A Human Economy (This is America)

Billionaire's Club

According to a report from CBS News, a new billionaire is minted every two minutes. this growth of the elite is coming at a cost to the middle class and the poor. 

According to Oxfam, the world's wealth is not creating more opportunities for the vast majority of people.  The distribution of wealth is top heavy. The shift of wealth began growing with the tax cuts for the wealthy during the Reagan administration. It has only become worse during the Trump administration.  In 2017, President Trump reduced tax rates for individuals and corporations, a decrease that favors the rich and businesses.

Oxfam is calling for a new approach, A Human Economy.

Trickle down and all boats rise is not working. Oxfam is calling for new policies. Paul O'Brien is vice president for policy and advocacy at Oxfam America.

 "Fundamentally the human economy is built from different principals than the growth economy," O'Brien said. "For years, the consensus was, 'Growth solves everything.' But that has fallen apart. Our planet has limited boundaries. We can't burn more, use more, and break through ecological boundaries that are essential for sustaining human life."

O'Brien says, the "human economy" would provide health care, education and gender equality to people across the globe, he said. "All the data show that educating your children is the best way to build a healthy economy and create genuine shared wealth. We need to get kids into quality schools, and get rid of these legal and cultural barriers to women being treated unfairly in the workplace, being burdened and discounted."

Raising taxes on the world's richest people and corporations would help fund those programs, with Oxfam calculating that boosting taxes on the richest by 0.5 percent would raise enough money to educate the 262 million children who currently don't receive an education and provide healthcare that would save 3.3 million people from preventable deaths.

In the past, unequal distribution of wealth has led to unequal opportunity, slowed economic growth, lowered expectations, social unrest and revolution. It matters.

Work Without Pay?

Work rules are clear for the private sector. Your employer cannot ask, require, or even allow you to work off the clock. If you're a non-exempt employee, you must be paid for all time worked. You can't waive this right. Moreover, your employer cannot give you comp time in lieu of overtime pay. #income #rights #pay


What's the deal for federal employees? Federal employees are suing calling it involuntary servitude. If the private sector forced employees to work without pay, there would be serious legal ramifications.  The lawsuits claim the federal government is violating the Fair Labor Standards Act, as well as the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. Federal workers also assert that the Trump administration is violating the Fifth Amendment because it’s depriving them of their wages without due process. (AOL.com)

“The Fair Labor Standards Act requires workers to be paid at least the minimum wage for hours they worked in a timely fashion,” said Minna Kotkin, director of the Employment Law Clinic at Brooklyn Law School. “There is a legitimate claim that this... is violating the Fair Labor Standards Act.” (AOL.com)

Gender Shades

Is there AI neutrality? 

According to research by Joy Buolamwini, no! There is built in bias in the algorithms toward white males. The AI identifies white males more easily that dark skinned people, especially dark skinned women.


This is an issue when it comes to hiring qualified people. Qualifications should not be based on gender, race or sexuality. Built in biases of the algorithms used in the AI is doing exactly that.


Buolamwini thinks the biases built into AI can be corrected. According to the Forbes article where I found this, "After MIT's Buolamwini sent the results of her study to Microsoft, IBM and Face++, IBM responded by replicating her research internally, and releasing a new API, according to a conference goer who attended her presentation on Saturday."

"The updated system now classifies darker-skinned females with a success rate of 96.5%."

This is America

If we really are one nation under God, then this should ring true.

For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.

Where did we go wrong?

This is America Too

The Income Gap

It's more than low income. It's despair, It's hopelessness. It's the powerless and voiceless.

It's more than throwing money at a situations. It's about facilitating long term solutions with the help of those affected.

The World Bank says access to good schools, health care, electricity, safe water, and other critical services remains elusive for many people, often determined by socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, and geography. Moreover, for those who have been able to move out of poverty, progress is often temporary: Economic shocks, food insecurity and climate change threaten to rob them of their hard-won gains and force them back into poverty.

The World Bank's goal is ending extreme poverty within a generation and promoting shared prosperity in a sustainable manner across the globe. This at a time when the elite continue gather and hold more than the rest of the world. The gap is widening.

According to inequality.org, the world’s 10 richest billionaires own $745 billion in combined wealth, a sum greater than the total goods and services most nations produce on an annual basis.

Mind Our Gap

The gap is widening here. According to a recent report on CNBC, The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

The top 1 percent of families took home an average of 26.3 times as much income as the bottom 99 percent in 2015, according to a new paper released by the Economic Policy Institute, a non-profit, nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. This has increased since 2013, showing that income inequality has risen in nearly every state.

Tax breaks for the rich are always touted as job creators as they invest in the economy. All boats will rise?

Maybe not. There are more jobs. Unemployment is low, but wages remain relatively low. The gap widens.

Worldwide?

According to Oxfam

Inequality gap widens as 42 people hold same wealth as 3.7bn poorest. The goal of shared prosperity seems further out of reach.