Chapter Ten

Turning Point

1. On work time in Western Europe, see for example, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Child neglect in rich nations, New York: United Nations Children's Fund, 1993. An excerpt (p. 8):

Relaxed European attitudes towards the work week have been greatly facilitated by a powerful trade union movement that has kept the issue of shorter hours at the top of the agenda throughout the postwar period. In bad economic times, unions have resisted the inevitable pressure for longer hours, arguing that a shorter work week actually combats unemployment by spreading the work around. Even during the severe downturn of the early and mid-1980s, weekly hours for most European workers continued to fall. Only recently, the large German union IG Metall won a 35-hour work week for its members, a gain that is expected to spread through the German labour force. And vacation time continues to rise throughout Europe. Recent collective-bargaining agreements have set annual paid leave at five to six weeks in France and six weeks in Germany. Contrast this to the American scene, where in 1989, workers had an average of 16 days off, down from 20 days in 1981.

For comparisons with work time in the United States, see for example, Juliet B. Schor, The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, New York: BasicBooks, 1991. An excerpt (pp. 2, 29):

U.S. manufacturing employees currently work 320 more hours [per year] -- the equivalent of over two months -- than their counterparts in West Germany or France. . . . [Compared to 1969 in the U.S.,] the average employed person [in 1989 was] on the job an additional 163 hours, or the equivalent of an extra month a year.

Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein and John Schmitt, The State of Working America, 1998-1999, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999, especially chs. 4 and 8. An excerpt (pp. 12, 2):

Between 1990 and 1995, a rise in the average hours worked per year in the United States and an even larger decline in the average hours worked per year in Japan have given the United States the dubious distinction of being the advanced economy with the longest work year. An important contributor to the much longer work schedule in the United States is the lack of legally mandated, employer-paid vacation time, which is typically three to five weeks per year for all workers in most European economies. . . . [T]he typical married-couple family with children worked 247 more hours (about six more full-time weeks) per year in 1996 than in 1989. . . . American families are working harder to stay in the same place and are seeing little of the gains in the overall economy.

See also footnote 65 of this chapter.

2. On Western European poverty rates among the elderly and children, see for example, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Child neglect in rich nations, New York: United Nations Children's Fund, 1993. An excerpt (pp. 15-16):

The situation in Europe is quite different from that in the United States and Canada. In France, for example, in recent years, tax policy and income transfers have reduced poverty among the elderly by a decisive 75 per cent, taking the rate from 76 to 0.7 per cent; but poverty among children has also been reduced significantly, falling from 21 to 5 per cent. Similarly, in the Netherlands, public policies have reduced poverty among the elderly by an impressive 56 per cent, taking the rate from 56 per cent to zero, while these same policies have lowered the child poverty rate from 14 to 4 per cent.

3. On Western European provisions for child-rearing, see for example, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Child neglect in rich nations, New York: United Nations Children's Fund, 1993. An excerpt (pp. 19, 21):

The United States is unique in its lack of provision for childbirth. In all other rich nations, pregnant women and newborn children are treated with much more generosity and humanity -- which is a large part of the reason why infant mortality rates are so much lower in France, Japan, the Netherlands and Sweden than they are in the United States. . . .

In sharp contrast to the restricted maternity benefits typical of the Anglo-American world, a large number of Western European governments provide a generous package of rights and benefits to all working parents when a child is born. For example, Sweden provides a parenting leave of 15 months at the birth of a child, to be taken by either parent, and replaces 90 per cent of earnings up to a specified maximum. In Italy, a pregnant woman is entitled to five months of paid leave at 80 per cent of her wage, followed by a further six months at 30 per cent of her wage. Her job is guaranteed for both periods. Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the Italian system is that a woman is entitled to two years of credit towards seniority each time she gives birth to a child. Not only does an Italian woman not get fired for having a child -- she is actually rewarded.

4. For Hewlett's book, see Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Child neglect in rich nations, New York: United Nations Children's Fund, 1993. An excerpt (pp. 1-2, 15, 18, 26):

The United States has by far the highest percentage of children living in poverty: 20 per cent, which represents a 21 per cent increase since 1970. . . . Three other "Anglo-American" countries -- Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom -- are at or near the 9 per cent mark. Yet, in most other rich countries, child poverty rates are a fraction of the United States rate. In Western Europe and Japan, for example, child poverty rates typically hover around 2 to 5 per cent. . . . Child poverty rates, school drop-out rates and teenage suicide rates [in the U.S.] are all on the rise. . . . Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores for college-bound students are 70 points lower than they were 20 years ago. . . . The overall drift [in the "Anglo-American" countries is] . . . towards blighting youngsters and stunting their potential. An anti-child spirit is loose in these lands. . . .

In the United States, 60 per cent of American working women still have no benefits or job protection when they give birth to a child. In the United Kingdom, only 2 per cent of child care available for children under age three is publicly funded. In Canada, 5 billion Canadian dollars (one Canadian dollar = U.S.$0.76, 1 September 1993) have been removed from social programmes that benefited poor children. . . . In 1990, the [U.S.] Medicaid system financed health care for only 40 per cent of those below the poverty line. . . . A recent study estimated that in the United States the costs to the taxpayer of one "throwaway child . . ." is about U.S.$300,000. That is the cost of one unproductive life, spent in and out of the welfare system, in and out of the penal system. The pain in [such a] life does not even come cheaply.

