wolfgang von skeptik
01-28-2008, 01:42 AM
Full title: The Subjugation of the U.S. Working Class: Statistics, Analysis, Narrative
(As promised a week ago to Eattherich and Kid of the Black Hole, and as an upraised-fist Red Salute -- decades-overdue -- to B.H. in grateful acknowledgment of lessons only now fully learned)
Part One
Probably the one point upon which we socialists are sure to agree is that in the United States of America, We the People of the Working Class are being methodically stripped of our rights and livelihoods. Not only are we increasingly oppressed; it is ever more apparent our oppressors intend to reduce us to a degree of subjugation unknown in the Western World since the time of the Czars of Russia.
Most of us recognize that one of the mechanisms of our oppression is the fact there is no meaningful difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. Thus we are effectively disenfranchised: each party represents the Ruling Class and the Ruling Class only -- and each party governs accordingly.
The Republicans are ever more openly tyrannical. The Democrats -- though they hide their intentions behind media smokescreens of Big Lies and disinformation -- are no less despotic. And this is nothing new. From 1964 on, the ultimate message of every national election -- including the Congressional elections in the years the Democrats lost the presidency -- has been that the Democratic Party will clandestinely inflict on us the same tyrannies to which the Republican Party is overtly pledged.
For example, in 1964 the warmonger Johnson won the presidency by presenting himself as a personification of the quest for world peace. Then, only 11 days after his inauguration, Johnson revealed his true colors in what has become a trademark Democratic act of betrayal: he ordered full-scale war against the Vietnamese people.
Since then, the one unvarying truth of U.S. politics is that the Democrats are deceivers and betrayers -- fraudsters who mobilize us in the name of “change” and energize us with chants of “yes we can,” then knife us in our collective backs with post-election edicts of “no you can’t.”
Worse, the Democrats afflict us with the wrenching anguish of shattered hopes -- as if their secret intent is to repeatedly cripple us with demoralizing proof of our own powerlessness.
Indeed it seems the sole purpose of the Democratic Party today is telling the biggest Big Lie of all -- fabricating an illusion of choice and thereby maintaining the ever-more-glaring falsehood of U.S. liberty.
Yet as obvious as this indictment may be, we are seldom allowed the opportunity to bolster it with irrefutable evidence.
However in the cold, undisputable reality of numbers -- most of it data still published in the Statistical Abstract of the United States and all of it footnoted by links within each section below -- is absolute proof of the extent to which we have been disenfranchised and defrauded by the two-party system.
That said, let me caution that this effort is preliminary in every sense of the word -- a first attempt, severely foreshortened by available time, to muster available evidence to cut through Big Lies in Democratic and U.S. propaganda. Within the limits of time and ability, I have done my very best to ascertain these numbers are quoted correctly -- that is, not marred by dyslexic transpositions or arthritic-finger typos -- though any errors nevertheless remain my own, and I therefore apologize for them in advance.
Mostly though I welcome any assistance, corrections or criticism in what I hope will be an ongoing project: yet another expression of our desperate need in the United States for a true Party of the Working Class.
***
At the time affirmative action was created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, males were the primary breadwinners in all U.S. racial groups. Affirmative action was thus clearly intended to benefit African-American males. All to that effect, the measure's enactment was accompanied by a great outpouring of self-congratulation and propagandistic boasting: now in the workplace as well as at the lunch counter, black men were to be “free at last.”
But the Statistical Abstract of the United States, the nation’s ultimate authority on socioeconomic data, discloses the extent to which this is another Big Lie -- especially a Democratic Party Big Lie.
Almost from its beginning, affirmative action was deftly manipulated to produce an outcome radically different from the program's stated intent. In fact, affirmation action is facilitating the victimization of black males by permanently ousting them from the workplace -- chiefly to the benefit of white women.
Here are the damning statistics, presented in narrative form for ease of comprehension:
In 1960, 80.1 percent of the adult black-male population (for this purpose defined as age 16 and above), was part of the workforce -- that is, the people with jobs (including military service) or available for work.
By 2005, only 67.3 percent of the nation’s adult black males were part of the workforce. This is a 45-year decline of 12.8 percent.
