America the gutted

GlobalPost has just released videos which address the problem of deindustrialization. The top post is a documentary addressing the effects of losing the Wrangler plant in Windsor, NC, and is available (along with a video on the loss of structural steel manufacturing in the northwest) at America the gutted. The bottom video is a personal note by Michael Moran on rising income inequality in the town in which he grew up, Bridgeport, CT, and was made in conjunction with the ongoing The Great Divide series.

the diploma divide

See associated New York Times article, For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall. On the diminishing ability of lower-income American youth to gain a college education, see the BBC article Downward Mobility Haunts U.S. Education. See also Education as the Great Equalizer? Or Class Enforcer?
Hear descriptions of a noteworthy attempt to turn around a high school in a low-income community: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/one-school-one-year.

"tax the rich" says Ed Asner

This video recently posted on the California Federation of Teachers' website, was designed to generate greater public support for increasing taxes on the rich. The following description of the video is quoted from that source:
Tax the rich: An animated fairy tale, is narrated by Ed Asner, with animation by award-winning artist Mike Konopacki, and written and directed by Fred Glass for the California Federation of Teachers. The 8 minute video shows how we arrived at this moment of poorly funded public services and widening economic inequality. Things go downhill in a happy and prosperous land after the rich decide they don't want to pay taxes anymore. They tell the people that there is no alternative, but the people aren't so sure. This land bears a startling resemblance to our land. After you watch this video, click here to share with friends, and send an email to your elected officials to let them know they need to restore higher federal tax rates on the wealthy so that we may once more enjoy properly funded public services.

Link to cft.org posting provided by MoveOn.org

For a conservative response to this cartoon, see Tax the Rich, The Critique.
Also in response, see this article and accompanying video with Fox News commentator Sean Hannity, who characterizes the cartoon as "a disgusting hit-piece."

ex-GM workers on hunger strike in Colombia

See this video and others about the strike against GM at Real News.com

"right-to-work" in Michigan?

 

In a surprise move yesterday, the Republican-majority state legislature signed bills to make Michigan the nation's 24th "right-to-work" state. Michigan has long been seen as a strong union state, and the bill, if passed, would make union membership no longer a condition for employment at a unionized workplace. In effect, non-union workers would receive the benefits conferred by a union without paying union dues. While backers of the bill claim that their action is not anti-labor (see Fox News interview with Governor Rick Snyder), protestors and Democratic legislators who walked out of the session at the state capitol obviously disagree (see above video and CNN story).

color grading

This blog post was contributed by Tichana Griffith, student in Miller's SOC 3013 class. 

I wanted to share this video with the class because the topic was not touched on a lot over the semester. The video addresses skin-color preferences, among a number of concerns related to racial identity. Despite the late-1960's Black Power claim that "black is beautiful," even today black teen girls still seem to believe that light skin is better than dark skin. This idea appears to have been prevalent since slavery when lighter blacks were given preference and permitted to work inside slave-owners' dwellings, while those who were darker remained outside to toil at hard labor in the fields. This video brings me to question actual changes in racial identity. Do we black Americans today really see our blackness in ways that radically oppose traditional racist definitions, or do we just think we do?

For a similar discussion about skin-color preference, see this clip from Dark Girls.

plight of the part-time worker

This post was contributed by Marta Gordon, student in Miller's SOC 3013 class.

Everyone agrees we need more jobs, but is part-time employment the answer? Some people may just need extra money for a short time, or can only work part time due to other responsibilities, and for them it is a boon. However, for many other workers, part-time jobs are a trap. In fact, a growing employer practice is to require part-time workers to have around-the-clock availability. And if such workers cannot report for duty when called, or are even found to have another job, they then may be terminated. This recent On Point panel interview, Stuck in Part Time, examines these pitfalls and other problems with part-time employment.