See also, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, When the Bough Breaks: The Cost of Neglecting Our Children, New York: BasicBooks, 1991 (expanded discussion of child neglect in the U.S.). And see chapter 2 of U.P. and its footnote 48; and footnotes 5, 12 and 13 of this chapter.

5. For the statistic of 40 percent of children in New York City living in poverty, see for example, Shlomo Maital and Kim I. Morgan, "Hungry Children Are A Bad Business," Challenge, Vol. 35, No. 4, July 1992, p. 54. The statistic is from a study by the New York City Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, which found that approximately 40 percent of New York City's children live below the poverty line for a family of three (i.e. $9,120 in 1986).

On child poverty in the U.S. generally, see for example, Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein and John Schmitt, The State of Working America, 1998-1999, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999, especially chs. 3 and 6. An excerpt (p. 9):

Since the mid-1980s, poverty rates in the United States have failed to respond to economic growth. The most recent poverty rate -- 13.3% in 1997 -- is 0.5 percentage points above the 1989 rate of 12.8%. Even with an economy that grew between 1979 and 1997, poverty rates in those 18 years were high by historical standards, averaging 13.6% for the period 1979-89 and 14.0% for the period 1989-97.

Poverty rates for minorities and children are well above the national average. . . . About one in five (19.9%) children were poor in 1997, up slightly from 19.6% in 1989 and 16.4% in 1979. For minority children, poverty rates are especially high: 37.2% of black children and 36.8% of Hispanic children under 18 were poor in 1997. The poor also appear to be poorer now than at any time in the last 20 years: in 1997, the share of people in poverty whose incomes were below 50% of the poverty line was 41.0%. Some argue that these rates are artificially high due to erroneous measurement. But a study by a nonpartisan panel of poverty experts shows that an updated measure of poverty would actually increase the number of poor by about 9 million persons (with most of the increase among the working poor).

David Holmstrom, "As Child Poverty Grows, Report Warns of Crisis," Christian Science Monitor, January 27, 1994, p. 2. An excerpt:

A recent study by Tufts University in Medford, Mass., indicates that poverty among white, black, and Hispanic children under 18 in the U.S. increased by a staggering 47 percent between 1973 and 1992. The result, says the Urban Institute in Washington, is that 1 out of 5 American children -- more than 14 million -- are in poverty today. That is twice the poverty rate of any other industrialized nation. . . . The government defines poverty as an annual income of $11,186 for a family of three.

Steven R. Donziger, ed., The Real War on Crime: The Report of the National Criminal Justice Commission, New York: HarperCollins, 1996, pp. 27-29 ("up to twelve million children are malnourished"). This study lists international child poverty rates as follows (p. 29): U.S. Total 21% [African-Americans 44%, Latinos 37.9%, Whites 16.2%] (1993); Australia 14% (1990); Canada 13.5% (1991); United Kingdom 9.9% (1986); Germany 6.8% (1989); France 6.5% (1984); Netherlands 6.2% (1991); Sweden 2.7% (1992).

On hunger among U.S. children, see for example, Shlomo Maital and Kim I. Morgan, "Hungry Children Are A Bad Business," Challenge, Vol. 35, No. 4, July 1992, p. 54. An excerpt:

Hungry children and adults comprise one of every eleven Americans. . . . Today, one of every eight children in the United States under the age of twelve suffers from hunger, and one child in every four is either hungry or lives in a household that experienced hunger during the year. That adds up to 5.5 million hungry children and another 6 million at risk of hunger. . . .

According to Dr. J. Larry Brown, Director of the Center on Hunger, Poverty, and Nutritional Policy at Tufts University, the history of child hunger is a relatively brief and recent one. "Three decades ago . . . extensive hunger was identified and the Government's responses in the 1960s and 1970s virtually eliminated the problem. The food stamp program served twenty million people. School lunch and breakfast programs were increased, so poor children would have the nutritional basis for doing well in school. Supplemental feeding programs were set up to supply food to poor pregnant women, to mothers, and to their infants. Then, in 1981 the Reagan administration began reducing and modifying those programs. By 1982 signs of hunger were widespread. . . .

One commonly-believed cause of hunger among children has no basis in fact -- the myth that children go hungry because poor people spend money on food wastefully or buy food that is not nutritious. According to Dr. Brown, "poor people actually buy more nutritious food than the rest of the population. They think more about how to make wise choices because they have to stretch their food dollar as far as possible. . . ." Today, less is spent on the school breakfast and lunch program than on the space program.

See also footnote 27 of this chapter.

On the low levels of child health care in the U.S., see for example, Derrick Z. Jackson, "The richest country has a poor record in child health care," Op-Ed, Boston Globe, September 29, 1993, p. 17. An excerpt:

The United States, the richest country in the world, has only the 19th-lowest rate of death for children under 5. For infants, the mortality rate of white children would rank with Switzerland, Japan and Canada. The death rate for African-American infants is worse than the rate in Cuba, Poland and Bulgaria. . . . Only 77 percent of children under 2 are immunized in the United States against measles. This ranks 60th among the nations listed by U.N.I.C.E.F. The U.S. measles immunization rate is worse than that for Iran, India, Botswana, Rwanda, both Koreas, China, Cuba, Vietnam, Mongolia, Honduras, Chile, Colombia, Hungary, Romania, Egypt, Syria, Panama, Mexico and the former Czechoslovakia. . . . [C]hild poverty rose from 15 percent in 1970 to the current 20 percent. The rate is twice that of any other developed nation. . . . Put together, the report [U.N.I.C.E.F.'s The Progress of Nations] reminded us that the United States is one of only two major industrial nations -- the other being the United Kingdom -- that allowed the state of children to deteriorate over the last two decades.

