Privatization and Elementary Math

I’ve been watching the push toward privatization in the new “prison industry,” “education industry,” and more, with both perplexity and alarm.

And wondering when and how the theology of free market salvation gained so many devoted believers.

I didn’t major in business, but even I know that rule number one for any for-profit business is maximize profits, minimize costs.

So, for instance, in the push to privatize prisons, preservation of inmate contact with families has been sacrificed to maximizing profit from phone calls (more than $1.13 a minute until a federal cap was putin effect in February 2014)  Profits are  maximized through “insourcing” work to inmates, some paid as little as $0.25 an hour.   And intensive lobbying shapes legislation to keep prisons full As I discussed in more detail in an earlier post, privatization of prisons incentivizes incarceration; a net result is that many states now spend more on prisons than education, and one out of four inmates – globally – is held in a US prison. 

Maximize profits, minimize costs. 

from The For Profit Prison Boom in
One Worrying Infographic,
 Business Insider, January 27, 2014

Prison industry profits are high, and CEO salaries are higher. Damon Hininger, president of CorrectionsCorporation of America (CCA), the oldest and largest private prison company in the US, earned $2,772,435 in 2012. The company has given over $5,200,000 in campaigncontributions (three fifths of that to state campaigns), has spent over $20,700,000 in lobbying on crime, detention, and immigration issues, and has contributed generously in the past to ALEC the American Legislative Exchange Council) which has written and promoted many of the laws responsible for increased sentencing and overcrowded prisons. Ever penny spent, every dollar of the more than $300,000,000 in profit last year, came from state and federal taxes. 

Maximize profits, minimize costs.

Even in obvious for-profit industries, that simple equation leaves out other important values: worker safety, employee satisfaction, truth in advertising, safeguarding of air and water, robust local economies.

Free-market principles too often reward short-term behaviors, externalizing costs to communities, workers, consumers and pushing long-term consequences onto unsuspecting others.

Setting that aside - are there arenas that should be outside the reach of for-profit motivation?

Medicine? What happens when a doctor will profit form a particular diagnosis, or prescription of a particular drug? Which diseases receive attention when profit shapes practice? Which low-cost solutions are ignored? What happens when marketing models stall low-cost sharing of essential vaccines or medications, costing human lives?

Roads? Ports? Airports? Does competition make them safer, more accessible?

Mail and package delivery? Internet access? Phone service? What happens when providers choose the most lucrative markets, and leave remote areas with no suppliers at all?

Education?

Advocates of “small government” often describe privatization as a way to shrink government expense.

It’s an interesting theory that ignores some elementary math. 

In practice, it works if the government abandons the enterprise completely, or ignores the quality of services given. Otherwise privatization adds a costly layer of oversight, regulation, and administration.

Not to mention the money spent in political influence, the corporate salaries, the shareholder profits.

Privatized education works if we agree some kids are just not worth educating.

Or convince ourselves that for-profit corporations will put kids before profit without extensive regulation and costly oversight.

Or buy the idea that teachers should be paid less, trained less, treated as hourly workers in an industry with high turnover and little job satisfaction.

The economic challenges of local school districts I posted about last week are compounded by the push to expand for-profit charter and cyber schools, funded with public money.  

Advocates of “school reform,” “school choice” and “smaller government through privatization” need to spend some time on basic math.

The numbers don’t add up.

According Senate Bill 123 passed in 1997:

A charter school is an independent public school established and operated under a charter from the local board of school directors. Charter schools must be established as public nonprofit, nonsectarian entities by teachers, parents, institutions of higher education or museums.

Some excellent charter schools formed by parents and non-profit widened access to excellent education, and opened doors of opportunity to students who struggled in larger, over-burdened public schools.  

But despite the “nonprofit, nonsectarian” definition, Pennsylvania has allowed for-profit firms to provide teachers, curriculum, administrative support, or complete on and off-site management,

blurring completely the definition of “nonprofit.”

It has also allowed for-profit firms to create and manage publicly funded cyber schools.

