research group. It found that inequality is sharply higher in economically vibrant cities like New York and San Francisco than in less dynamic ones like Columbus, Ohio, and Wichita, Kan. SK/N228.43) Annie Lowrey, THE NEW YORK TIMES, February 20, 2014, p. B3, LexisNexis Academic. The country's big cities tend to have higher income inequality than the country as a whole. For instance, in the 50 biggest American cities in 2012, a high-income household -- which the study measured at the 95th earnings percentile, putting it just into the top 5 percent -- earned about 11 times as much as a low-income household, at the 20th percentile. Nationally, that ratio was 9 to 1. SK/N228.44) Annie Lowrey, THE NEW YORK TIMES, February 20, 2014, p. B3, LexisNexis Academic. The driving force behind spiraling inequality at a national level is the rich getting richer. But in many cases, the Brookings numbers indicated, poverty is as important a factor at the local level. In Miami, for instance, a household in the bottom 20th income percentile earned just $10,000 a year in 2012. SK/N228.45) Elizabeth Barber, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, February 20, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Inequality is unequal across America's cities, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution. The report, published Thursday, confirms what US census data have long suggested: All cities have inequality in terms of their residents' incomes, but some of most economically vibrant, largest cities, such as Boston and New York, have much more inequality than others. "It turns out that big cities are more unequal places than the rest of the nation," says Alan Berube, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program and the author of the report, in an e-mail to The Monitor. SK/N228.46) Elizabeth Barber, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, February 20, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Atlanta, San Francisco, Miami, Boston, Washington, and New York are the most US unequal cities, the report found. The least unequal cities are: Virginia Beach, Va.; Arlington, Texas; Mesa, Ariz.; Las Vegas; Wichita, Kan.; and Colorado Springs, Colo. In general, the most unequal cities boast among the nation's most boast-worthy economies, while the less unequal cities sport more middling ones. 3. THE RICH HAVE TOO MUCH POLITICAL POWER SK/N228.47) Robert H. Frank [economics professor, Cornell U.], THE NEW YORK TIMES, January 12, 2014, p. BU-3, LexisNexis Academic. More recently, rising inequality has had much impact on the political process. Greater income and wealth in the hands of top earners gives them greater access to legislators. And it confers more ability to influence public opinion through contributions to research organizations and political action committees. The results have included long-term reductions in income and estate taxes, as well as relaxed business regulation. Those changes, in turn, have caused further concentrations of income and wealth at the top, creating even more political influence. SK/N228.48) Eduardo Porter, THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 26, 2014, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. One of the plausible consequences of rising inequality is that it allows the 1 percent to take control of the political system, purchasing the power needed to maintain the status quo. If that is the case -- and there is plenty of suggestive evidence of this -- the widening of the income gap would prove irreversible. SK/N228.49) Eduardo Porter, THE NEW YORK TIMES, May 14, 2014, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. What's more, disparities in income seem to produce political polarization and gridlock, which tend to favor those who receive a better deal from the prevailing rules, says Francesco Trebbi, an expert on political economy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. 4. INCOME INEQUALITY PERPETUATES POVERTY SK/N228.50) Eduardo Porter, THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 26, 2014, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. When he was President Obama's chief economic adviser, Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton economist, popularized what came to be known as the “Great Gatsby Curve,” which showed that in countries with wider income gaps the children of poor parents were more likely to grow up to be poor adults. SK/N228.51) Harry Bruinius, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, January 5, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. For many of those concerned about income inequality, a deeper worry is its effect on social mobility - the long-held promise of America, believed by liberals and conservatives alike, that hard work, industry, and talent can breed economic success, no matter one's social class. "Whatever you may believe about the facts, it has been the belief of a vast majority of Americans for a long time that they had a chance to get ahead - and that belief is a piece of the glue that holds our society together," says Mr. Holtz-Eakin, who has also served as director of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Yet today, four years after the recession ended, 64 percent of Americans no longer believe the country offers everyone an equal chance to succeed, compared with 33 percent who do, according to a Dec. 11 Bloomberg poll. And for those making $50,000 or less, 73 percent see the economy stacked against them. SK/N228.52) Annie Lowrey, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 2012, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. “What worries me is the idea that we're in a vicious cycle,” said Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics who has studied inequality extensively. “Increasing inequality means a weaker economy, which means increasing inequality, which means a weaker economy. That economic inequality feeds into political economy, so the ability to stabilize the economy gets weaker.” Rea S. Hederman, an economist at the right-of-center Heritage Foundation, a Washington research group, said that “the problem is that the policies that encourage growth also encourage inequality,” citing the preferential tax rates for investment income as an example. 