See also, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Child neglect in rich nations, New York: United Nations Children's Fund, 1993. An excerpt (p. 17):

Estimates vary, but in the early 1990s, somewhere between 600,000 and 3 million people are homeless. Approximately 30 per cent of them are families, most often a parent with two or three children. The average child is 6 years old; the average parent, 27. The loss of a home often leads to the dissolution of a family: two older children in foster care, the wife and baby in a public shelter, the husband sleeping on a park bench or under a bridge. . . .

In 1989, 10 million Americans were living near the edge of homelessness, doubled up with friends or family. . . . Local officials report that there is no public housing available for hundreds of thousands of poor families who, under existing government regulations, qualify for help. There are today about 44,000 persons on the waiting list in Chicago, 60,000 in Miami and 200,000 in New York City. While approximately 330,000 children are homeless in the United States, 12 million are uninsured and have little or no access to health care.

And see chapter 2 of U.P. and its footnote 48; and footnotes 4, 12 and 13 of this chapter.

6. For the New York Times's review, see Malcolm W. Browne, "What Is Intelligence, and Who Has It?," New York Times Book Review, October 16, 1994, p. 3. The three books under review were: Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, New York: Free Press, 1994; J. Philippe Rushton, Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective, New Brunswick, NJ: Transition, 1994; and Seymour W. Itzkoff, The Decline of Intelligence in America: A Strategy for National Renewal, Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994.

An excerpt from the Times review:

Indicators of national intelligence in the United States have declined compared with similar measurements of intelligence in other countries. The demographer Daniel R. Vining Jr. has calculated that America's I.Q. scores have fallen about five points since intelligence tests first came into use at the beginning of this century, and the College Entrance Examination Board says that scores for the Scholastic Aptitude Test fell from 1962 to 1990 by 11 percent in the verbal section and 5 percent in the mathematics part. . . . Worst of all, say the authors [of the books under review], the lowest intellectual levels of the population are strongly outbreeding the brightest, and if (as most psychologists believe) intelligence is partly inherited, America is losing the cognitive base essential to coping with national problems. . . .

Among Mr. Rushton's [one of the authors] conclusions are that whites, on average, emphasize nurture rather than numbers of offspring, while blacks, on average, are shaped by evolutionary selection pressures [of the warmer environment of Africa] to produce more children but to nurture each one less. . . . This is the kind of proposition that makes Mr. Rushton a constant target of furious protests. . . . Mr. Rushton is nevertheless regarded by many of his colleagues as a scholar and not a bigot. . . . Mr. Murray and Mr. Herrnstein [the authors of another of the books] write that "for the last 30 years, the concept of intelligence has been a pariah in the world of ideas," and that the time has come to rehabilitate rational discourse on the subject. It is hard to imagine a democratic society doing otherwise.

7. The opening sentence of the review is: "One may loathe or share the opinions expressed in the three books under review, but one thing seems clear: The government or society that persists in sweeping their subject matter under the rug will do so at its peril."

8. On the number of people in the United States suffering hunger, see for example, Theo Francis, "Hunger Found Surging In U.S., Easing Globally," Chicago Tribune, October 14, 1994, zone N, p. 26. An excerpt:

In 1990, 12 percent of the U.S. population was determined to be hungry, or ate too little "to provide them with the energy and nutrients for fully productive, active, and healthy lives," according to a study on the causes of hunger by the Bread for the World Institute. Between 1985 and 1990, the U.S. experienced an increase of 50 percent in the number of hungry people, according to the study. Twelve million of the 30 million deemed hungry in the U.S. are under 18 while 3 million to 5 million are senior citizens.

"Worldwide, hunger is going down," said institute director David Beckmann. "In Africa and, ironically, in America, it's going up. . . ." Increasing federal food assistance by less than one percent of the federal budget, or about $10 billion, would eliminate the country's hunger problem, according to the institute. . . . [Executive Director of the Congressional Hunger Caucus John] Morrill argued that enough money could be raised by cutting about 3 percent of the defense budget, or a third of the C.I.A.'s annual funds.

Judy Rakowsky, "Tufts study finds 12 million children in U.S. go hungry," Boston Globe, June 16, 1993, p. 80 (reporting similar statistics from a Tufts University study conducted based upon the nutrition standard set by the National Academy of Sciences, i.e. having enough money to buy adequately nutritious food to nourish the body and maintain growth and development in children). See also footnotes 5, 11 and 12 of this chapter.

9. On increasing hunger in the U.S. and Africa, see footnote 8 of this chapter.

10. On the permanent impact of malnutrition on children's neural development, see for example, John W. Frank and Fraser Mustard, "The Determinants of Health from a Historical Perspective," Daedalus (Health and Wealth), Vol. 123, No. 4, Fall 1994, pp. 1-19. An excerpt (p. 10):

Emerging evidence from fields such as psychology and the neurosciences points to how nurturing or stimulation influence brain development, particularly when it is most plastic. The modifications and connections that are formed among the billions of cells in the cerebral cortex occur very rapidly during the first few months of life and continue throughout childhood. The development of the brain is strongly influenced by the quality of the nourishment and nurturance given to infants and children. The stimuli affect not only the number of brain cells in the cortex and the number of connections among them, but also the way the nerve cells are "wired." The stages in the development of the brain appear to be linked so that events early in life affect the development and function of the brain at later stages. In addition, in adverse environments activated stress hormones can have a negative effect on brain development and can damage neurons, leading to permanent defects in memory and learning.

