Author: WHES

STEUBENVILLE, Ohio — This is the land of die-hard Democrats — mill workers, coal miners and union members. They have voted party line for generations, forming a reliable constituency for just about any Democrat who decides to run for office.But when it comes to President Obama, a small part of this constituency balks.

Before the birth of her fourth child, Keron Bartholomew decided she needed to be near her family in Orlando, Florida. Her partner, Fernando Bogle, was still in college in New York, and was hoping to become a pharmacist. He planned to join them when he graduated. But within a year of her move in 2009, Keron had lost her job. Bogle left school to find a job, but couldn’t, and by the end of the year the family was homeless. “It’s been a rat race ever since,” said Bogle.

Growing income inequality has a number of sources, but a distinct aspect of rising inequality in the United States is the wage gap between the very highest earners—those in the upper 1.0 percent or even upper 0.1 percent—and other earners, including other high-wage earners. Driving this ever-widening gap is the unequal growth in earnings enjoyed by those at the top. The average annual earnings of the top 1 percent of wage earners grew 156 percent from 1979 to 2007; for the top 0.1 percent they grew 362 percent (Mishel, Bivens, Gould, and Shierholz 2012). In contrast, earners in the 90th to 95th percentiles had wage growth of 34 percent, less than a tenth as much as those in the top 0.1 percent tier. Workers in the bottom 90 percent had the weakest wage growth, at 17 percent from 1979 to 2007.

American soldiers learned the hard way not to walk down enemy trails in Vietnam — and certainly not twice. But here come the House Republicans, marching into the sunlight by shifting billions from poverty programs to the Pentagon, all within hours of adopting an entirely new round of tax cuts for those earning more than $1 million a year.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria’s finance minister, is Africa’s standard-bearer in the contest to become World Bank president. Jose Antonio Ocampo, a former Colombian finance minister, is being championed by South America.

Many workers are facing uniquely tough times. Though now below its recessionary peak of 10 percent in October 2009, unemployment remains high at 8.2 percent, and job growth is slow. With around 25 million people unemployed or underemployed, it is clear that the jobs crisis did not subside with the official end of the recession. Moreover, workers are still suffering from difficulties that materialized in the decades before the Great Recession, such as deteriorating job quality and stagnant wages. The economic expansion from 2001­–2007, for instance, was among the weakest on record; typical family incomes grew by less than one half of one percent between 2000 and 2007 (Bivens 2011). These economic challenges are particularly acute for workers at the bottom of the wage scale.