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According to Federal Parliament member Charlie Angus, leaders of the Attawapiskat First Nation have declared a state of emergency. Living conditions are so terrible on the reserve that members of the community are at significant risk of illness and death.  Many residents have no electricity, heat, or running water.  They are living in uninsulated tents and shacks.  Many of these residences are filled with black mold and prone to quick-spreading fires.  Some use buckets as bathrooms; with no facilities, they dump their sewage into the streets.

Angus writes:

When it comes to the misery, suffering and even the death of First Nations people, the federal and provincial governments have developed a staggering capacity for indifference.

Try to imagine this situation happening in anywhere else in this country. We all remember how the army was sent into Toronto when the mayor felt that citizens were being discomforted by a snowstorm. Compare that massive mobilization of resources with the disregard being shown for the families in Attawapiskat.

The government waited a month to respond, but has now accepted some responsibility for the health and welfare of the residents.  Attawapiskat leaders are now trying to raise awareness of the other First Nation communities in Northern Canada with similar conditions.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

In the three-minute video below, Kate Pickett talks about why life life expectancy, happiness, and the variable that links them, stress, aren’t strongly related to national income averages within different developed countries.

See more at Equality Trust.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The author of Soundbitten: The Perils of Media-Centered Political Activism, Tufts University sociology professor Sarah Sobieraj is a reigning expert on media and social movements in the U.S.  In the four minute clip below, she discusses what it is about the Occupy Movement that has led to such favorable coverage. This includes an answer to the now ubiquitous question: “Is their message too broad?”

Clip at MyFoxBoston, via Citings and Sightings.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The Census Bureau posted some information about the economic payoff of a college degree on their blog, Random Samplings. A recent report indicated that educational level had a bigger impact than any other demographic factor on lifetime earnings. More education leads to both higher incomes not just because those with more education receive higher salaries, but also because they are more likely to be in full-time jobs. The x-axis here shows the % of people in full-time, year-round jobs:

Not surprisingly, the gap in earnings widens over time, especially for those with a bachelor’s or higher degree compared to those with less:

The report also estimated lifetime earnings by race/ethnicity for men and women separately. As they point out, except for a couple of cases at the very highest educational levels, men from even the most economically disadvantaged racial/ethnic groups out-earn women from the most economically advantaged ones:

Of course, not all college degrees are equal. Dolores R. sent in a link to an interactive table from the Wall Street Journal that lets you look at earnings and the unemployment rate for various majors. I sorted them by median earnings; here are the ten with the lowest median earnings:

And the ten with the highest:

The highest unemployment rate? Clinical psychology, at 19.5%.

You can also search by area (art, engineering, etc.), though it looks like the categorization may be a little sketchy — for instance, “geology and earth science” and “liberal arts” show up under the arts.

For more on college majors, earnings, and future career opportunities, see the report College Clusters: Forecasting Demand for High School through College Jobs, 2008-2018, from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

Cross-posted on Reports from the Economic Front.

The Occupy Movement has clearly transformed conversations about the economy.  It is now inequality — in particular, the gap between the top 1% and everyone else — rather than the national debt that dominates the news.

To review, this gap is real, as the following charts from the Economic Policy Institute make clear.  This chart shows the percentage increase in household income over the period 1979 to 2007 by income group.  While the top 1% enjoyed income gains of 224% over the period, the gains enjoyed by the bottom 90% were far more modest: 5%.  Equally striking is the fact that the household income of top 0.01% shot up an astounding 390%.

Unfortunately, there is another income gap that has not received nearly as much attention.  It is the white-nonwhite gap.  The Portland, Oregon based Coalition of Communities of Color recently published a report on the socioeconomic situation of people of color in Multnomah Country (which includes Portland).

As the chart below reveals, the mean income of families of color in the top decile (10%) actually declined by $6,002 over the years 1979 to 2007.  By contrast, the mean income of white families in the top 10%  rose by $122,591.  White families and families of color in the bottom half of the distribution all suffered losses.

The following two charts show the mean earnings of each group by decile and their change between 1979 and 2007.

Portrait in 1979:

Portrait in 2007:

This last chart shows poverty rates by color.  Clearly, as we work to create a more equitable society, our efforts must also be guided by awareness of the existence of serious racial and ethnic inequities.

Economist Michael Mandel, at Mandel on Innovation and Growth, posted these two figures showing that the real earnings of college graduates (full-time workers ages 25-34) have been declining since before the recession. According to Mandel:

• Real earnings for young male college grads are down 19% since their peak in 2000.
• Real earnings for young female college grads are down 16% since their peak in 2003.

Mandel poses the following questions:

…no one has given me a good explanation yet of why young American college grads should have been hit so hard. Is there increased competition with young college grads around the world?  Are new college grads lower quality than their predecessors? Has information technology reduced the need for young grads? I really would like to know.

For more depressing news about the earnings of college graduates, see these posts on how the economic recession will depress the earnings of college grads for their entire lifetime and a look at the trend in college graduate earnings since 1979.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Cross-posted at Caroline Heldman’s Blog.

Demand #8 from the Occupy Wall Street list of demands is a call for a “gender equal rights amendment,” a good sign that OWS is thinking about inequality in all its various forms.  This sentiment, though, seems to be lost on (supposedly) liberal filmmaker, Steven Greenstreet, whose past work  includes documentaries about the Mormon influence in passing Proposition 8 and the conservative backlash against Michael Moore.  Greenstreet is also the proud creator of the website, Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street.  He was watching news coverage of the Occupy movement that inspired him to tell a friend,

Wow, seeing all those super smart hot chicks at the protest makes me want to be there… Hmmm… Yeah, let’s go with that.