11. For the Wall Street Journal's article on increasing hunger among the elderly, see Michael J. McCarthy, "Frayed Lifeline: Hunger Among Elderly Surges," Wall Street Journal, November 8, 1994, p. A1. An excerpt:

[S]everal million older Americans are going hungry -- and their numbers are growing steadily. . . . [A]s many as 4.9 million elderly people -- about 16% of the population aged 60 and older -- are either hungry or malnourished to some degree, often because they are poor or too infirm to shop or cook. . . . [A]t least two-thirds of needy older people aren't being reached by federal food-assistance projects, including food stamps. . . . Meanwhile, funds for federal nutrition programs haven't kept pace with either the rising cost of food or the surging tide of older people. Increases in funding trailed the inflation rate throughout the 1980s, and in the 1990s program budgets have risen only marginally. In contrast, the elderly population swelled by more than 20% in the 1980s alone. . . .

Some nine million people 65 or older live alone, putting them at increased risk for poor nutrition, and their numbers are expected to grow to 11 million within a decade. . . . Says Ed Kramer, an aging-department official for the state [of New York]: "There are a lot of hidden elderly, particularly in urban areas and high-rises, who are literally starving to death."

12. On the Boston City Hospital malnutrition clinic, see for example, Diego Ribadeneira and Cheong Chow, "BCH [Boston City Hospital] Study Illustrates Poor's Painful Choice," Boston Globe, September 8, 1992, p. 1; Diego Ribadeneira, "BCH Reports Rise in Child Malnutrition," Boston Globe, September 25, 1992, Metro section, p. 1. An excerpt:

The demand for the services of the failure-to-thrive clinic is so great that staff members resort to triage -- a system of assigning on the basis of urgency or chance for survival -- to determine which children are in need of immediate care and which children can afford to be placed on a waiting list. . . . Some of the children suffer from Third World levels of malnutrition and require hospitalization. Their immune systems are so weakened by lack of nutrients that infections could be fatal. Doctors say the children, mostly infants and toddlers, are the victims of the social and financial calamities that have befallen families in Boston's inner-city neighborhoods. . . .

[The Director of the clinic] points out that the maximum allowance for food stamps is 80 cents per meal per person. . . . "I challenge you to be able to properly care for a child on 80 cents, given the food costs in this city," [she] said.

On infant mortality in the U.S., see for example, Derrick Z. Jackson, "America's shameful little secret," Boston Globe, December 24, 1989, p. A20. An excerpt:

The United States is the second-richest nation in U.N.I.C.E.F.'s State of the Children report. Its per-capita gross national product is $18,530, just behind first-place Switzerland's $21,330. But the United States has only the 22d lowest rate of infant mortality. In 1960, the United States had the 10th lowest. The United States is now behind Ireland and Spain, where the per-capita G.N.P. is about $6,000.

The numbers for African-American children are tragic. The U.S. infant-mortality rate is 10 per 1,000 live births. The African-American rate is 18 per 1,000. In Roxbury [a section of Boston], the rate is 27.2. That rate would rank Roxbury, supposedly part of the world's second-richest nation, 42d in infant mortality. Though Boston is perhaps the most hospitaled city in America, Roxbury's rate would be behind both Koreas, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, the Soviet Union, Uruguay, Mauritius, Yugoslavia, Romania, Chile, Trinidad and Tobago, Kuwait, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Cuba, Greece, Portugal, Czechoslovakia and Israel. It is barely ahead of Panama, Argentina, China and Sri Lanka. . . .

Paul Wise, a Harvard Medical School expert on infant mortality, said: "The only place where you see social disparities like you see in the U.S. infant-mortality rate is South Africa." The United States and South Africa hold the distinction of being the only two industrialized nations without guaranteed health care.

See also footnote 5 of this chapter.

13. On declining contact time between parents and children, see for example, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Child neglect in rich nations, New York: United Nations Children's Fund, 1993. An excerpt (pp. 2, 7, 10):

Over the last two decades there has been a sharp decline in the amount of time parents spend caring for their children, a trend that has been particularly pronounced in the United Kingdom and the United States. According to Stanford University economist Victor Fuchs, American children have lost 10 to 12 hours of parental time per week. . . . The data show that the amount of "total contact time" (defined as "all time parents spend with children, including time spent doing other things") has dropped 40 per cent during the last quarter century. . . .

It is a telling comment on the state of affairs that Hallmark, the greeting card company, now markets cards for overcommitted professional parents who find it difficult to actually see their children. "Have a super day at school," chirps one card meant to be left under the cereal box in the morning. "I wish I were there to tuck you in," says another, designed to peek out from behind the pillow at night.

William R. Mattox, Jr., "The Family Time Famine," Family Policy, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1990, p. 2.

14. On the rise of two-income families, see for example, Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein and John Schmitt, The State of Working America, 1998-1999, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999, especially ch. 1. An excerpt (pp. 17-18, 38):

Were it not for the extra hours of work provided by working wives, the average income of middle-income, married families would have fallen in the 1990s. Between 1989 and 1996, middle-class husbands and wives increased their annual hours of work outside the home from 3,550 to 3,685, or more than three weeks of extra work per year. And, because of falling wages, this 3.8% increase in hours translated into just 1.1% more family income over seven years. Most of the added hours came from wives, and, without their added work effort, these middle-class families would have lost 1.1% of their income. These middle-income families were not alone: the bottom 80% of families increased their annual hours of work but still managed only to stay even. . . .

