On 2013-07-09, at 11:13 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
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> On Jul 9, 2013, at 10:43 AM, Marv Gandall <marvgand2 at gmail.com> wrote:
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>> A 2010 study reported income inequality up fourfold since the Reagan years.
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> That's not mathematically possible. Measured how?
I don't know. I tried to link to the Brandeis study, but the link appears to be broken. Maybe you or someone else will have better luck.
Here's a reference to the study:
http://policyforresults.blogspot.ca/2010/06/racial-wealth-gap-increases-fourfold-in.html Wednesday, June 16, 2010
The Racial Wealth Gap Increases Fourfold in One Generation
In a recent research and policy brief, the Institute on Assets and Social Policy (IASP) at Brandeis University discusses its finding that the racial wealth gap has increased fourfold over the past generation, from $20,000 to $95,000.
IASP’s data highlight a significant growth in assets among white families between 1983 and 2007, with the greatest wealth accrued to highest income whites. During this time period, however, high-income African American families’ wealth grew only 25% as much as middle-income white families’.
The disparity in income growth was accompanied by a disproportionate increase in the negative wealth, or debt burden, of African American families. In each year of the study, at least 25% of African American families had no assets.
The expanding racial wealth gap indicates that public policies to support family asset-building and economic mobility are not fully addressing the problem. The data show that job achievement alone cannot predict family wealth holdings; universal policies do not necessarily translate to universal wealth-building outcomes. To close the racial wealth gap, IASP argues, asset-building policies must be revisited and targeted to families of color whose economic security has remained more tenuous than their peers in the workforce.
> There is now a nontrivial black professional/managerial class. Such a thing barely existed just a generation ago.
Sure. I noted that the culture is now more tolerant and opportunities have opened up for educated blacks. But that's no indication that, as you put it, "this notion of white supremacy is way way out of date - which, of course, doesn't stop people from robotically reciting it as if nothing has changed since 1957."
You don't agree that white supremacy is an ongoing structural feature of US capitalism? You really think the concept lost its validity after the passage of the Civil Rights Act by the Johnson administration in 1964?
Here's a contemporary example of how it's being expressed in Detroit, CB's home town. The wealthy white suburbanites would rather the city gut black working class pensions and other benefits rather than sell off parts of its art collection in the Detroit Institute of Art. The city should do neither, but you get the point.
Should Detroit sell its art? Motown steps on Degas The suburbs and the city disagree The Economist Jul 6th 2013
ONE of the masterpieces in the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) is James Whistler’s “Nocturne in Black and Gold”. Ominous dark shadows are punctuated with the light of fireworks falling to Earth. It is an “urban, ephemeral, indescribable spectacle”, says the blurb. It is “a pot of paint [flung] in the public’s face”, harrumphed John Ruskin, a Victorian critic. It could also be a metaphor for the rise and fall of Motown, not least since it is one of many works the bankrupt city may sell to pay off its debts.
Detroit has one of the finest art collections in America, including works by Van Gogh, Degas, Matisse and Bruegel the Elder. Murals by Diego Rivera, commissioned in the 1930s, show muscular workers cranking out cars in a Ford factory.
Many of those factory jobs have now left. (Some have gone to Rivera’s native Mexico.) Detroit’s population has collapsed. With a shrunken tax base, the city cannot service its debts of more than $17 billion, or $25,000 for every resident.
Desperate times call for harsh measures. Kevyn Orr, the city’s emergency manager, who was appointed this year with almost dictatorial powers to turn the city’s finances around, has ordered an inventory of the treasures in the DIA. These were valued at $1 billion in 2004; they may be worth more now. If Detroit formally declares bankruptcy, they may be sold. That would be controversial.
Many affluent suburbanites hate the idea. The suburbs that encircle Detroit are politically separate: suburbanites neither pay city taxes nor send their kids to crumbling city schools. But they do like to visit the art museum from time to time. Only last year, they voted to pay a special tax to subsidise it.
Even more appalling, for many suburbanites, is the prospect that the proceeds would bail out what they see as a corrupt and incompetent city government. In March a former mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, was convicted on two dozen charges, including racketeering and bribery. The city council is in chaos: its president has gone missing, amid allegations of an inappropriate relationship with a high-school boy. A third of the council seats are empty. “You start to get numb. This week it was the DIA, last week something else,” says Paul Tyll, an engineer who lives in the suburbs and voted for the DIA tax.
Race aggravates matters. The city is 83% black. Adjacent Oakland County is 77% white, and more than twice as rich. Suburbanites are glad that the governor of Michigan has appointed an emergency manager to sort out the city. In a poll, 78% of voters of Oakland County approved, against only 41% in Detroit itself.
The DIA is unusual in that it is directly owned by the city. Art museums elsewhere are typically owned by non-profit foundations. So whereas other struggling rust-belt cities with great art collections, such as Toledo and Cleveland, probably could not sell them to repay their creditors, Detroit probably can.
Scandalised out-of-towners are eager to prevent this. Michigan’s attorney-general says that the artwork is held in trust and therefore cannot be sold. State legislators are proposing a law that would block a debt-driven sell-off. Even if Mr Orr has the law on his side, creditors and art-buyers may be wary of getting tied up in court. Art-lovers hope that the red tape that helped wreck Detroit’s economy might save its art collection.
Paintings or pensions?
Were the city to sell its paintings, it would lose some of its allure for residents and tourists alike. Annemarie Erickson, the DIA’s chief operating officer, argues that art can “empower all of us”. But many residents will grasp at anything that means their pensions might be paid, or the streetlights might start working again. “I earned that pension,” says Robert Jones, a retired police officer who now helps run a car park outside the Detroit Tigers’ baseball stadium. “Paintings?” asks Carl, a ticket-scalper outside the same stadium: “What do I need with paintings?”