As the crisis grows deeper, the wealth gap gets wider
By Manuel E. Yepe

A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.

One of capitalism’s unquestionable rules is that, in times of crisis, it’s the poor who suffer the effects of each major budget cut. So even if crises spare no one, the gap gets wider rather than narrower.

The current world economic crisis is not an exception to this maxim in the case of the United States.

“Over the coming months, as many as 1.5 million jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits, ending what for some has been a last bulwark against foreclosures and destitution”, says an article published on August 2, 2009 by The New York Times, signed by journalist Erik Eckholm under the title Prolonged Aid to Unemployed is Running Out.

As Eckholm explains, by virtue of the unemployment insurance program created in 1930 and because of emergency extensions enacted by Congress, laid-off workers in nearly half the states can collect benefits for up to 79 weeks, whereas in others they can do it from 46 to 72 weeks. “But unemployment in this recession has proved to be especially tenacious, and a wave of job-seekers is using up even this prolonged aid. Tens of thousands of workers have already used up their benefits, and the numbers are expected to soar in the months to come, reaching half a million by the end of September and 1.5 million by the end of the year”.

The columnist points out that for every job that becomes available, about six people are looking. The wages offered are increasingly lower, and even low-paid fast-food jobs traditionally filled by teenagers are being taken by laid-off, overqualified adults.

According to journalist Don Monkerud’s U.S. Income Inequality Continues to Grow published by Wisconsin’s daily Capital Times, in June 2009 “the U.S. economy saw its second steepest decline in 27 years. New jobless claims increased, business inventories fell and exports plunged as bad economic news persisted” (…) “During eight years of the Bush administration, the 400 richest Americans, who now own more than the bottom 150 million Americans, increased their net worth by $700 billion. In 2005, the top 1 percent claimed 22 percent of the national income, while the top 10 percent took half of the total income, the largest share since 1928”.

What Monkerud reveals is that the root of disparity in U.S. society, formerly sprung from the relations of property, now hinge upon the growing disproportion between the salaries paid to executives and what the rest of the labor force receives.

“The source of wealth has changed over the past 30 years; corporations have become the engine of inequality in the U.S.," says Sam Pizzigati, professor at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., quoted by Monkerud. "In the past, wealth came from ownership. Today it comes increasingly from income. The highest incomes come from executive pay at top corporations. In the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s, the ratio of CEO pay to the average paycheck fluctuated between 30 and 40 to 1. This year’s ratio is estimated to be 317 to 1.”

In 1955, IRS records indicated the 400 richest people in the country were worth an average $12.6 million, adjusted for inflation. In 2006, the 400 richest increased their average to $263 million, that is, over twenty times more, representing an epochal shift of wealth upward in the U.S.

“Bubble economies over the past 30 years helped CEOs pump up their income, and efforts to corral their pay are weak and ineffective. CEO pay may fall during these economic hard times, but disparity isn’t going away. Without a strong movement for change, the wealth gap will only increase in this downturn”, the analyst concludes.

This lack of balance in the payroll is merely the newest outcome of a capitalistic engine built on the dictatorship of wealth in a system thoroughly designed to make of capital ownership the driving force of society.

Consequently, the wealth gap grows larger and deeper, so deep that it may even become its graveyard some day.



THE NEW YORK TIMES
August 2, 2009

Prolonged Aid to Unemployed Is Running Out
By ERIK ECKHOLM
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/us/02unemploy.html

Over the coming months, as many as 1.5 million jobless Americans will exhaust their unemployment insurance benefits, ending what for some has been a last bulwark against foreclosures and destitution.

Because of emergency extensions already enacted by Congress, laid-off workers in nearly half the states can collect benefits for up to 79 weeks, the longest period since the unemployment insurance program was created in the 1930s. But unemployment in this recession has proved to be especially tenacious, and a wave of job-seekers is using up even this prolonged aid.

Tens of thousands of workers have already used up their benefits, and the numbers are expected to soar in the months to come, reaching half a million by the end of September and 1.5 million by the end of the year, according to new projections by the National Employment Law Project, a private research group.

Unemployment insurance is now a lifeline for nine million Americans, with payments averaging just over $300 per week, varying by state and work history. While many recipients find new jobs before exhausting their benefits, large numbers in the current recession have been unable to find work for a year or more.

Calls are rising for Congress to pass yet another extension this fall, possibly adding 13 more weeks of coverage in states with especially high unemployment. As of June, the national unemployment rate was 9.5 percent, reaching 15.2 percent in Michigan. Even if the recession begins to ease, economists say, jobs will remain scarce for some time to come.

