Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Break the cycle of overconsumption: http://bit.ly/2uLoS2Qvia Greenpeace International
Posted by EcoWatch on Thursday, August 17, 2017
Category: Veterans – Patriotism
Mr. Trump Wants to Keep Our “Beautiful Confederate Statues and Monuments” ‘We Must Tear Them Down’
John Hanno, tarbabys.com August 17, 2017
Mr. Trump Wants to Keep Our “Beautiful Confederate Statues and Monuments”
‘We Must Tear Them Down’
All across America, cities and towns, big and small, are debating whether the toxic reminders of our Civil War and a fatally divided country should finally be torn down.
I think a better idea, in this age of worsening climate change, would be to melt down and recycle these toxic metal sculptures and then turn them into a grand Washington monument, to those who fought and died to heal the country during reconstruction, to those who’ve spent their lives bringing America’s races together instead of dividing us and to our black brothers and sisters who paid some of the highest costs for that war and its ongoing consequences.
Its a sad thing indeed, as we’ve witnessed since our incursion into Iraq, when radical Islamic terrorists tear down or destroy the centuries old artifacts or monuments to any semblance of a religion or culture that doesn’t conform to their narrow extreme ideology.
This is not the same. Most of these Civil War monuments were constructed many decades after the civil war ended, most during the height of Jim Crow. In many cases, they were used to glorify and rewrite the most painful and divisive episodes in our history.
My idea, not new of course, would be to turn our “Swords into Plowshares.” Something resourceful folks have been doing for centuries.
We could model it after the “Swords to Plowshares Memorial Bell Tower” project; only on a much grander scale.
“The Swords to Plowshares Memorial Bell Tower, initiated by the Eisenhower Chapter of Veterans For Peace, is a traveling monument dedicated to stopping the cycle of war and violence, healing the wounds of war that is caused on both sides of conflict, and providing a forum for all victims to start the healing process caused by wars.
Wherever the tower appears, veterans and victims of war of different national origins will ring the bell and share stories of how their families have been effected by war. It is hoped that an honest dialogue about the costs of war may help victims heal and veterans recover from the “moral injury” that has been linked to an epidemic of veteran suicides.
Roger Ehrlich and Joe McTaggert built the bell tower from reclaimed steel, aluminum cans and a bell donated from the Church of Reconciliation in Chapel Hill who unburied it during renovations. The tower is made of 4 stackable pieces, each 6 feet high, so when assembled the tower stands 24 feet high. The aluminum bricks are each attached independently to allow movement from the wind, and reflect the sun and lights from the surface. The bell is suspended within the tower and can be rung by pulling on an attached rope.”
The plaque on the tower reads:
I think we should have a contest to create a plaque for a new Washington monument, dedicated to those who work tirelessly to bring all races and religions together.
My own version would be:
‘Turn Relics of a Sad War Into a Symbol of Hope and Change’
To Mark the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation;
Rational Folks of All Races and Religions Dedicate this Monument;
Made from Remnants Donated from Repentant Confederate States;
To Victims, Soldiers and Families who Suffered this Unresolved Conflict;
Without Regard to Race, Religion, Family History or Political Persuasion;
To Those Who Find no Comfort in Perpetrating Our National Disgrace;
To Those Who Struggle to Heal or Bridge Our Racial or Political Divides;
We Erect a Monument to America’s Ability to Forgive and Forget;
To Call For an End to All Racial Animosity and Persecution;
In Order to Spare All Future Generations the Same Fate!
Donald Trump said: “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,”
But if he’s so concerned about our historical legacy fading away, then for every civil war relic, who folks like Mr. Trump insist on preserving, there should be a companion monument displaying the other side of the issue of slavery. Maybe a statue next to Robert E. Lee, (who did more than almost anyone to preserve slavery, even after the war) depicting one of our black brothers hanging from a tree limb at the end of a rope. And along side other Confederate monuments, maybe a group of peaceful protesters being attacked by police armed with clubs, attack dogs and fire hoses. Or maybe a depiction of Emmett Till lying in his coffin with thousands of mourners filing by his mutilated body.
Of course we probably wouldn’t do that. There’s no glory in such a display. No regal soldier dressed in his uniform and perched on a beautiful horse. Just pain and suffering.