In 1960, 36.0 percent of the nation’s adult white female population was part of the workforce.
By 2005, the participation of this demographic group in the workforce had grown to 58.9 percent. In other words, 58.9 percent of all adult white females (again for these purposes age 16 and above) were either working or seeking work -- a 45-year increase of 22.9 percent.
African-American females have also benefited from affirmative action, but not to the dramatic extent white females have. In 1960, 47.2 percent of the adult black female population were part of the workforce. By 2005, 61.6 percent were part of the workforce -- an increase of 14.4 percent.
The employment of white males meanwhile is also shrinking: 82.6 percent of the adult white male population in 1960, 74.1 percent of this demographic group in 2005, a reduction of 8.5 percent.
To summarize: from 1960 through 2005, participation of adult black males in the U.S. workforce was reduced by 12.8 percent, while participation of white males was reduced by 8.2 percent. Meanwhile during the same period white female participation was increased 22.9 percent while black female participation was raised by 14.4 percent.
The 22.9 percent addition of white females to the workforce represents a disproportionately larger number of jobs than the addition of 14.4 percent more black females. In 1960 there were 20.1 million white females in the workforce; by 2005, 58.9 million. By comparison, in 1960 there were 3.1 million black females in the workforce; in 2005 there were 9 million
These trends have been statistically evident at least since the Carter years. If the Democrats are the “party of racial quality,” why are they not protesting this wholesale betrayal of affirmative action?
Indeed, if the Democrats are as claimed, why did the Clinton Administration -- in response to angry complaints by African-Americans and strident demands for censorship by closet-racist white feminists -- alter the Abstract's presentation of statistics?
(I remember the associated controversy rather vividly: during the ‘90s it produced an outpouring of “we’re-not-racist” diatribes by various white feminist ideologues, this as someone in the House of Clinton -- my guess would be Hillary herself -- finally moved to suppress the evidence to the contrary.)
In any case, and obviously to hide the magnitude of the betrayal -- that is, the extent to which white women had stolen a program intended to help black men -- the categorizations of the workforce by race and gender were carefully separated in the Abstract editions from 1997 through 2000.
Because of this separation, the extent to which white women were benefiting from affirmative action was hidden: the public was allowed to see merely that the overall percentage by which males participated in the workforce was declining as the female percentage increased -- not how this was affecting the individual races. The Bush Administration changed the format back to its original -- white male/white female; black male/black female -- perhaps the one honest thing the Bush Administration has ever done.
Sources: Statistical Abstract of the United States; section, “Labor Force, Employment and Earnings”; table: “Labor Force and Participation Rates by Race, Sex and Age” (all editions from 1960 through 2007, spot checks of 1967, 1977, 1987, 2007 editions):
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/
***
The probable reason the Ruling Class is making room for so many more white women in its workplace is reflected in statistics and supportive narrative that demonstrate the extent to which white females are the least likely of all demographic groups to belong to unions and are the most likely to resist unionization.
This is so true it has become axiomatic among labor activists of both genders that white women -- particularly white women who identify with the bourgeoisie -- are by far the most difficult women to organize. It is also axiomatic that such white women are the most likely to betray solidarity by giving their support to decertification and other forms of union-busting -- though for obvious reasons this bitter reality is acknowledged only privately and behind closed doors. Nevertheless the statistical confirmation is undeniable: in the year 2005, only 10.5 percent of the white female workforce belonged to unions.
By comparison, that same year 15.6 percent of the black men belonged to unions -- which surely gives the Ruling Class a powerful motive for decreasing the percentage of African-American workforce males it actually allows to get jobs.
Again in 2006, 13.7 percent of the black women and 12.8 percent of the white men belonged to unions.
All these numbers come from federal Department of Labor sources in the 2008 Statistical Abstract of the United States, “Labor Force, Employment and Earnings,” Table 643: “Union Members by Selected Characteristics.” This data is linked here:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/08a ... /labor.pdf (http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/08abstract/labor.pdf)
Analysis of the same tabular data across the span of 25 years reveals how the Ruling Class war against unionism is not only lowering the pay of the entire Working Class but also dramatically widening the pay-gaps between whites and minorities as well as between men and women.
