Return to Zombie America

image from Umair Haque's article
on the American Collapse

Outstanding article "Why We are Underestimating American Collapse" by Umair Haque in Eudaimonia  looks at some of the human costs such as the epidemic of school shootings, the "opioid epidemic," the declining life expectancy of rural, white Americans.

This all fits in with what I've started calling  "zombie America." Zombies are variously referred to as the "undead" and the "walking dead," phrases that I think can be applied to American economy, politics and society at large. The nation is still lurching and weaving about, animated but no longer truly alive, dead (or dying) on the inside but because still animated, so that many observers still imagine it to have life.

Not like science fiction: the decline of America

 I began reading science fiction when I was nine, and it remains even today sixty-two years later still my favorite flavor of fiction, but science fiction has taught us all to expect the end of civilization to come abruptly, dramatically and unmistakably. This has made us collectively blind to the real world slow, drip-drip erosion of our society. 

A good example of what I'm talking about is the novel (and now HBO series) Station Eleven, a story of an apocalyptic pandemic and its aftermath. The novel published in 2014, shows the disease a deadly "flu" killing something like 90 percent of the people infected, and its impact in disrupting society occurs within days. People die in the streets, in their cars, everywhere all at once, and almost instantly modern society as we know it is gone.  Some time in the last month or so, I ran across someone (on Twitter or in an interview) using Station Eleven as the rubric against which our real world COVID pandemic should be marked as not very serious. I wish I'd written it down, saved the Tweet or bookmarked the interview because it epitomizes the way we've ingrained science fiction as the arbitrator of what is and what is not the end of the world.

Make no mistake about it, we are already in the midst of the fall and decline of the great American democratic, post-industrial society. It has been going on for some time now, at least two decades, but probably longer than that. Let me make it clear, I am NOT a MAGA, I am not talking about trying to recover some fake golden age of the past. I see as good and positive trends the exact things that MAGA people hate: increasing diversity, greater political, social and economic power for women and people of color, increasing openness to alternatives to rigid gender boundaries and the celebration of all kinds of sexual orientations. I applaud marriage equality and support the Black Lives Matter movement. 

However, even if the MAGA crowd is wrong about what ails our society and who or what is responsible, they are on to something when they express anxiety about the decline of America. Extreme inequality in wealth, political power, and social opportunities are fundamentally distorting and destroying our society. A very small class of people benefit hugely, others benefit slightly and the vast majority find themselves living on the edge with little voice and less influence. 

The COVID pandemic did not cause any of this, but it exacerbates all the existing problems, continues tiny piece by tiny piece to help tear away at the fabric of society. The pandemic which has killed less than one percent of our population has nonetheless shredded our health care system, scratches at our supply lines, and creates a huge new class of disabled persons, and is far from over in terms of its impacts, regardless of our intentions to just "live with it." 

The United States Postal Service as a Symbol of the Nation

In 1985 scientist and science fiction writer David Brin published a post-apocalyptic novel entitled The Postman. If you are not a reader of science fiction you might be more likely to remember the movie directed and starred in by Kevin Costner in 1997. During the early weeks of the pandemic shutdown back in April, when Trump first started making noises about undermining the U. S. Postal Service, I decided to re-read the book. 

The key idea of The Postman is that the United States Postal Service is more than simply a service to deliver mail and packages, it is a powerful symbol of our united nation. So much so that in a fragmented post-apocalyptic world,  men wearing the uniform of the USPS and carrying mail from community to community can be enough to jump start the economic, social and political unification of a country. 

The U. S. Postal Service provides enormous practical benefit to Americans regardless of their economic or social standing. In fact the lower your economic and social status is the more you may benefit from the USPS. Every address and community, no matter how small or rural must be served by the USPS.  If you don't get home delivery and can't afford a post office box you can still get your mail general delivery at your local post office. We may not be big senders of cards and letters in this age of digital communications, but we still do business by mail, pay bills by mail, get checks by mail, get medications by mail. 

However, the real point here is that far above and beyond the practical benefits of the U. S. Postal Service is the symbolic role it plays in our sense of all being citizens in one nation.  There are several examples that highlight this. One is the degree to which Americans have mythologized the Pony Express, a service that lasted a mere 18 months (April 3, 1860, to October 24, 1861), that tied the eastern United States to the relatively new state of California.  For something that lasted such a very short time, the Pony Express lives in the American psyche as the epitome of nationhood - physically linking states together across a wilderness. Another is the beloved Christmas movie Miracle on 34th Street in which the U. S. Postal Service delivers bags and bags of mail addressed to Santa Claus to Kris Kringle in the court room. If the mighty U. S. Postal service, an official government agency  could recognize Kris Kringle as Santa Claus, then that was enough for the judge. 

All those people salivating with dollar signs in their eyes, over the prospect of carving up the business of the Post Office and distributing it to for-profit corporations, miss this very important fact about the U. S. Postal Service. It is far more than a set of services, it is part of the fabric of America, and it is a symbol of our national unity. 

If we lose the United States Postal Service we lose our national soul. 

Family not Business

Republicans and conservatives are always talking about how we need to run our country like a business; they also talk a lot about family values but never link the two together.

We would be far better served if we decided to run our country like a family - a good family not a dysfunctional one. Good families put their frailest and most vulnerable members first, making them a priority. Families sacrifice for their children and their elderly, giving their time, energy and resources to those who can least go out into the economy and world and fend for themselves. The adults in good families know they are protecting the future -- of themselves, their families, and society -- when they put their children first, and that they are acknowledging the sacrifices of their parents when they put their elderly first.  Good families do not abandon or kill their children and elderly when money gets tight, they look for new resources, a second job, government assistance, even illegal sources of income (not condoning the latter, just observing).

Businesses on the other hand, when money gets tight, put stockholders and top executives first and throw away the most vulnerable of their workers, forcing retirement on older workers, laying off workers, abandoning the very people who make the business work.

Our present government leadership (both Houses of Congress and the Presidency) are taking a business rather than a family approach to running the country, cutting off the vulnerable (cutting programs), rather than expanding resources (returning taxes to previous levels before the huge tax cut giveaway of 2018):

House GOP plan would cut Medicare, Medicaid to balance budget https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/house-gop-plan-would-cut-medicare-medicaid-to-balance-budget/ar-AAySglD?li=BBnb7Kz

This Congress has already cut the programs that care for children (food stamps, welfare, education, and many others), and now it's taking aim at our elderly. All to give those who already have enormous resources, more than they could possibly spend in their lifetime, even more. Let's start thinking of our society as a family and not a business.