Maybe if we tear down all these painful reminders, we can finally turn the corner on the tenuous race relations that keep bubbling up to the surface. John Hanno www.tarbabys.com
New Orleans Mayor Blasts Confederate Nostalgia
Southern Mayor blasts Confederate nostalgia
Watch the mayor of New Orleans call out Confederate monuments for what they truly are: symbols of white supremacy.Via CREDO Mobile
Posted by Daily Kos on Thursday, August 17, 2017
Trump: Keep our ‘beautiful’ Confederate monuments
Yahoo News
Trump: Keep our ‘beautiful’ Confederate monuments
Julia Munslow August 17, 2017
President Trump on Thursday bemoaned the removal of “beautiful” Confederate monuments across the U.S. after last weekend’s violent clashes in Charlottesville, Va., where white supremacists rallied against the removal of Robert E. Lee statue.
“Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday morning. “You can’t change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson – who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!”
Trump continued: “Also the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!”
Last weekend’s violent Charlottesville protests rekindled the debate over Confederate monuments, which critics say symbolize the slavery issue that prompted the Southern secession. Baltimore, Lexington, Ky., and other municipalities have already started removing memorials.
Trump has repeatedly equated Lee, a Confederate general, with the Founding Fathers.
“So this week it’s Robert E. Lee,” the president said Tuesday in Trump Tower. “I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”
But when asked if he thought Confederate statues should be removed, Trump said, “That’s up to a local town, community or the federal government, depending on where it is located.”
Trump, reeling from widespread criticism over such comments, has apparently decided such monuments should stay.
Group wants to end war, not glorify it, with traveling memorial in Raleigh
The News & Observer-Wake County
Group wants to end war, not glorify it, with traveling memorial in Raleigh
Doug Ryder, left, Roger Ehrlick, right, and Jim Senter, on ground, put together the final pieces of a hand-made memorial bell tower Friday on the south side of the State Capitol in Raleigh. jhknight@newsobserver.com
By Martha Quillin – November 7, 2014
A stiff wind from Friday’s cold front blew across the State Capitol grounds and struck the tower that Roger Ehrlich and his partners were trying to raise, making its hundreds of aluminum plates rattle like sabers.
But instead of weapons of war, the plates are meant to be symbols against it, forming a sort of anti-war memorial Ehrlich hopes will encourage people this Veterans Day to consider the cost of world conflict rather than to glorify it.
“A lot of war monuments are built with the idea that war is fought to guarantee freedom,” said Ehrlich, a sociologist-turned-artist who lives in Cary. “That’s a big lie, and we wanted to do something different.”
Ehrlich conceived the tower for the local chapter of Veterans For Peace, a global nonprofit based in St. Louis that says its main mission is to end war, in part by educating the public on what the group says are war’s true causes and effects. It also hopes to help veterans heal from their combat experiences, Ehrlich says, by supporting conciliatory efforts such as the clearing of mines from former battlefields, so the land can be used for farming.
The group first erected the 24-foot structure on Memorial Day and has displayed it several times since.
It was built in three pieces that can travel on the back of a trailer – the smaller pieces nestled inside the larger – and be put back together on site. Between its metal frame are stretched metal stakes once used to support young apple trees in Ehrlich’s family’s orchards near Asheville. Each metal rod becomes a rack on which hang the metal plates, hammered from empty aluminum drink cans.
The group calls the triangular tower “Swords to Plowshares,” a biblical reference to Isaiah’s prophesy that one day, nations will not lift swords against one another.
The tower has evolved since it was introduced. Veterans – and those who remember them – inscribe names and messages on the plates, the way thousands of people have left notes at the base of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.
John Hueur, president of the local chapter, helped raise the tower Friday afternoon so it would be in place on the south side of the State Capitol building in time for today’s Veterans Day Parade, which will pass close by.
Members of Veterans For Peace will participate in the parade, which will wind along several blocks of downtown Raleigh, a moving salute to those who have served.
Ehrlich and Hueur, who were not members of the armed forces but who had relatives who fought in both world wars, say their intent with the memorials is not to diminish veterans’ sacrifices but to see a world in which such sacrifice is no longer needed.
Doug Ryder, left, John Heuer, center, and Roger Ehrlich hold a rope to keep control of a hand-made memorial bell tower while it was lifted using a hand winch Friday on the south side of the State Capitol in Raleigh.
