The Ehrlich Report
A monthly commentary on politics and more.
This month: Class War

I was skimming through a waiting-room magazine when I was struck by a photo of a (not very attractive) woman with the headline “Moss: In Demand.” She was Kate Moss, an international model, and her demand will earn her, so the small article said, $18 million this year. Two thoughts crossed my mind. The first was my perverse fantasy that I would be willing to model for much less money. Very much less. My second, more serious thought, was the question, “Why?” Why does society pay such absurdly high salaries to relatively few people, while millions go to bed hungry.
Maybe, I thought, we haven’t raised enough of a class consciousness. Why aren’t more people angry by this maldistribution of money and wealth. Could it be they really don’t know?
Try this little class quiz I just made up. See what you know. These are all “true-false” questions. Resist looking up the answers until you are done.

1. For every $1.00 earned by the average worker, the average CEO earns $300.

2. Today there are about 37 million Americans living below the “poverty line.”

3. The number of Americans living below the poverty line has increased during the Bush-Cheyney administration.

4. The Bush-Cheyney administration has cut food stamps and programs for women, infants, children, and the elderly.

5. The U.S. is the only Western superpower that does not give workers any legally mandated holiday time off.

6. The average compensation for chief executive officers of large U.S. companies has doubled over the past 10 years.

7. The homeless are predominantly single parents and their children.

8. Annually, emergency requests for shelter and food have been increasing over the past 20 years.

9. Polls indicated that 50% of full time American workers say that they are completely satisfied with their jobs.

10. More than half of the country’s largest corporations with pension plans made no contributions to their pension fund over the past 10 years.

11. About 45 million Americans do not have any health insurance.

12. Median family income is dropping.

13. The current minimum wage is $5.15 an hour.

14. The minimum wage was last raised in 1997 resulting today in a 20% decline in purchasing power.

15. Top CEOs are paid on the average 821 times as much as a minimum wage earner.

16. These top CEOs earn more before lunch on the first workday of the new year than the minimum wage earner will make all year.

17. Men own 99% of the ownable land in the world.

18. The U.S. Agency for International Development spent over one billion dollars over the last 10 years to help companies move US jobs to cheaper labor markets around the world.

19. Most of the new, important technologies have been developed at public expense and given to private industry for private profits.

20. Adult literacy rates have not changed very much since 1992 with about 30 million Americans barely able to accomplish simple reading tasks.

21. The percentage of full time workers living in poverty has been increasing.

22. Women working full time earn 76 cents for every dollar a man earns.

23. Prisons and “corrections” is one of the top five growth industries in the country.

24. Forty-percent of America workers do not use their full vacations.

25. For the first time since the Great Depression, American households are spending more than they earn.

26. Bill Gates’ Microsoft stock is itself 10 times the stock market value of the holdings of all 35 million African Americans.

27. The employment rate for teenagers is the lowest it has been since statistics have been kept on teenage employment.

28. IRS is eight times more likely to audit the working poor (earning about $16,000) than they are to audit millionaires.

29. The average 25-year-old man in 1970 made $2 more per hour, adjusted for inflation.

30. Children’s poverty rates are higher in the U.S. than in any of the major industrialized countries.

Now consider that if you had 25 correct answers, you are already equipped for the class war. If you had under 15 correct you need to do your homework. The answers? They are all true. Don’t mourn. Organize.

[end]