In 1983, 27.2 percent of the African-American workforce was unionized, as was 19.3 percent of the white workforce. The black-white pay gap -- the difference in weekly earnings based on median incomes -- was $58 ($319 per week for whites, $261 per week for blacks).
In 1996, with black union membership reduced to 18.9 percent and white membership reduced to 14.0 percent of the workforce, the pay-gap had slightly more than doubled to $119 ($506 per week for whites, $387 for blacks).
By 2006 -- the last year for which complete figures are available -- black union membership had been reduced to 14.5 percent of the workforce while white union membership shrank even further to 11.7 percent. The black-white pay gap had meanwhile widened further to $136 ($690 per week for whites, $554 per week for blacks).
The male-female pay differential has likewise expanded, though not nearly so dramatically as the black-white gap. The same tabular data -- 1883, 1996 and 2006 -- shows a 1983 difference of $126, this based on the same median weekly income figures ($378 for men, $252 for women).
By 1996 the gap had widened to $139 ($557 for men, $418 for women). By 2006 it was $143 ($743 for men, $600 for women).
Converting these numbers into percentages gives damning evidence of the extent to which the war on unions is in fact a war on African-Americans. Between 1983 and 2006, the black-white pay gap increased 135 percent ($163-$58=$78/$58=1.34482).
By comparison, the male-female pay gap expanded only 14 percent ($143-$126=$17/$126=.13492) during the same 25-year period.
Sources: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2008 and 1996, “Labor Force, Employment and Earnings”; tables entitled “Union Members by Selected Characteristics,” 1983 and 1996 (combined) and 2006. The link is here:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/
***
A similar pattern is evident in healthcare statistics, including the fact that the war on the poor -- euthanasia by denial of health care -- is disproportionately a war on African-Americans.
Not surprisingly, these figures are a bit more difficult to obtain: in service to its Big Business masters, the U.S. government has long tried to conceal the real and growing destitution of the Working Class population. Not until 1980 did Statistical Abstract begin disclosing the percentages of people who lack health insurance -- a practice promptly discontinued by the Reagan Administration. Reporting the percentages was restored in 1985. From 1985 on -- though never in any of the years before -- the percentages were also broken down by race and gender.
In 1976, the first year for which any such figure is available, 10.2 percent of the total population lacked health insurance.
By 1985, the total uninsured population had grown to 13.3 percent; 12.4 percent of the white population lacked insurance, as did 9.3 percent of the black population.
In 1995 the uninsured population had expanded again: 15.4 percent of the total population lacked insurance; 14.2 percent of the white population was uninsured while 21.0 percent of the black population had no health insurance.
But after the Bush Administration took office, the federal government data on uninsured people begin to conflict with data from other sources.
According to the Bush Statistical Abstract, in 2005 15.3 percent of the population was uninsured; the percentage of the uninsured white population had risen to 14.4, while the uninsured portion of the black population had allegedly (and inexplicably) dropped to 19.0 percent. The 2005 figures are in the 2008 edition of the Abstract and are claimed to be the latest available.
By contrast, the Kaiser Family Foundation -- generally considered the most reliable source of health-care statistics in the nation -- says that in 2006, 17.9 percent of the total non-elderly population was uninsured. (The “non-elderly” definition is to prevent Medicare -- for which virtually all elderly citizen are eligible -- from artificially inflating the percentages of people with insurance.)
The Kaiser figure is unquestionably the more accurate one: it reflects continuation of the trend, evident more than 20 years ago, of an economy deliberately designed to deny healthcare to increasing numbers of Working Class people.
Kaiser’s numbers also show how devastating the denial is to African-Americans. Again in 2006, 21.8 percent of non-elderly blacks were denied health insurance -- nearly twice the 12.8 percent of the white population that was without such insurance.
Because healthcare in the U.S. is a privilege accorded only by wealth (and not the civil right it is everywhere else in the developed world), the only way a Working Class person can achieve guaranteed access to healthcare is via a unionized workplace.
Hence the huge decline in unionism -- a decline particularly hurtful to black males -- is also a radical decline in the percentage of the Working Class population allowed health insurance.
