For the Record

The comprehensive scoop on U.S. economic inequality

Via Slate, a don't-miss historically and statistically informed read: Timothy Noah's The United States of Inequality.

U.S. run by corporations; administered by craven capitulators

The latest bit of evidence here.

More evidence here.

I think I'll just keep the list going for a while.  What fun!

Bank-friendly Dems threaten to block Financial Regulatory reform bill.

Death of public option causes health insurance stocks to climb 20-30% to a 52-year peak.

Obama sells out, and then sells out some more.

Follow the money.  And don't forget the iron law of institutions.

Wheee!

Read this; it's brilliant.

Want the good life? Live in a social democratic country

Call it what you want, but on indexes of what everyone wants the SD-ers knock it down cold.

This about sums it up

Richard Gwyn, in today's Toronto Star, has an excellent "opinion" piece on the prospects for regulation and reform in the U.S.  The short cut:

[T]o really understand what's going on, follow the money. The American political system has become its hostage.

Was the USSR better prepared for its collapse than the USA will be?

This guy thinks so.

US income inequality worst since 20's

Among the stats released by the IRS (and you know, girlfriend, that the rich have all kinds of ways of hiding their income, so things are undoubtedly much worse than these stats indicate):

-- The top 1% earned 21.2 percent of all income in 2005, up from 19 percent in 2004.

That is, the top 1% gets more than 1/5 of all income.

-- The bottom 50% earned 12.8 percent of all income in 2005, down from 13.4 percent.

That is, the bottom 50% gets about 1/8 of all income.

One of the interesting things about keeping track, to whatever small degree, of things like this is seeing the same old ludicrous and empirically disconfirmed excuses wheeled out over and over by Bush et al.   So last time stats on inequality came out, Bush was all about his "the income gap was an education gap"; now it's that "skills gaps yield income gaps".  Whatever.

The true measure of power

The true measure of power is how much you can get away with, which makes the gangsters running the U.S. effectively all-powerful.

New year's baby

Yesterday the first global super-union was born... or anyway conceived:

British, American and German unions are to forge a pact to challenge the power of global capitalism in a move towards creating an international union with more than 6 million members. [...]

Derek Simpson, general secretary of Amicus, said: 'Our aim is to create a powerful single union that can transcend borders to challenge the global forces of capital. I envisage a functioning, if loosely federal, multinational organisation within the next decade.'

Welcome, Internationale!

U.S. cancer expert: severe illness imposes much greater burden in U.S. than Canada

One of the supposed advantages of privatized healthcare in the U.S. is that, assuming that one isn't unlucky enough to be one of the 45.8  million U.S.-ers without any healthcare whatsover), you can get treated efficiently and well for what ails you.  Like so many false dogmas of free-market capitalism, this claim seems to follow practically a priori from the more basic capitalist dogma that competition results in greater efficiency or better services.  Of course, that's a laugh: witness Enron, Halliburton, Diebold, the corporate media, etc.

(What's that you say?  The inefficiency and inferior products of these sorts of corporate monstrosities is an indication that the markets aren't genuinely free? That's another bit of dogma that's close to question-begging -- for how could it be definitive of free markets (or free market capitalism) that these result in better or more efficiently produced or distributed goods and services than other economic systems?  That's an empirical claim, dude.  Anyway, even if in Free Market Nirvana this would be the case (which I doubt) the sad fact is that in The Real World what happens when the winners of a few local competitions amass a bit more capital (or are a bit more competitively ruthless) than their fellow capitalists, the winners very quickly make it the case (via the usual runs of money-driven influence) that in the future they won't have to actually compete all that much, after all.   BTW, it has always struck me as ironic that free-marketers love to motivate their view by citing, in a vague way, the supposedly insuperable pragmatic difficulties of implementing a more egalitarian economic system (guess they never heard of Cuba).  But heaven forbid they should acknowledge the obvious fact -- upon which most of the tragedies of history and the present can be blamed, by the way -- that those who gain more capital (via competition, theft, or honest toil) nearly always use their capital to game the system so that they won't be likely to lose it in the future.)

Anyway, as yet another case where we can run a modus tollens on the idea that free markets lead to improved goods and services, it turns out that the dogma about U.S. healthcare goods and services is just another lie being sold in the increasingly non-free market of ideas to gullible U.S.-ers.   Reader J. N. sends along this article in which a noted U.S. cancer expert who moved from Edmonton, Alberta to Houston, Texas compares the two systems of healthcare, especially as relevant to detection and treatment of cancer and other life-threatening illnesses:

EDMONTON (CP) - World-renowned cancer specialist Eduardo Bruera is homesick for Canada's health-care system.    

