The wealth
of the top 1% of Americans has grown dramatically in the past four decades, squeezing both
the middle class and the poor. This is in sharp contrast to Europe and Asia,
where the wealth of the 1% has grown at a more constrained pace.
Harvard Guest Speaker: Charity Is Used by the Rich to Cover for ‘Injustice’
1:46
Harvard University guest speaker Anand Giridharas recently told students at the exclusive Ivy League school that donations to charity by the wealthy are a deceptive means of covering the injustices that the elites have created in society.
According to a report by Campus Reform, author Anand Giridharadas told Harvard students that philanthropy by billionaires is destructive to society because they are simply applying a bandaid to societal issues that are often created by their own businesses.
Giridharadas was invited to Harvard to speak about a book he published called Winners Take All, which examines the relationship between billionaires and philanthropy. Giridharadas argues that Americans should not necessarily praise billionaires that engage in philanthropy.
“What’s the connection between the extraordinary elite helping of our time? Which is real. And the extraordinary elite hoarding of our time? Which is real,” Giridharadas said at one point during the lecture.
“We are living in this time where most people agree we need transformational reform and we are not getting transformational reform because we have outsourced the job of changing the world to the people with the most to lose from real change,” Giridharadas said at another point during the lecture.
This isn’t the only time that Giridharadas has made this argument. In a tweet published on December 1, Giridharadas argued that billionaires engage in philanthropy to fix the problems that their businesses have created. “Billionaires are like Bruce Wayne, causing societal problems through their companies by day — then wearing Batman costumes to solve them philanthropically by night,” Giridharadas wrote.
Billionaires are like Bruce Wayne, causing societal problems through their companies by day — then wearing Batman costumes to solve them philanthropically by night.
On @patriotact, @hasanminhaj just explained my book better than I can.
A master episode. netflix.com/title/80239931 …
Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more campus updates.
De Blasio Deports Thousands of Homeless Families Across America
3:31
Cities across the United States are grappling with large homeless populations, but New York City decided to deal with the problem by relocating those sleeping in the streets or in shelters to other American cities.
The New York Post reported that city records show that homeless people have been sent to 373 American cities.
The Post also reported that since the program started in 2017, New York has relocated 5,074 families, or 12,482 people, to other areas in the city, the state, and around the country.
Cities selected for homeless relocation include several in New Jersey and Georgia, according the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
A New York City program that relocates its homeless to other cities around the country is drawing fire from Marietta leaders who say they learned it was happening from a newspaper article.Marietta city councilmembers say they want answers about how New York runs its Special One-Time Assistance program, which provides one year’s rent for eligible clients to relocate within the city, other New York state cities or other states.The program is the subject of a lawsuit filed Dec. 1 by the city of Newark, New Jersey, which is one of the destination cities for New York’s homeless. The lawsuit argues the program pressures desperate homeless to accept substandard housing conditions and that slumlords benefit from the city’s program that pays for a year’s rent with no checks on the living conditions.
AJC reported that Marietta City Councilwoman Michelle Cooper Kelly said she was “astonished” when she read of the NYC program in the Post.
The Post reported on the extent of the program across the country:
From the tropical shores of Honolulu and Puerto Rico, to the badlands of Utah and backwaters of Louisiana, the Big Apple has sent local homeless families to 373 cities across the country with a full year of rent in their pockets as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Special One-Time Assistance Program.” Usually, the receiving city knows nothing about it.City taxpayers have spent $89 million on rent alone since the program’s August 2017 inception to export 5,074 homeless families — 12,482 individuals — to places as close as Newark and as far as the South Pacific, according to Department of Homeless Services data obtained by The Post. Families who once lived in city shelters decamped to 32 states and Puerto Rico.The city also paid travel expenses, through a separate taxpayer-funded program called Project Reconnect, but would not divulge how much it spent. A Friday flight to Honolulu for four people would cost about $1,400. A bus ticket to Salt Lake City, Utah, for the same family would cost $800. Not only are officials in towns where the city’s homeless land up in arms, but hundreds of the homeless families are returning to the five boroughs — and some are even suing NYC over being abandoned in barely livable conditions.
Sade Collington, her husband, and two children returned to a Bronx shelter after being relocated to an East Orange, New Jersey, apartment that lacked water, heat, or electricity.
“It was completely unlivable,” said Collington, who added she planned to sue the city.
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OPEN BORDERS IS ALL ABOUT
KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED!
"The
laws of supply and demand dictate that when the supply of labor goes up, wages
go down, assuming the demand for labor does not rise by a proportional
amount."
As a result, the income gap between the rich and the very rich
has grown dramatically. The top 1% of incomes
were multiplied by 2.6, between 1979 and 2017, while the top 0.1% of
incomes were multiplied by 4.4 in inflation-adjusted terms.
Why Rich People Love Poor Immigrants
Soon after the
Immigration Act of 1965 was passed, real wages of low-skilled workers soon
stopped growing and have gone nowhere ever since. The incomes of the
rich, however, accelerated upward. Both events can be explained by the
mass immigration of cheap labor. The combination of these events presents
an immediate threat to democracy.