Comparative statistics show this clearly.
In 1985, when 18 percent of the workforce was unionized, 13 percent of the population lacked health insurance. In 1995, after the unionized percentage of the workforce was reduced to 14.9 percent, 15.4 percent of the population was without health insurance. By 2004, with the percentage of unionized workers further reduced to 12.5, 17.9 percent of the population lacked health insurance.
The harsh impact of de-unionization on African-Americans is also statistically evident.
In 1985, 24.3 percent of the black workforce was represented by unions, and 9.3 of the black population lacked health insurance. By 2004, with black unionism reduced to 16.7 percent of the workforce, fully 21.8 percent of the black population had no health insurance.
References:
Statistical Abstract of the relevant years, 1980, 1987, 1996, 2006; “Health and Nutrition“: table, 1980, “Public and Private Health Care Coverage by Family Income and Age, 1976”; tables “Health Insurance Data by Selected Characteristics,” all other years cited. “Labor Force, Employment and Earnings, ” tables, “Union Members, by Selected Characteristics,” all years cited:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/
The Uninsured/A Primer/ Key Facts about Americans without Health Insurance, Table 1 (Page 30), Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, Kaiser family Foundation, 2007:
http://www.kff.org/uninsured/upload/7451-03.pdf
Reproductive choice in the U.S. is also determined by wealth, and here too -- despite loud and braying pronouncements to the contrary -- the Democrats have proved as hostile to "choice" as the Republicans, with the burden of Democratic hostility to reproductive rights falling entirely on the Working Class.
The Democrats' gradually escalating war on Working-Class access to birth control began in 1977, when Carter banned all federally funded abortions -- not just another classic Democratic betrayal, but undying proof that (behind his carefully cultivated pre-election camouflage of pseudo-liberalism), Carter is as fanatically vicious an advocate of theocracy as any other Christian fundamentalist.
In subsequent years, the birth control available to women without health insurance has been increasingly limited to abstinence only, which at the very least proves Democrat collaboration in the Republican project of transforming the U.S. into a biblical dictatorship.
The Clintons have shown themselves to be especially vicious toward the Working Class. Sophisticated political operatives that they are, it is impossible their 1994 “universal health insurance” debacle was anything less than deliberate sabotage -- sabotage from which Hillary is now reaping huge profits:
As First Lady, Clinton’s high-profile bid to usher in universal healthcare was an exercise in jump-starting her own political career. The plan was doomed to fail by her elitist refusal to collaborate with individuals already working on the issue, in order to corner the fanfare. Even more key was her unwillingness to launch the necessary fight with the healthcare profiteers. In the end, the woeful HMO system was only strengthened, and today the medical industry is donating more to her than to any other presidential contender.
From: Freedom Socialist, Vol. 28, No. 5, October-November 2007: Lois Danks, “Hillary Clinton: two X-chromosomes do not a feminist candidate make!”:
http://www.socialism.com/fsarticles/vol ... inton.html (http://www.socialism.com/fsarticles/vol28no5/28513RWclinton.html)
Meanwhile the Democrats’ votes for the union-busting, downsizing and outsourcing mandated by the World Trade Organization (WTO), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and all other such treaties continue to throw millions of Working Class Americans out of work and into inescapable poverty -- knowingly vicious imposition of endless wretchedness that of course includes denial of health insurance.
Which means, among other things, still more denial of any effective birth control method save abstinence.
Votes for so-called “free trade” are therefore as much “anti-choice” as any vote to ban birth control and abortion outright -- an especially ugly truth now underscored by the skyrocketing U.S. birth rate.
From: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 16 January 2008, Mike Stobbe (Associated Press Medical Writer), “Against the trend, U.S. births way up”:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/ ... source=rss (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110ap_baby_boomlet.html?source=rss)
(Unfortunately this is only complete or nearly complete version of the Associated Press report I could find -- “unfortunately” because daily newspaper links typically die in a couple of weeks or a month, so it will eventually need to be replaced by a link to a more enduring variant of the story.)
Loren Bliss
19-27 January 2008
(Continued in Part Two)
_________
Edit: corrected per the Kid, with thanks.
