The biggest secrets in the U.S. today

Robert Dalling

This is what we all know and agree about: We live for our children (see here and here). Ask any person, anywhere on the planet, and he or she will tell you that the only thing that really matters in life is to have healthy and happy children, families, and communities.

Here are some “secrets” about our community

* About one in five of our children live in a home whose income falls below the poverty line.

* Our wages have decreased 15% in three decades. Since our wage today is the same as it was in 1961, it effectively means that we have not had a raise in over fifty years.

* Globalization means that a corporation moves manufacturing to a foreign nation where labor and raw materials cost the least. The goods are not sold to their overseas makers who cannot afford, for example, $100 shoes on their $5 per day salary. Instead, the goods are taken to the U.S., Europe, and Japan where they can be sold for the highest possible price. This approach can mean that labor costs shrink from $150 per day down to $5 per day, but the retail price changes little so that corporate profit is maximized.

* “Corporate” profit is the income for the most wealthy of us, who comprise the upper 1% in annual income by averaging $1 million per year. In recent years, only the upper 4% of us have seen an increase in real wages. Extreme wealth is nothing but proof of your ability, or that of your recent ancestors, to overcharge other people.

* College costs $0 - $3000 per year in Europe but $5,000 - $50,000 per year in the U.S.

* The annual healthcare cost per person is twice as much here as in Europe, but Europeans live five years longer. In fact, the people of one-quarter of the world’s 200 nations have a longer average life span than occurs in the U.S.

* Since 1970, the average portion of family income spent on healthcare has increased from 2% to 20%, but the health industry wants 50%. In 1960, the national health expenditure was $28 billion (in current dollars) but in 2004 it was $2 trillion; about 2% of this amount was spent on research. While heart surgery might cost $300,000 in the U.S., it costs $5,000 in India.

* The U.S. spends as much on the military as does the rest of the world combined.

* War is not a permanent part of civilization. Civilization has existed for about 10,000 years, but there were no wars of mass murder during the first 5,000 years of civilization. Wars of mass murder have occurred through only the last 5,000 years as our leaders sought to expand their own wealth and power by convincing us that it would somehow be glorious to be killed and to kill others by tearing away arms, legs, and heads. War is not glorious and benefits nobody.

* Our society is the mutually beneficial pooling of our efforts. That is why we form social groups rather than “going it alone.” Each of us contributes our lifetime’s worth of work and expects to share in its benefits.

* Forty other nations, including Cuba, have a lower infant mortality rate than exists in the U.S.

* Between elections, the majority party is turning the U.S. into a single party or authoritarian state by trying to exclude the involvement or debate of the minority party.

* Let’s decide that the purpose of our government is to “promote the general welfare and the pursuit of happiness as measured by hundreds of citizen-selected social and economic indicators.” Our goal is to maximize this set of measures. This gives us a way to gauge the success of our attempts to govern ourselves. What are your priorities? Should priority be given to reduce the infant mortality rate or to increase the share of income received by the upper 1%? Which of these two measures is going up due to our recent efforts?

* Democracy is more than voting and free speech. It is a blending of views that partially satisfies each person and group. The people of a nation conduct either compromise or civil war. When civil war occurs, it lasts until people tire of daily death and destruction and decide that compromise isn’t so bad after all. Citizens of a democratic culture have a tolerance for different views and lifestyles and believe in the right of dissent. While the citizens of a stable monarchy have a confidence in benevolent kings and queens, the members of a stable democracy must have trust in the motives and intelligence of other citizens and have a distrust of power. Citizens within a democracy keep their eye on authority and do not blindly follow it nor adopt a fatalistic acceptance of its actions, and the citizens believe that the state is responsive to their requests. Citizens must voice their requests to gauge the responsiveness of their system. The more involved are the citizens, the stronger will be their democracy. U.S. democracy limits power by spreading and balancing it among three branches of government and among about 500 legislators, administrators, and judges. This also means that the views, priorities, and agenda of no single person or group can monopolize the actions of the government. Since no legislation occurs without the support of enough persons, much of daily politicking consists of the attempt to persuade a sufficient number of persons that a specific action should be taken by the nation. Democracy is most appropriate and durable in a nation whose citizens have a working level knowledge in politics, participate in political affairs, consider education for all to be beneficial to the nation as a whole, desire economic development, have political beliefs and attitudes rather than apathy toward everything political, have a belief in the legitimacy of the state, have interpersonal trust for the other members, do not view government as a caring and trusted parent or as an institution that has the divine right to rule, have goals for the nation, reject revolutionary change and instead use the existing system to make changes, want to cooperate and compromise rather than suffer civil war, and have trust in their mutually beneficial system and gain enough personal satisfaction from its existence to support it while it is temporarily performing poorly–for example, during an economic recession.