And it has allowed those schools to collect per-pupil fees equivalent to those of each student’s local district, without regard for the real cost of teaching that student, and without any public scrutiny of profit, expenses, or relationship between advertised claims and student results.

Dig even a little and the evidence is overwhelming: while investors and CEOs of these firms enjoy large profits, students, teachers, and school districts pay the price.

Just a small sampling:

1. A 2009 national study by CREDO, (Center for Research on Education Outcomes),a research unit at Stanford University,  found that 

Compared to the educational gains the charter students would have had in their traditional public schools, the analysis shows that students in Pennsylvania charter schools on average make smaller learning gains.  

2. No PA cyber charter schools made adequate yearly progress in 2011-2012 (the most recent year available). According to an April 2014 report by the Democratic House Education Committee: 

For 2010-11, while 94% of school districts met AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress), 75% of public schools met AYP. In contrast, only 61% of charter schools met AYP and only two of the 12 cyber charter schools met AYP. . .
 For 2011-12, while 61% of school districts met AYP, 50% of public schools met AYP. In stark contrast, only 29% of charter schools met AYP and none of the 12 cyber charter schools met AYP (9)

3. Charter schools and siphon off students with mild, easily addressed special education needs, leaving more expensive-to-teach students in local schools. In Pennsylvania, charter schools have no limit on how many special education students they claim, while local schools are held to a percentage. A detailed evaluation by The Center for Rural Education found: 

A single payment amount for all types of special education students does not reflect the wide variation in the costs of different types and intensities of services that various students need. Under the current funding formula for special education tuition payments, the charter schools received substantially more in tuition payments for special education students than they reported spending for special education. As reported on the Pennsylvania Department of Education website, in 2012-13, charter schools received $351 million in tuition payments from school districts for special education students and had $151 million in special education instruction and related expenditures, an excess of
$200 million. In 2011-12, the reported data were $295 million in special education tuition payments received from school districts for special education students and $134 million spent for special education, a difference of $161 million.

There is no provision for review of excesses, and no mechanism to have that money refunded to school systems that were forced to pay excessive amounts.    

4. Several of Pennsylvania’s cyber schools have been involved in fraud investigations:

PA Cyber . . .  has been receiving well over $100 million in public money annually, a portion of which prosecutors allege that Trombetta was using to fund businesses that functioned as his "personal ATM machine" and "personal retirement account. 

Page 1 of a 4 page chart from Charter and Charter
Cyber School Reform Update (pp 9-12)

In March 2013, the Democratic House Education Committee study offered an extensive “fraud chart,” listing a long list of abuses against a long list of charter corporations. Many had multiple offenses, including multiple salaries, unsubstantiated expenses, incomplete or inaccurate financial disclosures, conflicts of interest, use of public funds for personal expenses.

In 2010, Attorney General Jack Wagner  asked for a moratium on creation of new charter and cyber schools until the legislature addressed the flawed funding system. That moratorium didn’t happen. Charter school reform bills have been introduced, killed in committee, watered down until they reform nothing.

Public funds pay the CEO salaries of these for-profit firms (those numbers are not publicly available) and public funds are used to fatten the campaign funds of compliant legislators on both sides of the aisle.) A major contributor to Governor Tom Corbett in 2010, Vahan Gureghian, is one of the top political contributors in Pennsylvania, and in the last few years has built multi-million dollar mansions in both Gladwyne and Palm Beach.   

Those dollars all came from Pennsylvania’s education budget – a budget stretched too thin to provide counselors and librarians for urban kids, or after school sports in cash-strapped rural towns.  

Next time you hear someone talking about “school reform” ask yourself: what does “reform” mean?

Who is paying to publicize that message?

Who will profit if that “reform” takes place?

And does privatization really make government smaller, or just shift public dollars for common goals to private pockets?

Take some time to do the math.

Next steps?

The League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania education page offers links to organizations involved in education, and descriptions of current legislation.  

Education Voter of Pennsylvania offers more detailed information, and link for contacting local representatives. 

Next on my reading list is Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error: TheHoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.

And two League of Women voter tools can help voters find out more about local candidates positions. In many states, Vote 411, and in others, (including Pennsylvania and California) Smart Voter provide sample ballots by zip code, and links to candidates own websites. 

