HIGH INCARCERATION RATE IN US IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE

ABSTRACT: The get tough on crime policies of the last 30 – 40 years have been counterproductive. They have swelled our prison population from less than 200,000 in the mid-1970s to 2,500,000 today. Our incarceration rate is the highest in the world and 5 times the world average.

This is costing us a fortune – we spend over $80 billion per year on prisons. There is no evidence that incarcerating more people leads to reduced crime. This mass incarceration is also costing us a fortune in lost human and social capital. Perhaps worst of all, our criminal justice system is blatantly racist. Some people compare today’s criminal justice system to the Jim Crow laws of the late 1800s and early 1900s that made blacks second class citizens.

To address the problems of over incarceration we need to: 1) End mandatory minimum sentences, 2) Stop discriminatory police and prosecutorial practices, 3) Stop building prisons and start closing some, and 4) Ban the box that requires job applicants to disclose if they have a criminal record.

The mass incarceration the US has engaged in over the last 30 years is wrong, ineffective, inefficient, and racist. Instead of closing doors on people, we need to open opportunities through jobs and education, as well as mental health services and drug treatment when needed.

FULL POST: The get tough on crime policies of the last 30 – 40 years have been counterproductive. These policies, such as mandatory sentences and 3-strikes-you’re-out laws, have swelled our prison population from less than 200,000 in the mid-1970s to 2,500,000 today – 12 times as many inmates. One out of every 100 adults in the US is in prison. Our incarceration rate is the highest in the world and 5 times the world average. The US has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners.

This is costing us a fortune – we spend over $80 billion per year on prisons. This has increased substantially in the last 30 years and has continued to increase despite falling crime rates for the last 20 years. State governments are spending more on prisons than on higher education. The federal government spends 6 times as much on prisons as on education. [1]

Meanwhile, there is no evidence that incarcerating more people leads to reduced crime. Crime rates, especially violent crime rates, are not linked to incarceration rates. Crime rates in states with higher incarceration rates, sometimes twice as high, do not have lower crime rates. This is because the increased incarceration is largely for non-violent, victimless crimes such as illegal drug possession.

This mass incarceration is also costing us a fortune in lost human and social capital. Many young men, particularly young black men, are sent to prison when what they really need is education and job skills, or mental health services and drug treatment. And after they have served their time, their criminal record often prevents them from getting a job or a student loan, and from voting. This loss of potentially productive human capital is bad for our economy. Furthermore, the social exclusion and high rates of incarceration in some communities, including of fathers with children, result in a huge loss of social capital that exacerbates and perpetuates disadvantage in these neighborhoods.

Perhaps worst of all, our criminal justice system is blatantly racist. People of color are more likely to be stopped by police, and are more likely to be arrested, convicted, and sent to jail than whites. For example, although all races and ethnic groups use illegal drugs at basically the same rate, far more people of color are arrested, convicted, and sent to prison for drug offenses than are whites. Some people, notably Michelle Alexander, compare today’s criminal justice system to the Jim Crow laws of the late 1800s and early 1900s that made blacks second class citizens. (She has a powerful TED talk on this topic entitled The future of race in America at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ6H-Mz6hgw. She has also written a book entitled The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.)

To address the problems of over incarceration we need to:

End mandatory minimum sentences as inflexible, ineffective, and unfair. There are much more effective and efficient alternatives to incarceration for non-violent crimes.
Stop discriminatory police and prosecutorial practices.
Stop building prisons and start closing some, so we can put the money spent on them to more productive uses, such as education, job training, drug treatment, and mental health services.
Ban the box that requires job applicants to check a box to disclose if they have a criminal record. Many employers have already done this. Given the breadth of mass incarceration for minor offenses, it is not a meaningful screen for many jobs.

The mass incarceration the US has engaged in over the last 30 years is wrong, ineffective, inefficient, and racist. It harms our economy and our communities, wasting lots of money and human potential. It locks people out of society even after they have served their time. Instead of closing doors on people, we need to open opportunities through jobs and education, as well as mental health services and drug treatment when needed.

Ending mass incarceration is the tenth of Ten Ideas to Save the Economy: The Big Picture presented by Robert Reich and MoveOn.org. (You can watch the 3 minute video at: https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/videos/1034546579891271/.)

[1] Mitchell, M., & Leachman, M. (2014). “Changing priorities: State criminal justice reforms and investments in education,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (http://www.cbpp.org//sites/default/files/atoms/files/10-28-14sfp.pdf)

A CARBON TAX IS A WIN-WIN

Air pollution has real costs for all of us, from negative health effects (such as asthma), to climate change, to more severe weather and the damage it creates. We all suffer these effects and pay their costs while the polluters pay nothing. They are allowed to dump their pollution into our air for free. The carbon released into the atmosphere (mainly as carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels) costs us between $40 and $100 per ton and over 5 billion tons of it are poured into our air each year. This adds up to hundreds of billions of dollars per year.