One of the biggest financial problems with part-time jobs is that such workers not only may make less, but they also may not qualify for benefits. And with the new health-care provisions that will be enacted, there appear to be clear incentives for employers to increasingly transform jobs from full-time to part-time status. Indeed, a recent article by Furchtgott-Roth of the Manhattan Institute suggests that employers could theoretically reduce their cost-per-labor-hour by half should they go to an all part-time work force in order to minimize mandate penalties.

However, there is already evidence that shifting to part-time workers may generate backlash. For example, in anticipation of health-care insurance changes which become effective January 1, Darden Restaurants, owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster, announced in October that it would be moving even more of its 185,000 employees over to part-time status, despite the fact that about 70 percent were already part time. However, citing adverse public reaction leading to lower sales in test market areas, Darden just announced that it was suspending such efforts for now.

Karl Marx: masters of money

This fall, the BBC aired Masters of Money, a series about the three giants of economic thought who have shaped policy and action throughout the world: Hayek, Keynes, and Marx. 

I encourage anyone in the class to write a review of the episode devoted to Marx:
http://youtu.be/QdbyUy-DN80

food stamp challenge

Join Newark mayor, Cory Booker, to see how you fare in living off $4 worth of food per day, the amount provided through the federal food stamp program.

To learn about taking the SNAP Challenge, visit http://frac.org/initiatives/snapfood-stamp-challenges/ Learn also about the problem with such challenges in this brief article.

Update: Dec 11, 2012
Follow how Cory Booker has done on his food stamp challenge through this and subsequent videos.

living wage calculator

We've discussed the many problems of using a single figure to estimate poverty existence, as well as the inadequacies of the current measure adopted a half century ago to quantify extreme material hardship in the nation at that time.  . 

Well, Amy Glasmeier of MIT has developed a helpful online application, Living Wage Calculator, to estimate how much it actually takes for bare-bones existence across US counties and cities. Her calculator specifies the wage necessary to provide a more realistic minimum level of living and typical wages for various occupations available in the area, against the government specified minimum. It also breaks down the minimal cost of local living across a broad range of living expenses, including housing, groceries, and transportation, for eight different households bases on size and composition. 

According to Glasmeier: Our tool is designed to provide a minimum estimate of the cost of living for low wage families. The estimates do not reflect a middle class standard of living... Metropolitan counties are typically locations of high cost. In such cases, the calculator is likely to underestimate costs such as housing and child care. Consider the results a minimum cost threshold that serves as a benchmark, but only that. Users can substitute local data when available to generate more nuanced estimates. Adjustments to account for local conditions will provide greater realism and potentially increase the accuracy of the tool. As developed, the tool is meant to provide one perspective on the cost of living in America.

poor us: an animated history of poverty

Watch Poor Us: An Animated History of Poverty on PBS. See more from Why Poverty?.

Please feel free to write a review for post of this new documentary. 

See the entire 50+ minute version at htttp://video.pbs.org/video/2296684944

poor kids

Please feel free to write a review of this just-released documentary. View entire documentary at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/poor-kids/

inequality state by state

Much has been recently written about growing economic inequality at a national level, but  a new study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Pulling Apart, now provides an analysis of income change on a state-by-state basis. Quoting from some of the report's most notable findings: 

• In the United States as a whole, the poorest fifth of households had an average income of $20,510, while the top fifth had an average income of $164,490 — eight times as much.  In 15 states, this top-to-bottom ratio exceeded 8.0.  In the late 1970s, in contrast, no state had a top-to-bottom ratio exceeding 8.0.

• The average in come of the top 5 percent of households was 13.3 times the average income of the bottom fifth.  The states with the largest such gaps were Arizona, New Mexico, California, Georgia, and New York, where the ratio exceeded 15.0.

Thanks to NPR's Marketplace for calling attention to this publication. 

TAL: red state / blue state

evolution of equality

This useful infographic places a variety of events relevant to inequalities of race, sex, and sexual orientation on a historical timeline.

112 years of presidential election maps

The video and discussion are available in this article in The Blaze.