(As promised a week ago to Eattherich and Kid of the Black Hole, and as an upraised-fist Red Salute -- decades-overdue -- to B.H. in grateful acknowledgment of lessons only now fully learned)
Part One
Probably the one point upon which we socialists are sure to agree is that in the United States of America, We the People of the Working Class are being methodically stripped of our rights and livelihoods. Not only are we increasingly oppressed; it is ever more apparent our oppressors intend to reduce us to a degree of subjugation unknown in the Western World since the time of the Czars of Russia.
Most of us recognize that one of the mechanisms of our oppression is the fact there is no meaningful difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. Thus we are effectively disenfranchised: each party represents the Ruling Class and the Ruling Class only -- and each party governs accordingly.
The Republicans are ever more openly tyrannical. The Democrats -- though they hide their intentions behind media smokescreens of Big Lies and disinformation -- are no less despotic. And this is nothing new. From 1964 on, the ultimate message of every national election -- including the Congressional elections in the years the Democrats lost the presidency -- has been that the Democratic Party will clandestinely inflict on us the same tyrannies to which the Republican Party is overtly pledged.
For example, in 1964 the warmonger Johnson won the presidency by presenting himself as a personification of the quest for world peace. Then, only 11 days after his inauguration, Johnson revealed his true colors in what has become a trademark Democratic act of betrayal: he ordered full-scale war against the Vietnamese people.
Since then, the one unvarying truth of U.S. politics is that the Democrats are deceivers and betrayers -- fraudsters who mobilize us in the name of “change” and energize us with chants of “yes we can,” then knife us in our collective backs with post-election edicts of “no you can’t.”
Worse, the Democrats afflict us with the wrenching anguish of shattered hopes -- as if their secret intent is to repeatedly cripple us with demoralizing proof of our own powerlessness.
Indeed it seems the sole purpose of the Democratic Party today is telling the biggest Big Lie of all -- fabricating an illusion of choice and thereby maintaining the ever-more-glaring falsehood of U.S. liberty.
Yet as obvious as this indictment may be, we are seldom allowed the opportunity to bolster it with irrefutable evidence.
However in the cold, undisputable reality of numbers -- most of it data still published in the Statistical Abstract of the United States and all of it footnoted by links within each section below -- is absolute proof of the extent to which we have been disenfranchised and defrauded by the two-party system.
That said, let me caution that this effort is preliminary in every sense of the word -- a first attempt, severely foreshortened by available time, to muster available evidence to cut through Big Lies in Democratic and U.S. propaganda. Within the limits of time and ability, I have done my very best to ascertain these numbers are quoted correctly -- that is, not marred by dyslexic transpositions or arthritic-finger typos -- though any errors nevertheless remain my own, and I therefore apologize for them in advance.
Mostly though I welcome any assistance, corrections or criticism in what I hope will be an ongoing project: yet another expression of our desperate need in the United States for a true Party of the Working Class.
***
At the time affirmative action was created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, males were the primary breadwinners in all U.S. racial groups. Affirmative action was thus clearly intended to benefit African-American males. All to that effect, the measure's enactment was accompanied by a great outpouring of self-congratulation and propagandistic boasting: now in the workplace as well as at the lunch counter, black men were to be “free at last.”
But the Statistical Abstract of the United States, the nation’s ultimate authority on socioeconomic data, discloses the extent to which this is another Big Lie -- especially a Democratic Party Big Lie.
Almost from its beginning, affirmative action was deftly manipulated to produce an outcome radically different from the program's stated intent. In fact, affirmation action is facilitating the victimization of black males by permanently ousting them from the workplace -- chiefly to the benefit of white women.
Here are the damning statistics, presented in narrative form for ease of comprehension:
In 1960, 80.1 percent of the adult black-male population (for this purpose defined as age 16 and above), was part of the workforce -- that is, the people with jobs (including military service) or available for work.
By 2005, only 67.3 percent of the nation’s adult black males were part of the workforce. This is a 45-year decline of 12.8 percent.
In 1960, 36.0 percent of the nation’s adult white female population was part of the workforce.