This is the third in a series looking at specific issues of importance in state and local elections, as an extension of my 2012 series "What's Your Platform?"

Earlier posts:

What are Workers Worth, September 1, 2014Back to School Lament, September 7, 2014  

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Just click on   __comments below to see the comment option.   

Remember those in prison

“Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.” (Hebrews 13:3)

Data Source: Source: Roy Walmsley, International Centre for Prison Studies,
“World Prison Population List (8th edition),” January 2009.

I’ve been working through topics that shape US party platforms, praying, as I start each week, about the topic that comes next. This week: Prisons. Prison privatization. Mandated sentencing. Prison labor.

I once helped empty an apartment left vacant by an aging hoarder. Each room was worse than the one before, each stack confronting me more troubling than the last. Roaches darted from every pile; holes in the ceiling dripped black tar. I had agreed without knowing the extent of the damage, and found myself dreading each next step on the way.

I’m beginning to feel a bit like that as I follow rabbit trails of numbers, dig through stacks of statistics. Part of me would rather not know: not know the extent of our culture’s obsession with guns, not see the staggering cost of our dependence on weapons.

And I would rather not remember, think about, acknowledge anything to do with prison.

For fourteen years my husband worked for a prison ministry and we knew, up close and personal, men and women who had done time. We had ex-offenders for dinner. I organized delivery of Christmas gifts to children whose parents were incarcerated. I listened to my husband’s stories of visits to prisons across the country, around the globe, and stood in worship with men whose first experience of worship and God’s grace took place behind bars.

I know from my own conversations, from my own friendships, that there is much that is broken in our correctional system. I know men who with a halfway attentive lawyer would have been released on probation, yet did significant time because the public defender systems of many states offer no incentive for genuine legal aid.

I know there is little effort made to give inmates tools to face reentry, little support given to those who leave prison with no safety net of family or friends.

And I’ve seen, first hand, the damage to families when a loved one is sent away, too far to visit, with no sense of justice done.

Remember those in prison.

As if you were together with them in prison.

As if you were the one ripped from your family, your life, and locked away until . . .

from Pew Center on the States Infographic

As I’ve inventoried the sad stories I've seen and know, I’ve also done some digging, and find myself grieving, and wondering, and praying. The reality is far worse than I knew.

Some simple facts:

The United States is the uncontested leader in incarceration. As of 2009, our incarceration rate (743 per 100,000) was almost eight times the average of Western European countries (96 per 100,000), more than five times the worldwide average of 146 per 100,000.

One in 104 American adults is behind bars. One in 33 is under correctional control (on bail, on parole, in prison or jail).

One in four of the world’s inmates is doing time in an American prison.

16% (350,000) of incarcerated adults are mentally ill. The percentage in juvenile custody is even higher.

3/4 of drug offenders in state prisons are non-violent offenders or in prison solely for drug offenses.

85 percent of all juveniles who appear in juvenile court are functionally illiterate. More than 6 in 10 of all prison inmates would have difficulty writing a letter, or filling out a job application.

Young black men without a high school diploma are now more likely to be incarcerated than employed. 

More than 2.7 million children now have an incarcerated parent. That’s one child in every 28.

I find these statistics alarming. Take the time to read them slowly. One in 28 children: that's an average of one child in every classroom. Multiply the misery. Then multiply the expense.

Yes, our move to lock up drug offenders, the mentally ill, illegal aliens, hard to manage juveniles is more and more expensive. Many states (like my own state of Pennsylvania) now spend significantly more on prisons than on higher education.

Even more alarming than the avalanche of jarring statistics and troubling graphs is the impetus spurring this explosion of expense and human misery.

Who benefits from locking so many people behind bars?

What motivates all the tough on crime rhetoric? The “three strikes/you’re out” slogans? The immoral mantra of “lock them up and throw away the key”?

There are books written on this, but here’s the piece that alarms me: a move to privatize prisons has introduced a financial incentive to increased incarceration.

Simple logic would suggest we’re all better off if prison populations are kept as low as possible.

