Joe the Plutocrat

plu'to·crat' (plōō'tə-krāt') n., One who exercises power by virtue of wealth. A member of the plutocracy.

plu·toc·ra·cy (plōō-tŏk'rə-sē) n., 1. Government by the wealthy. 2. A wealthy class that controls a government. 3. A government or state in which the wealthy rule.

Is the Republican Party really the party of Joe the Plumber? Really? Since when are the Republicans on the side of working class people? Since the year 2000, the gap is not only growing between the rich and the poor, but the gap is also growing between the rich and the middle-class. When adjusted for inflation, the median household income of the average Joe out there is lower today than it was in the year 2000. In the year 2000, 57% of companies with fewer than 10 employees offered health benefits. Today, only 45% of those same-sized companies do so.

Are you Better Off Now?

According to a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, the gap is not only growing between the rich and the poor, but the gap is also growing between the rich and the middle-class. Here are a few quotes from the study regarding the United States.

“…nowhere has this trend been so stark as in the United States. The average income of the richest 10% is $93,000…the highest level in the OECD. However, the poorest 10% of the US citizens have an income of $5,800 per year – about 20% lower than the average for OECD countries.”

Did you see that? The top income in the US is the highest of the 30 countries studied, while at the same time, our low-income citizens earn 20% lower than the average.

“Social mobility is lower in the United States than in other countries like Denmark,
Sweden and Australia. Children of poor parents are less likely to become rich than children of rich parents.”

This says that the poor in the US have less chance to become middle-class and the middle-class have less chance of becoming rich than in many countries in the study.

Switching from the topic of income to the topic of accumulated wealth, the study points out the top 1% controls about one third of all of the wealth in our nation.

“Wealth is distributed much more unequally than income: the top 1% control some 25-33% of total net worth and the top 10% hold 71%.”

Stunningly, the report says:

“The United States is the country with the highest inequality level and poverty rate across the OECD, Mexico and Turkey excepted. Since 2000, income inequality has increased rapidly.”

Since 2000, the year that George W. Bush won the White House, income inequality has increased rapidly.

The Gini Out of the Bottle

The OECD study also looked at the Gini-coefficient of inequality, a commonly used measure of the gap between the incomes of people within a society. The coefficient ranks inequality on a scale between 0, which is complete equality (everyone has the same income) and 1, which is complete inequality (one person has all the income and all others have none).

They ranked 30 countries by their Gini-coefficient. Out of the 30 countries studied, the US ranked 28th in income equality. As the chart below indicates, not only is the gap between the rich and poor in the US widening, but it is widening at a much higher rate than the other 29 countries in the study.





Notice the slightly downward slope of the line from 1992 - 2000, the last time we had a Democratic president and the sharp upturn in 2000, the first year that George W. Bush was in office.

Party of the Working Class?

Obviously the Republican Party is here to enrich the already-rich by “spreading the wealth around” from the poor and the middle class to the rich. The Party of Joe the Plumber? Would Joe the Plumber spend $150,000 for clothes for a six-week campaign? I don’t think so. Working people need change. Working people need Barack Obama.

Inequality in Iowa

Iowans don’t have to go far to find prejudice.

Last week marked the passing of an historical day of racial inequality and hope in America. It was 50 years ago that the Little Rock Nine were integrated into Little Rock Central High School. The good news is that these nine students went on to achieve great feats in life. The bad news is that they had to be forcibly integrated against the will of the Governor and many “white citizens’ councils.” This event highlighted the hope of racial integration, the beginning of the civil rights movement and the lingering prejudice of a segregated south.

It would be easy to look at these events and to think “Look how far we’ve come in 50 years!” That might be easier to say if it weren’t for the events in Jena, LA that deal with the same issues of race and inequality. Note: For a complete background on the Jena Six case, click here. Fifty years after the Little Rock Nine, the Jena Six remind us that we still have a long way to go. As much as we would like to think that time has healed all wounds, we would be wrong in that assumption.

Iowans might also try to take comfort by thinking of our geographic distance from these events. It’s easy to assign these events to a bigoted south clinging to its prejudice past. Unfortunately, again, we would be wrong to make such an assumption. You don’t have to go as far as Jena, LA to find racial inequality and an imbalance in race and justice. It’s happening right here in Iowa.