Unlike the prior decade, wives' contributions were no longer sufficient [in the 1990s] to offset the lower earnings of husbands, whose wages continued to fall (only husbands in the top fifth experienced wage increases). By 1996, the bottom 80% of married-couple families would have experienced flat or declining incomes in the absence of wives' work; even with wives' contributions, families in the bottom 40% lost economic ground in the 1990s.

See also footnote 101 of this chapter.

On the steep increase in the number of working poor in the U.S. since the 1970s, see for example, Robert A. Rosenblatt, "Survey Finds Sharp Rise In Working Poor Salaries: The Number of Full-Time Workers Who Earn Less Than A Living Wage Rose From 12% To 18% In 13 Years," Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1994, p. D1. An excerpt:

The percentage of gainfully employed Americans receiving poverty-level wages rose sharply over the last decade, with nearly one in five full-time employees now counted among the working poor, according to a study released Wednesday by the Commerce Department. The study, titled "The Earnings Ladder," shows that 18% of Americans with year-round full-time jobs had earnings of less than $13,091 in 1992. In 1979, only 12% of all full-time workers earned comparably low wages. A worker trying to support a family on this wage would be living in poverty; the official definition of poverty in 1992 was a family of four earning $14,428 a year.

Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein and John Schmitt, The State of Working America, 1998-1999, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999, chs. 3 and 6. An excerpt (pp. 307, 313, 309, 137):

Despite the popular notion that the poor work very little . . . in 1996, 72.6% of the employable, prime-age [age 25-54] poor either worked (67.1%) or sought work (5.5%). . . . [T]he wage and employment conditions shown in [numerous accompanying statistical tables] make it difficult to see how low-wage workers can realistically be expected to work their way out of poverty. . . . Low-wage workers . . . are defined as those whose hourly wage [is less than that which] would lift a family of four just up to the poverty line in 1997: $7.89 per hour. This group's average wage in 1997 was $5.92, 25% below the poverty-level wage. . . .

[There has been] a significant expansion of workers earning far less than poverty-level wages since 1979, primarily in the 1980s. In 1979, only 4.2% of the workforce were "very low earners," with wages at least 25% below the poverty-level wage. By 1989, 13.4% of the workforce earned such wages, a shift of 9.2% of the workforce into this low-wage group. This group declined by 1.3% between 1989 and 1997, however. Looking at the total group earning poverty-level wages . . . in 1997, 28.6% of the workforce earned poverty-level wages, a rise from 23.7% in 1979. There was no change over the 1989-97 period.

On the systematic undercounting in official unemployment statistics, see for example, Marc Breslow, "The real un(der) employment rate," Dollars and Sense, May 1, 1995, p. 35.

15. For some of Fortune's celebrations of the rise of profits in the mid-1990s without a corresponding increase in payroll expenditures, see for example, Louis S. Richman, "Why Profits Will Keep Booming," Fortune, May 1, 1995, p. 33. An excerpt:

Champagne, anyone? Though the final figures for 1994 are still trickling in, it isn't too early to start celebrating the best profit party corporate America has thrown in decades. Net earnings of the S&P [Standard and Poor's, a stock-price index] 500 companies rose a splendid 40% last year -- the fourth successive year of double-digits gains -- and the festivities ain't over yet. . . . You have to look back to the golden years of the mid-1960s to find the last time U.S. companies experienced a six-year run in earnings growth. . . . [Workers] have been off the profit-party guest list so far.

Richard S. Teitelbaum, "Introduction to the Fortune 500; Largest U.S. Corporations A Boom In Profits," Fortune, May 15, 1995, p. 226. An excerpt:

Even an anxious Broadway producer couldn't wish for a stronger opening. The premiere of the new Fortune 500, combining industrial and service companies, offers performance numbers that would bedazzle any critic. For the group, profits rose a stunning 54% on a sales gain of 8.2%. That powerful showing came with only modest growth in the cast: employee rolls of Fortune 500 companies gained just 2.6% last year.

Richard S. Teitelbaum, "The Largest U.S. Industrial Corporations; Hats Off! It was a Heck of a Year," Fortune, April 18, 1994, p. 210. An excerpt:

[A] dazzling $62.6 billion in profits. . . . What makes that 15% gain even more impressive is that sales growth in 1993 was virtually stagnant. . . . Employees, though, might well voice a few loud gripes.

"Getting Stronger," Fortune, November 14, 1994, p. 14 ("The percentage of corporate income devoted to payrolls is hovering near a record low").

See also, John Liscio, "Is Inflation Tamed? Don't Believe It," Barron's, April 15, 1996, "Market Week" section, p. 10 ("The big reason why the bond and stock markets have enjoyed such a heady run for the past 15 years has been capital's clear subjugation of labor"). And see footnotes 14 and 101 of this chapter.

16. Chomsky incisively elaborated on an important aspect of this problem in a 1976 interview broadcast on British television. For the transcript of this discussion, see "The Relevance of Anarcho-Syndicalism/The Jay Interview," in Noam Chomsky, Radical Priorities, Montreal: Black Rose, 1981, pp. 245-261. The passage (pp. 254-257):

Chomsky: [T]here's a certain amount of work that just has to be done if we're to maintain [something like our current] standard of living. It's an open question how onerous that work has to be. Let's recall that science and technology and intellect have not been devoted to examining that question or to overcoming the onerous and self-destructive character of the necessary work of society. The reason is that it has always been assumed that there is a substantial body of wage-slaves who will do it simply because otherwise they'll starve. However, if human intelligence is turned to the question of how to make the necessary work of society itself meaningful, we don't know what the answer will be. My guess is that a fair amount of it can be made entirely tolerable.