5. INCOME INEQUALITY KILLS THOUSANDS SK/N228.53) Charles DiMaggio et al., THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, August 2011, p. 1456, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. We conducted a MEDLINE search for all English-language articles published between 1980 and 2007 with estimates of the relation between social factors and adult all-cause mortality. We calculated summary relative risk estimates of mortality, and we obtained and used prevalence estimates for each social factor to calculate the population-attributable fraction for each factor. We then calculated the number of deaths attributable to each social factor in the United States in 2000. Results. Approximately 245,000 deaths in the United States in 2000 were attributable to low education, 176,000 to racial segregation, 162,000 to low social support, 133,000 to individual-level poverty, 119,000 to income inequality, and 39,000 to area-level poverty. SK/N228.54) Meghan J. Clark [Asst. Professor of Theology & Religious Studies, St. John’s U.], AMERICA, October 29, 2012, p. 17, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In short, inequality is making Americans sick and contributing to premature death. According to public health research, more than 800,000 U.S. deaths can be linked to excessive economic inequality. SK/N228.55) USA TODAY MAGAZINE, July 2012, p. 8, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Higher levels of income inequality in the U.S. lead to more deaths in the country over a period of years, claims a study published in Social Science and Medicine. The findings suggest that income inequality at any one point does not work instantaneously--it begins increasing mortality rates five years later, and its influence peaks after seven years, before fading after 12 years. 6. INCOME INEQUALITY STUNTS ECONOMIC GROWTH SK/N228.56) Eduardo Porter, THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 26, 2014, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. In “The Price of Inequality,” the Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz argues that “we are paying a high price for the inequality that is increasingly scarring our economy.” He says that rising inequality is putting a brake on growth and promoting economic instability. SK/N228.57) Michael A. Fletcher, THE WASHINGTON POST, January 25, 2014, p. A4, LexisNexis Academic. Now, a new paper argues, inequality is not only bad for those at the bottom. It is also bad for economic growth as a whole and a major reason why the recovery from the Great Recession has been so weak. The paper by Barry Z. Cynamon and Steven M. Fazzari, economists working with the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis, says that stagnant income for the "bottom 95 percent" of wage earners makes it impossible for them to consume as they did in the years before the downturn. SK/N228.58) Annie Lowrey, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 2012, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. The yawning gap between the haves and the have-nots -- and the political questions that gap has raised about the plight of the middle class -- has given rise to anti-Wall Street sentiment and animated the presidential campaign. Now, a growing body of economic research suggests that it might mean lower levels of economic growth and slower job creation in the years ahead, as well. “Growth becomes more fragile” in countries with high levels of inequality like the United States, said Jonathan D. Ostry of the International Monetary Fund, whose research suggests that the widening disparity since the 1980s might shorten the nation's economic expansions by as much as a third. SK/N228.59) Annie Lowrey, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 2012, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. The concentration of income in the hands of the rich might not just mean a more unequal society, economists believe. It might mean less stable economic expansions and sluggish growth. That is the conclusion drawn by two economists at the fund [International Monetary Fund], Mr. Ostry and Andrew G. Berg. They found that in rich countries and poor, inequality strongly correlated with shorter spells of economic expansion and thus less growth over time. And inequality seems to have a stronger effect on growth than several other factors, including foreign investment, trade openness, exchange rate competitiveness and the strength of political institutions. SK/N228.60) Eduardo Porter, THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 26, 2014, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. The case against vast inequality is grounded in economic theory. It posits, quite reasonably, that making an extra $10,000 will improve the well-being of a middle-class family more than losing $10,000 will reduce the well-being of a billionaire. Provided it does not substantially reduce economic growth, this alone can support the case for redistribution. 7. INCOME INEQUALITY PRODUCES A HOST OF SOCIAL ILLS SK/N228.61) Eduardo Porter, THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 26, 2014, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. The British epidemiologists Kate E. Pickett and Richard G. Wilkinson have made probably the boldest arguments. In “The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better,” they say that severe inequality undermines social bonds and dashes the health of millions. It contributes to mental illness. It increases obesity and teenage pregnancy. It fosters crime. It lowers life expectancy. These ills don't affect just the poor. They affect everybody. SK/N228.62) Eduardo Porter, THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 26, 2014, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. What's more, Mr. Wilkinson [British epidemiologist] argues, inequality does a great job of making sense of the United States. “You must explain why a country like the United States does so badly on so many fronts and countries in Scandinavia do well on all these things,” he said. “On drug abuse and imprisonment and obesity and everything else. It's very hard to find something else that could explain it.” 8. SURVIVAL OF U.S. CAPITALISM IS IN JEOPARDY SK/N228.63) Robert H. Frank [economics professor, Cornell U.], THE NEW YORK TIMES, January 12, 2014, p. BU-3, LexisNexis Academic. As Americans, we once pointed with pride to our country's high level of economic and social mobility, but we've now become one of the world's most rigidly stratified industrial democracies. Given the grave threats to the social order that extreme inequality has posed in other countries, it's easy to see why the growing income gap is poised to become the signature political issue of 2014. SK/N228.64) Harry Bruinius, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, January 5, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. "We're not just experiencing a new Gilded Age, but a Bitcoin Age," says Mr. Gross [most powerful bond manager of his generation], referring to the digital currency. "Artificial money, corporate K Street, and Wall Street interests are producing one world for the rich