We should put a tax on carbon pollution to help pay for its costs and also to create an incentive to reduce it. The revenue a carbon tax would produce could be used to foster renewable energy sources, to address climate change, to improve and expand mass transportation, or to fund other worthwhile activities.

Instead of investing in the fossil fuel industry – oil, coal, and gas – we should be divesting. Many of us are investing in the fossil fuel industry without evening knowing it. The government should stop using our tax money to provide incentives to fossil fuel companies. We all should ask pension funds, mutual funds, and university endowments we are connected with to divest their holdings in the fossil fuel industry and instead invest in renewable energy or other investments that don’t cause harm.

A carbon tax would put market forces in place that create a win-win: polluters would be paying for at least part of the cost of their pollution and would have an incentive to reduce pollution, while at the same time governments would have revenue to address the damage caused by pollution and to invest in renewable energy.

The air belongs to all of us. And we need clean air to live healthy lives and have a healthy planet. Polluters are fouling our air for free; they should pay the price through a carbon tax.

Implementing a carbon tax is the ninth of Ten Ideas to Save the Economy: The Big Picture presented by Robert Reich and MoveOn.org. (You can watch the 3 minute video at: https://www.facebook.com/moveon/videos/vb.7292655492/10152803963545493/?type=1&theater.)

A FAIR ESTATE TAX WILL REDUCE INEQUALITY

Wealth inequality in the US is even more dramatic than income inequality. The richest 1% of Americans own 42% of all the wealth in the country. And the richest 0.1% (300,000 people) have as much total combined wealth as the combined wealth of the bottom 90% (270 million people). This is the highest concentration of wealth in this country since the Gilded Age of the late 1800s. The richest 1% have an average of $14,000,000, while the bottom 90% average $80,000.

Thomas Piketty, in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, analyzes wealth and economies over the last 250 years and concludes that without a progressive wealth tax wealth inequality will grow. Left unchecked, wealthy families will perpetuate and grow their wealth, while the rest of us fall farther and farther behind. This will produce a permanent, wealth-based aristocracy.

To prevent the rise of this new aristocracy, we need to raise the estate tax — a modest tax on inherited wealth. Raising the estate tax on the wealthiest Americans is one key way to slow growing inequality. Yet some lawmakers in Congress actually want to eliminate this tax on inherited wealth.

Currently, the estate tax applies only to estates over $10,860,000 for a couple. The 40% tax applies only to any amount over this threshold. This means that the wealthy can give $10,860,000 to their heirs tax-free.

If the estate tax were eliminated, for which some in Congress are advocating, the federal government would lose roughly $27 billion a year in revenue and the growth in inequality in the US would accelerate. The average household that currently pays the estate tax would get a $3 million tax cut. State governments would lose revenue as well, because many state estate taxes are tied to the federal tax. This means that our state and federal governments, that are already stretched very thin, would have even fewer resources for public safety, schools, roads and bridges, and so forth.

If the estate tax were returned to its level in 1998 (with an adjustment for inflation), couples could give $1,748,000 tax-free to their heirs and amounts over that would be taxed. The federal government would receive an additional $49 billion a year in revenue to fund important needs. A couple with an estate of $10,860,000, the current tax-free threshold, would still be able to give $7.15 million to their heirs after paying the estate tax. Clearly, restoring the estate tax to its 1998 level would reduce the ability to pass on inherited wealth, but by no means eliminate it. It would slow our growing inequality but it certainly wouldn’t stop the ability to pass on significant inherited wealth.

A reasonable estate tax would be a step in addressing the growing economic inequality in the US. Returning to the lower tax-free estate threshold of 1998 would be a step in the right direction; conversely eliminating the estate tax would be a step in the wrong direction. American democracy would be seriously undermined by a self-perpetuating, wealth-based aristocracy. Such concentrated economic and political power is antithetical to the principles of our democracy.

Raising the estate tax is the eighth of Ten Ideas to Save the Economy: The Big Picture presented by Robert Reich and MoveOn.org. (You can watch the 3 minute video at: https://www.facebook.com/moveon/videos/10152795905365493/.)

A VOICE FOR WORKERS

Workers need to have a strong voice in the workplace and in our democracy to maintain an equitable balance of power with large, corporate employers. As the voice of labor has weakened over the last 35 years, workers’ pay has barely kept up with the cost of living and has fallen far behind workers’ growing productivity. In addition, the minimum wage has fallen substantially relative to the cost of living and workers’ benefits have been cut – many fewer workers have pensions and workers are paying more and more for their health insurance, if they have it.