By 2005, the participation of this demographic group in the workforce had grown to 58.9 percent. In other words, 58.9 percent of all adult white females (again for these purposes age 16 and above) were either working or seeking work -- a 45-year increase of 22.9 percent.
African-American females have also benefited from affirmative action, but not to the dramatic extent white females have. In 1960, 47.2 percent of the adult black female population were part of the workforce. By 2005, 61.6 percent were part of the workforce -- an increase of 14.4 percent.
The employment of white males meanwhile is also shrinking: 82.6 percent of the adult white male population in 1960, 74.1 percent of this demographic group in 2005, a reduction of 8.5 percent.
To summarize: from 1960 through 2005, participation of adult black males in the U.S. workforce was reduced by 12.8 percent, while participation of white males was reduced by 8.2 percent. Meanwhile during the same period white female participation was increased 22.9 percent while black female participation was raised by 14.4 percent.
The 22.9 percent addition of white females to the workforce represents a disproportionately larger number of jobs than the addition of 14.4 percent more black females. In 1960 there were 20.1 million white females in the workforce; by 2005, 58.9 million. By comparison, in 1960 there were 3.1 million black females in the workforce; in 2005 there were 9 million
These trends have been statistically evident at least since the Carter years. If the Democrats are the “party of racial quality,” why are they not protesting this wholesale betrayal of affirmative action?
Indeed, if the Democrats are as claimed, why did the Clinton Administration -- in response to angry complaints by African-Americans and strident demands for censorship by closet-racist white feminists -- alter the Abstract's presentation of statistics?
(I remember the associated controversy rather vividly: during the ‘90s it produced an outpouring of “we’re-not-racist” diatribes by various white feminist ideologues, this as someone in the House of Clinton -- my guess would be Hillary herself -- finally moved to suppress the evidence to the contrary.)
In any case, and obviously to hide the magnitude of the betrayal -- that is, the extent to which white women had stolen a program intended to help black men -- the categorizations of the workforce by race and gender were carefully separated in the Abstract editions from 1997 through 2000.
Because of this separation, the extent to which white women were benefiting from affirmative action was hidden: the public was allowed to see merely that the overall percentage by which males participated in the workforce was declining as the female percentage increased -- not how this was affecting the individual races. The Bush Administration changed the format back to its original -- white male/white female; black male/black female -- perhaps the one honest thing the Bush Administration has ever done.
Sources: Statistical Abstract of the United States; section, “Labor Force, Employment and Earnings”; table: “Labor Force and Participation Rates by Race, Sex and Age” (all editions from 1960 through 2007, spot checks of 1967, 1977, 1987, 2007 editions):
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/
***
The probable reason the Ruling Class is making room for so many more white women in its workplace is reflected in statistics and supportive narrative that demonstrate the extent to which white females are the least likely of all demographic groups to belong to unions and are the most likely to resist unionization.
This is so true it has become axiomatic among labor activists of both genders that white women -- particularly white women who identify with the bourgeoisie -- are by far the most difficult women to organize. It is also axiomatic that such white women are the most likely to betray solidarity by giving their support to decertification and other forms of union-busting -- though for obvious reasons this bitter reality is acknowledged only privately and behind closed doors. Nevertheless the statistical confirmation is undeniable: in the year 2005, only 10.5 percent of the white female workforce belonged to unions.
By comparison, that same year 15.6 percent of the black men belonged to unions -- which surely gives the Ruling Class a powerful motive for decreasing the percentage of African-American workforce males it actually allows to get jobs.
Again in 2006, 13.7 percent of the black women and 12.8 percent of the white men belonged to unions.
All these numbers come from federal Department of Labor sources in the 2008 Statistical Abstract of the United States, “Labor Force, Employment and Earnings,” Table 643: “Union Members by Selected Characteristics.” This data is linked here:
http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/08a ... /labor.pdf (http://www.census.gov/prod/2007pubs/08abstract/labor.pdf)
Analysis of the same tabular data across the span of 25 years reveals how the Ruling Class war against unionism is not only lowering the pay of the entire Working Class but also dramatically widening the pay-gaps between whites and minorities as well as between men and women.
