Yule Heibel's Library tagged usa →  View Popular, Search in Google

An undoubtedly frightening article (or rather: an article reporting a frightening reality).
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"The whole face of homelessness is changing, and a lot of that has to do with unemployment," says Craig Billman, who was Michele's case manager when she arrived at Maple Street and is now associate program director at the facility. "People from the professional ranks are becoming more prevalent. You're seeing more first-time homeless than ever before."

That this is happening here, in the crucible of high-tech affluence, is a testament to the fact that it is happening almost everywhere in the country, part of a wave of suburban poverty that began in the 1990s and has accelerated since the beginning of the Great Recession.
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silicon_valley homelessness unemployment economy depression usa recession

Allan Grayson explains Occupy Wall Street. Must-see.

allan_grayson occupy_wall_street ows usa financial_crisis politics video youtube bill_maher

Right on.
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Americans making over $250,000 in 1944 — over $3.2 million today — paid 69 percent of their total incomes in federal income tax, after exploiting every tax loophole they could find. In 2007, by contrast, America’s 400 highest earners paid just 18.1 percent of their total incomes, after loopholes, in federal tax.

None of the debt ceiling “deals” that House and Senate leaders advanced last week asked any of these top 400 — or any other rich Americans — to pay a penny more in taxes than they do now. In the 2011 debt ceiling struggle, inequality has clearly triumphed.

So what ought we learn, amid this triumph for greed, from FDR’s debt ceiling battle? Maybe this: We really can have a more equal America. We just need to fight for it.
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fdr debt_ceiling taxation usa fiscal_crisis republicans sam_pizzigati too_much

Health care is local.
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Large swaths of the United States are showing decreasing or stagnating life expectancy even as the nation’s overall longevity trend has continued upwards, according to a county-by-county study of life expectancy over two decades.

In one-quarter of the country, girls born today may live shorter lives than their mothers, and the country as a whole is falling behind other industrialized nations in the march toward longer life, according to the study.

Those are among the conclusions of the study by a team of researchers that has spent years teasing apart the regional and demographic differences in longevity in the United States. It sketches a picture of widening inequality among regions and is likely to add urgency to the debate over health-care reform and spending.
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usa health_care longevity ageing public_health

Fascinating (possibly scary?) piece by Florida on how Obama's win could still fan the flames of an ugly backlash from the right that may be more convulsive and destructive than the current economic / financial meltdown. Florida factors in some data around demographic changes due to the creative economy (linked to democratic/ Obama politics), to paint a picture of a potentially very divided country.

politics obama class_theory usa republican democrat class_war richard_florida creative_class

A fascinating article that makes me think about cultures (in the sense of how Ali Dastmalchian talked about global cultures at his presentation on 10/6/08), and how in turn different cultures will react to crisis and/ or enable some strategies while frustrating others.

china financial_crisis usa globalization business

"When a Seattle writer tried to recruit some north-of-the-border help in her fight against cancer, she learned how different our countries really are." Seattle cancer blogger Jeanne Sather writes about the differences between Canadian and American health care (including, especially, cost, and access to). Her blog, The Assertive Cancer Patient (http://www.assertivepatient.com/) provides real time details and updates.

breast_cancer canada cancer crosscut health health_care jeanne_sather seattle usa

Regine Debatty's review of *Hyper-Border: The Contemporary U.S.-Mexico Border and Its Future* by Fernando Romero includes many interesting extracts. Eg.: (p.76) At present there are more American border patrol agents than soldiers in Afghanistan.; (p.106) In 2004, remittances to Mexico equaled $16.6 billion, in 2005 they reached $20 billion and in 2006 they rose higher to $24 billion becoming the second source of US dollars after oil exports.; (p.175) ... most economists [agree?] that immigrants actually represent a net positive for the economy, meaning that overall, at the federal level, they pay more in taxes than they acquire in services. Whether they are sales, gasoline, property, or social security taxes, as people residing in the United States, undocumented immigrants contribute to the tax system just as legal workers do.; (p.193) Although Mexico is the number one source of immigrants into the U.S., it ranks seventh in foreign enrollments in U.S. universities.; (p.226) Nearly 40,000 people who live in Tijuana commute every weekday across the border to work in San Diego and surrounding areas.

border_issues fernando_romero hyper_border immigration mexico pup regine usa

- so much for the myth of disengaged youth; most are paying attention, and they're not happy with what the traditiional parties are dishing up. I think this also indicates unhappiness with the parties' neglect of urban issues.

2008_elections giuliani harvard obama political_parties politics polls usa youth