But once corporations begin building prisons and looking at those prisons as an avenue to profit, that simple logic is swept away as the new prison-industrial complex presses politicians to sell prisons, to authorize private prisons, to guarantee prison populations that maximize profit.

Data Source: Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics.
(Graph: Prison Policy Initiative, 2010)

It’s hard to tease out cause and effect in a subject as complicated as crime and punishment, but any chart depicting prison populations as percentage of population show a relatively stable rate through the mid seventies. While Nixon’s “War on Drugs” led to a slight rise in the tide of incarcerations, the real change came in the mid eighties. In 1984, a number of Tennessee investors with close ties to the state legislature formed Corrections Corporation of America, (CCA), as a way to use venture capital, rather than public money, to build a new prison and lease the beds to the state. Since then, privatized prisons have been a tremendous growth industry, allowing correctional departments to add prison beds with lower up-front costs.

As of today, nearly ten percent of inmates are housed in private prisons run by a private industry that exercises significant influence over all aspect of our justice system.

According to a  recent Justice Policy Institute report:

For-profit private prison companies primarily use three strategies to influence policy: lobbying, direct campaign contributions, and building relationships, networks, and associations. Over the years, these political strategies have allowed private prison companies to promote policies that lead to higher rates of incarceration and thus greater profit margins for their company. 

The report offers detailed evidence of the cozy relationship between lawmakers, congressional staffers, prison industries, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, a self-described “nonpartisan individual membership organization of state legislators.”  A more recent Nation article   offers details about the influence of corporately-funded ALEC in ensuring growth in the prison industry:

ALEC helped pioneer some of the toughest sentencing laws on the books today, like mandatory minimums for non-violent drug offenders, “three strikes” laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws. In 1995 alone, ALEC’s Truth in Sentencing Act was signed into law in twenty-five states. . . . ALEC has also worked to pass state laws to create private for-profit prisons, a boon to two of its major corporate sponsors: Corrections Corporation of America and Geo Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections), the largest private prison firms in the country. . . ALEC arranged secret meetings between Arizona’s state legislators and CCA to draft what became SB 1070, Arizona’s notorious immigration law, to keep CCA prisons flush with immigrant detainees. ALEC has proven expertly capable of devising endless ways to help private corporations benefit from the country’s massive prison population.

"We pause here to note CCA stock is up 340%
in the last 10 years; the S&P 500 is up less than 20%."

Even more troubling than the thought that private profit is behind our nation’s expansive prison population is the suggestion that prison labor has become a new form of slavery, providing even further profits for the prison industry and replacing good jobs here in the US, even outsourced jobs in other countries, with work done for just pennies an hour. The Nation article describes the legal maneuvering that made this possible; a Global Research report offers specifics:

At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom's, Revlon, Macy's, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. . . Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call "highly skilled positions."  . . .

Thanks to prison labor, the United States is once again an attractive location for investment in work that was designed for Third World labor markets. A company that operated a maquiladora (assembly plant in Mexico near the border) closed down its operations there and relocated to San Quentin State Prison in California. In Texas, a factory fired its 150 workers and contracted the services of prisoner-workers from the private Lockhart Texas prison, where circuit boards are assembled for companies like IBM and Compaq.

As the Global Research report notes:

Human rights organizations, as well as political and social ones, are condemning what they are calling a new form of inhumane exploitation in the United States. . . For the tycoons who have invested in the prison industry, it has been like finding a pot of gold. They don't have to worry about strikes or paying unemployment insurance, vacations or comp time. All of their workers are full-time, and never arrive late or are absent because of family problems; moreover, if they don't like the pay of 25 cents an hour and refuse to work, they are locked up in isolation cells.

As I read report after report, I find myself staring out over my green backyard, enjoying the silence of my quiet study, wondering what it would be like to be locked away, to be working for pennies, to have no privacy, no freedom, no hope.

And I repent: of my own ignorance. My disinterest. My failure to remember those in prison. My naive trust that those elected to serve the common good are in fact doing that, rather than bending to pressure from industries where profit is the highest, sometimes the only, goal.

