Health care: Score one against the hyenas

N.B. The hyena caricature (right) is from William Belcher’s Address to Humanity, published in 1796. Thanks to Ragged Edge Magazine.

On Monday, the day after passage of the new health reform law, I received a visit from a friend (call him Vic) who’s perpetually broke. He and his wife (Tina) lived with us at one point when their only other alternative was the street. Now they pay $39 a day to stay at a seedy hotel near the Interstate.

They were supposed to have moved on by now, to have a place of their own. Months ago, a man set aside $1,000 for Vic and Tina to pay a deposit and first month’s rent on an apartment or rental. But Vic and Tina haven’t found a place they can afford, at least not one that Tina is willing to move in to. Vic won’t even look in Birmingham, where rents are lower, because they want to be in a good school district. Their 11-year-old daughter lives with Tina’s parents, and they want her back.

It hasn’t occurred to them to get a cheap apartment for the short term in order to save money. Saving is not a realistic prospect to them. In their entire adult life — Vic is 48 — they have only experienced two conditions: not having enough, and having just enough.

Comparative propaganda

The Obama administration needs to convey a message that things are under control. So they commemorated the first anniversary of the Recovery Act with this:

It’s a chart showing the number of jobs lost each month from December 2007 to January 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Read any unjust economies lately?

We need a literature about being spoiled.… Most people who read in this country are spoiled and boring, yet all they want to read about is struggle and adventure. — William Upski Wimsatt, No More Prisons

To be fair, income inequality must have been much greater in the colonial period than it is today. Income gaps must have been wide up through the Civil War and Reconstruction, and I’ll allow that the 1890s in the USA were even worse than the 1990s.

Still, in the century or so since the United States became a world power, income inequality has never been greater than it is now. Class-defining inequality reached a new high in 2006, when the richest tenth of the population cornered half of all the earnings made in America that year. That surpasses the previous record set in 1928.

The financial crisis has destroyed much of the wealth charted in 2006, but that wealth is being rebuilt. Jobs and affordable housing are not, and so the gap is set to widen further.

And no one much cares.

“If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?”

This traditional southern put-down came to mind as a I read Matthew Yglesias’ posts (yesterday and today) on the presumed link between wealth, on the one hand, and competence and innovation, on the other. Exhibit A: Big Business may retard technological progress. Alexander J. Field argues that the 1930s were the “most technologically progressive” decade […]

Shopping in a global economy

So I need to replace the lenses in my glasses to match a new prescription from the eye doctor. Thanks to the globalization of lens grinding, I am having to fill the prescription twice. That’s because in all of metro Birmingham (pop. 975,000), there is not a single optician who makes lenses on the premises. […]

False promises to the jobless

Looking over Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bait and Switch, a 2005 exposé on the decline of the middle class, I found descriptions of the following three alternatives for the downsized corporate manager. Franchising, also known as “buying yourself a job,” is the purchase of the right to operate a local franchise of a major corporation. Most of […]

Raptor to the rescue?

One of the ads in Gmail pleaded with me to “Preserve F-22 Raptor jobs now!” Curious, I followed the link, and after a few minutes I used the site’s tools to send the following letter to the White House. Dear President Obama, During the campaign for president, your opponents often attacked you as a “socialist.” […]

The case against the dome

André Natta comments at the Terminal about the verbal sniping that marred the latest BJCC board meeting. I agree with André about the need to stop the “internal battle.” But I don’t support building what we keep calling “the dome.” Here’s why. (André:) Our convention center needs the space, period. Whether we want to admit […]

Cutbacks at the Alabama Archives

Due to state budget cuts, the Alabama Department of Archives and History has had to lay off staff and limit its operating hours. Beginning February 1, the archives will no longer be open on Saturdays. Six staff members will be laid off, and five more are leaving “through attrition.” The agency had already stopped new […]

We get boycotted

The website Boycott Alabama Now, created by a disgruntled UAW retiree, has been a nine hours’ wonder in the Alabama media. Joe Babiasz, already tagged “Joe the Autoworker” by at least one ink-stained wretch, has a grudge against our state because our Sen. Richard Shelby has been the most outspoken critic of a bailout for […]