Without a strong voice and bargaining power, workers do not get their fair share of economic growth and prosperity. (See my previous post, The Undermining of the Middle Class, for more detail.) For example, as workers’ pay and benefits have fallen in recent years, corporate profits and executives’ pay and benefits have risen dramatically.

The primary vehicle for providing a voice and bargaining power to workers is a labor union. Over the last 35 years, large corporations and their allies in government have engaged in a concerted campaign to weaken unions and workers’ bargaining power. Corporate employers have voided union contracts by declaring bankruptcy (e.g., many airlines), employers have been allowed to hire replacement workers when unionized workers engage in a strike (e.g., the air traffic controllers), employers have closed factories and moved jobs overseas, it has been made harder to organize workers and form a union, labor laws have been only weakly enforced, and penalties on employers who break labor laws are minimal.

This campaign to weaken unions has succeeded in reducing union membership among corporate employees from over 1 in 3 workers in the 1950s to 1 in 14 workers today. It has also undermined all workers’ bargaining power and throughout our economy has caused wages to stagnate and benefits to decline. The result has been a decline in the middle class’s share of national income.

Three key policy changes are needed to strengthen unions and the voices of workers:

Make it easier to form a union. Eliminate the ability of employers to delay and put up procedural hurdles to workers organizing a union.
Implement meaningful penalties for labor law violations. For example, the current penalty for firing a worker who is working to form a union (which is illegal), is simply to give him or her a job back, possibly with back pay. There is no fine or other penalty for having broken the law. Often these cases take so long to resolve (often it’s over a year) that the worker has had to find employment elsewhere.
Overturn, through federal law, states’ “right to work” laws. These laws allow employees in a unionized workplace to benefit from union-negotiated pay and benefits without having to pay union dues. This is a backdoor way to weaken and destroy unions by reducing their membership and revenue.

Wages and benefits are better in states (and countries) with higher levels of union membership. For example, in states with “right to work” laws, wages are $6,000 per year lower than in states without such laws and workers have weaker health and pension benefits as well. This applies not just to unionized workers but to all workers; all workers’ wages and benefits are better when unions are stronger.

Workers deserve fair pay and benefits for a hard day’s work. Unions provide the voice and bargaining power for workers; they establish a countervailing power to that of large, corporate employers. They improve pay and benefits, as well as working conditions, such as limiting the standard work week to 40 hours. Strong unions lead to a strong and fair economy, as well as a strong middle class. We need to strengthen labor unions to bring back a thriving middle class, as well as the fairness and shared prosperity that our economy produced in the 1950s through 1970s.

Strengthening labor unions is the seventh of Ten Ideas to Save the Economy: The Big Picture presented by Robert Reich and MoveOn.org. (You can watch the 3 minute video at: https://www.facebook.com/moveon/videos/vb.7292655492/10152780314000493/?type=1&theater.)

CORPORATE WELFARE IS MAKING US POOR

When we hear the term welfare, we think of public programs to help poor people. However, there are numerous public programs that provide welfare to corporations, most of whom are not poor at all. Corporate welfare occurs through so many subsidies and tax breaks that it is hard to keep track of them all. And it’s even harder to determine how much they are costing the federal and state governments.

Corporate welfare costs tens of billions of dollars – maybe $100 billion – per year. This means the federal and state governments have billions of dollars less to spend on education, public safety and defense, roads and bridges, and so forth. And it means that other taxpayers – you and me – have to pay more to make up the difference.

The corporate welfare goes mainly to large, often multi-national, corporations. They have the clout to bend government policies to serve their interests rather than the public interest. There are tax breaks and subsidies for the oil, coal, and gas industries ($37.5 billion per year [1]); for agribusiness; for the pharmaceutical industry; for the big Wall Street banks and financial corporations; for hedge fund managers; for international investors and multi-national corporations; etc.

This is crony capitalism: the private capitalists get their cronies in government to do them favors. They do this through campaign contributions and spending, through lobbying, and through the revolving door for personnel, which includes well-paying jobs in the private sector for public officials and employees when they leave their government positions.

For example, 288 of the Fortune magazine’s list of the 500 largest US corporations were profitable in every year from 2008 to 2012. But because of corporate welfare tax breaks, 26 of these large, profitable corporations paid no federal income taxes over those 5 years, including Boeing, General Electric, and Verizon. Furthermore, 93 of the 288 paid taxes at an effective rate of less than 10% over those 5 years – far less than the stated tax rate of 35%. [2]

Corporate welfare and crony capitalism need to end. Although the capitalists like to extol and advocate for the “free market,” our economy is anything but a free market. The large corporations have used their political clout to tip the scales in their favor. This is bad for the economy, for small businesses, for workers and the middle class, for governments and the public sector, and for democracy. Corporate welfare is unfair, inefficient, and wasteful; it needs to stop.