For dynamic visuals comparing the direction of the presidential vote for 2012 and 2008, see this recent interactive graphic in the The New York Times.

stealing the American Dream

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/11/17/middle-class-the-squeeze-is-on-heres-why/

peoples' bailout

Wall Street was rescued by the federal government. Why not bail-out ordinary Americans who are overwhelmed with debt? An organization called Rolling Jubilee is behind this effort.

Park Avenue: money, power, and the American Dream

Park Avenue: Money, Power, and the American Dream aired on PBS Independent Lens last night and is now available on Hulu. If any student or students would like to write a review of it, please do so ASAP and forward to me for posting.

Nov 11: class, war, and dying (updated Nov 11, 2022)

Veterans' Day is a most appropriate time to reflect on the relation between social class and military service. In particular need of reflection is the fact that those from the lower reaches of the stratification order typically bear the brunt of casualties during war. Poor and working-class men are more often killed because they are more likely to serve in harm's way as non-commissioned front-line soldiers, but they also have been less able to avoid conscription by either paying another to serve as in the Civil War or receiving college deferment as in the Vietnam War (see MacLean, 2012). Today's military is exclusively comprised of volunteers who often join because they lack viable employment alternatives, and this has only heightened the class-biased composition of casualties from recent wars in the Middle East. Moreover, poor and working-class men are also more likely to feel the continuing effects of war in terms of psychiatric distress as they transition out of the service and try to adapt to civilian life.

Army and Marine suicide rates increased sharply between 2001-2020 and today are about twice that for the U.S. population (US Dept of Veterans Affairs 2022) . During the heigth of war in the Middle East, more active-duty military personnel took their lives than died on the battlefield (Williams, 2012). However, suicide among veterans is of even far greater magnitude. According to Veterans Affairs, although about 1 percent of adults served in the military over the past decade, veterans represented 20 percent of all U.S. suicides. As discussed in the above Democracy Now! interviews with Aaron Glantz and others knowledgeable about the issue, the extreme suicide problem among military personnel and veterans reflects several key factors, including multiple deployments to the Middle East and an inadequate government treatment response to depression and PTSD.

For an excellent description of how war produces mental disorders and other adjustment problems, view the PBS Frontline documentary, The Wounded Platoon, which follows soldiers in an Army infantry unit from Fort Riley to deployment in Iraq and then back to the U.S.

why poverty?

 STEPS has created a multimedia initiative to reignite interest in the problem of global poverty. Why Poverty? will feature 8 documentaries and 30 shorter videos that will be released for online and television viewing later this month (trailers and some shorts are already available on its YouTube channel). According to STEPS, the objectives of the initiative are to:
produce narratives that inspire people to think and be part of the solution, 
involve the best filmmakers in the creation of bold and provocative factual films, 
bring together broadcasters worldwide and engage audience through multiple media platforms, 
create a global outreach campaign, supplementing the broadcasts with extra teaching materials, 
and engage with decision-makers and influencers to find solutions for change.

developing cultural capital amidst poverty

Social stratification perspectives to the left of conservatism assume that innate intelligence is not a resource largely monopolized by the affluent. Rather, raw aptitude is distributed throughout the class structure, and the opportunity for cultivation is all that is needed to realize it. This CNN article and video speak to these assumptions in describing a classical music program extended to children living in some of Brazil's poorest slums. Retired pianist, Joao Carlos Martins, started the program several years ago after searching to find kids with music potential. "I discovered so many naturally talented children that I decided to build a project... In 10 years, I intend to build 1,000 string orchestras in underprivileged areas across our country." Along with providing employable skills, his program has been credited with psychologically empowering participants, while diverting them from drugs and crime.

Update: Dec 12, 2012
The above video similarly examines the development of music talent among the poor in South America. Landfill harmonic describes how a Paraguayan community built on piles of refuse fashions crude, but sweet-sounding instruments, out of trash, and what these instruments and the "recycled" orchestra formed around them means to its children. The larger story about this project will soon appear in a full-length documentary.