It's a mistake to think that even back-breaking physical labor is necessarily onerous. Many people -- myself included -- do it for relaxation. Well recently, for example, I got it into my head to plant thirty-four trees in a meadow behind the house, on the State Conservation Commission [land], which means I had to dig thirty-four holes in the sand. You know, for me, and what I do with my time mostly, that's pretty hard work, but I have to admit I enjoyed it. I wouldn't have enjoyed it if I'd had work norms, if I'd had an overseer, and if I'd been ordered to do it at a certain moment, and so on. On the other hand, if it's a task taken on just out of interest, fine, that can be done. And that's without any technology, without any thought given to how to design the work, and so on. . . .

But let's assume there is some extent to which it remains onerous. Well, in that case, the answer's quite simple: that work has to be equally shared among people capable of doing it.

Peter Jay: And everyone spends a certain number of months a year working on an automobile production line and a certain number of months collecting the garbage, and . . .

Chomsky: If it turns out that these are really tasks which people will find no self-fulfillment in. Incidentally, I don't quite believe that. As I watch people work, craftsmen, let's say, automobile mechanics for example, I think one often finds a good deal of pride in work well done, complicated work well done, because it takes thought and intelligence to do it, especially when one is also involved in management of the enterprise, determination of how the work will be organized, what it is for, what the purposes of the work are, what'll happen to it and so on -- I think all of this can be satisfying and rewarding activity which in fact requires skills, the kind of skills people will enjoy exercising. However, I'm thinking hypothetically now. Suppose it turns out that there is some residue of work which really no one wants to do, whatever that may be -- okay, then I say that the residue of work must be equally shared, and beyond that people will be free to exercise their talents as they see fit. . . .

[N]otice that we have two alternatives: one alternative is to have it equally shared, the other is to design social institutions so that some group of people will be simply compelled to do the work, on pain of starvation. Those are the two alternatives. . . . And I think that the chances for [the former] are enormously enhanced by industrialization. Why? Precisely because much of the most meaningless drudgery can be taken over by machines, which means that the scope for really creative human work is substantially enlarged. . . .

[Y]ou pose a dilemma which many people pose, between desire for satisfaction in work and a desire to create things of value to the community. But it's not so obvious that there is any dilemma, any contradiction. So it's by no means clear -- in fact, I think it's false -- that contributing to the enhancement of pleasure and satisfaction in work is inversely proportional to contributing to the value of the output.

Peter Jay: Not inversely proportional, but it might be unrelated. I mean, take some very simple thing, like selling ice cream cones on the beach on a public holiday. It's a service to society; undoubtedly people want ice creams, they feel hot. On the other hand, it's hard to see in what sense there is either a craftsman's joy or a great sense of social virtue or nobility in performing that task. Why would anyone perform that task if they were not rewarded for it?

Chomsky: I must say I've seen some very cheery-looking ice cream vendors . . . who happen to like the idea that they're giving children ice creams, which seems to me a perfectly reasonable way to spend one's time, as compared with thousands of other occupations that I can imagine. . . .

[W]hat I'm saying is that our characteristic assumption that pleasure in work, pride in work, is either unrelated to or negatively related to the value of the output is related to a particular stage of social history, namely capitalism, in which human beings are tools of production. It is by no means necessarily true.

17. On the lack of scientific legitimacy of claims about I.Q., see for example, Richard C. Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon J. Kamin, Not In Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature, New York: Pantheon, 1984; Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, New York: Norton, 1981; Russell Jacoby and Naomi Glauberman, eds., The Bell Curve Debate: History, Documents, Opinions, New York: Times Books, 1995. See also, Noam Chomsky, "Equality: Language Development, Human Intelligence, and Social Organization" (1976), in James Peck, ed., The Chomsky Reader, New York: Pantheon, 1987, pp. 183-202; Noam Chomsky, "Psychology and Ideology" (1972), in Noam Chomsky, For Reasons of State, New York: Pantheon, 1973, pp. 318-369 at pp. 347-363 (note that the relevant passage of this essay was not included in the version of it that is reprinted in The Chomsky Reader).

18. On public knowledge of and attitudes towards the "Contract With America" -- the policy program advanced in 1994 when the Republicans gained control of Congress -- see for example, Maureen Dowd, "Americans Like G.O.P. Agenda But Split on How to Reach Goals," New York Times, December 15, 1994, p. A1 ("Although Mr. Gingrich has been waving around his copy of the Contract with America, which was printed in TV Guide, 72 percent of those polled [by the New York Times and C.B.S. News] said they had not read or heard anything about it"); Marc Breslow, "The G.O.P.'s 17% mandate," Dollars and Sense, March 1, 1995, p. 43; John Brennan [Director of the Los Angeles Times Poll], "Voters Don't Buy Expert Wisdom That Economy's Perking Along," Los Angeles Times, November 20, 1994, p. D2. An excerpt:

This October, as the Republican blowout was brewing, 61% still told The Times Poll that spending for domestic programs should be increased. Most, including GOP-leaning voters, had never heard of the now-legendary Republican Contract with America. When told it was a mix of tax cuts, more defense spending and a balanced budget amendment, a majority called it "unrealistic."