According to a Chicago Tribune article by Howard Witt, “In Iowa, blacks make up just 5 percent of the statewide public school enrollment but account for 22 percent of the students who get suspended.” In fact, the ratio of percentage of black student suspensions to percentage of black student enrollments is higher in Iowa than in any other state.

In grasping for simple explanations, some have put forth the hypothesis that these numbers are more reflective of economic conditions than race. It is true that 31.6% of African Americans in Iowa live at or below the poverty level. The overall rate of poverty for all of Iowa is 9.1%. Wouldn’t it be convenient to simply dismiss the results to the impact of poverty? However, according to the article by Howard Witt, when you hold the data constant for income, the results are the same, a higher proportion of blacks punished severely than white students.

Another possible explanation put forth is that, blacks commit more heinous acts in school than do whites. This simply is not true. The data shows that for the same action, blacks are more severely punished than whites. You can listen to Howard Witt discuss this story here.

As Iowans we might try to comfort ourselves by assigning these problems to “the school system,” however, there is a larger issue here, one that involves all of society.

According to a study by The Sentencing Project, the black-to-white incarceration ratio in Iowa is 13.6-to-1. That’s 13.6 black people incarcerated for every white person. Again, Iowa has the dubious honor of holding the highest ratio of incarceration inequality in the nation.

And of course, this racial inequality doesn’t just apply to blacks but extends to Hispanics as well. For every 100,000 white people in Iowa, 309 will end up in jail or prison. However for every 100,000 black people, 4,200 will go to jail. And for every 100,000 Hispanics in Iowa, 764 will go to jail, more than a 2:1 ratio over whites. This trend is what some are calling the “School-to-Prison Pipeline.”

What can we do about it?

If you find all of this as disturbing as I do, then I encourage you to take action. Here are a few suggestions.

1. Learn

It might have surprised you to learn that the problem of racial inequality does not belong to another time or another place. The issue is real, it is relevant and it is local. Learn all you can.

Great sources of information include:

· The Iowa Commission on the Status of African Americans (ICSAA). Their mission is to report on the status of Iowans of African-American descent.
· The African American Historical Museum and Cultural Center of Iowa.
· The Iowa Mosaic Diversity Conference, October 15 and 16, 2007.
· The Covenant with Black America. Based on a book by Tavis Smiley, the Covenant with Black America is a national plan of action to address the primary concerns of African Americans today -- from health to housing, from crime to criminal justice, from education to economic parity.

For example, did you know that the unemployment rate for Iowa African Americans was 14.2% in 2000? The overall Iowa unemployment rate at that time was 4.2%.

2. Fund the fix in schools.

According to a report by the NAACP, “Addressing the School-to-Prison Pipeline requires focusing on where it begins: a neglected and under-resourced public education system. Recent research has confirmed what educators have known for quite some time—there are direct correlations between inputs and outputs in schools.”

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to talk to Elizabeth Edwards on the North Carolina model for “No Child Left Behind” and how it differed from the national model promoted by George W. Bush. According to Mrs. Edwards, the difference was that, when North Carolina found schools to be failing, they funded the fix. This is the opposite approach taken by the Bush Administration. You can see the interview regarding No Child Left Behind here.

3. Speak out wherever you can.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” The good news is, if you live in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state, you have greater access to presidential candidates than people in other states. Use that access. Ask the Republican candidates why they refused to attend a debate on issues important to Hispanics (only John McCain agreed to attend). Ask Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and John McCain why they refused to debate African-American issues. It was so bad Mike Huckabee commented "I'm embarrassed. There has long been a divide in this country and it doesn't get better when we don't show up."

And don’t let Democrats off of the hook either. Ask them about school funding. Ask them about social justice. Ask them what they intend to do about the disparity in school discipline and sentencing in the judicial system.

Ask all of the candidates about mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug offenses that leave judges with little discretion. Do they support these mandatory sentences, or will they work to see them repealed?


In closing, the most important action you can take to promote equality in Iowa is to get involved. Reading this article is probably a good start.