Thanks to Jay Villarreal for bringing this inspiring clip to attention.

race and wealth inequality

This post was written by Paul Dean and originally appeared in The Sociological Cinema. 

This CBS news report shows dramatic wealth inequalities across race, and how the inequalities have increased dramatically during the Great Recession. Like Oliver and Shapiro's classic book, Black Wealth/White Wealth, the report documents that in 1995, the median white household had a net worth 7 times larger than black and Hispanic households. Citing Census data analyzed by the Pew Center, the video shows that in 2010 white households ($113,000) now have 18 times the net worth of Hispanics ($6,325) and 20 times the net worth of African-Americans ($5,677). It notes that part of this growing difference is that the net worth of most racial minorities is found in their homes, while whites are more likely to also own financial assets. The news team argues that this asset allocation explains why white wealth has rebounded significantly from its recent losses and increased the wealth divide. While this is true, they largely miss other important factors. For example, Melvin Oliver's 2008 report found that African-Americans were the subject of systematic predatory lending during the housing bubble that led to the Great Recession. He noted that "minorities were steered away from safe, conventional loans by brokers who received incentives for jacking up the interest rate" and that their mortgages had "high hidden costs, exploding adjustable rates, and prepayment penalties to preclude refinancing." This not only lead to a drop in the value of minority wealth, but actually stripped much of their assets as borrowers who defaulted on their loans. The video closes by saying "experts say it could be a decade before the wealth gap closes," although they do not cite any experts that say this. Viewers may question the optimism of this prediction and reflect on why it is likely to take much more than a decade for something like wealth (which is passed down from one generation to another) to be more equitably distributed across race. The video is a great accompaniment to the readings linked to above, and perhaps even this comedic video from Chris Rock on race and the differences between being rich and wealthy.

will UTSA be just for rich kids?

Hannah Carney's recent article in The Texas Observer addresses the provocative question: are Texas' public universities just for rich kids? Although data pertinent to this issue are limited, she cites evidence which suggests that this may be the case for at least some public universities in the state. For example, median parent income of UT Austin students is almost twice that for households statewide. According to Carney, "The numbers expose a higher education system that’s suffering from profound economic inequality. The more “elite” the university, the less representative it tends to be of the state’s economic diversity." In addition to difficulties with financing an education, she goes on to connect the issue to enrollment policies, implying that affirmative action for racial and ethnic minority students may be a bit misdirected. A fairer approach, she contends, would have admission at least partially hinged on students' class backgrounds. In all, Carney's analysis is consistent with social reproduction explanations of inequality which hold that schooling in capitalist societies primarily serves to maintain privilege among the haves, while neglecting the interests of those toward the bottom of the class structure.

What about UTSA? It may not be your impression that our students largely come from affluent homes, but what of social class composition down the line? Will continued growth lessen diversity by tightening admission requirements and, particularly what of Tier 1? If realized, will it mean a student body that replicates UT Austin's?

Note: no analysis for UTSA appears in Carney's article, but at its end she does link data for entering students. Although obviously dated (collected in 2004), what does it suggest about economic diversity among our students?

educating black boys

See video at 
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/aljazeeracorrespondent/2012/10/201210249148948252.html 
The following post is a direct quote from that site.

Baltimore, Maryland has come to be known as 'Charm City' because of its harbour, which attracts a vibrant nightlife and thriving tourism business. But just beyond the harbour's calm waters is one of the toughest and most violent inner cities in the US. Baltimore is also home to Al Jazeera presenter Tony Harris and in this episode of Al Jazeera Correspondent he takes us on an up close and personal journey to his old neighbourhood to witness the challenges facing black youth today as they struggle to get out of the dead end of life on inner city streets. Most of the crime in Baltimore is committed by black males with other blacks as victims, making black males an easy target for the police. And many believe that the stereotyping of black kids starts at an early age in the US--as as early as grade school. In this film, Harris examines how the education system has failed black boys and reflects upon why he managed to make it out successfully while so many of his friends did not. A visit to his former high school reveals the desperation felt by both the pupils and the teachers. "School and criminal justice systems biased against black boys; all echoes of my childhood. But I managed to avoid the trap of Baltimore's cycle of poverty and violence," he explains. "But now I was going back to my hometown to get to the bottom of what I considered the new civil rights fight in America--educating black boys."