Ending corporate welfare is the sixth of the Ten Big Ideas to Save the Economy presented by Robert Reich and MoveOn.org. [3]

[1] Aronoff, K., July 2015, “The death of climate denialism,” In These Times

[2] Citizens for Tax Justice, 2/25/14, “The sorry state of corporate taxes,” http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2014/02/the_sorry_state_of_corporate_taxes.php

[3] You can watch the 3 minute video at: https://www.facebook.com/moveon/videos/vb.7292655492/10152770639760493/?type=1&theater

IMPORTANT ISSUES FOR THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

ABSTRACT: There’s no shortage of important issues facing the U.S. today. As candidates announce their intention to run for president, it will be interesting to see which issues they make priorities and which issues the mainstream corporate media decide to cover. Many candidates and the mainstream media are likely to avoid the issues of the struggling middle and working classes and of the growing inequality of income and wealth.

However, MoveOn.org and Robert Reich have teamed up to present 10 important issues for supporting the middle and working classes, reclaiming our democracy from moneyed interests, and saving our planet. Reich does a 3 minute video on each issue.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a Democratic candidate for President, has a similar focus. If these issues resonate with you, I encourage you to follow Senator Sanders’ campaign. If you want these issues to be discussed in the campaign, give him some support during the primary.

FULL POST: There’s no shortage of important issues facing the U.S. today. As candidates announce their intention to run for president, it will be interesting to see which issues they make priorities. It will also be interesting to see which issues the mainstream media – the big corporate media – decide to cover. Many candidates and the mainstream media are likely to avoid the issues of the struggling middle and working classes and of the growing inequality of income and wealth. However, there are efforts to explicitly put these issues in the spotlight.

MoveOn.org and Robert Reich [1] have teamed up to present “10 Big Ideas to Save the Economy.” These are 10 important issues for supporting the middle and working classes, reclaiming our democracy from moneyed interests, and saving our planet. The corporate media and many candidates will avoid them. Therefore, MoveOn and Reich are using social media to try and bring these ten issues to voters’ attention. The issues are:

Enacting a $15 minimum wage
Supporting working families through equal pay for women, predictable work schedules, quality child care, and paid leave
Expanding Social Security
Reining in Wall Street
Reinventing education
Ending corporate welfare
Strengthening workers’ bargaining power through stronger unions
Increasing the estate tax
Implementing a carbon tax to cut pollution and address global warming
Getting big money out of politics

I’ve done blog posts on the first five and will do posts on the others soon. In the posts, I include a link to the 3 minute video that Robert Reich does to explain each one.

There’s one Democratic candidate for President, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, whose campaign has a similar focus on the middle and working classes and on inequality. Although the mainstream (corporate) media tend to describe him as a fringe candidate and highlight his socialist political label, his positions on issues are very well aligned with what the voting public supports. For example, he supports: [2] [3] [4]

Providing universal pre-kindergarten – supported by 77% of the public
Reducing income and wealth inequality – supported by 63% of the public
Fair trade that protect workers, the environment, and jobs – supported by 75% of the public
Increasing taxes on the rich – supported by 52% of the public
Expanding Social Security – supported by 70% of the public
Breaking up the big banks – supported by 58% of the public
Making higher education more affordable – supported by 79% of the public
Reducing the burden of student debt – supported by 78% of the public
Ending tax loopholes for corporations that ship jobs overseas – supported by 74% of the public
Closing offshore corporate tax loopholes – supported by 70% of the public
Addressing climate change – supported by 71% of the public
Getting big money out of politics – supported by over 70% of the public across party lines

If Senator Sanders’ positions on these issues resonate with you, I encourage you to follow to his campaign. If you want these issues to be discussed in the campaign, give him some support during the primary. His campaign website is https://berniesanders.com/.

[1] Robert Reich was President Clinton’s Secretary of Labor and MoveOn.org is the progressive, grassroots organization promoting participation in our democracy.

[2] Moyers, B., & Winship M., 6/3/15, “Turn left on Main Street,” Moyers & Company (http://billmoyers.com/2015/06/03/turn-left-main-street/?utm_source=General+Interest&utm_campaign=512c7d35f1-Midweek12171412_17_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4ebbe6839f-512c7d35f1-168350969)

[3] Cole, J., 5/29/15, “Despite what corporate media tells you, Bernie Sanders’ positions are mainstream,” Common Dreams (http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/05/29/how-mainstream-bernie-sanders)

[4] Progressive Change Institute, Jan. 2015, “Poll of likely 2016 voters,” (https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.boldprogressives.org/images/Big_Ideas-Polling_PDF-1.pdf)