In 1983, 27.2 percent of the African-American workforce was unionized, as was 19.3 percent of the white workforce. The black-white pay gap -- the difference in weekly earnings based on median incomes -- was $58 ($319 per week for whites, $261 per week for blacks).
In 1996, with black union membership reduced to 18.9 percent and white membership reduced to 14.0 percent of the workforce, the pay-gap had slightly more than doubled to $119 ($506 per week for whites, $387 for blacks).
By 2006 -- the last year for which complete figures are available -- black union membership had been reduced to 14.5 percent of the workforce while white union membership shrank even further to 11.7 percent. The black-white pay gap had meanwhile widened further to $136 ($690 per week for whites, $554 per week for blacks).
The male-female pay differential has likewise expanded, though not nearly so dramatically as the black-white gap. The same tabular data -- 1883, 1996 and 2006 -- shows a 1983 difference of $126, this based on the same median weekly income figures ($378 for men, $252 for women).
By 1996 the gap had widened to $139 ($557 for men, $418 for women). By 2006 it was $143 ($743 for men, $600 for women).
Converting these numbers into percentages gives damning evidence of the extent to which the war on unions is in fact a war on African-Americans. Between 1983 and 2006, the black-white pay gap increased 135 percent ($163-$58=$78/$58=1.34482).
By comparison, the male-female pay gap expanded only 14 percent ($143-$126=$17/$126=.13492) during the same 25-year period.
Sources: Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2008 and 1996, “Labor Force, Employment and Earnings”; tables entitled “Union Members by Selected Characteristics,” 1983 and 1996 (combined) and 2006. The link is here:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/
***
A similar pattern is evident in healthcare statistics, including the fact that the war on the poor -- euthanasia by denial of health care -- is disproportionately a war on African-Americans.
Not surprisingly, these figures are a bit more difficult to obtain: in service to its Big Business masters, the U.S. government has long tried to conceal the real and growing destitution of the Working Class population. Not until 1980 did Statistical Abstract begin disclosing the percentages of people who lack health insurance -- a practice promptly discontinued by the Reagan Administration. Reporting the percentages was restored in 1985. From 1985 on -- though never in any of the years before -- the percentages were also broken down by race and gender.
In 1976, the first year for which any such figure is available, 10.2 percent of the total population lacked health insurance.
By 1985, the total uninsured population had grown to 13.3 percent; 12.4 percent of the white population lacked insurance, as did 9.3 percent of the black population.
In 1995 the uninsured population had expanded again: 15.4 percent of the total population lacked insurance; 14.2 percent of the white population was uninsured while 21.0 percent of the black population had no health insurance.
But after the Bush Administration took office, the federal government data on uninsured people begin to conflict with data from other sources.
According to the Bush Statistical Abstract, in 2005 15.3 percent of the population was uninsured; the percentage of the uninsured white population had risen to 14.4, while the uninsured portion of the black population had allegedly (and inexplicably) dropped to 19.0 percent. The 2005 figures are in the 2008 edition of the Abstract and are claimed to be the latest available.
By contrast, the Kaiser Family Foundation -- generally considered the most reliable source of health-care statistics in the nation -- says that in 2006, 17.9 percent of the total non-elderly population was uninsured. (The “non-elderly” definition is to prevent Medicare -- for which virtually all elderly citizen are eligible -- from artificially inflating the percentages of people with insurance.)
The Kaiser figure is unquestionably the more accurate one: it reflects continuation of the trend, evident more than 20 years ago, of an economy deliberately designed to deny healthcare to increasing numbers of Working Class people.
Kaiser’s numbers also show how devastating the denial is to African-Americans. Again in 2006, 21.8 percent of non-elderly blacks were denied health insurance -- nearly twice the 12.8 percent of the white population that was without such insurance.
Because healthcare in the U.S. is a privilege accorded only by wealth (and not the civil right it is everywhere else in the developed world), the only way a Working Class person can achieve guaranteed access to healthcare is via a unionized workplace.
Hence the huge decline in unionism -- a decline particularly hurtful to black males -- is also a radical decline in the percentage of the Working Class population allowed health insurance.