Richard Morin [Director of the Washington Post Poll], "Myths and Messages in the Election Tea Leaves," Washington Post National Weekly Edition, November 21-27, 1994, p. 37. An excerpt:

[P]ublic opinion polls and an analysis of [1994 Congressional] election returns suggest that the vote was something less than what Newt Gingrich and his fellow travelers appear to have in store for the country. According to a Time magazine-CNN post-election survey, six out of 10 persons interviewed said the election was a repudiation of the Democrats, while just one out of six said it was an affirmation of the Republican agenda. . . . Republicans claimed about 52 percent of all votes cast for candidates in contested House seats, slightly better than a two-point improvement from 1992.

Richard Berke, "Poll Finds Public Doubts Key Parts Of G.O.P.'s Agenda," New York Times, February 28, 1995, p. A1. An excerpt:

Eight weeks after Republicans assumed control of Congress and vowed to make the Government more responsive, Americans are dubious about central elements of the party's legislative agenda. . . . More than half of Americans said they knew nothing about the Contract With America, the House Republicans' political manifesto. But the number of people who had some familiarity with the contract has risen to 45 percent, from 27 percent in December. Even so, Americans -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- disagreed with or were divided over many particulars in the contract. . . .

Despite the contract's call to increase military spending, 63 percent preferred to keep such spending at the current level. Sixty-nine percent of Americans said it was a poor idea for the House to approve, as it did recently, a bill that would allow the police to make searches without having a warrant.

For one of the most fascinating stories about the so-called "Contract," see Knight-Ridder, "G.O.P. Pollster Never Measured Popularity Of 'Contract,' Only Slogans," Chicago Tribune, November 12, 1995, p. 7, zone C. An excerpt:

After recent polls suggested that the "Contract With America's" popularity had fallen, House Speaker Newt Gingrich blamed pollsters for asking "totally dishonest" questions. There may be another explanation.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz, a Gingrich protege, never really measured the contract's popularity in the first place, before assuring reporters last September that at least six out of 10 Americans supported each of its 10 main proposals. Instead, in a survey he won't disclose for publication, Luntz merely measured the popularity of the strongest slogans that the contract's drafters could come up with. Luntz now concedes that his methods were flawed, and even some Republicans suspect that public support for the contract was overstated. . . . This month's Wall Street Journal/N.B.C. News survey, for example, finds that by a 45 percent to 35 percent margin, the public disagrees with most of what the House G.O.P. is proposing to do.

On public attitudes remaining stubbornly social-democratic in important respects since the New Deal years of the 1930s, see chapter 1 of U.P. and its footnote 7; and footnote 50 of this chapter.

19. For excerpts from the Contract With America, including "The Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act," see David E. Rosenbaum, "The 1994 Campaign: The Republicans," New York Times, November 1, 1994, p. A20. The exact words of that paragraph of the Contract:

The Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act. Small business incentives, capital gains cut and indexation, neutral cost recovery, risk assessment/cost-benefit analysis, strengthening the Regulatory Flexibility Act and unfunded mandate reform to create jobs and raise worker wages.

20. On U.S. military spending, see chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnote 75.

21. Note that the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 was not an attack on the United States itself, because Pearl Harbor was a military base on a U.S. colony -- stolen by force and guile from its inhabitants half a century before (as the sources cited below make clear) -- and Hawaii became a State only in 1959.

On the U.S. conquest of Hawaii, see for example, Thomas Hietala, Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985; Noel J. Kent, Hawaii, Islands Under the Influence, New York: Monthly Review, 1983; Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands, New York: Macmillan, 1968.

Chomsky notes that the hijacked airplanes that hit the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, were "something quite new in world affairs, not in their scale and character, but in the target. For the U.S., this is the first time since the War of 1812 that its national territory has been under attack, even threat."

22. On the real purpose of the Pentagon, see chapter 3 of U.P., "Teach-In: Evening."

On tourism, Boeing, and the Pentagon system, see for example, Leslie Albrecht Popiel, "Aircraft Producers Expect to Make $5.5 Billion Profit," Christian Science Monitor, January 20, 1994, p. 8 (quoting Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena: "The aviation industry is critical to our country. . . . It contributes $80 billion a year to our economy. It plays a significant role in perhaps the world's largest industry . . . the $3 trillion global travel and tourism industry"); Mark Trumbull, "Boeing's Defense Division Accelerates Out of the Red," Christian Science Monitor, December 16, 1993, p. 9 (on the continuing importance of Pentagon contracts to the Boeing Company); Frank Kofsky, Harry Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation, New York: St. Martin's, 1993, especially pp. 13-15, 36-38 (on the publicly-funded development of the aircraft industry generally); Laura D'Andrea Tyson, Who's Bashing Whom?: Trade Conflict in High-Technology Industries, Washington: Institute for International Economics, 1992. An excerpt (pp. 157, 169-170):

Both Boeing's monopoly of the wide-body, long-range market and its consequent position in the global industry have their roots in engine technologies and design competitions funded by the U.S. military. . . . During the first twenty years of its existence . . . Boeing ran losses on its commercial operations. . . . Boeing was able to sustain these losses only because of its military operations. At least through the 1960s, endemic market volatility and subcompetitive returns in the commercial aircraft market were offset by market security and often supercompetitive returns in the military market. Operations in the latter market provided an implicit subsidy for operations in the former.