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/counties/wake-county/article10122032.html#storylink=cpy
President Trump flunks a moral test
The Economist-Politics
President Trump flunks a moral test
August 14, 2017
DEEP down, it is always about him: what the world thinks of him. The applause that is his due. The glory that enemies are trying to take from him. That, perhaps, is how best to understand the cramped, self-regarding moral code which seems to guide Donald Trump at moments which call for grand, inspiring acts of leadership.
To understand why Mr. Trump could not bring himself to condemn white supremacists who brought fear and murderous violence to the Virginia college town of Charlottesville on Saturday, some Americans sought vast, dramatic explanations. They puzzled over the president’s mealy-mouthed reaction to the sight of Nazi banners waving in their country. They fretted about Mr. Trump’s muted response to what appeared to be a political murder, as a car was driven at speed into a group of anti-racist marchers in Charlottesville, leaving one woman dead and at least 19 injured. And then some of those Americans peered into the moral void left by their president on a terrible day, and wondered if somewhere within that blankness they could make out something very dark and frightening indeed. Does the president of America sympathize with white racists, they wondered? Or at a minimum, does Mr. Trump believe the votes of white racists to be so important that he does not want to alienate them as a voting block?
That is a weighty allegation, for which critics of the president offer mostly circumstantial evidence. On this latest occasion, Mr. Trump was asked by reporters if he condemned the 500 or so white racists who assembled in Virginia this weekend, led by such provocateurs and publicity-seekers as David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and Richard Spencer, a leader of the so-called “alt-right”, to protest the planned removal of a Confederate monument. Mr. Trump, so often a man of trenchant opinions, proved oddly reluctant to pin the blame for the violence on the white nationalists who set out to start a riot and inspire fear, and succeeded.
Instead the president deplored what he called a scene of: “hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” Mr. Trump, who is usually quick to claim credit for all important events that occur during his presidency, then sought to cast the protests as a historic, non-partisan sort of wickedness, like a bank robbery. “It’s been going on for a long time in our country, it’s not Donald Trump, it’s not Barack Obama,” Mr. Trump said, before calling for the “swift restoration of law and order,” and calling for unity among Americans of all races and creeds.
His feeble response certainly made Mr. Trump sound isolated. Other national leaders of the Republican Party saw the same protests and had no hesitation in assigning blame. Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, called the views on display in Charlottesville “repugnant” and “vile bigotry.” Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who ran against Mr. Trump for the presidential nomination last year and who has since co-existed with the president uneasily, said it was “very important for the nation” to hear the president describe the events in Charlottesville for what they are: “a terror attack by white supremacists.” On the Republican hard right, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, another presidential rival from 2016, said that “all of us” have a duty to speak out against white supremacists spreading hatred, racism and antisemitism, and called on the Department of Justice to probe the car-borne murder as a “grotesque act of domestic terrorism.” A moderate Republican from the swing state of Colorado, Senator Cory Gardner, tweeted a plea to acknowledge that the violence was the work of white supremacists, saying: “Mr. President—we must call evil by its name.”
It is also striking that Mr. Trump is always quick to condemn Islamist terror attacks in Europe, often tweeting that they prove his wisdom in demanding harsh, border-tightening measures to keep America safe. Yet when a mosque was attacked in Minnesota earlier this month, the president was silent.
Lexington does not pretend to know what lies within Mr. Trump’s heart. For his part the president has said that he is “the least racist person that you have ever met.” But here is something eminently knowable. Mr. Trump ignored a question shouted by a reporter at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, about what he had to say to white supremacists who say that they support him. Some of those on the march in Charlottesville carried Trump campaign signs alongside Confederate battle flags and torches. Mr. Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, had earlier said that he and other protesters were “going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump” to “take our country back”.
In other words, as Mr. Trump watched the protests in Charlottesville, he knew that they threatened to sully the triumph that he returns to again and again in speeches and at rallies, even as his legislative agenda as president lurches from one setback to another: his unexpected election victory in 2016. Who knows what deep political calculations or personal beliefs seethe in Mr. Trump’s head when he sees avowed racists waving placards with his name on them? It is enough to know something much simpler. Mr. Trump is a man with an all-consuming interest in his image, and how it is perceived.
