Kelly seems to think otherwise. Still, an increase of something on the order of 3/4 million in the last decade should leave some fairly significant statistical trace, both on employment rates, as Yoshie says, and income, as I argued before. Again, I'm doing this blind. Have there been any studies of this?
At the
> same time, the wars on crimes & drugs have made costs of living
> higher (& lowered standards of living) for an increasing number of
> people, since fines, court costs, lawyer fees, bail bonds, etc. must
> be paid & prisoners can't contribute to household incomes (through
> regular or unofficial jobs) & instead have to be supported by their
> families. In short, fighting against the criminal justice system has
> become a part of daily necessities for the poor, but this fact is
> ignored when economists discuss "standard budgets" & "official
> poverty lines," I believe.
Yes, and outside of legal costs imposed by Clinton era crime policies (which one assumes are not included in the inflation index), one could mentioned all sorts of costs taken for granted today which were not on the horizon a decade or more ago, or in the same degree. What about, say, increases in costs for college education as state school tuitions climb out of the range of all but the affluent, costs for bottled water as public water supplies become unreliable, users fees in National Parks imposed under Gore's re-engineering government initiative, the need for cell phones as public phones become increasingly rare, etc. This is a random coming off the top of my head. The speculation is that achieving the same standard of living requires a significantly higher income due to costs imposed by the new economy. I would assume Doug has some ideas along these lines.
> snit wrote:
>
> > i think i made clear that i don't actually think everything is hunky
> > dory. if blacks have gained it is not at the expense of whites. if blacks
> > have gained, it is likely because of the effects of a tight labor market
> > which will raise people's incomes and that rise will *look* like a lot more
> > because they started out so low to begin with. AND, if you look at the
> > actual numbers (at EPI, max's joint) then you can see that by no means have
> > blacks' income achieved parity with whites.
> >
My point, which I expressed badly, was that Clinton era statistics seem to indicate greater relative gains for black workers compared to white workers. This is either true or false. My argument, in fact, was that due to incarceration rates, the statistic might be misleading. What's going on is that a large fraction of the work force which would be marginally employed at best is stamping license plates for a 30 cent an hour wage which doesn't make it into the position papers.
In any case the alleged gains, do not imply parity. However, they do suggest significant readjustments in the structure of race and class which it might be worth keeping an eye on, and which might have consequences for political organizing, it seems to me.
Anyway, thanks to all for weighing in on this.
Best, John