What do I take from this?

• As I’ve said on every topic I’ve examined, industry money controls the conversation, shapes legislation, and drowns out the legitimate concerns of citizens.
• Politicians who pass legislation ensuring expanded prison populations, or who promote fear as a tool to ensure votes, do a disservice to the truth, their constituents, and our already tight budgets. 
• Christians who advocate a “lock them up and throw away the key” mentality need to rethink the meaning of grace, forgiveness, restoration, and what it looks like to love our neighbors as ourselves.
• As a free person, able to read, able to vote, I have a moral obligation to be alert, knowledgeable, and articulate about unjust incarceration policies, and I am without excuse if I don’t remember, pray for, and look for ways to serve those who find themselves in prison.

“Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.” (Hebrews 13:3)

Overcrowding in a California state prions; Wikipedia

This is part of an continuing series about faith and politics: What's Your Platform?

More than ever, I welcome your thoughts about which issues to consider, as well as your insight, comments, and questions.  Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

Wondering about Wealth

The Synchroblog topic this month is “extreme economic inequality”. Since I’m not an economist, don’t really like numbers, have other things I’d much rather write about, I was tempted to let this topic pass.

But I’m afraid, as I think and pray about it, that this may be one of the most important topics of this election cycle, this decade, maybe of my remaining lifetime.

Economic inequality isn’t a new thing. There have always been rich and poor.

But we seem to be in a new place. The income gap between rich and poor is the greatest it’s been in decades. There are plenty of statistics on this –Forbes, Reuters, the Economist. Choose your favorite financial source and take a look at the troubling graphs.

But the real issue, from what I can see, isn’t income, but wealth. Wealth - net worth - can be defined as financial assets (stocks, bonds, savings) plus real assets (primarily housing) minus debt. Credit Suisse, a multinational finance group, provides some interesting data in their 2011 Global Wealth Report: 

• The average net worth, globally, in 2011 was $51,000 USD (that’s US dollars).
• But the median net worth, globally, was $4,200. In other words, half of the world’s population has a net worth of $4,200 or less.
• The top 10%, globally, has net worth of $82,000 or more.
• The top 1% has net worth of  $712,000 or more.
• The richest 10% owns 84% of the world’s assets.
• The top 1% owns 44% of the world’s assets.
• The bottom half owns just 1% of the world’s assets. 

The report discusses “Ultra High Net Worth individuals”  (UHNW), noting, without explanation, that “to assemble details of the pattern of wealth holdings above USD 1 million requires a high degree of ingenuity. The usual sources of wealth data – official statistics and sample surveys – become increasingly incomplete and unreliable at high wealth levels.”  Is this because the very wealthy hide their assets and their earnings? Is it because their wealth is in off-shore tax havens, invisible to all eyes but their own?

For those with net worth from 50 million and upward, “very little is known about the global pattern of asset holdings.” What is known is that “the United States has by far the  greatest number of members of the top 1%  global wealth group, accounting for 41% of those with wealth exceeding USD 10 million and 32% of the world’s billionaires. The number of UHNW individuals with wealth above USD 50 million is six times that of the next country . . .Although comparable data on the past are sparse, it is almost certain that the number of UHNW individuals is considerably greater than a decade ago. . . [N]otwithstanding the credit crisis, the past decade has been especially conducive to the establishment of large fortunes.”

I’m not an accountant, economist, or historian. But what seems clear, in these terse financial statistics, is that a small handful of very wealthy Americans have been busily consolidating their wealth at the expense not only of their fellow Americans, but at the expense of the poor and struggling in nations around the globe.

In trying to understand this, I came across a Bill Moyer interview with Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, authors of Winner Take All Politics, a recent book investigating this consolidation of wealth. Here’s just a hint of what the authors, and book, have to say:

JACOB HACHER: these large shifts in our economy had been propelled in part by what government has done, say deregulating the market, the financial markets, to allow wealthy people to gamble with their own and other peoples' money, and ways to put all of us at risk, but allow them to make huge fortunes.

And at the same time, when those risks have become apparent, there has been a studious effort on the part of political leaders to try to protect against government stepping in and regulating or changing the rules.

