"If current trends continue, US will be as unequal as Brazil in Obama's 2nd term"

[HiPointDem]

A dozen years ago, Brazil ranked as the world’s most unequal major nation. Brazil’s most affluent 10 percent were grabbing nearly 50 times more income, on average, than the nation’s poorest tenth, over double the U.S. gap.

Amid this intense inequality, affluent Brazilians found themselves spending $2 billion a year on private security. Kidnappings in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, became so common that some plastic surgeons started specializing in ear reconstruction. The reason: Kidnappers had taken to including cut-off ears with the ransom notes they sent their wealthy victims.

Over in Brazil’s second-largest city, Rio de Janeiro, carjackings were taking place so often that police were assuring well-heeled drivers they wouldn’t “be fined for running red lights at night.” Thousands of those drivers took no chances. They armored their cars, typically at $35,000 per automobile, or commuted via helicopter from fortified home to fortified office.

Could an inequality this stark ever take root in the United States? Luxury fortress life, suggests new work from the Brazil Center at the University of Texas, may actually be closing in upon us. If current trends continue, Center director Fernando Luiz Lara calculates, the United States will probably “be as unequal as Brazil” before the end of President Obama’s second term.

Two trends are driving this “convergence.” The first: Brazil’s most desperately poor have become less poor. New government social programs have halved the number of Brazilians living in “extreme poverty.” The second: Income in the United States has continued to concentrate. Since 2009, the latest stats show, top 1 percent incomes have jumped an average 11.2 percent. Bottom 99 percent have slipped 0.4 percent.

http://toomuchonline.org/brazil-and-the-united-states-a-shrinking-gap/

[Initech]

1. We have got to start prosecuting the god damn billionaires.

The Waltons, the Koch's, the whole damn lot of 'em. We're in the beginning stages of a global great depression that could easily be prevented had we held the billionaire class accountable for their actions.

[HiPointDem]

2. who is this 'we'?

[Recursion]

3. Our crime rate has fallen as inequality has increased

And Brazil's violent crime rate is nearly 5 times the US's.

[HiPointDem]

4. and we lock up way more people per capita than brazil. especially poor people.

716/100,000 v. 260/100,000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate

yet still the crime rate in my poor white/hispanic neighborhood is increasing.

not to put too fine a point on it, in my short block of 10 houses, 5 have had their cars burgled and 2 have had their houses burgled, + various have had things stolen from their yards.

so where i sit, crime is not going down. it's going up.

[davidn3600]

6. +100

However the reason why our prisons are more populated is not necessarily because of our crime rate, but because we lock people up for petty crimes and keep passing stricter laws that increase sentences.

I remember in the late 90s and early 2000s, the conservatives were bitching about prisoners not serving their full sentences or that their terms were too light. So they pass these mandatory sentencing guidelines and 3 strike laws and 10-20-life laws and various others. Add this to the war on drugs and what has happened? Our prison population has exploded!

[HiPointDem]

7. it's about 1% of the population locked up/under various kinds of custody, which is about 3

million people.

currently there are about 2 million fewer jobs than there were before the recession and about 3-4 applicants for every job opening.

now imagine those 3 million people weren't locked up and what the crime and unemployment rates might be.

[beopenminded]

13. good post.

.

[Fumesucker]

5. Two words..

Mission Accomplished

[woo me with science]

14. +1

[Tseko]

8. And the Republicans would still call him a socialist.

[HiPointDem]

9. publicly. but they know he's not, that's just for the rubes.

[Freddie]

10. I bring this up to Repug friends

You sometimes hear about a South American MLB player's mother being kidnapped. This is why. They think it could never happen here; I tell them be careful what your party leaders really wish for. Talking to the wall, of course.

[HiPointDem]

11. of course. and even if it were happening, their answer would be more of the same, just as it

is where it does happen.

power doesn't vote to get rid of itself anywhere.

[SidDithers]

12. 'And Baltimore is just like North Korea'...

right, Hannah?



Sid