Good news just in from the U.S. Census Bureau – minority incomes are up. In fact, African-American and Hispanic households saw more than double the median income growth of their white counterparts…
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Good news just in from the U.S. Census Bureau – minority incomes are up. In fact, African-American and Hispanic households saw more than double the median income growth of their white counterparts from 2015 through 2016, according to a newly released report on income and poverty.1
The country’s leadership got some important things right for under-served areas in the wake of the Great Recession. Minority communities must now leverage our nascent progress so we can pass on a strong financial legacy to the next generation.
For African-Americans, this mission is urgent. Recent research by the Institute for Policy Studies warns that, without action, Black wealth could reach zero by 2053. We need solutions to drive entrepreneurship, skills attainment, and lasting prosperity.
Janine Jackson: The lead of the Washington Post story reads:
The incomes of middle-class Americans rose last year to the highest level ever recorded by the Census Bureau, as poverty declined and the scars of the past decade’s Great Recession seemed to finally fade.
The piece ends with a source’s comment that this is “unambiguously good news.” Somewhere in between, you might catch the notes that “inequality remains high” and “yawning racial disparities remain,” but the story’s framing encourages you to see those as asterisks.
Much media coverage presents the economic well-being of non-white Americans as an afterthought, or a tangent from an overall picture. And if those groups’ fortunes are out of step with those of white people, the implication is that they’ll catch up with time. Whatever positive trends there are will naturally “trickle down” to them at some point. But this implication is wrong, and it would be important to understand why it’s wrong, even if black and Latinx people were not on course to be the country’s majority.
A new report helps us see what’s happening. It’s called The Road to Zero Wealth: How the Racial Wealth Divide Is Hollowing Out America’s Middle Class’s Middle Class. It comes from the groups Prosperity Now and the Institute for Policy Studies, and we’re joined now by one of its authors. Dedrick Asante-Muhammad is Senior Fellow, Racial Wealth Divide, at Prosperity Now. He joins us now by phone from somewhere near Washington, DC. Welcome to CounterSpin, Dedrick Asante-Muhammad.
In 1998, about half of all private-sector employers in the United States offered newly hired workers a defined-benefit pension for their retirement.
By 2015, that percentage dropped to just 5%, according to the consulting firm Willis Towers Watson.
Nearly all private-sector workers now make do with a 401(k) plan — and the average 401(k) balance is roughly $95,000, which comes nowhere close to what the typical American will require in their sunset years.
Having spent 50-plus years working to use the power of sports to bring about positive social change, I found Sunday to be the most important sports day since Muhammad Ali declared he would not fight in the Vietnam War. It evoked memories of Tommie Smith and John Carlos protesting at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics and Arthur Ashe protesting against apartheid in South Africa. These men are among a handful of former athletes who were able to publicly argue for social justice in spite of how it might affect their careers.
For me, the NFL rose enormously in public stature as soon as commissioner Roger Goodell criticized President Donald Trump for making a “divisive statement” about the NFL and the protests during the national anthem. Trump had, of course, called on owners to fire any “son of a bitch” who knelt during the anthem. At the end of the day of protest on Sunday, Goodell applauded the league and its players for their response.
“We must reduce the tax rate on American businesses so they keep jobs in America, create jobs in America and compete for workers right here in America,” he said. “Because when businesses compete for labor, your wages will go up.”
While Mr. Trump’s speech was billed as laying the groundwork for tax reform later this year, his proposal was short on details, which experts say makes it difficult to gauge how his plan might work. Yet on the face of it, a drastic cut to corporate taxes may not provide the type of benefit to the middle-class worker that Mr. Trump suggests.
SHARMINI PERIES: It’s The Real News Network. I’m Sharmini Peries, coming to you from Baltimore. After intense fighting between the Lebanese army, Lebanese Hezbollah, and the Syrian military against ISIS on the Lebanese-Syrian border, Lebanon’s president, Michel Aoun, declared victory over ISIS this week. The declaration was the result of negotiation and cease-fire agreement that the Lebanese party Hezbollah negotiated. Under the agreement, over 300 Islamic State fighters and their families were allowed to evacuate. The deal sparked outrage in Iraq, with the U.S. military as well, arguing that they too have been fighting ISIS over several years now. In protest, the U.S. forces bombed the road and a bridge, preventing the ISIS convoy and their families from evacuating.Joining us now to analyze the situation is Phyllis Bennis. Phyllis directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and has written and edited some 11 books. Among them, Understanding ISIS and the New Global War on Terror: A Primer. Thanks for joining us, Phyllis.
The Republican push to sell the public on tax reform kicked into a higher gear Wednesday, as President Trump gave a speech at a manufacturing company in Springfield, Missouri, promoting the forthcoming GOP tax plan as a step to un-rig the economy and close loopholes that have benefitted the wealthy.
Trump’s speech was light on specifics and heavy on populist patriotism, but it did lay out four broad themes for tax reform that the president said would restore American competitiveness, create new jobs and raise wages for workers.
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Read the full article on Business Insider.
President Trump is cheerleading for corporate tax cuts as part of his effort to make America grate, asserting that tax relief would encourage businesses to invest, expand, hire, and boost wages.
But while cutting the 35-percent corporate rate may be perfectly logical if loopholes are eliminated and the plan is revenue neutral, his first problem is producing evidence that the freed-up capital would be used to benefit the American workers.
Janine Jackson:On August 21, Donald Trump gave what one Washington Post writer called a “muscular speech” on his plans for the US’s long war in Afghanistan. Corporate media were critical of the lack of detail: How many new troops would be sent? How long exactly until the US annihilates all the terrorists? And media were critical of the messenger: Didn’t what was often benignly described as “continued US presence” in Afghanistan contradict Trump’s earlier views?
Less compelling for big media than what it means that this is “Trump’s war now” was what the US-led war has meant every day for Afghan citizens, and what escalation is assured to mean.
We made it through the Holiday that marks the end of the Summer of Trump (like the Summer of Love, but with a lot more Hate) and now we are stuck with the baby World we’ve made and it just spit up a hydrogen bomb. Daddy Trump promised “fire and fury the likes of which the World has never seen“ if baby NoKo simply fired another missile, which they did over Japan last week but the weekend’s HBomb was a move to a whole new level of telling Trump to F off.
Now Mr. Trump has to either put up or shut up but, of course, no one actually believes a word he says (including, obviously, Kim Jong Il), which makes him sort of totally ineffective as a figure of authority in this situation. That’s the downside of constantly lying, I suppose, people don’t believe you when it matters the most.