Zombie America - Installment 7

It appears that economists have finally glommed on to something that sociologists have been talking about for 30 years: the middle class is disappearing and there is a great divide between haves and have-nots in America. 

MIT economist Peter Temin is getting rave reviews for his new book The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy. While Temin certainly has some updated data, the phenomenon he is describing- the hollowing out of the American middle class and the increasing divide between affluent and those scraping by - has been in progress for decades at least since the deindustrialization of American began in earnest in the late 1970's. Sociologist Katherine Newman aptly described the early stages of the decline of the middle class in Falling From Grace: Downward Mobility in the Age of Affluence in the 1980's.

Many social scientists, policy makers, and politicians have noted the decline of the "rust belt," but blithely assumed that new industries (especially in high tech fields) would replace the older manufacturing centers. They offered up condolences to industrial communities devasted by the closing of steel mills, automobile factories, and coal mines, but have done little of substance to change the decline of those communities.  The old economy workers who cannot be retrained for the new economy are members of the "unnecessariate" - disposable people who do not figure as workers in the new economy but become the fodder for the careers of law enforcement, prison guards, social workers, doctors, and therapists.  It is not terribly surprising that so many of them voted for the one politician that appeared to care about them, speak to them directly, and tell them they were worth something.

The cavalier abandonment of so many small cities and towns in America, who have not made the transition to the new economy is a major indicator of the rot in our society.  However, the real problem is that the new economy itself is divisive and destructive to American society.

Seattle with its booming tech/internet economy is an excellent example of how economic success contributes to the increasing divide in American society. Not all of the jobs of the new economy are "good" jobs - lots of lower paid, dead end warehouse and service sector jobs come out of the same economic developments that provide high paying tech jobs. Moreover, influxes of higher paying jobs can push up housing costs, tax rates, strain transportation, and other public services, increasing the cost of living on those who do not have the "good" jobs.  Nestor Ramos, a Boston Globe reporter describes the benefits and pitfalls of a booming high tech economy. An article intended as a cautionary tale to those communities that might be bidding for a new Amazon headquarters.

May We Remember

Like many Americans the news of the deaths of two black men in Louisiana and Minnesota, and of the police officers in Texas shook me to the core. Feelings of sadness, anxiety, fear, and from those anger, flooded me for several days. Then, like many Americans, ordinary everyday routine reclaimed my life, the knots in my stomach along with the anxiety, fear and anger ebbed. It’s not that I (we) forgot what happened, but I (we) could turn away from the immediacy and relax.

Lying in bed last night awake in the dark early morning hours, it finally occurred to me that this ability of most Americans to push these issues out of the forefront of our lives is part of the problem. Because the people most directly concerned – African Americans (especially young black men) and uniformed law enforcement – do not have this luxury.  Sadness, anxiety, fear and anger are embedded in their daily lives in way that the rest of us cannot really understand.  

However, the experiences of African Americans and uniformed law enforcement while similar in some ways are not identical.  

Sociologists use the term “master status” to encompass things those things in our lives that are central to our definition of self and our identity.  Both being “African American” and a “law enforcement officer” are important master statuses, central to the personal identity and sense of self of most of the individuals who can claim those statuses. The difference is that being “African American” is an ascribed status, one conferred at birth by having parents/grandparents with African ancestry, one imposed by society regardless of one’s own wishes, and impossible to exit except by death.  Being a “law enforcement officer” is an achieved status, obtained by study  and practice, consciously chosen as an occupation by an adult over other possible occupations; while far more central to a person’s identity than “working in a factory” or “flipping burgers,” achieved statuses such as law enforcement officer can be exited by choice resignation and retirement, or can be forced upon one by disability or death. Exiting the status of law enforcement by death is the exception rather than the rule. Moreover, law enforcement officers can and do take vacations from their status – they can take their family to Disney World and not be perceived by anyone else as a law enforcement officer.  There is no vacation from being African American.

So the thought came to me as I lay in the dark, that it is important for the rest of us – who are neither African American nor law enforcement – to remember the intensity of the fear, the anxiety, the anger and to remember that while we can let it go and get on with our lives, others must continue to deal with those destructive, life-corroding feelings every day. The goal is not to make us all live in fear and anger, but to use our memory to assist in building a society in which no one need feel that way every day. 

Zombie America - Installment 6

Four years ago, while thinking about conditions in the U.S., the phrase "zombie America" popped into my head. What is a zombie? The original use of the word is for a dead body, devoid of real life and soul, that is reanimated and caused to walk around by witchcraft or dark magic. In the ever popular science fiction of recent years, the concept of zombie has evolved to mean a person who has as the result of infection or exposure to unspecified substances been robbed of their humanity - of their personality, intelligence, soul and will - and transformed to a monster that kills and feeds on uninfected humans (especially their brains). Those that are not killed are also infected and become zombies themselves.

Zombies are variously referred to as the "undead" and the "walking dead," phrases that I think can be applied to American economy, politics and society at large. The nation is still lurching and weaving about, animated but no longer truly alive, dead (or dying) but because still animated, so that many observers still imagine it to have life. 

New evidence that American society is "walking dead" is constantly presenting itself. Through out the month of August 2015 stories about teacher shortages have popped up almost daily as many states struggle to put teachers in front of classes with the beginning of a new school year (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/us/teacher-shortages-spur-a-nationwide-hiring-scramble-credentials-optional.html ). Thousands of veteran teachers are leaving the classroom every year and no where near enough new teachers are coming up through the pipeline to replace them.  Veteran teachers are deserting the profession due to low pay, lack of classroom resources, schools obsessions with testing, proliferation of regulations and paper work, and lack of real instruction time in the classroom.  This is just one of the ways in which the American educational system is being hollowed out. 

The former center of automotive manufacturing in America in Western Michigan has become the canary in the coal mine for the rest of American society.  Flint, Michigan has recently (December 14, 2015) declared a formal state of emergency as the result of a wholly man-made disaster: the dramatic increase in lead in the cities water supply. Substantially increased levels of lead are showing up in blood tests of the cities children.  The increase in lead poisoning came when the city switched to the Flint River as a water source. Lead exposure in children is irreversible and impacts intelligence and general mental functioning, creating long term educational issues for communities with declining educational resources, not to mention the human tragedy involved. 