“If more help is not on the way, by September a huge wave of workers will start running out of their critical extended benefits, and many will have nothing left to get by on even as work keeps getting harder to find,” said Maurice Emsellem, a policy director of the employment law project.

For many desperate job seekers, any extension will seem a blessing. Pamela C. Lampley of Dillon, S.C., said she sat outside the post office last month and cried because “it was the first Wednesday in quite some time that I’ve gone to the mailbox and left without an unemployment check.” The jobless rate in her state is 12.1 percent.

Ms. Lampley, 40, who is married with three children, lost her job as a human resources officer in January 2008 and had been receiving $351 a week, which covered the groceries and gas. Even so, she and her husband, who still has work as a machinist, were sinking into debt. Now, still poorer, she feels devastated because they cannot buy their son a laptop to take to college and she cannot give her 9-year-old son money for the movies.

In Ohio, where unemployment is 11.1 percent, Cathy Nixon, 39, a mother of four teenagers from Lorain, has been out of work for much of the time since June 2007, and her benefits — $313 a week — run out in September. Ms. Nixon is already fighting foreclosure and said she feared that when the benefits end, “we’ll be homeless.” She was unable to afford summer camp and baseball activities for her children, despite scrimping on basics.

Raymond Crouse of Columbus operated heavy construction machinery but has found no work since 2007. Mr. Crouse is 72 and receives Social Security but said that was not enough to live on. The $190 a month he has received in unemployment benefits enabled him and his wife to hang on to the house they bought 15 years ago, he said. But with the benefits ending next month, he fears that they will not keep up.

In ordinary times, employers pay into a state insurance fund, and workers who lose jobs draw benefits for up to 26 weeks. During recessions, Congress has often paid for extended coverage for an extra 13 or even 20 weeks.

In 2008, as the recession deepened, Congress provided 33 extra weeks of benefits. Earlier this year, President Obama’s stimulus plan offered an additional 20 weeks in states where unemployment surpassed 8 percent, if they adopted new federally recommended rules governing these extra weeks. (South Carolina did not make the changes, and benefits there are running out more quickly.)

Currently, people can draw benefits for up to 79 weeks in 24 states and from 46 weeks to 72 weeks in others.

The stimulus law also, through the end of the year, provided an extra $25 a week to all recipients, exempted a portion of benefits from federal income tax and subsidized Cobra health payments for the unemployed.

Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, said he would introduce a bill in September to provide yet another 13 weeks of coverage in states with unemployment rates of 9 percent or higher. “Legislators will line up quickly when they start getting calls from desperate constituents,” he said in a telephone interview.

The cost would be $40 billion to $70 billion, but the expense would be temporary, Mr. McDermott said.

Some business groups remain skeptical. Douglas Holmes, president of UWC, a group in Washington that represents businesses on unemployment issues, said that there were early glimmers of economic progress and that it was premature to extend benefits again. The money might be better spent, Mr. Holmes said, creating jobs and training people to move into emerging industries.

Traditionally, many economists have been leery of prolonged unemployment benefits because they can reduce the incentive to seek work. But that should not be a concern now because jobs remain so scarce, said Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard.

For every job that becomes available, about six people are looking, Dr. Katz said. “Unemployment insurance gives income to families who are really suffering and can’t find work even if they are hustling to look,” he said.

With the economy still listing, he added, a temporary extension can provide a quick fiscal stimulus. And, Dr. Katz said, when people exhaust unemployment and health insurance, many end up applying for disability benefits, which become a large, unending drain on the Treasury.

Ms. Lampley, whose benefits have ended, described the tough job market. She used to make nearly $15 an hour and has unsuccessfully sought office and clerical work at $8 an hour. Mr. Crouse said that even if new building projects were planned, construction slows in the winter cold.

And Ms. Nixon said that she had interviewed endlessly for jobs in real estate and office work and that even her teenagers could not find fast-food jobs because laid-off adults were filling them.

“I can’t find a job,” she said, “and you can’t survive if you don’t work.”




 

CON LA CRISIS CRECE TAMBIÉN LA BRECHA
Por Manuel E. Yepe

Una regla inviolable del capitalismo es que, en épocas de crisis, el sistema hace que los mayores recortes y sufrimientos caigan sobre los pobres. Es por ello que las crisis afectan a todos, pero la brecha en vez de reducirse, se incrementa.

La actual crisis económica mundial no está siendo excepción en cuanto a este apotegma en los Estados Unidos.