At critical moments, government contracts provided the safety net to catch a plummeting commercial airframe company. . . . Even as late as the early 1980s, for example, the U.S. Air Force bought 60 K.C.-10s, an airplane that was virtually identical to the D.C.-10 (except for the addition of in-flight refueling equipment). Without this purchase, McDonnell-Douglas would not have been able to keep its D.C.-10 production line open. . . . The N.A.S.A. R & D budget paled in comparison with the explosion of federal funds for defense R & D in aerospace during the postwar period, but N.A.S.A. continued to play an important role through its research installations and its participation in several collaborative R.&D. projects.

See also footnotes 3, 4 and 10 of chapter 3 of U.P.

23. On Pentagon spending in the post-Cold War era, see for example, Center for Defense Information, Defense Monitor, July 1993, XXI.3, XXII.4 (noting that Clinton's military budget remained above the Cold War average in real dollars); John Aloysius Farrell, "Clinton seen returning to 'New Democrat' stance," Boston Globe, December 3, 1994, p. 7 ("The president scored a preemptive political strike on a Republican Congress -- and shored up his status as commander in chief -- by proposing Thursday a $25 billion hike in defense spending"). See also chapter 3 of U.P. and its footnotes 3 and 10; and chapter 8 of U.P. and its footnote 75.

24. On tax deductions for home mortgages and other regressive fiscal measures, see for example, Christopher Howard, "The Hidden Side of the American Welfare State," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 108, No. 3, Fall 1993, pp. 403-436 at pp. 416-417 ("Over 80 percent of the tax benefits for home mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and real estate taxes go to those earning more than $50,000"); Michael Wines, "Taxpayers Are Angry. They're Expensive, Too," New York Times, November 20, 1994, section 4, p. 5. An excerpt:

[P]ayments to the poor add up to less than the three largest tax breaks that benefit the middle class and wealthy: deductions for retirement plans, the deduction for home mortgage interest and the exemption of health-insurance premiums that companies pay for their employees. Perhaps more important, most tax breaks and payments to the well-situated are practically exempt from the debate over controlling expenditures.

See also, Nancy Folbre and The Center for Popular Economics, The New Field Guide to the U.S. Economy, New York: New Press, 1995, sections 6.7 and 1.2 (adding together the value of direct benefits and tax breaks, an average household with income under $10,000 received roughly 60 percent of the welfare provided to households with income over $100,000 in 1991: $5,700 to $9,300. Moreover, "The top tax rate on income fell from 90% during the Kennedy years to 31% during the Reagan years").

For a useful discussion of dozens of the primary welfare programs in the U.S. -- from the Pentagon system, to Savings and Loan bailouts, to insurance loopholes, to the "horse write-off," and many others -- see Mark Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman, Take The Rich Off Welfare, Tucson, AZ: Odonian, 1996. An excerpt (pp. 6-7, 10, 35-36, 52-53, 70-71, 96):

Welfare for the rich costs us about 3 1/2 times as much as the $130 billion we spend each year on welfare for the poor -- an amount the 1996 welfare "reform" bill will reduce significantly. . . . $448 billion greatly understates the amount of money American taxpayers spend each year on welfare for the rich. . . .

Back in the 1950s, U.S. corporations paid 31% of the federal government's general revenues. Today, they pay just 11%. . . . A series of tax "reforms" that began in 1977 have cut the rate paid by the richest Americans nearly in half, while Social Security taxes -- which are paid overwhelmingly by ordinary wage earners (and not paid at all on income over $62,700) -- have steadily risen. . . . Social Security tax is a major technique for transferring the tax burden away from the rich. One reason is that it only applies to "earned" income; income from investments is exempt. Another reason is that there's a ceiling -- currently $62,700 -- on how much earned income is taxed. Anyone who earns $62,700 or more pays the same Social Security tax Bill Gates does -- needless to say, it amounts to a slightly higher percentage of their income. This makes Social Security one of our most regressive taxes. A family that made the (1993) median income of $37,800 paid 7.65% of its income in Social Security tax, while one that made ten times as much paid 1.46% and one that made a hundred times as much paid 0.1% (one-tenth of 1%). . . .

Homeowners get five different federal tax breaks that the 40 million American families who rent their homes don't. . . . [T]wo-thirds of the benefits go to families with incomes of $75,000 or higher. . . . Although about 63 million U.S. families own their homes, only 27 million -- fewer than half -- claimed the mortgage interest deduction in 1994. That's probably because it isn't worth it for most nonwealthy taxpayers to itemize their deductions. What's more, the lower your tax bracket, the less the deduction is worth to you. . . . The National Housing Institute calculates that this deduction cost the Treasury slightly more than $58 billion in fiscal 1995, and that half that total -- $29 billion -- went to people with incomes over $100,000. . . .

Of the U.S.-based transnationals with assets over $100 million, 37% paid no U.S. federal taxes at all in 1991, and the average tax rate for those that did pay was just 1% of gross receipts! (We'd tell you what it was as a percentage of profits, but nobody knows. That's just the point -- they avoid paying tax by concealing how much profit they make.) Foreign-based transnationals did even better. 71% of them paid no U.S. income tax on their operations in this country, and the average rate for those that did pay was just 0.6% -- six-tenths of one percent -- of gross receipts! . . .The [business] meals and entertainment deduction amounts to an annual subsidy of $5.5 billion for fancy restaurants, golf courses, skyboxes at sports arenas and the like. And it's applied unequally. Factory workers can't deduct meals or sporting events at which they discuss their jobs with colleag