Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2003-2004
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/index.html
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Project Censored
http://www.projectcensored.org/
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here is #1: Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy
MULTINATIONAL MONITOR, May 2003, Vol. 24, No. 5
Title: "The Wealth Divide" (An interview with Edward Wolff)
Author: Robert Weissman
BUZZFLASH, March 26 and 29, 2004
Title: "A Buzzflash Interview, Parts I & II" (with David Cay Johnston)
Author: Buzzflash Staff
LONDON GUARDIAN, October 4, 2003
Title: "Every third person will be a slum dweller within 30 years, UN
agency warns"
Author: John Vidal
MULTINATIONAL MONITOR, July/August, 2003
Title: "Grotesque Inequality"
Author: Robert Weissman
Faculty Evaluators: Greg Storino, Phil Beard Ph.D.
Student Researchers: Caitlyn Pardue, David Sonnenberg, Sita Khalsa
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THE DOMESTIC TREND
In the late 1700s, issues of fairness and equality were topics of
great debate - equality under the law, equality of opportunity, etc.
Considered by the framers of the Constitution to be one of the most
important aspects of a democratic system, the word "equality" is
featured prominently throughout the document. In the 200+ years
since, most industrialized nations have succeeded in decreasing the
gap between rich and poor.
However, since the late 1970s wealth inequality, while stabilizing or
increasing slightly in other industrialized nations, has increased
sharply and dramatically in the United States. While it is no secret
that such a trend is taking place, it is rare to see a TV news
program announce that the top 1% of the U.S. population now owns
about a third of the wealth in the country. Discussion of this trend
takes place, for the most part, behind closed doors.
During the short boom of the late 1990s, conservative analysts
asserted that, yes, the gap between rich and poor was growing, but
that incomes for the poor were still increasing over previous levels.
Today most economists, regardless of their political persuasion,
agree that the data over the last 25 to 30 years is unequivocal. The
top 5% is capturing an increasingly greater portion of the pie while
the bottom 95% is clearly losing ground, and the highly touted
American middle class is fast disappearing.
According to economic journalist, David Cay Johnston, author of
"Perfectly Legal," this trend is not the result of some naturally
occurring, social Darwinist "survival of the fittest." It is the
product of legislative policies carefully crafted and lobbied for by
corporations and the super-rich over the past 25 years.
New tax shelters in the 1980s shifted the tax burden off capital and
onto labor. As tax shelters rose, the amount of federal revenue
coming from corporations fell (from 35% during the Eisenhower years
to 10% in 2002). During the deregulation wave of the '80s and the
'90s, members of Congress passed legislation (often without reading
it) that deregulated much of the financial industry. These laws took
away, for example, the powerful incentives for accountants to behave
with integrity or for companies to put away a reasonable amount in
pension plans for their employees-resulting in the well-publicized
(too late) scandals involving Enron, Global Crossing, and others.
THE GLOBAL IMPACT
As always, America's economic trends have a global footprint-and this
time, it is a crater. Today the top 400 income earners in the U.S.
make as much in a year as the entire population of the 20 poorest
countries in Africa (over 300 million people). But in America,
national leaders and mainstream media tell us that the only way out
of our own economic hole is through increasing and endless
growth-fueled by the resources of other countries.
A series of reports released in 2003 by the UN and other global
economy analysis groups warn that further increases in the imbalance
in wealth throughout the world will have catastrophic effects if left
unchecked. UN-habitat reports that unless governments work to control
the current unprecedented spread in urban growth, a third of the
world's population will be slum dwellers within 30 years. Currently,
almost one-sixth of the world's population lives in slum-like
conditions. The UN warns that unplanned, unsanitary settlements
threaten both political and fiscal stability within third world
countries, where urban slums are growing faster than expected. The
balance of poverty is shifting quickly from rural to urban areas as
the world's population moves from the countryside to the city.
As rich countries, strip poorer countries of their natural resources
in an attempt to re-stabilize their own, the people of poor countries
become increasingly desperate. This deteriorating situation, besides
pressuring rich countries to allow increased immigration, further
exacerbates already stretched political tensions and threatens global
political and economic security.
UN economists blame "free-trade" practices and the neo-liberal
policies of international lending institutions like the IMF and WTO,
and the industrialized countries that lead them, for much of the
damage caused to Third World countries over the past 20 years. Many
of these policies are now being implemented in the U.S., allowing for
an acceleration of wealth consolidation. And even the IMF has issued
a report warning the U.S. about the consequences for its appetite for
excess and overspending.
In developing countries, the concentration of key industries
profitable to foreign investors requires that people move to cities
while forced privatization of public services strip them of the
ability to become stable or move up financially once they arrive.
Meanwhile, the strict repayment schedules mandated by the global
institutions make it virtually impossible for poor countries to move
out from under their burden of debt. "In a form of colonialisation
that is probably more stringent than the original, many developing
countries have become suppliers of raw commodities to the world, and
fall further and further behind," says one UN analyst. World
economists conclude that if enough of the world's nations reach a
point of economic failure, such a situation could collapse the entire
global economy.
For further information on this story, please check out the following
excellent websites:
www.inequality.org
http://www.dollarsandsense.org/
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/income.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1118425,00.html
David Cay Johnston interview also found on Democracy Now!, May 18, 2004.
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Censored 2005: The Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2003-2004
http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2005/index.html
--------------------------------
Project Censored
http://www.projectcensored.org/
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