We instantly went to Tumblr and made [Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street]. Our original ideas were admittedly sophomoric: Pics of hot chicks being all protesty, videos of hot chicks beating drums in slow-mo, etc. But when we arrived at Zuccotti Park in New York City, it evolved into something more.

There was a vibrant energy in the air, a warmth of community and family, and the voices we heard were so hopeful and passionate. Pretty faces were making signs, giving speeches, organizing crowds, handing out food, singing, dancing, debating, hugging and marching.

The evolution from “sophomoric” to “something more,” inspired by “community and family,” is not evident on the website.  Aside from the obvious reduction of activist women to sexual objects, this site is shockingly offensive in its inclusion of young women/girls, one with the caption “She is identified as being 18 years old.” [Hint: If you have to identify “her” as being of age, that’s a sign you probably shouldn’t be posting the photo.]

Greenstreet does not provide information about whether he gained permission from the girls/women featured, but since no names are provided, we can assume he did not systematically seek permission.

It is also unlikely that Greenstreet informed his subjects of his intention to post their photos on the Hot Chicks website.  With his accomplice, Brandon Bloch, Greenstreet shot a video with interviews of women in which it is clear they thought their words, not their bodies, would be the focus:

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/30476100]

Greenstreet has posted criticism on the Hot Chicks website like a badge of honor:

@JaeChick: Nothing like degrading women to get attention. You are a small, sorry excuse for a man.

@MeFunk: Whatsay you take down your sexist video, issue a formal apology to female protesters, and then I pour hot coffee on you?

He responded to critiques of sexism with the following statement:

Apparently a lot of controversy has erupted online from people passionately opining (among many things) that this is sexist, offensive, and dangerously objectifies women. It was not my intent to do that and I think the spirit of the video, and the voices within, are honorable and inspiring.

However, if you disagree with me, I encourage you to use that as an excuse to create constructive discussions about the issues you have. Because, to be honest, any excuse is a good excuse to bring up the topic of women’s rights.

Wow, what a humanitarian.  It appears that this fumbling display of overt sexism was really just a ploy to get us talking about women’s rights.  Thanks, Steven.

Thanks to Katrin, Melanie L., Jessie W., and Nathan Jurgenson of Cyborgology for asking us to write about this topic!

Originally posted at Organizations, Occupations and Work.

Last week I discussed the connection between the Occupy Wall Street protests and the long-term transfer of national income into the finance sector. Well the problem is worse than Wall Street’s power over the national economy and polity.

There really are two faces to financialization. The most familiar face is the dominance of the finance sector over the rest of us: the giant profits and bonuses at the big banks and investment houses and the instability generated by too big to fail but rapaciously imprudent financial services firms. The other face is the financialization of the rest of the economy. Greta Krippner figured this out first. Greta discovered that since the 1980s firms in the non-finance sector have increasingly invested, not in the production of goods and services, but in financial instruments. The productive economy, Main Street in some formulations, has increasingly abandoned production in favor of financial shenanigans. Finance related income, including interest, foreign exchange profits, and stock market investments have risen from about 1/8^th of corporate profits to around 30%. In the manufacturing sector the move from production to financial strategies has been even more dramatic, rising to a ratio of finance revenue/profit as high as .60 after 2000.

The most well-known examples of this type of financialization might be the financial arms of automobile manufacturers. General Motors established its financial arm General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC) in 1919 and Ford established its financial service provider Ford Motor Credit in 1959. Before the 1980s, the main function of these financial institutions was to provide their automotive customers access to credit to increase car sales. Starting in the 1980s, these firms broadened their portfolio. GMAC entered mortgage lending in 1985. In the same year, Ford purchased First Nationwide Financial Corporation, the first thrift that operated at the national level, to enter the savings and residential loan markets. In the 1990s both GMAC and Ford Motor Credit expanded their services to include insurance, banking, and commercial finance. In 2004, GM reported that 66 percent of its $1.3 billion quarterly profits came from GMAC; while a day earlier, Ford reported a loss in its automotive operation but $1.17 billion in net income, mostly from its financing operation.

Founded in 1943 GE Capital was designed to provide loans for the customers of home appliances. However, under the post-1980 leadership of Jack Welch, its scope rapidly expanded to small business, real estate, mortgage lending, credit cards, and insurance. After running a close second for more than two decades, it topped GMAC as the largest nonbank lender in 1992. The profit return to financial expansion was extraordinary. In retrospect this should not be surprising; the same financial deregulation than broke down the walls between various types of financial firms also freed non-financial firms to enter these markets. Simultaneously deregulation created fertile fields in which to capture income in multiple financial markets.

This kind of financialization is in many ways more insidious than the concentration of wealth and power on Wall Street. At this point many of us, including political movements such as Occupy Wall Street and even the Tea Party movement can see that financial power and concentrated wealth undermine democracy and capitalism respectively. I think that the financialization of the non-finance sector has undermined the real economy by reducing capital and management commitment to production and further marginalizing labor’s role in U.S. corporations. The result has been an incremental exclusion of the general workforce from revenue generating and compensation setting processes. While once CEOs were celebrated for expanding employment and market share, they are now lauded for increased profitability and decreased employment. They have accomplished this transition by shifting the creative energies and investment strategies of their firms away from the production of goods and services and into financial investments.

Recently Ken-Hou Lin and I have found that as financial strategies replace production ones, income inequality climbs dramatically. In fact as industry financialization rises so does capital’s share of income. In addition, financialization is associated with higher compensation for corporate officers and higher income inequality among employees. We estimate that about half of the post 1970s decline in labor’s share of income, 10 percent of the growth in officers’ share of compensation, and 15 percent of the growth in earnings dispersion between 1970 and 2008 are linked to the financialization of the non-finance sector. One way to think about financialization is that it is a system of income redistribution which strengthens the hand of finance capital and weakens the hand of labor associated with the real economy.