Inequality, Global Warming and the Western Drought

It seems to me highly likely that the capitalist elite, the wealthy owners and controllers of large energy corporations such as the oil companies and people like the Koch brothers know full-well that global warming is real, that it is propelled by human carbon emissions, and its negative consequences like heat extremes, drought, rising oceans and severe weather extremes are real as well.  These are intelligent people, they have to be to manage their huge corporate and financial empires. They are certainly at least as intelligent as U.S. military leaders who have been convinced for years that the most significant security problem facing the U.S. in the long term is climate change.

A report released by the Pentagon in 2014 indicated that "Department of Defense has dramatically shifted its views towards climate change, and has already begun to treat the phenomenon as a significant threat to national security. Climate change, the Pentagon writes, requires immediate action on the part of the U.S. Military." http://www.newsweek.com/pentagon-report-us-military-considers-climate-change-immediate-threat-could-277155.

After all the Koch brothers were one of several funders of Berkeley physicist Richard Muller's Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project. Muller initially a climate skeptic began the project expecting to debunk climate science and instead came away a convert, declaring publicly that the climate science data not only showed that the earth had warmed and was continuing to warm for the foreseeable future, but that the only reasonable explanation for the warming was human carbon dioxide emissions. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?_r=0 By providing funding for Muller's research the Koch brothers obviously considered him a scientist with a good reputation whose work would be respected.

However, unlike the military the wealthy leadership of the fossil fuel energy industry are publicly doubling down on climate change denial, and investing huge amounts of money into a efforts to convince the American public that global warming is a hoax; all while raking in enormous profits from the fossil fuel economy.

The most logical explanation it seemed to me was that the wealthy whole-heartedly believed that their wealth would exempt them from any consequences of climate change. Their approach seemed to be scrounge every bit of profit from the sinking ship and then abandon it and retreat to some protected, gated, isolated community cushioned by their wealth, while the rest of humanity dealt with the problems created.

So I felt vindicated to discover that this kind of thinking about environmental crises does in fact exist among the wealthy.  From yesterday's Washington Post an article datelined Rancho Santa Fe, California quotes from wealthy residents (owners of $30+ million dollar estates) that their wealth exempts them from water rationing. The basic sentiment expressed by some of the wealthy in Rancho Santa Fe which is the only community in its region to increase water usage while other communities are cutting back, is that if we can afford to pay for it we should have it, because the "should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful." (http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/rich-californians-balk-at-limits-%E2%80%98we%E2%80%99re-not-all-equal-when-it-comes-to-water%E2%80%99/ar-BBl6vyY) Yes, it is more important for the wealthy to have green lawns than it is for the farmers to have enough water for their crops. The economy of the state, the solvency of the farmers, the jobs of the region, even the cost of food for the rest of the country is not as important as green lawns. 

confessions of a former optimist

I have always been an optimist. Or perhaps I should say I was always an optimist until the last few years. This has little or nothing to do with my personal life experiences. I maintained an optimistic outlook during unemployment, poverty, cancer, divorce, and many other personal trials, and recent years have been kind to my husband and I in many ways. 

Moreover, my optimism  was not based on ignorance of the worlds problems and issues. My parents brought me up to be highly aware of the dire circumstance of poverty, war, brutality, pain and suffering that others in the world suffered. I was brought up to care about and fight for equality, freedom, and opportunity for others. I was a realist optimist. 

I can remember reading Linda Goodman's Sun Signs in high school and she had this very apt description of Aquarius that fit me to a "T": 

"Lots of people like rainbows. Children make wishes on them, artists paint them, dreamers chase them, but the Aquarian is ahead of everybody. He lives on one. What’s more, he’s taken it apart and examined it, piece by piece, color by color, and he still believes in it. It isn’t easy to believe in something after you know what it’s really like, but the Aquarian is essentially a realist, even though his address is tomorrow, with a wild-blue-yonder zip code." 
Goodman, Linda (2011-02-23). Linda Goodman's Sun Signs: Aquarius (Linda Goodman's Sun Signs Set) (Kindle Locations 175-178). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition. 

Later few years later in college I read Yevegeny Yevtushenko's A Precocious Autobiography  and identified strongly with this passage: 

"My optimism which had been all pink, now had all the colours of the spectrum in it, including black, this is what made it valid and genuine." 

I made my career in sociology a discipline focused on understanding the realities of social life; and I focused on topics of inequality (wealth and poverty), economic and political power (its uses and misuses), and environmental problems. I became more and more versed in what was wrong with human societies, and still I retained optimism that if people properly understood the sources of those problems they could struggle together to make a better world. 

But some where in the past decade, perhaps just the past five years I lost my way. I have come to believe that many of the problems the world is facing can not be fixed, at least not in a way that allows human societies to move forward from where we are now. The inequalities have become so huge, the gaps in power so large, and the many of the environmental problems irreversible without immediate, dramatic reversals in energy, transportation, and food policies that I know will not happen because of those overwhelming inequalities and power differences. 

It feels to me on a daily basis as if those in control of the multinational corporations and the worlds' wealth are deliberately driving humanity towards the edge of destruction, because they believe that there is more profit and more power in creating impoverished and powerless masses, and that the accumulation of vast wealth will some how exempt them from the disasters to come....and who knows, enormous wealth provides a lot of cushion against catastrophe so perhaps they are right. Whether they are right or wrong they are acting as if they, and their children and grandchildren will be immune. 

I do not believe humans are headed to extinction - even as we drive many other species to extinction - but I do believe that we are headed to a lot of hunger, disease and death, and the break down of much of modern industrial society.  

I also believe that within that disaster lies the possibility for vibrant, localized, lower tech, sustainable communities to come out from the other side of the disaster - perhaps many decades on the other side. I also believe that there are people around the world who are doing enormously good things to build social capital, make connections, create local food webs, advance new forms of spirituality  and environmental awareness, and to create support networks that may be the tenuous bridges that we will need to reach that sustainable future on the other side of disaster. 