Consider the peevish tweet that the president sent out on Saturday afternoon complaining that the violence in Charlottesville had distracted attention from a staged photo-call with veterans from the American armed services, and officials from the Veteran’s Administration (VA) which provides old soldiers, sailors and airmen with medical services. Mr. Trump said: “Am in Bedminster for meetings & press conference on V.A. & all that we have done, and are doing, to make it better-but Charlottesville sad!”
There is a parallel with the ongoing probes into whether the Trump campaign in 2016 colluded with Russian spooks attempting to influence the election. It remains a mystery whether Mr. Trump or senior aides worked with a foreign power to attack American democracy. But it is already quite enough that Mr. Trump thinks his victory’s legitimacy is being challenged. That questioning of his success is sufficient to make him furious. The president himself has said his frustration at not being exonerated over Russian meddling made him angry enough to fire the FBI director, James Comey.
Remember that the next time Mr. Trump fails to live up to the office which he holds. When trying to understand him, start by looking for small, shallow explanations. Perhaps there are others, but self-regard is the right place to start. Whatever the subject, for this president, it is always about him.
5 major differences between federal and private student loans
Yahoo Finance
5 major differences between federal and private student loans
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/5-major-differences-federal-private-student-loans-153948663.html
Alyssa Pry August 16, 2017
If you’ve been to college or have recently graduated, chances are you have a student loan. About 43.3 million people have student loans, and 90% of borrowers take out a Federal student loan, according to the US Department of Education. But federal loans don’t always cover all of your college costs, and more borrowers are turning to private loans; according to a new study by LendEDU, 1.4 million people currently have a private loan to pay for college costs.
Experts recommend using Federal loans, financial aid, and scholarships before taking out a private student loan. Understanding the main differences between your loan options will help you determine the best way to fund your education.
Difference 1: How they’re funded
Federal loans are funded by the US Department of Education or private institutions that the government guarantee to pay back in case of default. Federal loans come with more protections, such as flexible payment schedules, lower interest rates and income-based pay-back programs.
Private loans are funded by banks and other lenders, such as credit unions, which means the lenders set the terms and interest rates. Interest rates are typically higher, and there is less flexibility for the borrower.
Difference #2: Interest Rates
The interest rate for federal loans is set by the Federal Reserve. They have fixed interest rates, which means the rate won’t change for the entirety of your loan. In 2017, the Federal Reserve raised the interest rate on undergraduate loans to 4.45%, and 6-7% for graduate student loans.
Private loans can have fixed or variable rates. Variable interest rates can fluctuate depending on the economy, potentially adding large amounts of interest to your loan. According to LendEDU, the average fixed-rate student loan is 9.66%, while the average variable rate is 7.81%, but rates can vary depending on your lender and loan terms.
Difference #3: Getting the loan
You will need to fill out the Free Application for Student Aid (FAFSA) in order to apply for a federal student loan, and you’ll also find out if you qualify for federal grants or other student aid. Your credit will not affect your ability to get a government loan.
There are three different types of federal student loans. A Direct Subsidized loan is given to students with financial need, and the loan interest will be paid by the federal government if you go to school part time, during the six months after you graduate or if you defer your loan payments. You can also receive a Direct Unsubsidized loan, which you are eligible for regardless of financial need, and you are responsible for all interest payments. Finally, you can receive a Direct PLUS loan, for graduate or professional school students.
Your ability to receive a private loan depends on your credit history, which will affect your loan terms and interest rates. You may also need a cosigner, such as a parent, who guarantees he or she will be responsible for your loan if you can’t pay it back. You don’t need to fill out the FAFSA in order to apply for a private loan.
Difference #4: Repaying the loan
You have a grace period of six months after you graduate before you have to start repaying your federal student loan. Most federal loan borrowers are put on a 10-year repayment plan, but you have up to 25 years to repay your federal loans in full.
Private loans may need to be repaid immediately—while you’re still enrolled in college—but you may have the option to defer payment until you graduate. There is less flexibility when it comes to your repayment schedule than with a federal loan, and the length you have to repay it varies depending on your lender.
Difference #5: Lowering your payments
If you’re having difficulty repaying your loan, Federal loans offer more options than private loans to lower your payments. You can defer your loan payments for up to three years, and your loans may be forgiven if you work in public service.
