The Rich Reeeeaaaallllyy Don't Want to Hear About the Poor (No Kidding!) No Matter How Rich They Are, It's Not Rich Enough

And, no, they really don't care either as they believe in magic (just like the rest of the population), and a gentle, caring other from somewhere else will take care of all problems. Having known a few (okay, more than a few) I believe they're just indifferent to it (and thus lies the explanation of the national acceptance of the unspeakable torture of innocents for vague national purposes). Thus, you won't be surprised at how many U.S. presidents after JFK (and you remember what happened to him) dared to challenge the wealthy to do more for their country. No change here. The trick, of course, is to keep them watching "American Idiots" on the tubes long enough to make a clean getaway. Or such was the topic at Davos. (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)

Hard-Knock (Hardly Acknowledged) Life CHARLES M. BLOW January 28, 2011 President Obama made history on Tuesday.

It was only the second time since Harry S. Truman’s State of the Union address in 1948 that such a speech by a Democratic president did not include a single mention of poverty or the plight of the poor. The closest Obama got to a mention was his confirmation for “Americans who’ve seen their paychecks dwindle or their jobs disappear” that, indeed, “the world has changed. The competition for jobs is real.” I’m sure they appreciated that. The only other Democrat not to mention poverty in the speech was Jimmy Carter in 1980, but even he was able to squeeze in one reference to at least a portion of the poor and disenfranchised, stressing the continuation of jobs programs to “provide training and work for our young people, especially minority youth.” (Carter did mention the poor in a written version that he submitted to Congress.)

John F. Kennedy didn’t say the specific words “poor” or “poverty” in his first State of the Union, but he talked at length about providing “more food for the families of the unemployed, and to aid their needy children,” securing “more purchasing power for our lowest-paid workers by raising and expanding the minimum wage” and of a new housing program to address the problem of “cities being engulfed in squalor.”

So how is it that this Democratic president has the temerity to deliver a State of the Union address that completely neglects any explicit mention of the calamitous conditions now afflicting his staunchest supporters: the poor?

(In 2008, Obama won 73 percent of the vote of those earning less than $15,000 a year, 60 percent of those earning between $15,000 and $30,000 and 55 percent of the vote of those earning $30,000 to $50,000. Those were his widest margins of victory of any income group and helped to propel him to victory.)

He talked at length about education (the most inspiring part of the speech) and about civility and his repackaged bromides of global competitiveness and investments in the future. And, of course, there were cautious mentions of programs that benefit seniors and the need to protect and secure them. Can’t forget the plea to the old people.

Protecting programs for seniors strikes the right chord morally and politically, but the data show that seniors are not the ones feeling the majority of the pain these days.

According to data from the Census Bureau, the percent of people ages 18 to 64 who were living in poverty in 2009 was higher than it had been in any year since 1959, while the percent of seniors living in poverty was lower than it had been in any year since at least 1959. (By the way, voters over 65 were the only age group that Obama lost in 2008.)

I, for one, refuse to believe that this is an either-or proposition. We can make smart choices about protecting seniors and supporting younger Americans in need at the same time. We don’t have to ignore the Annies among us to court the Miss Daisys.

For the poor, this is the Obama Conundrum. He was obviously the best choice in 2008. And judging by the current cast of Republican presidential contenders, he could well be the best choice in 2012. But does that give him license to obviate his moral responsibility to his electoral devotees?

Can and should they take his snubs as a necessary consequence of political warfare as he makes every effort to tack back to the middle and reconnect with those whose opinion of him vacillates between contempt on a bad day and sufferance on a good one? Does keeping him in the White House dictate keeping them in the shadows?

And things could get even worse for the poor if the president feels the need to cut too many deals with the new Republican-led House in order to appear more centrist.

According to Brian Miller, the executive director of the nonpartisan and Boston-based group United for a Fair Economy and co-author of the group’s report entitled “State of the Dream 2011: Austerity for Whom?” released earlier this month, “austerity measures based on the conservative tenets of less government and lower taxes will ratchet down the standard of living for all Americans, while simultaneously widening our nation’s racial and economic divide.”

As Miller put it, deficits that tax cuts for the rich helped to create “are being used to justify a host of austerity measures that will harm Americans of all races but will hit blacks and Latinos the hardest.”

According to Miller, “With 42 percent of blacks and 37 percent of Latinos lacking the funds to meet minimal household expenses for even three months should they become unemployed, cutting public assistance programs will have devastating impacts on black and Latino workers.” (Obama won 95 percent of the black vote and 67 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2008.)

Even as my respect for this president as a shrewd politician has begun to rebound, my faith in him as a fervent crusader for the poor and disenfranchised has taken yet another nose dive.

One’s tone-deafness — or blatant indifference — to the poor has to be at Black American Express status to brag that “the stock market has come roaring back” and “corporate profits are up” and not even mention the unemployment rate or the continuing foreclosure crisis.

I want to believe that President Obama’s speech omissions were oversights, not acts of arrogance. But I’m not sure.

President Truman wrote in 1953 that, “ultimately, no President can master his responsibilities, save as his fellow citizens — indeed, the whole people - comprehend the challenge of our times and move, with him, to meet it.” But, it is sometimes hard to follow — indeed, to chase — a president who appears to be moving, often at a full sprint, away from the people who once carried him.

And yes, there are better ways in which to organize a smart country. The Europeans don't work the hours we do, and they are able to take vacations throughout the year to recharge those hard-working batteries (no matter what you've been told by trolls) (and have a pretty nice life because they have unions to represent them when bargaining with their employers). But don't believe me.

Vive la Difference!

Paul Krugman

GDP Per Capita, Here and There

I’ve been writing a fair bit about the US-European comparison; one comment that often arises here is that Europe must be doing something wrong, because it has much lower GDP per capita. And it’s true: French GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing power, is only about 3/4 the US level.

But when you look behind that number, the story isn’t quite what you might think.

David Leonhardt recently pointed to a useful summary (pdf) produced by the BLS, which lets us break apart the factors between the GDP gap. I’m going to do this for France, not Europe more broadly, because that’s what the BLS gives us; but anyway, France is the country we have strong feelings about, right?

One more thing: I’m going to use 2008, not 2009. In 2009 US firms laid off lots of workers, while European firms didn’t; that produces a divergence in productivity that has more to do with short-run business cycle events than with fundamental trends. You can go back to the data source and roll your own for 2009, if you like, but I think this gives a better sense of the underlying differences.

So, here are some ratios of France to the United States:

* GDP per capita: 0.731

* GDP per hour worked: 0.988

* Employment as a share of population: 0.837

* Hours per worker: 0.884

So French workers are roughly as productive as US workers. But fewer Frenchmen and women are working, and when they work, they work fewer hours.

Why are fewer Frenchmen working? As I’ve pointed out, during prime working years they’re as likely to work as Americans. But fewer young people work (in part because of more generous college aid); and, mainly, the French retire earlier.

The latter is arguably the result of misguided policies: Mitterand made early retirement alarmingly attractive. But it’s not a problem of weak productivity or mass unemployment.

And why do the French work shorter hours? Probably for the most part because of government policies mandating vacation time.

The bottom line is that France is a society with the same level of technology and productivity as the US, but one that has made different choices about retirement and leisure.

Vive la difference!

Oui! Suzanne (Thanks for sending this, Trish!) ________________