I know some of those people doing good work and dreaming good dreams. Most of them are far away from me and I only have contact with them through Facebook. It is this lack of direct connection that I think has given birth to my despair.  I want to be part of the bridge building, but no longer know how to make the connections.  I no longer feel it in my soul the way I once did. I feel weighted down by the presence of so many whose response to the uncertainty and fear that they feel in their bones is to cling to a mythical past that never existed and demand that nothing change or that changes should be to a more restrictive, narrower, meaner, less inclusive future. 

Why the Rich Hate Obama

This morning I ran across an article "The Best Worst President Ever" by Mark Morford in SF Gate.  Morford observes a wealthy beneficiary of the economy under Obama proclaim Obama the "worst president ever." Morford then proceeds to give a litany of economic facts that provide ample evidence that this wealthy individual is almost certainly benefiting greatly from the economy during Obama's presidency. In the end Morford just laughs, and shakes his head at the "bizarre lament" of these crazy rich bastards. His only explanation is simple racism - rich white guys can't stand it that a black guy could actually run the country, so they'll simply deny that he has done so. 

I think that Morford and almost all the other defenders of the Obama presidency are missing something truly important, something that the wealthy feel in their bones, even though few of them can allow themselves to recognize it consciously. There has been a seismic shift in this country during the Obama presidency, one that has nothing at all to do with Obama's actions as president, but everything to do with what a black man in office means to American people. It is not what Obama has done, but what Obama has inspired (including fear) that makes him "the worst president ever." 

The seismic shift to which I refer is the cosmic decline in the legitimacy of the existing American social system, in all its economic, political and social dimensions, in the minds of Americans. The fact of an Obama presidency, the presidency of a Harvard educated, progressive black man of mixed racial and cultural heritage is the catalyst that turned the already existing cultural divergence of America into a chasm of Grand Canyon proportions. It is not about what Obama has done or will do, it is all about who he is and what he represents to the various factions in America. 

Obama of course represents quite different things to those on the left and those on the right. For those on the left, Obama's presidency offers hope (yes that "hopey changy thing") that real change and reform can happen. If a black man can get elected in America, than perhaps real, progressive economic reforms are possible too. By raising expectations, Obama's presidency undermines the legitimacy of a Congress stalled in the morass of partisan bickering, and of a corrupt and massively unequal economy.  Decades ago historical research on revolutions suggested that the greatest danger for revolt occurred not when conditions were the worst in a society, but when small improvements gave people hope, but change did not come quickly enough to satisfy those hopes. 

Obama's presidency has done something that nothing before has been able to do: the fact of a black man in the highest office in the land has led masses of ordinary conservatives to question the legitimacy of government and law enforcement. Suddenly "law and order" conservatives are on the side of armed vigilantes protecting a law-breaking rancher (Bundy) in Nevada, who casually aim weapons at local, state and federal law enforcement officials. 

The most class conscious, educated members of the rich are fully aware of the disintegrating legitimacy of capitalism and the vastly unequal distribution of wealth and income in this country. A tiny handful of these economic elite think that it is possible to re-establish legitimacy as was done during the Great Depression by Roosevelt. Warren Buffet speaks openly and often about the need to reform the tax system to address rising inequality. Bill and Melinda Gates focus on pouring their wealth into reforming education with a goal of reducing inequality. Far more common however, is the headlong rush to accumulate more and more, claiming the moral superiority of capitalism (or getting toadying academic economists to do it for them), and blaming Obama for the rising numbers of Americans who seriously question the both  legitimacy of extreme inequality and capitalism. 

Their hatred of Obama is based not on anything that he as actually done to effect inequality, because in point of fact, Obama's actual policies and actions have fueled the growth of wealth and inequality.  Rather it is based on the fact that an Obama presidency has fueled more and more open disaffection with the existing order of things, and shaken the legitimacy of both government and economy. Their hatred is greater because they have more to lose. 

Zombie America - Installment 5 UPDATED!

America, the zombie nation that ONLY appears to be alive.  

Excellent article about how economic reality on the ground of everyday life for most Americans contradicts the economic fantasies theory of economic and political elites who argue for more tax cuts for "job creators," also known as voodoo "trickle down" economics.

See succinct article in Buzzflash  http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/trickle-down-economics-and-climate-deniers-face-an-insurmountable-challenge-reality

This is not debatable data: it is reality, like seeing rain gushing from the sky as proof that the sun is not shining. You can spin this reality, as The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times - among other pro-Wall Street media - do but you cannot deny the facts of what is occurring. The US has two economies: a soaring stock market and wealth for the plutocracy, and a declining standard of living, lower pay, increasing debt and long-term joblessness for the rest of the United States.

This disparate reality breeds anxiety and fear in the ordinary person, who recognizes the inherent instability of their lives, families and communities, but doesn't fully understand the source of that instability. 

Media messages, from advertising to pundits to pulpits, send a message that nothing is wrong with the basic system of industrial capitalism, it is merely the presence of some out-group - socialists, immigrants (legal and illegal), "takers" (translate: "people different from me"), non-Christians (especially Muslims), and the poor in general - who need to be eliminated, controlled, sent home, or simply disenfranchised so that capitalism can get back to doing what it was designed to do.  The problem however, is that capitalism was always designed to increase capital. It was never designed to create jobs or build communities. 

--
Update: June 2014

An excellent AlterNet article http://www.alternet.org/economy/overwhelming-evidence-half-america-or-near-poverty provides links to sound research and statistical data that show that half of all Americans - yes, HALF! - meet the criteria for being "low income;" almost half of American's have zero (zilch) wealth; half of Americans lack the resources to survive even three months without income. 

How Increases in Income Inequality Undermine Social Security

I spent several hours today working on a detailed example for my Inequality class, and thought that I would share it: 

Social Security retirement benefits are one of the most important things that prevents millions of elderly Americans from being poor.  Social security has been one of the most successful and most popular government programs in the past 80 years.
As the baby boom generation ages and reaches retirement age (which began in 2011) and as the size of the younger generation of workers becomes smaller, people begin worrying about the solvency of the social security program. The discussion often pits the interests of young people against the interests of the elderly - totally unnecessarily. 
It turns out that the biggest problem facing Social Security is NOT the disparity between the size of the elderly group and the size of the younger working group, the REAL problem with Social Security has been the increasing disparity in income between low paid workers and higher paid workers.  As wages for MOST workers have stagnated and declined in value while wages for a very tiny (about 10 percent of workers) have increased hugely  this has dramatically reduced the amount of social security taxes that would have been paid into the system.