and an entirely different world for the working class," says the founder and co-chief information officer of PIMCO in Newport Beach, Calif. "It can't go on like this, either from the standpoint of the health of the capitalist system itself or the health of individuals and the family," he adds. SK/N228.65) Harry Bruinius, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, January 5, 2014, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. For many economists, a shrinking middle class, as well as low employment, has profound implications. A majority of economists polled by The Associated Press in mid-December said they worry that with most stock market gains flowing upward to the top 10 percent of Americans, the consumer spending base has become too narrow. They also said that a middle class with more cash to spend would be able to stimulate a broad-based climate of economic growth and job creation better than a smaller, über-rich base could. "For the past 10, 20, 30 years, capital has moved away from labor and towards corporations and investors," Gross [most powerful bond manager of his generation] says. "I'm not sure capitalism can thrive in a system in which ... [labor] has a declining interest, in terms of percentage of the pie. Then ultimately the pie itself can't grow, because consumption can't be supported." SK/N229. SEABED MINING: Solvency 1. INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY IS UNRELIABLE SK/N229.01) Sarah Blackman, PROGRESSIVE MEDIA, May 30, 2013, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. The ISA [International Seabed Authority] has only scratched the surface of what may be involved in preparing a fiscal policy that would set fiscal rates based on comparable land-based minerals, identify a tax and cost accounting code on which fiscal calculations can be made; and develop a system that does not burden the ISA or mining investors. The authority hopes to ensure that whatever resource rent legislation is adapted is simple, equitable and transparent. But the implementation of such regimes may be too big a challenge for certain governments. SK/N229.02) Donald H. Rumsfeld [former U.S. Secretary of Defense], THE WASHINGTON TIMES, July 18, 2012, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. What makes such a transfer of wealth even more objectionable is its poor design. The mechanism outlined in the treaty is the newly created International Seabed Authority, which is effectively a U.N. agency that would be empowered to regulate all mining and oil and gas activity on the high seas. Those who like the expansion of federal regulation into more and more aspects of private business will like the new international regulations under the treaty even more. SK/N229.03) Donald H. Rumsfeld [former U.S. Secretary of Defense], THE WASHINGTON TIMES, July 18, 2012, p. B1, LexisNexis Academic. Even more troubling is what might happen to the billions of dollars that will be funneled through "the Authority." Global-governance advocates have long desired a reliable and independent revenue stream, separate from donations by member states. This is the genesis, I suspect, of the recent U.N. proposal for a worldwide "billionaires' tax" - an annual 1 percent tax levied on the wealth of billionaires. The U.N. has an indisputably poor record in administering its programs and managing money. For example, the U.N. Oil for Food Program was a multibillion dollar scandal. 2. IT WILL PENALIZE U.S. CORPORATIONS SK/N229.04) John O’Sullivan, NATIONAL REVIEW, September 10, 2007, p. 22, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The structure of UNCLOS means that bodies it has created, such as the ISA and ITLOS, are now in effect independent international agencies accountable only to each other. They enjoy both the taxing power in light disguise and the ability to expand the reach of their regulatory activities. And they have a claque of external supporters in nation-states that are content to have their own sovereignty limited provided that America's sovereignty is curbed too--even without Washington's consent. SK/N229.05) John O’Sullivan, NATIONAL REVIEW, September 10, 2007, p. 22, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. If our supposed legal gains from the treaty are in fact losses, what of the acknowledged economic losses? These are admittedly less severe than those proposed in 1982, but they are still unjustifiable and, worse, capable of expansion as the ISA gets into its stride. Thus, if the U.S. wished to drill or mine on the continental shelf beyond a 200-mile limit, it would have to provide a percentage of its revenue, rising from 1 to 7 percent annually, to the Deep Seabed Authority established by the ISA to superintend such commercial exploitation. SK/N229.06) John O’Sullivan, NATIONAL REVIEW, September 10, 2007, p. 22, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. As Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy has vainly tried to explain to U.S. corporations, a company wishing to mine the deep sea has an obligation to set aside an area where the ISA can develop its own mining with financial and technological assistance from its commercial rival. The ISA is itself obliged by its UNCLOS charter to ensure that the seabed resources are used for the general benefit of mankind. What this means in practice is that the ISA would provide economic assistance to what have been described as "developing countries which suffer serious adverse effects on their export earnings" from deep-sea-bed mining. In other words, nations and companies that engage in commercial mining must subsidize their rivals and competitors. SK/N229.07) Steven Groves [The Heritage Foundation], STATES NEWS SERVICE, December 4, 2012, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In fact, U.S. accession [to UNCLOS] would penalize U.S. companies by subjecting them to the whims of an unelected and unaccountable international bureaucracy. U.S. companies would be forced to pay excessive fees, costs, and royalties to the International Seabed Authority for redistribution to developing countries. U.S. interests are better served by not acceding to UNCLOS. SK/N229.08) Steven Groves [The Heritage Foundation], STATES NEWS SERVICE, December 4, 2012, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The United States should not cede regulatory authority and bureaucratic control over the attainment of any national interest to an international organization. International organizations should not have the power to deny American companies access to the deep seabed or the authority to regulate exploration and mining activities. Download 0.49 Mb. Share with your friends:
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