...a thousand cuts

what happened to The American Dream?

This post was contributed by Tara McQuay, UTSA student in Miller's SOC 3013 class.

Although The American Dream says that hard work will lead to wealth and success, it doesn't seem to apply to most of us. Indeed, the smallest economic returns go to those generally laboring the hardest of all: the working poor. In the previous post, billionaire Thomas Peterffy argues in his anti-Obama ad that America's rich will lose motivation to work if they are required to pay more taxes. But while preaching the value of hard work, he fails to note that the rich have virtually monopolized income gains over recent years. Reflecting on the unequal opportunity for financial security that the class structure presents, the late Beth Shulman, in her 2005 book, The Betrayal of Work, was one of the first to examine the diminishing well-being of the working poor. In an interview on PBS's NOW in 2007 (view here, starting at about the 12:20 mark), she observed that worker productivity has grown significantly, but this has not trickled down to those in the bottom reaches of the American class structure. Indeed, "The top 1% is garnering 80% of income gains." (Today, it's over 90% going to the top 1%, according to Saenz). With this being said, how is it possible for most American workers, and particularly the poor, to sustain their dream of a better life when their incomes remain so low and stagnant that they continue to struggle just to get by?

ad suggestion: Obama = socialist (or worse?)

A new nationally distributed television ad implies Obama and the Democrats are leading us down a "slippery slope" towards socialism. Thomas Peterffy, the Hungarian-immigrant founder of a discount brokerage chain, both independently sponsored and appears in a sixty-second message that takes him from a boy in his impoverished, communist homeland to a self-made billionaire, a transformation only possible because of the freedoms and opportunities available in America. He warns specifically that "America's wealth comes from the efforts of people striving for success. Take away their incentive with badmouthing success and you take away the wealth that helps us take care of the needy. Yes, in socialism the rich will be poorer--but the poor will also be poorer. People will lose interest in really working hard and creating jobs." 
Read more at http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/10/rich-worried-and-buying-ad-time/

super-rich feel dissed by Obama

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - It's Not Easy Having Green
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

This Colbert Report video touches on the growing antipathy of the super-rich towards President Obama, despite the fact they have enjoyed incredible prosperity over the span of his term. Colbert particularly takes off on a recent article that appeared in The New Yorker about hedge-fund investor anger about Obama's insufficient rhetorical respect for such "wealth creators." 

what to do with your wealth? get help at "Mansion"

In this age of growing income disparities and economic hardship, Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal has chosen to further glamorize the rich and their wealth by starting a section called Mansion. According to the launch press release, the new section will appear weekly in the paper copy and daily at WSJ.com. “The mantra for real estate has always been location, location, location – the location for the most intelligent, original, trustworthy and insightful journalism on prestige property is now The Wall Street Journal,” said Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones & Company and managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. “We all like to think of our home as a mansion, even if it is a humble abode, and we all have the license to aspire, so we have created Mansion to be the home of both aspiration and real estate realization.” For more information on the addition, see introductory video. 

Unfortunately, it does not appear that Mansion will likely offer the kind of coverage about the lifestyles of the rich that readers came to appreciate in Robert Frank's recently discontinued WSJ blog, The Wealth Report. However, Frank's work is now available at CNBC's Inside Wealth.

tall poppy syndrome

Amy Stein and Stacy Mehrfar have just published a collection of photos which explores tall poppy syndrome in Australia. As Amy states in a recent interview with Benjamin Starr, “Stacy was visiting NYC from Sydney and... in the course of discussing life in Australia she mentioned the term. I immediately said that would be a great book. The term was so strange and arresting to me. When we realized that it represented a viewpoint and practice so far from ideas of American individualism and exceptionalism we knew that we potentially had an interesting project.” For rest of brief interview and selected images go to http://www.visualnews.com/2012/09/29/tall-poppy-syndrome-on-a-cultural-phenomenon/.