Here’s how it works.  In 2014 all workers who make any income up to $117,000 must pay social security tax on the full amount of their income.  But a worker that makes $500,000 a year (a many upper middle class executives, bankers, lawyers, doctors, etc. do) only pays Social Security taxes on the first $117,000 and pay nothing at all (in Social Security ) on the other $383,000 that they make.  So let’s imagine two different business A and B, where A has low inequality, with higher pay for all workers, and less difference between lowest paid and CEO, and B has high inequality, with lower pay for all workers and large differences between lowest paid and CEO. 

Business A with Low Income Inequality, Ratio of Lowest Paid to Highest Paid is  17:1
Category of worker	Number of persons at level	Salary Range	Average Salary	Total Salary Paid by Business	Total subject to Social Security Tax	Total Social Security Tax Paid
CEO	1	$530,400	-	$530,400	$117,000	$14,508
Upper Management	10	$120,000 to $490,000	$214,000	$2,140,000	$1,170,000	$145,080
All other workers	5500	$31,200* to $115,000	$41,000	$225,500,000	$225,500,000**	$27,962,000
			Total Salary Paid	$228,170,400	Total Social Security Taxes Paid	$28,121,588

*lowest hourly wage paid $16.00 an hour times 40 hours per week
**all of this income is subject to Social Security Tax because all workers make less than $117,000.

Business B with HIGH Income Inequality, Ratio of Lowest Paid to Highest Paid is  300:1
Category of worker	Number of persons at level	Salary Range	Average Salary	Total Salary Paid by Business	Total subject to Social Security Tax	Total Social Security Tax Paid
CEO	1	$4,212,000	-	$4,212,000	$117,000	$14,508
CFO, COO	2	$2,210,000 and $3,116,000	-	$5,326,000	$234,000	$29,016
Upper Management	8	$118,000 to $643,000	$302,000	$2,416,000	$936,000	$116,064
All other workers	5500	$14,040* to $100,000	$34,000	$187,000,000	$187,000,000**	$23,188,000
			Total Salary Paid	$198,954 ,000	Total Social Security Taxes Paid	$23,347,588

*lowest hourly wage paid $7.20 an hour times 37.5 hours per week.
**all of this income is subject to Social Security Tax because all workers make less than $117,000.

In the first business the total compensation of the top 11 workers is $2,670,400, and the total Social Security Tax paid is $159,588.
In the second business the total compensation of the top 11 workers is $ 11,954,000,but the total Social Security Tax paid is still just $159,588 because only the first $117,000 is taxed.  Because workers paid less than $117,000 are paid less overall (lowest pay of company B is less than half that of Company A), the total Social Security taxes paid are lower.

The pattern found in Company A was typical in the 1960's in the U.S. albeit at lower dollar figures. Today's business pattern is much more like Company B. The result of thousands of businesses holding down income for the majority of workers while increasing the disparity of pay between those at the top and at the bottom, has had the overall impact of reducing the percentage of total salaries/wages that are subject to social security taxes. 

Businesses have multiple motivations to increase inequality in this way, the decrease total salary wage costs and decrease their share of Social Security taxes as well. The top workers are motivated because their additional income is not subject to Social Security taxes, and with the concurrent decline in upper bracket income taxes since the 1970's there is little income tax disincentive for additional income beyond the bottom of the highest bracket. In 2014 the highest income bracket begins at $ 406,751 for an individual and $457,601 for a married couple. So whether one's income is $500,000 or 5,00,000 the tax percentage is the same.  

Alternatives to "Zombie America"

I was asked to come up with some additional material for the chapter of a textbook that I've been writing. The chapter is for an introductory sociology textbook and concerns the relationship between societies and their environments. This is something of a first in sociology; up until now the environment has been either ignored or given a few sections under some other topic (such as population or social change).
Sociology, unlike it's sister discipline anthropology, has not until recently paid much attention to how the environment affects culture and society.

I was so pessimistic in my last post, that I wanted to provide a little balance, particularly because I found the books I read for this additional material so interesting (list of references at bottom of post).  So here is the additional material written over the past week:

Where does this leave us? On the one hand, as long as our world economies are organized as they currently are failure to grow will have devastating economic and social consequences; on the other hand industrialization and economic growth have brought us to the point where the human ecological footprint has exceeded the carrying capacity of the earth. Are we doomed to either slide into economic recession with increasing unemployment and poverty while we protect the environment, or to prosper economically while we destroy our environment? No, we are not so doomed. The choice between economic growth and environmental sustainability is a false dichotomy. 

A growing number of environmentally aware economists (Daley and Farley 2003, Dietz and O’Neill 2013, Heinberg 2011) point out a crucial flaw in the economic growth versus environmental sustainability choice. That flaw is that environmental problems such as global warming, food and water scarcity, and the depletion of non-renewable resources like oil are fundamental roadblocks to economic growth. If human societies do not address the environmental problems we will have no choice at all, economic growth will grind to a halt because of intrinsic limits imposed by the natural environment. 

This is not a new idea; it was first systematically put forth in the classic The Limits to Growth a research study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists commissioned by the Club of Rome in 1972 (Meadows, Rander and Meadows 2004).  The conclusions of this study have been reinforced by careful analysis of the actual environmental and economic trends of the intervening forty years (Daley and Farley 2003, Dietz and O’Neill 2013, Heinberg 2011, Meadows, Randers and Meadows 2004). If the world’s nations persist in pursuing the goal of economic growth, the result will be both environmental destruction and the failure of economic growth. Once environmental limits bring economic growth to a halt, the economic system would most likely crash in catastrophic fashion (Heinberg 2011). 

This is not necessarily the doomsday scenario it might seem at first. Most people are “pro-” economic growth because they assume that prosperity and economic well-being are dependent upon economic growth. Using detailed social and economic data environmentally savvy economists have demonstrated that economic growth is not necessarily equated with economic prosperity and security, and that the increasing size of economies undermines the prosperity of the average person (Daley and Farley 2003, Dietz and O’Neill 2013, Heinberg 2011). 