Dr. Bruera left Edmonton's Cross Cancer Institute after 15 years in 1999 to become chairman of the department of palliative care at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. After working in both countries, Bruera, an oncologist, has a message for people who complain about medicare or who want to expand the use of private health insurance in Canada.

"The portability and the universality of health care in Canada are unbelievably good. I think Canadians are not aware of that," said Bruera, who was to compare care in the two countries in a speech Wednesday at the annual conference of the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association.

"Don't look at the United States. The public health-care system makes it possible for patients to access palliative care in Canada earlier and more effectively."

Additionally, Bruera observes that even those who are insured in the U.S. often face an overwhelming financial burden as a result of terminal illness:

Since moving to Texas, Bruera said he can't get over the spectre of crushing debt that even upper-middle-class Americans face when a family member is dying from an advanced illness.

Even premium private health insurance in the United States rarely covers all the costs, which can lead to bereaved survivors facing an almost never ending list of medical bills, he said.

Of every $100 spent by families on medical care at the M.D Anderson Centre, only $32 is paid for by private insurance, he said.

More than 41 million [JW: as above, should be 45.8 million] Americans don't have health insurance, he said.   Of those who are insured, one in three will lose all their financial assets during illness. 

"To me it is an enormous impact on quality of life. The burden of dying in the U.S. of cancer is much heavier than the burden . . . in Canada."

Unfortunately, Canadians don't realize how much better their system is:

Bruera's remarks come as the federal and provincial governments work to come to grips with a Supreme Court of Canada decision in a Quebec case earlier this year which approved some uses of private health insurance.

Since the ruling, provinces such as Alberta have been actively considering expanding the use of private health insurance.

[...]   

Premier Ralph Klein has said allowing private insurance firms to sell policies would benefit Albertans who want to shorten their waiting times for non-emergency medical procedures. 

However, the province has yet to define exactly what it means by "non-emergency." 

Bruera said he is "100 per cent sure" that private insurance would not improve palliative care. 

"In general, services such as palliative care, that is not highly profitable or high tech, are generally not insured very well in the U.S.," he said.

Statistics about U.S. healthcare tell the story.  Gross inefficiency at the national level:

• In 2003, the United States spent 15.3 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on health care. It is projected that the percentage will reach 18.7 percent in 10 years. (3)
• Although nearly 45 million Americans are uninsured, the United States spends more on health care than other industrialized nations, and those countries provide health insurance to all their citizens. (4)
• Health care spending accounted for 10.9 percent of the GDP in Switzerland, 10.7 percent in Germany, 9.7 percent in Canada and 9.5 percent in France, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. (5)

Obscene, and obscenely rising, costs of insurance and out-of-pocket medical expenses:

• Health insurance premiums will rise to an average of more than $14,500 for family coverage in 2006. (6)
• According to the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, premiums for employee-sponsored health insurance in the United States have been rising five times faster on average than workers' earnings since 2000. (2)
• Employee spending for health insurance coverage has increased 126 percent between 2000 and 2004. (7)
• Since 2001, the employees' share of health insurance costs has soared 63 percent for single coverage and 58 percent for family coverage. (7)

Devastating financial consequences of illness:

• Almost 50 percent of the American public says they are very worried about having to pay more for their health care or health insurance, while 42 percent report they are very worried about not being able to afford health care services. (10)
• A recent study by Harvard University researchers found that the average out-of-pocket medical debt for those who filed for bankruptcy is $12,000. The study noted that 68 percent of those who filed for bankruptcy had health insurance. In addition, the study found that 50 percent of all bankruptcy filings were partly the result of medical expenses (11). Every 30 seconds in the United States someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem.
• One half of workers in the lowest-compensation jobs and one-half of workers in mid-range-compensation jobs either had problems with medical bills in a 12-month period or were paying off accrued debt. One-quarter of workers in higher-compensated positions also reported problems with medical bills or were paying off accrued debt. (12)

Some people not afraid to speak the eternal language of Marx

As per Derrick Jackson's discussion of Bush's recent lipservicing concerning U.S. poverty:

Let him be the first to rise, by ending his cruel and wasteful assault on the poor. The last four and half years of his trickle-down theories have failed. His tax cuts and tax incentives have only enriched the rich. The poor have become poorer. The poverty rate has risen by from a 27-year low of 11.3 percent to 12.7 percent according to the US Census. For the first time on record, household incomes failed to rise for five consecutive years. Even Phillip Swagel, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute was quoted in The New York Times as saying, "The gains have gone to owners of capital and not to workers."

Ah, capitalism in a nutshell.