Given current election campaign dynamics, perhaps the ideological proponents of great wealth would do well to address critics in relation to this particularly "unAmerican" concept.

dissecting "the 47 percent"

Candidate Mitt Romney continues to wield a very blunt scalpel in his dissection of the U.S. class structure. A video clip from a May 2012 speech to prospective contributors has ignited the most recent campaign firestorm. In it, he states that "47 percent" of Americans "view themselves as victims," and he's not interested in reaching out to them. The clip, initially published in a Mother Jones article by David Corn, will no doubt receive big press over the duration of the campaign. Romney goes on to claim the "47 percent" are government dependents, who pay no federal income taxes. Juliet Lapidos in a New York Times article examines the 46.4 percent of Americans who paid no federal income taxes during 2011. This population, quoting Lapidos, has the following characteristics:

• They are more likely to live in Republican states. The states with the highest percentage of non-filers, with the exception of Florida and New Mexico, are solidly red. Ezra Klein calculates that Mr. Romney will receive “96 electoral votes from the ‘taker’ states” while Mr. Obama will receive 5. (29 are tossups.)
• More than one-fifth are elderly. David Frum says they’re “people who pay no income taxes because their income takes the form of Social Security.”
• Most of them pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than Mr. Romney. Here’s Ezra Klein again: “Among the American who paid no federal income taxes in 2011, 61 percent paid payroll taxes—which means they have jobs and, when you account for both sides of the payroll tax, they paid 15.3 percent of their income in taxes, which is higher than the 13.9 percent that Romney paid.”
• Some of them are simply too poor to pay federal taxes. In 2011, 18.1 percent of households paid neither income tax nor payroll taxes. Within that group, more than half are elderly; over one-third are nonelderly with annual income under $20,000.
• Some of them are wealthy, and manage to slip into Mr. Romney’s dependent-victim category due to exemptions and deductions. As ABC noted in June, “20,752 households that reported earning more than $200,000 in 2009 paid no federal income taxes. About 1,500 of those tax-free Americans were millionaires.”

A series of graphics providing greater detail about those Americans who paid no federal income taxes during 2011 is available at NPR.   

Update: see Jamelle Bouie's July 2014 Slate article for a history on the use of the "47 percent" meme among conservative politicians and pundits.

income, unemployment, and foreclosure: interactive map of U.S. states and counties

NPR has published a handy interactive map of the U.S., providing recent data relevant to household income, unemployment, and housing foreclosures. Data, color-coded per county, allow for easy visual comparisons between states and regions. Users may drill down to obtain precise county level figures.

why prole day? how about bourgeoisie day?

Why is there a holiday set aside to celebrate labor? This brief video from the History Channel provides an overview of its origins within the context of class division and strife. On the other hand, Gerald Skoning in an article today for that bastion of capitalism, The Wall Street Journal, asks "Why Not Corporation Day?": "Corporation Day would be a joyous celebration of capitalism, a three-day national holiday honoring the great industrialist pioneers, business barons and tycoons of our nation. We would pay grateful respects to the Mellons, Carnegies, Gettys, Fords, Rockefellers and, yes, the Kochs, for their contributions to our country's prosperity." 

Happy Labor Day!

Today's Labor Day edition of The Washington Post includes a brief animated video depicting the status of labor relative to the pro-deregulation position that is being articulated by Romney-Ryan. In your opinion, does this cartoon provide further support for claims by conservative critics, as suggested in this video, that mainstream media evinces a decided "liberal bias"? 

single and unequal

This post was written by Paul Dean and originally appeared in The Sociological Cinema. 