Economic growth is a matter of size, of quantity not quality and is generally measured by the expansion of the gross domestic product of a nation (GDP).  Growth is about more but not always about better. GDP increases when we drill and sell more oil, but it also increases when we spend millions of dollars on cleaning up oil spills. If the number of people smoking decreases and sales of cigarettes fall then GDP goes down, while if the number of cancer cases increases and we spend more money as a society treating cancer patients than GDP goes up.

Measures of economic growth also pay no attention to how wealth and income are distributed (Heinberg 2011). Between 1975 and 2012 the Gross Domestic Product of the United States increased nearly nine times (from 1.8 trillion to 15.7 trillion). During that same period the amount of income and wealth inequality increased with the gap between the top wealthiest individuals and everyone else growing substantially. Median wages and household incomes in the United States stagnated and fell – even as corporate profits and gross domestic product rose (Packer 2013). There were other qualitative declines in standards of living in the United States that were not included in measures of economic growth: the percent of the workforce holding part-time and temporary jobs increased, as the percent receiving health care, sick leave, retirement and other benefits declined (Packer 2013). The conclusion: economic growth has not translated into economic prosperity or security for increasing numbers of people both in the United States and elsewhere. 

There is an alternative one that promises both economic prosperity and security and environmental sustainability. The alternative is the steady-state economy which maintains a stable level of resource consumption and a stable population, while providing sufficient resources for the sustenance and satisfaction of people. The goal of a steady-state economy is improving quality of life within ecological limits. 

What would a steady-state economy look like? The first defining characteristic of a steady-state economy is environmental sustainability. There would be strict limits on the use of materials and energy, and on the production of waste materials (Heinberg 2011). Built environments – roads, bridges, housing, factories – could not expand into new land; existing agricultural and natural lands (whether forests or deserts) would be protected from encroachment. Environmental sustainability includes an overall reduction in the scale of economies with a shift from far-flung global supply lines to localized production and exchange of both food and manufactured goods (Dietz and O’Neill 2013). Stabilization of world population numbers would be an essential element of environmental sustainability (Assadourian and Prugh 2013). In a steady-state economy humans create sustainable environments in which natural ecosystems and human development are blended to design healthy communities, economies, and ecosystems over the long term. 

The second defining characteristic of a steady-state economy is fair and equitable distribution of resources: food, housing, employment, health care, transportation, leisure time, educational opportunity and economic security (Daley and Farley 2003). Everyone would have access to meaningful jobs and full employment would be the norm (Dietz and O’Neill 2013). Fair distribution of resources would apply within and across societies and across generations (McDonough and Braungart 2013). The result is a world in which everyone is prosperous and extremes of wealth and poverty are muted. 

A steady-state economy is one in which the quality of life is measurably enhanced. People are healthier with fewer of the diseases of poverty (cholera, dysentery) and those of affluence (obesity, heart disease). They work less, have more leisure with time for creativity and hobbies, time to spend with family and engaged in their local community (Heinberg 2011, Dietz and O’Neill 2013). 

How is a steady-state economy achieved? The title of this section of your text suggests that the alternative to “growth” is “restraint,” but restraint is not how one completely transforms the world’s economies to avoid environmental and economic disaster. The project of creating steady-state, environmentally sustainable before environmental problems such as global warming and resource depletion become irreversible requires a mobilization effort similar to the one that helped the United States ready for war in 1942 (Assadourian and Prugh 2013). Major transformation of economic, political and social institutions and a substantive shift in individual and societal values is required. 

There will remain a role for markets in a steady-state economy, but markets must be balanced by the state and civil society (Dietz and O’Neill). The current ruler for market success is profit alone, which must be replaced by a triple metric in which people and the planet are placed in line ahead of profit (McDonough and Braungart 2013). New priorities that focus on long term outcomes measured in terms of sustainability, equity, employment and quality of life, rather than simply profit will have to be set for economies, and only governments can do that (Daley and Farley 2003, Heinberg 2011). But governments can only set new priorities if the people who elect and support them develop new, sustainable rather than growth oriented values. 

How do you, the student, meet this challenge?  The first thing is education. Understand why growth is problematic not only for a sustainable environment, but also for a sustainable society and human quality of life. Learn what it takes for a sustainable environment and a steady-state economy.  A good place to start is the books such as those cited in this section including: Enough is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources by Robert Dietz and Daniel W. O’Neill (2013); The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality by Richard Heinberg (2011); State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible? organized by Erik Assadourian and Tom Prugh for World Watch (2013); and The UpCycle: Beyond Sustainability – Designing for Abundance by William McDonough and Michael Braungart (2013). 

Finally it is important to use your knowledge by becoming involved with local and national organizations that promote change. Every geographic locality has a variety of local groups that concern themselves with sustainable development. The numbers are so great and the types of organizations so varied that one cannot even begin to list them.  You can begin by searching on the internet for both local and national groups using search terms like: sustainable communities, Transition, permaculture, renewable energy, and appropriate technology (Heinberg 2011). You can also talk to others around you—fellow students, instructors, neighbors, local government leaders—to find people who share concerns about the environment and the need for sustainable development.

References:

Assadourian, Erik and Tom Prugh, Project Directors. 2013. State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible? Washington, DC: Island Press. 

Daley, Herman and Joshua Farley. 2003. Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications. Washington, DC: Island Press. 

Dietz, Robert and Daniel W. O’Neill. 2013. Enough is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers. 

Heinberg, Richard. 2011. The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality. Gabriola Island, BC, Canada: New Society Publishers. 

McDonough, William and Michael Braungart. 2013. The Upcycle: Beyond Sustainability – Designing for Abundance. New York, NY: North Point Press, Division of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 

Meadows, Donella, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows. 2004. Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company. 

Packer, George., 2013. The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America. London, England: Farrar, Staus and Giroux.

Zombie America - installment 2

(Second in a series)

America is in decline. The signs are all around us.  These are the words with which I began this series, but I was wrong - it isn't just America, its the entire advanced industrialized world.

Advanced capitalist industrial societies are all zombies - we all died some time ago, we just didn't notice we'd become the walking dead.

The first indicator of this decline that I talked about in the first installment is the desertion of communities, first small towns, and now urban neighborhoods and cities.  All my examples were from the United States, because until today, I was unaware that the exact same trend is occurring in Europe.