Comparative statistics show this clearly.
In 1985, when 18 percent of the workforce was unionized, 13 percent of the population lacked health insurance. In 1995, after the unionized percentage of the workforce was reduced to 14.9 percent, 15.4 percent of the population was without health insurance. By 2004, with the percentage of unionized workers further reduced to 12.5, 17.9 percent of the population lacked health insurance.
The harsh impact of de-unionization on African-Americans is also statistically evident.
In 1985, 24.3 percent of the black workforce was represented by unions, and 9.3 of the black population lacked health insurance. By 2004, with black unionism reduced to 16.7 percent of the workforce, fully 21.8 percent of the black population had no health insurance.
References:
Statistical Abstract of the relevant years, 1980, 1987, 1996, 2006; “Health and Nutrition“: table, 1980, “Public and Private Health Care Coverage by Family Income and Age, 1976”; tables “Health Insurance Data by Selected Characteristics,” all other years cited. “Labor Force, Employment and Earnings, ” tables, “Union Members, by Selected Characteristics,” all years cited:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/
The Uninsured/A Primer/ Key Facts about Americans without Health Insurance, Table 1 (Page 30), Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, Kaiser family Foundation, 2007:
http://www.kff.org/uninsured/upload/7451-03.pdf
Reproductive choice in the U.S. is also determined by wealth, and here too -- despite loud and braying pronouncements to the contrary -- the Democrats have proved as hostile to "choice" as the Republicans, with the burden of Democratic hostility to reproductive rights falling entirely on the Working Class.
The Democrats' gradually escalating war on Working-Class access to birth control began in 1977, when Carter banned all federally funded abortions -- not just another classic Democratic betrayal, but undying proof that (behind his carefully cultivated pre-election camouflage of pseudo-liberalism), Carter is as fanatically vicious an advocate of theocracy as any other Christian fundamentalist.
In subsequent years, the birth control available to women without health insurance has been increasingly limited to abstinence only, which at the very least proves Democrat collaboration in the Republican project of transforming the U.S. into a biblical dictatorship.
The Clintons have shown themselves to be especially vicious toward the Working Class. Sophisticated political operatives that they are, it is impossible their 1994 “universal health insurance” debacle was anything less than deliberate sabotage -- sabotage from which Hillary is now reaping huge profits:
As First Lady, Clinton’s high-profile bid to usher in universal healthcare was an exercise in jump-starting her own political career. The plan was doomed to fail by her elitist refusal to collaborate with individuals already working on the issue, in order to corner the fanfare. Even more key was her unwillingness to launch the necessary fight with the healthcare profiteers. In the end, the woeful HMO system was only strengthened, and today the medical industry is donating more to her than to any other presidential contender.
From: Freedom Socialist, Vol. 28, No. 5, October-November 2007: Lois Danks, “Hillary Clinton: two X-chromosomes do not a feminist candidate make!”:
http://www.socialism.com/fsarticles/vol ... inton.html (http://www.socialism.com/fsarticles/vol28no5/28513RWclinton.html)
Meanwhile the Democrats’ votes for the union-busting, downsizing and outsourcing mandated by the World Trade Organization (WTO), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and all other such treaties continue to throw millions of Working Class Americans out of work and into inescapable poverty -- knowingly vicious imposition of endless wretchedness that of course includes denial of health insurance.
Which means, among other things, still more denial of any effective birth control method save abstinence.
Votes for so-called “free trade” are therefore as much “anti-choice” as any vote to ban birth control and abortion outright -- an especially ugly truth now underscored by the skyrocketing U.S. birth rate.
From: Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 16 January 2008, Mike Stobbe (Associated Press Medical Writer), “Against the trend, U.S. births way up”:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/ ... source=rss (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110ap_baby_boomlet.html?source=rss)
(Unfortunately this is only complete or nearly complete version of the Associated Press report I could find -- “unfortunately” because daily newspaper links typically die in a couple of weeks or a month, so it will eventually need to be replaced by a link to a more enduring variant of the story.)
Loren Bliss
19-27 January 2008
(Continued in Part Two)
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Edit: corrected per the Kid, with thanks.