“En los próximos meses, tanto como un millón y medio de norteamericanos desempleados agotarán los beneficios que les brindan sus seguros por desempleo, poniendo fin a lo que para algunos ha sido su último reducto contra despidos y destituciones”, dice un artículo aparecido en el New York Times el 2 de agosto de 2009 firmado por el periodista Erik Eckholm titulado “La ayuda prolongada a los desempleados se está agotando” (Prolonged Aid to Unemployed is Running Out).

Allí se explica que en virtud del programa contra los efectos del desempleo, que se promulgó en 1930, y a las extensiones de emergencia dispuestas por el Congreso, los trabajadores de 24 de los estados del país pueden cobrar indemnizaciones por hasta 79 semanas, en tanto en los demás estados por espacio de entre 46 y 72 semanas. “Pero el desempleo en esta recesión ha demostrado ser especialmente tenaz y la ola de buscadores de empleo está consumiendo incluso esta prolongada asistencia. Decenas de miles de trabajadores han consumido sus beneficios y el número se espera que crezca en los próximos meses hasta alcanzar medio millón en septiembre y que al finalizar el año sean millón y medio”.

El articulista señala que se calcula que, para cada empleo disponible, hay hoy seis pretendientes. Las ofertas de paga están descendiendo e incluso los trabajos menos remunerados, como los de los expendios de comida rápida que antes empleaban jóvenes, están siendo ahora tomados por adultos desempleados, con mayor calificación.

Según un análisis de los efectos de la recesión actual en los Estados Unidos del periodista Don Monkerud, publicado en el diario Capital Times de Wisconsin, “en junio de 2009, la economía tuvo su más honda declinación en 27 años: creció el número de parados, cayeron los inventarios y se redujeron las exportaciones a medida que persistían las malas noticias sobre el estado de la economía”.

Según el autor de ese estudio, titulado Las desigualdades en los ingresos siguen creciendo, “durante los ocho años de la administración de George W. Bush, la fortuna conjunta de los 400 estadounidenses más ricos (mayor que la suma de la de los 150 millones de ciudadanos menos afortunados), se incrementó en $700 mil millones. En 2005, al 1% superior en la lista de los ricos correspondía el 22% del ingreso nacional, en tanto que al 10% superior de esa lista correspondía la mitad del ingreso nacional, la mayor proporción registrada desde 1928.

El análisis revela que, a nivel de la sociedad estadounidense, el origen de las disparidades, que antes estaba en las relaciones de propiedad, ahora descansa en la creciente desproporción de la remuneración por nómina de los ejecutivos de las corporaciones respecto a los demás asalariados.

“El origen de la riqueza ha cambiado en los últimos 30 años; las corporaciones se han convertido en el motor de las desigualdades en los Estados Unidos," sostiene Sam Pizzigati, profesor del Instituto de Estudios de Política (Institute for Policy Studies) de  Washington D.C., citado por Monkerud. "En el pasado, la riqueza procedía de la propiedad: hoy, cada vez más, deriva de los ingresos. Los más altos ingresos provienen de la remuneración, sobre todo, de los ejecutivos de las corporaciones. En los años sesenta, setenta y ochenta del pasado siglo, la relación entre el promedio de la retribución de los ejecutivos y los trabajadores en la misma nómina  fluctuaba entre 30 a 1 y 40 a 1. Se estima que esa relación será este año de 317 a 1.”

En 1955, según datos del Servicio de Impuestos Internos (IRS), las 400 personas más ricas del país percibieron un promedio 12,6 millones de dólares, ajustados por inflación. En 2006, los 400 más ricos multiplicaron ese promedio de ingresos más de 20 veces, a 263 millones de dólares, lo que representa un cambio al alza histórico en la acumulación de la riqueza en los Estados Unidos.

 “Las burbujas financieras que se han desarrollado en los últimos treinta años ayudaron a los ejecutivos de las corporaciones a inflar sus ingresos y los esfuerzos por reducirles sus pagas resultan débiles e inefectivos. Sus ingresos pueden recortarse en estos tiempos económicos difíciles, pero lo que no se reduce es la disparidad.  Sin un fuerte movimiento por el cambio, la brecha de la riqueza no hará más que ahondarse”, concluye el analista.

La asimetría de la remuneración es apenas la manifestación más novedosa de la actuación de los mecanismos capitalistas que expresan la dictadura de las clases adineradas. Todo en el sistema está diseñado para que la posesión del capital sea el elemento que regule el desarrollo de la sociedad.

Esto hace que la brecha se haga cada vez más honda y puede ser que algún día se haga tan profunda que le sirva de tumba.


Agosto de 2009.