Yesterday, I began reading a fascinating, almost lyrically written, work of non-fiction The Coming Population Crash And Our Planet's Surprising Future by Fred Pearce (Beacon Press 2010). There on page 87, at the beginning of chapter 10, were these words:

"Even at eight p.m. on a sunny summer's evening, the roads were empty in Chemnitz [Germany], an industrial center known for forty years as Karl-Marx-Stadt. The tiny summer houses on suburban allotments were deserted. I have seen the derelict, rust belt landscapes of former industrial towns before--not least in England, on trains from Sheffield to Doncaster or Birmingham to Wolverhampton.But this world seemed drained of people. In Bavaria, I had asked if anyone ever went to Dresden or beyond. Most shuddered at the idea. I could have been asking about Chernobyl. Of course there were people about, but far fewer than there once were."

Pearce goes on to give details of the abandonment of the industries, towns and cities of the eastern portions of Germany. In the eastern town of Hoyerswerda the main municipal activity is tearing down buildings and "giving street after street "back to nature;" a description that readily fits the conditions of Detroit in the U.S. as well.

The film below examines the dismantling of Detroit:

The second indicator that America is a zombie society, is the dismantling of basic public amenities such as roads, water systems, sewer systems that were once assumed to be part of modern community life. 

I live in one of the few areas of America that never achieved those things.  In the coal fields of eastern Kentucky where I live, municipal water systems have never reached more than 30 percent of the residents of this region. Municipal sewage service reaches only about 20 percent. The last significant expansion of water and sewer services in my county was 10 years ago (when my neighborhood got "city" water). Sewer was suppose to follow that within a few years, but never did. As I read reports about the retrenchment of such services in more urban communities, I begin to realize that sewer probably never is coming to my neighborhood.

Paved roads are being dismantled in America. Across the nation, smaller municipalities are finding that they can no longer afford the costs for the petroleum based components of paved roads.

In a Wall Street Journal article, "Roads to Ruin: Towns Rip Up the Pavement: Asphalt Is Replaced By Cheaper Gravel; 'Back to Stone Age'" reporter By Lauren Etter describes the process in widening phenomenon:

"Paved roads, historical emblems of American achievement, are being torn up across rural America and replaced with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue. State money for local roads was cut in many places amid budget shortfalls.

The heavy machines at work in Jamestown, N.D., are grinding the asphalt off road beds, grading the bed and packing the material back down to create a new road surface.

In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as "poor man's pavement." Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel."

Roads aren't the only modern amenity to take a hit in recent years. In Jefferson County, Alabama malfeasance, fraud, construction problems, rampant political corruption and a series of debt and derivative deals that went sour have resulted in the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. Soaring costs have meant soaring rates for water and sewer, that the poor of Jefferson County cannot pay. The poor of Jefferson County have found themselves cut off from municipal water and make due with bottled water for drinking and bathing, and setting up portable toilets in their yards in place of sewer service. That the poor are doing with less is nothing new in America. The most fascinating element of the story of Jefferson County, is that the middle class and affluent in Jefferson Counties suburban communities are responding to the high rates for water and sewer by installing individual septic systems. ("Third world in the U.S." BBC World, 14 December 2011 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16172522

When affluent suburban communities start moving backwards, from municipal sewage service to private septic systems (and all the environmental problems those pose), something is very, very wrong in America. Something vital has died.

This morning I read a comment following an Internet news article by some anonymous reader of libertarian persuasion, who argued that there would be no loss of services like police, fire, and rescue workers, when (not if) libertarians were successful in cutting federal taxes and the size of federal government. This clueless commenter suggested that people would willingly start paying higher local governments taxes to provide all those services. As someone who has made a life study of community sociology, I know that tax austerity has its roots in local governments, and that the pressures for tax cuts, and the service cuts those tax losses make necessary are far more acute at the community and county level than at the federal level.

When towns are tearing up roads and cutting off water and sewer lines due to low tax mentality, how would communities ever compensate for the loss of federal funds for necessary services (like police, fire, rescue)?

an unholy alliance

Today the Chronicle of Higher Education posted an interesting story Is "Wal-Mart U." a Good Bargain for Students?, about a deal made between the Walmart corporation and American Public University, a for-profit institution that specializes in on-line instruction.

Here are some excerpts from the story:

A closer look at the deal announced this month shows how American Public slashed its prices and adapted its curriculum to snare a corporate client that could transform its business. It also raises one basic question: Is this a good bargain for students?

Adult-learning leaders praise Wal-Mart, the nation's largest private employer, for investing in education. But some of those same experts wonder how low-paid workers will be able to afford the cost of a degree from the private Web-based university the company selected as a partner, and why Wal-Mart chose American Public when community-college options might be cheaper. They also question how easily workers will be able to transfer APU credits to other colleges, given that the university plans to count significant amounts of Wal-Mart job training and experience as academic credit toward its degrees.

For example, cashiers with one year's experience could get six credits for an American Public class called "Customer Relations," provided they received an "on target" or "above target" on their last performance evaluation, said Deisha Galberth, a Wal-Mart spokeswoman. A department manager's training and experience could be worth 24 credit hours toward courses like retail ethics, organizational fundamentals, or human-resource fundamentals, she said.

Altogether, employees could earn up to 45 percent of the credit for an associate or bachelor's degree at APU "based on what they have learned in their career at Wal-Mart," according to the retailer's Web site.

Janet K. Poley, president of the American Distance Education Consortium, points out that this arrangement could saddle Wal-Mart employees with a "nontransferable coupon," as one blogger has described it.

"I now see where the 'trick' is—if a person gets credit for Wal-Mart courses and Wal-Mart work, they aren't likely to be able to transfer those to much of anyplace else," Ms. Poley wrote in an e-mail to The Chronicle. Transferability could be important, given the high turnover rate in the retail industry.

The cynic in me wonders if the lack of transferability of the credits may be exactly the point for Walmart. As the last paragraph above points out, there is very high worker turnover in the retail industry. Walmart expends time and money training workers, only to have them leave. The ones most likely to leave are those who obtain a college degree and move on to new careers. What better way to gain more stability in their labor market -- provide workers with something they crave -- access to a college degree that will give them huge amounts of credit just for working at Walmart, and they'll discover that the degree is only good for advancing within Walmart.