Private loans typically don’t offer loan forgiveness. However, if you’re having difficulty making your payments, you may be able to refinance the private loan. Refinancing means you consolidate your loan(s) into a new loan and repay the new loan at a lower interest rate. But, keep in mind, not all borrowers are eligible for refinancing.
It’s important to be a responsible borrower and know how much you’ll owe. And remember, the longer you take to repay your loans, the more interest will accrue.
WATCH MORE
5 ways to tackle your student loan debt
4 steps to a debt-free college degree
Money Minute: How to get your student loans completely forgiven
Plague: Fleas in Arizona Test Positive for Easily Spread and Fatal Disease
Newsweek-Tech & Science
Plague: Fleas in Arizona Test Positive for Easily Spread and Fatal Disease
By Jessica Firger August 14, 2017
Fleas in two Arizona counties are carrying bubonic plague, an infectious disease that took the lives of millions of people in the Middle Ages, according to news reports. So far there have been no reported illness and deaths.
Health officials in Navajo and Coconino counties in Arizona recently issued a warning to the general public after fleas in the northern part of the state tested positive for Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes the bubonic plague. Humans can contract the plague in a number of ways. In addition to flea bites, people can pick up the bacteria by handling the fluids or tissue of a rodent or another animal that has the illness. The plague can also be transmitted through bodily fluids such as respiratory droplets.
“Navajo County Health Department is urging the public to take precautions to reduce their risk of exposure to this serious disease, which can be present in fleas, rodents, rabbits and predators that feed upon these animals,” the public health warning states, ABC news reported. “The disease can be transmitted to humans and other animals by the bite of an infected flea or by direct contact with an infected animal.”
The plague is primarily found on the West Coast of the U.S., especially the southwestern U.S. when cool summers follow wet winters. At the end of June, three people in New Mexico tested positive for the plague as well, according to NPR.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America and senior associate at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security says the area of the country is vulnerable to the transmission of the plague bacterium.
“Western parts of the United States have had ongoing plague transmission in rodents for over a century,” he says.
Although incidents of plague are minimal these days the risk still exists so people should be vigilant “when dealing with rodents and clear areas of their property that may be attractive to rodents,” says Adalja. He adds that it’s also important for health care providers to be aware of cases and learn to spot symptoms of illness, and to be aware of diagnostic testing and treatment protocols for the illness.
The infectious bacteria that causes plague is rare in the U.S. today. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention, an average of seven human cases are diagnosed each year. In 2015, four people in the U.S died from the illness. Worldwide there are roughly 300 cases of the plague each year, according to the World Health Organization.
Symptoms of the plague include sudden onset of fever, headache, chills, and weakness and one or more swollen, tender and painful lymph nodes (called buboes). This form is usually the result of an infected flea bite. The bacteria multiply in the lymph node closest to where the bacteria entered the human body. The disease can be treated effectively with a course of antibiotics, but left untreated the plague can spread to other parts of the body. Without appropriate medical care the illness can be deadly; up to 60 percent of people infected with the pathogen die from it.
Express
Return of Black Death: Risk of epidemic as three stricken with bubonic plague from fleas
PLAGUE fighters are killing off fleas carrying the Black Death after three people were stricken with world’s most feared disease.
By Stuart Winter August 15, 2017
Health officials are targeting rodent burrows to thwart the risk of an epidemic just weeks after an outbreak put the three victims in hospital.
Urgent action to wipe out flea infestations in prairie dog burrows in two parts of Arizona has been ordered after scientists confirmed the insects were carrying the same plague that wiped out a quarter of humanity in the 1300s.
Besides tackling the infestations, public health officials in Arizona are putting out warnings to reduce the risk of people contracting plague by preventing pets from running loose as well as avoiding rodent burrows.
GETTY Scientists confirmed that fleas are carrying the plague
Whooping cough, scarlet fever & scurvy: The returning Victorian diseases
Confirmation that fleas were carrying the bacteria that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, came this week after positive tests at two sites near Flagstaff.
Symptoms of plague in humans generally appear within two to six days following exposure
Coconino County Public Health Services District
In June, three people needed hospital treatment after contracting plague 400 miles east in Santa Fee County, New Mexico.