In this video, The New York Times notes that "as a single mother of three, Jessica Schairer falls in the middle of a sharp debate about how economic inequality is increasingly linked to changes in family structure" (see accompanying article and infographic). Through Jessica's story as a working class mother, it illustrates how family structure can exacerbate already existing class inequalities. Jessica explains her stress trying to raise her children as a single parent, including the difficulties of getting home and needing to meet the needs of children and her inability to pay for all the activities her children would like to do. This is contrasted with her married supervisor at work, who is able to rely on a partner when going home from work. The narrator notes that like Jessica's supervisor, college-educated people are more likely to marry and that their combined resources help provide an additional advantage in raising their income, which provides additional advantages conferred to their children. The narrator also notes that "many children of single parents flourish, but studies have shown that on average, children raised by single parents are more likely to fall into poverty, do poorly in school, or become teenage parents." The accompanying article provides many additional statistics. For example, it notes that "estimates vary widely, but scholars have said that changes in marriage patterns — as opposed to changes in individual earnings — may account for as much as 40 percent of the growth in certain measures of inequality." Viewers can be encouraged to consider how class and family structure intersect to shape intergenerational economic inequality, and how low-income workers face more job-related difficulties in meeting family needs as compared to salaried professional workers.

Image by Stephen Crowley/New York Times

do men really earn more than women?

This entry was written by Lester Andrist and originally posted at The Sociological Cinema.


A few months ago, sociologist Phillip Cohen blogged about a feminist viral statistic meme, which claims that women own less than 1% of all the world's wealth. It turns out, a credible source for this figure can't be traced and is unlikely to exist. As Cohen's post reminds us, the very statistics that shape how we understand the world are sometimes little more than elaborately disguised rumors. So what about other influential statistics? What about that viral statistic which states that women earn about 77 cents for every dollar men earn? When people have denied gender inequality exists and when they have implied it is unnecessary to enact policies aimed at eradicating it, the 77-cent statistic has often come to the rescue and thwarted derailment, so whether the statistic is accurate is an important question. In the above clip, Republican Party strategist Alex Castellanos asserts the 77-cent statistic is untrue. Could it be just another viral statistic meme without a source? The short answer is no. The longer answer is that 77 cents is an average, and the number varies based on profession, age, and race. The 77-cent statistic can easily be traced to a respectable source--the Census Bureau (the U.S. Bureau of Labor calculates the number differently and arrives at about 81 cents on the male dollar). The point is society needs an accurate description of the world, lest our dominant understanding of the world become solely derived from eloquently stated assertions by elites with narrow interests. In part, this clip makes a good case for the potential importance of sociology, and in particular, a sociology that checks its sources. It is also important to have a sociology that is capable of setting the record straight, if only to rebuke those talking heads who seek to confuse the public with baseless assertions. In this clip, Alex Castellanos' baseless assertion begins at about the 7:35 mark.

Marx rolls over in grave

A Reuters release notes that bank cards with a likeness of Karl Marx have proven to be popular among those living in the former East Germany. A subsequent NPR story has generated some interesting twitter hashtags for suggested logos (e.g., Revolution of the Proletariat: Priceless. #marxcard).

current issue of Context

The Spring, 2012 issue of Contexts includes several articles that should be of interest to students of stratification. Much of the content of the journal is accessible only through purchase or subscription, but two pieces are both relevant and available at no cost. Understanding "occupy" is a collection of different takes on the meaning and significance of the OWS movement written by several sociologists, including Ruth Milkman and William Julius Wilson. Also informative is Sharmila Rudrappa's India's reproductive assembly line. Women who served as surrogates largely appear to be positive about surrogacy, particularly when compared to alternative employment in garment factories. A piece discussing the "world changing" effect of Michael Harrington's The Other America is available for purchase.

inequality speech banned by TED

Jim Tankersley in a recent NationalJournal article reported that TED has refused to air a speech given about income inequality, claiming it to be too controversial. Delivered on March 1, 2012 by venture capitalist, Nick Hanauer, the speech argued that the middle class is the true engine of job creation and economic growth, not rich people, and therefore, the rich should not be given special tax breaks by government. While TED has not released the talk on its home website nor its YouTube channel, the video is available elsewhere on YouTube.