My experience college teaching in the past thirty years has shown me that college students from lower and working class families, and even many from middle class families, are extraordinarily naive about the different values that employers put on degrees from different institutions. They also actively resist knowing how different the content of education differs between colleges. My students refuse to acknowledge any difference between the content of their college courses and those at four year colleges and universities. Yet they find ways not to read the forty or fifty pages a week assigned in my class, and will not listen to the facts, that students at four year school are expected to read and comprehend, two and three times the amount of content.

The reality is, I could assign as much reading as I thought was necessary and test students on that reading, but then my course failure rate would be unacceptably high, and my teaching evaluations unacceptably low. So slowly as years have gone by, I've bowed the quiet, subtle pressure NOT to "dumb" down the class, but to cover less material, and to cover it differently (like not getting into esoteric discussions about the deeper meaning and implication of materials).

Community college faculty are constantly commanded to accommodate students who are married, with children and full-time jobs. These students cannot read three full books a week (as I often had to do in my own undergraduate career at an elite four year college) -- heck they cannot even seem to find the time to read three full books a semester.

The depth and breadth of knowledge acquired by community college students simply pales compared to that acquired at more demanding four year colleges and universities. This fact is well understood by colleges, graduate schools, professional programs, and employers. Which is why graduates from elite schools have different doors open to them than do community college students.

So an educational institution that is willing to say, oh sure we'll give students up to 45 percent of their academic credit for just doing their Walmart job, is reducing the content of education even lower. Students will be able to get "degrees without all that troublesome knowledge" (my husband's favorite saying) even easier than they already can with this alliance between Walmart and American Public U.

college students today....

College professors have always complained about college students. The complaints usually starts with the phrase "the trouble with college students today..." and usually also contains the phrase "when I was a student..."

The fact is that college students today are different from the past, in a whole host of ways. Let's look at the demographics: in 1966 the total number of undergraduate college students of all ages was 6,085,000 which represented 3% of the total U.S. population, in 2008 the total number of undergraduate college students of all ages was 14,955,000, which represented 5% of the total U.S. population ; in 1966 39% of college students were 18-19 years old, 15% were age 25 or older, 94% were white and 5 percent were black, 38% were women and 62% were male; in 2008 22% were 18-19 years old, 37% were age 25 or older, 77% were white and 13 percent were black, 55% were women and 45% were male. In the year 1970 (first year for which the government collected data on this) the percent of all undergraduate students attending community colleges was 27%, in 2008 that had risen to 36%.

As discussed this past week in the Chronicle of Higher Education most of the increasing numbers of college students in the last couple of decades have gone into the community colleges, and to a lesser extent into less selective four year colleges (public and private). More selective colleges and universities have used the increased numbers of students applying to become more selective, more choosy.

Family income which impacts college choices due to rising costs, also has a strong positive correlation with standardized test scores and to a more moderate correlation with high school grade point average. Other aspects of social class, such as parental educational levels influence students' selection of or assignment to courses of study in high school. [The college educated parent is more likely to know that taking algebra in summer school before high school can put their child on a fast track to advance math classes in high school making him or her more attractive to selective colleges and universities.]

As a result of the confluence of increased selectiveness and rising costs, social class and income stratification between colleges has increased steadily over the past twenty years. Students from poor and working class families are becoming a smaller and smaller percentage of elite, selective colleges and universities, while community colleges become the primary educational institutions for poor, working class, and even lower middle class families.

The flood of new college students into community colleges and less selective four year colleges, is made up primarily of poorer, working class and lower middle class students who are the first in their family to go to college. Educational pundits have pointed out the impact of this on the level of college preparation -- a large percentage of these new students were shunted by their high school advisers into non-college preparatory tracks or classes. They did not take the mathematics, science or even English, history, etc. usually taken by college bound secondary students. Pundits have also made much about the lack of monetary resources of these students, and the high percentage of them that have jobs (all of these things have been discussed extensively in The Chronicle of Higher Education in recent weeks and over the last few years).

One thing that has not been discussed at all, that is painfully obvious among our poorer and working class student body at my Kentucky community college, is the impact of poor health and health care problems on students. Our students themselves have a very high level of health problems, including diabetes and its complications, heart disease, other obesity related conditions, back problems, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and a frighteningly high level of cancer for a relatively young population. As many health problems as my students have, their families -- spouses, parents, grandparents, mothers- and fathers-in-law, siblings, aunts and uncles, have even more. Because in lower income communities, people are highly dependent on family and kin for aid during crises, students often are primary care-takers for ill family members, providing emotional support, transportation, and nursing care at home or in the hospital. [These days with nursing staffs stretched so thinly -- especially in poor rural areas like this -- some one needs to be present in the hospital with a patient to insure proper nursing care.]

This semester I had one student providing physical, household, medical/nursing, and emotional support for her mother with cancer and her mother-in-law with congestive heart failure (the mother-in-law died just before the end of term). An other student spent weeks in the nearest research hospital (3 hours away from her home) providing support for her long term partner who was dying, and then came home to her own diagnosis of heart disease and need for heart surgery. At least a dozen other students in my classes (I only teach about 75 students a semester) had serious health issues for themselves or family members this term, and this was not an unusual semester.

All these forms of illness have a higher incidence among lower income and working class populations. On top of that, are the burdens imposed by lack of good health coverage. Many of them have the additional struggle of having to worry about mounting medical bills that they may never be able to pay off. If they have assistance from Medicaid or from the local public health department, they often have very little control over the times of appointments and have to invest more time than some one with insurance would have to invest.

Just this week as I was getting my mammogram I overheard the following situation -- a woman with a suspicious lump had been referred by the public health department to a private physician to order a diagnostic mammogram and had authorized payment for that mammogram. The physician however, had decided that an ultrasound would provide him with more information and wrote an order for an ultrasound. The woman showed up at the radiography department for her appointment, only to be told that she would have to return to the public health department, so that they could write a new authorization for payment for the ultrasound, and then go back to the physicians office for a new order to go with it, and have to reschedule the mammogram for a day later in the week. It was obvious from the conversation that her husband who accompanied her, had taken off from work and was losing pay, and would have to take off yet another day later in the week to accompany her for the second go-round.

Poor health and poor health care are huge obstacles to successful college completion for lower income and working class students.