The American economy has been growing at less than 2% per year. Productivity, which leads to higher wages, has grown at less than one percent, accounting for the very slim raises the last year or so.

Of the growth that has occurred, most of it has gone to the top 10% of taxpaying families, who now take one-half of all income reported in this country. Bernie Sanders has no practical response. Donald Trump ignores the issue.

So what could reasonably be done? Since some of the inequality comes from the rising premium for technical skills, we need to provide more vocational education for underemployed Americans of all ages. Since much inequality comes from single parent households, we need to strengthen marriage by targeting income support for two-parent households. Since excessive incarceration for non-violent felonies has weakened minority communities, we can strengthen them by offering the unemployed jobs repairing public facilities. Community corrections should replace prison terms. Since discrimination against women contributes to poverty too, stronger unions should demand equal pay for equal work. That work should earn a new minimum wage of $10-12 an hour. Studies show that this modest increase in the current minimum wage would not raise prices or unemployment unreasonably relative to the benefits for those who need it.

A program like that would attract my vote.

Now, in 2014, President Barack Obama has been quietly nurturing the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a free trade deal supported by corporate interests that Noam Chomsky states would “further erode the security of workers and the middle class, irrevocably harm the environment and undercut important financial, medical and food safety regulations.”

There is a growing problem of income inequality in the U.S., striking a blow to the functioning of a healthy democracy. With TPP, the richest 5 to 10 per cent of American households would get richer, while the bottom 90 per cent of Americans suffer a loss of income.

President Obama has tried to keep TPP secret.Thanks to WikiLeaks parts of the text were made public. A public outcry against TPP was expressed to Congress. Senator Harry Reid, Majority Leader, refused to fast-track TPP legislation, which has temporarily blocked approval from Congress.

FlushtheTPP.Org sums it up very well. “The TPP is about much more than trade. It is a global corporate coup.” We must stay vigilant.

References

“NAFTA, Twenty Years After: A Disaster” (Economic Policy Institute)

Effect of TPP on richest 5 to 10 percent and poorest 90 percent is by Ruth Conniff in The Progressive, March, 2014, page 6.

Chomsky is quoted in The Nation, March 10, 2014, page 11.

If Senator Coats is concerned about the poor, he should support extension of unemployment benefits and an increase in the minimum wage.

Climate change will affect the poor even more severely than it affects everyone else. Who lives on marginal land, suffers most from rising food prices, lacks health care and is most subject to newly virulent epidemics? Who will lose their jobs when climate refugees from coastal regions around the world flood into our cities and towns?

The world seems virtually certain to reach a climate tipping point. Nations and regions which have avoided the energy transition will be left behind, just as Detroit automakers were after they refused for years to build fuel efficient cars.

The President is working through EPA regulations because Congress has failed to offer a credible alternative. Senator Coats should support a revenue-neutral carbon tax and dividend as the most efficient way to cut emissions and accelerate the shift to renewable energy. This shift offers tremendous economic opportunities. Green industries and smart conservation create far more jobs per dollar invested than do capital-intensive coal and nuclear plants.

Members of Congress need to remember the most underrepresented of all groups: the generations that follow us.

References

“Senator Blunt, Colleagues Call On President Obama To Stop Punishing Most Vulnerable Americans With Higher Utility Bills” (Roy Blunt)

“Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax” (Citizens Climate Lobby)

However, a closer look shows that the United States has made progress in fighting poverty and offers lessons about what should be done to do better.

Poverty itself has fallen substantially. According to a more comprehensive measure than the official one, 26 percent of Americans were poor in 1967. In 2012, 16 percent were.

The demographics of poverty have changed too. When Johnson sounded his battle-cry, elderly and retired people were more than twice as likely to be poor as those of working age. Today, their poverty-rates are about the same.

In 1966, over forty percent of African Americans were poor. By 2012, little more than one-quarter were. The poverty-rate among whites was less than half that among blacks, though slightly higher than in the Johnson years.

Less encouraging: Poverty among children has been rising and falling since the 1960’s. It now stands at about 20 percent, above the adult rate.

The percentage of Hispanics who are poor has also been rising. Since the early 1970’s, half the increase in poverty reflected the growth of the Hispanic population.

Proposals that do not address the status of the nation’s fastest-growing minority-group are unlikely to do much to help the poor. Nor will avoiding the difficult issue that has left so many children in poverty: The growth of female-headed families since the 1960’s.

By tackling these issues, we can continue to make progress in reducing poverty.

Sources

“Trends in Poverty with an Anchored Supplemental Poverty Measure”  (Chistopher Wimer)

“Who’s poor in America? 50 years into the ‘War on Poverty,’ a data portrait” (Pew Research Center)