The inflation-adjusted
wages of low-skilled workers would now be double current levels, if they had
kept up with the historic trend (which is driven by the advance of technology
and knowledge).
But the incomes of the
rich have gone up at about double the historic trend rate, as shown in Figure
1. (Click here for my sources
and notes.)
Similar things happened
from 1820 to 1910.
The ratio of the top 1%
of incomes to unskilled income has quadrupled since 1972, to a level far
exceeding the previous peak in 1928. The graph in Figure 2 shows that
this ratio has gone up and down with the immigrant fraction of unskilled
workers in the economy since 1774.
The failure of unskilled
wages to keep up with the trend is what we would expect because the labor
market was flooded with unskilled immigrants in the decades after 1825, and
again after 1965. The laws of supply and demand dictate that when
the supply of labor goes up, wages go down, assuming the demand for labor does
not rise by a proportional amount.
The incomes of the rich
have benefited dramatically because high-income people generally supply the
managerial expertise that directs and controls the labor of the people.
(I include investors and business owners in the term “managers”.) The
supply of skilled managers did not increase very much during these surges of
low-wage labor. But the demand for managers went up because the number of
workers in need of management went up. Also the amount of management needed
per worker went up because of the lower “self-management” skills of the
workers. The laws of supply and demand work on the demand side in this
case.
Everyone has some
management talent, but the people we call “managers” have significantly more
management talent than the average person. As the pool of less talented
people grows with mass importation of cheap labor, the demand for managers
grows, and more workers with marginal management talent are pulled into
management positions. The top managers, the “managers of managers,” are
thus in greater demand, because more lower-level managers must be
managed. Also the management skills of the lower level managers are lower
than before, so even more upper-level management is needed.
As a result, the income
gap between the rich and the very rich has grown dramatically. The top 1%
of incomes were multiplied by 2.6, between 1979 and 2017, while the
top 0.1% of incomes were multiplied by 4.4 in inflation-adjusted terms.
As the divide between the
very rich and the rest of the people has widened, democracy has been weakened
and is now immediately endangered. Political giving, charitable giving,
spending, and investment that influences society and culture has become
increasingly dominated by the very wealthy. That would not be so bad if
the rich were wise. But as their power and influence has grown, they have
become more arrogant and willing to believe they can and should radically
change society, regardless of the desires of ordinary people. The theories
they follow to “fundamentally transform” society come mostly from leftist
crackpots.
Arrogant leftist
billionaires use their great wealth to influence and buy news media, fund
pressure groups, and buy politicians in order to increase the immigration of
cheap labor and thus increase their wealth. But they also use these
powers to bring their crazy beliefs into fruition. They even use their
power to punish those who do not go along and parrot their beliefs. They
fund and train “community activists” and other rabble rousers to make the poor
believe that their oppression is caused by the opponents of these lunatic
ideas, rather than by the mass immigration that these billionaires push.
The previous great wave
of immigration lasted over a hundred years (1820-1924) before the people were
finally able to stop it. The final victory in 1924 came only after a long
frustrating struggle against the “malefactors of great wealth,” as Teddy
Roosevelt called them. Over the next 40 years following 1924, the countless
leagues, committees, roundtables, movements, champions, orators, books, and
pamphlets of the struggle grew old and faded away as our nation assimilated its
immigrants. Wages surged upward as the incomes of the rich
stagnated. The people regained control of their government and culture by
the 1950s. But in the 1960s, a new generation forgot how and why their
grandparents had fought against that great flood of cheap labor.
As soon as the people
forgot, the business interests greedy for cheap labor paid politicians
to start up the next great wave. Unless we want to lose our
constitutional republic and be ruled by the careless whims of billionaire
overlords, we must learn from the records left by our forefathers, and correct
the widening power gap as quickly as possible. The attacks on our
freedoms, especially freedom of speech, have become so fierce and
effective that we should be spurred to more drastic actions than in the past.
Cutting off the flow of
cheap labor into the country will correct this problem only very slowly, over a
period of 40 years or so, as the immigrants retire and their children
assimilate. Before the end of that period, our republic might die.
I believe Teddy Roosevelt showed us the way with his “trust busting” and other
quick and direct actions. The actions we might choose to take may be
different than his were, but the time for fastidious adherence to precedent has
run out.
In his “malefactors of great wealth” speech, Teddy explains to us
what is at stake: “I regard this contest as one to determine who shall rule
this free country -- the people through their governmental agents or a few
ruthless and domineering men, whose wealth makes them peculiarly formidable,
because they hide behind the breastworks of corporate organization.”
Ultimately, Teddy’s goal
was not merely to stop “unfair competition” or “restraint of trade.” His
main goal was to save democracy from a concentration of power that had fallen
into the hands of a few plutocrats. The flood of cheap labor was finally
stopped in 1924, but only after Teddy had smashed or regulated the trusts and
turned the population against the malefactors of great wealth. Otherwise,
the victory in 1924 might never have been attained, and our democracy might
have become a mega-corporate kleptocracy with a billion impoverished and
servile workers.
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