BILL MOYERS: You write, we have a government that's been promoting inequality, and at the same time, as you just said, failing to counteract it. This has been going on, you write, 30 years or more. And here's the key sentence: Step by step, and debate by debate, our public officials have rewritten the rules of the economy in ways that favor the few at the expense of the many.

The Price of Big Oil

As Hacker and Pierson make clear, as has been made clear by others before them, money equals influence equals power equals money, and as money, influence and power become more and more concentrated in the hands of the few, real democracy, real justice, real opportunity disappear.              

Picture a Monopoly game. Your opponent owns the utilities, the railroads, all the properties, and has two hotels on each property. He’s rewritten the rules so every time he passes GO he collects $20,000, while every time you pass GO you collect $20.  There’s no money left in the bank, so he’s written elaborate IOUs from the bank to himelf. Each time around the board he writes another IOU.

Are you having fun? Do you have a come-back plan? Are you ready to quit?

Profit comes from somewhere. Assets have some connection back to the material world.  What happens when foreign investors own the best farm land in Africa? What happens when foreign corporations determine what happens to mountains, forests, oil fields in small hungry nations?

Bolivia v. Bechtel

What happens when international financiers pressure desperate countries to open their markets to companies like Monsanto, or to sell their water supply to private corporations? What happens when debt-ridden communities sell their hospitals, airports, bridges, schools, prisons?

Are we really hoping the new owners and investors will, from the goodness of their hearts, subsidize these efforts to serve the common good? A short reading of the water wars of Bolivia might be instructive, and a growing body of research makes clear what should be obvious to all but the most determined libertarian: privatization of public resource yields unchecked profit for the investor, higher cost for the public, greater suffering for those already struggling to survive.

I don’t hear our Christian leaders speaking out on this, but the Old Testament prophets had plenty to say about justice and injustice, and about those who become wealthy at the expense of the poor:

“Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people.”

“The plunder from the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?” 

“You do as you please, and exploit all your workers.”

 “The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, denying them justice."

“They sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed. “

“You take interest and make a profit from the poor. You extort unjust gain from your neighbors.”

“The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the foreigner, denying them justice.”

Is this something we should be talking about, praying about?

WaterJustice.org

Should we be asking our representatives to explain their preferential treatment of the rich?

Should we be organizing as citizens to demand justice – not for ourselves – but for those being forced out of their homes, bankrupted by their hospital bills?

Should we be paying attention to the ultra high net worth individuals whose profits are maximized at the expense of child slavery, sweat shops, misuse of resources stolen from indigenous people who lack the power to stop them?

Should we be wondering where those graphs will end? Where the consolidation of income and power will lead? What happens when not just 44%, but 100%, of the assets are held in the hands of the wealthiest one percent?

In Isaiah 1 the prophet, himself a grandson, nephew, cousin of kings, one of Judah’s wealthy one percent, explains to his people that God is not convinced by their offerings, their spiritual words, their observance of feasts, their religious gatherings. According to Isaiah, here’s what God has to say. The words echo across thousands of years, timeless, clear, convicting:

Stop doing wrong: Learn to do right; seek justice.
   Defend the oppressed.

Take up the cause of the fatherless;
   plead the case of the widow.

I’m not sure yet how to do that, but, as Isaiah says, maybe it’s time to learn.

As always, your comments are welcome. Click on the ___comments link for the comment box to appear.

This post is part of Synchroblog, a group of Christian bloggers posting on a common topic. Other posts about extreme income inequality are listed below:

Marta Layton - Fear Leads to Anger. Anger Leads to hate …

Kathy Escobar - Pawn Shops, Empty Refrigerators, The Long Hill Up

Glenn Hager - Shrinking The Gap

Jeremy Myers - Wealth Distribution

Liz Dyer - The First Step Is Admitting There Is A Problem

Ellen Haroutunian -Economic Inequality: Coming Back To Our Senses 

K. W. Leslie -  Wealth, Christians, and Justice. 
Abbie Watters – My Confession

Steve Hayes - Notes from underground: Obscenity