Health officials carried out extensive checks around the homes of the victims, who included a 52-year-old and a 62-year-old woman, to “ensure the safety of the immediately family and neighbors”.
New Mexico witnessed four plague cases in 2016 in Bernalillo, Mora and Rio Arriba counties but with no fatalities. In 2015, one person died when four plague cases were reported in Bernalillo and Santa Fe counties.
GETTY Health officials are targeting rodent burrows to thwart the risk of an epidemic
Getty Stock Images The disease can be transmitted to humans and other animals by the bite of an infected flea
For a pandemic that killed as many as 200 million people across Europe and Asia in the 14th Century, bubonic plague still resists total eradication globally, throwing up thousands of cases every year.
The western states of the USA witness annual reports, largely because its native rodent species, such as ground squirrels and prairie dogs, act as vectors in the same way as the black rats that spread the medieval plague across most of the known world.
Arizona’s Coconino County Public Health Services District, confirming the latest positive results, said the disease is “endemic” in the area and urged the public to “take precautions to reduce their risk of exposure to this serious disease, which can be present in fleas, rodents, rabbits and predators that feed upon these animals”.
Its public warning added: “The disease can be transmitted to humans and other animals by the bite of an infected flea or by direct contact with an infected animal.
“Symptoms of plague in humans generally appear within two to six days following exposure and include fever, chills, headache, weakness, muscle pain, and swollen lymph glands – called ‘buboes’ – in the groin, armpits or limbs.
GETTY Scientists confirmed that fleas had the disease after positive tests at two sites near Flagstaff
“The disease can become septicemic – spreading throughout the bloodstream – as well as pneumonic – affecting the lungs – but is curable with proper antibiotic therapy if diagnosed and treated early.”
During the recent New Mexico outbreak, doctors warned how pets could play a worrying role in spreading the disease.
“Pets that are allowed to roam and hunt can bring infected fleas from dead rodents back into the home, putting you and your children at risk,” said Dr Paul Ettestad, a public health veterinarian for the Department of Health.
“Keeping your pets at home or on a leash and using an appropriate flea control product is important to protect you and your family.”
Al Gore, on Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)
EcoWatch
By AlterNet August 9, 2017
Al Gore at the Paris COP21 UN conference on climate change in Le Bourget, France (December 7, 2015). Frederic Legrand – COMEO / Shutterstock
Al Gore Predicts Trump’s Exit
Why income inequality is so much worse in the U.S. than in other rich countries
Washington Post Opinion-Rampage
Why income inequality is so much worse in the U.S. than in other rich countries
By Catherine Rampell August 11, 2017
My column Friday was about why the $15-minimum-wage-obsessed grass-roots left should get more fired up about expanding other kinds of tools to help poor people. Particularly ones that don’t make the poor more expensive to hire, such as the earned-income tax credit, food stamps, housing vouchers, etc.
These kinds of anti-poverty tools are sometimes referred to as “post-tax” policies. They’re mostly paid for by the government (i.e., taxpayers) rather than by employers or workers. The column mentioned that the United States relies far less on them than other developed countries. Here’s some more detail on that point.
Below is a chart, from University of Oxford economist Max Roser, showing a measure of income inequality called a Gini coefficient. Gini coefficients can run anywhere from zero to one. A value of zero would mean that income was distributed perfectly evenly among everyone in society; a value of one would mean that a single person has all the income and everyone else gets nothing. In other words, the higher the measure, the more unequal the income distribution.
The orange points show Gini coefficients for market income — that is, what people earn before the tax and transfer system comes into play.
The United States doesn’t exactly rank here as the most egalitarian advanced country on Earth, but we don’t totally embarrass ourselves. On pre-tax-and-transfer income inequality, we do about as well as France.
Now look at the blue points, which show Gini coefficients after considering tax and transfer spending, i.e., redistribution.
The United States does much, much worse. The only developed country with more unequal income distribution is Mexico. (Chile also is more unequal, though it’s not usually categorized as an advanced/developed economy.)
As I’ve said before, I favor using both pre-tax and post-tax policies to reduce inequality and help the poor. These data suggest there’s a whole lot more room for improvement on post-tax redistribution especially.
Catherine Rampell is an opinion columnist at The Washington Post.