Here are some details.

About one in five of our children live in a home whose income falls below the poverty line (see here for an international comparison). This situation has steadily existed through the last twenty years, see here or here. Half of our single mothers have an income that is below the poverty line, and every head of household earning the federally mandated minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, which corresponds to $15,000 per year, has an income that is below the poverty line. The 2005 American Community Survey of the Census Bureau found that 38 of 288 million persons (13% of us) in the U.S. live below the poverty line. The government website for statistics about children has many indicators of children's well-being describing the economic, health, drug usage, and educational aspects of their lives. We live for our children. Since most of us agree that the needs of our children come first, the information provided on that website give the most meaningful measure of the performance of our families, society, government, and civilization. Our single most meaningful, mutual goal is to improve the lives of our children. The measurements shown by these indicators helps us know if our efforts are succeeding. In fact, this data comes close to measuring “the pursuit of happiness and the general well being.” Maybe we should have our Constitution say that the purpose of government is to maximize the “general welfare” as measured by a set of indicators such as those shown above. To determine the portion of our mutual efforts that are directed at our children's well-being, you might determine the portion of last year's legislation directly involved them (see Congressional Roll Call, published by Congressional Quarterly, Inc. ).

For a family of four in 2006, the poverty threshold was $20,794. For a single worker, this corresponds to the total income from a job paying about $10 per hour, which was about double the minimum hourly wage of $5.15. A direct effect of our decreasing wages has been an increase in the number of children living in a family whose income is below the poverty line. Single-parent homes are much more likely to be living in poverty. In those families that have both parents living within the home, about 10% fall below the poverty line while 45% do so in our single-parent homes.

To see how much money is needed to run a household in your region, check the Economic Policy Institute which has determined basic family budgets for four hundred different cities. As for the most common annual income, 40% of men and 70% of women earn below $25,000, which is $12 per hour. (The U.S. Census Bureau has a table of worker counts by income.) A Dutch professor explained to me that one difference between Americans and Europeans is that Europeans do not expect to become rich but Americans are told daily that they will become rich. In Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen points out that despite the mantra, it is a fact that very few of us are going to become millionaires.

Having so many of us living below the poverty line indicates a widespread inequality of wealth. In fact, the inequality is global in scope and causing social unrest. When a person's income is so low that phone, car, antibiotics, and healthcare are unaffordable, then that person is being forced to live a medieval lifestyle while being surrounded by twenty-first century benefits. About one-quarter of men and one-half of women living in the U.S. have an annual income below $15,000. What is life like when trying to head a household with such an income? It means affording only an annual night out to a restaurant or movie theater and it means that consumer items priced over $100 are beyond easy reach. On payday, our family of three might have $12 left to last until the next payday. We do not have enough money to purchase $200 per month car or health insurance–even if required by law–because we can not afford even to purchase $1 oranges or eat at KFC. (Too many of us in the U.S. can not afford fruit, see here and here for a similar report from Britain. In the last eight years, both the supply and the price of fruit has gone up. The weighted average price for fresh fruit was then 71 cents per pound. Today, farmers sell oranges to wholesalers for $8 per 76-pound box. What do you pay for oranges or other foods, gasoline, and utilities?) Such an income barely allows a person to pay rent and buy food. This means that one-quarter of us are realizing relatively little benefit from our lifetime’s effort.

This is an injustice because those of us living with an income below the poverty line are contributing our lifetime's efforts to our mutual civilization. We can do better for more of us. Our mutual efforts are doing very well for 1% of us and doing poor for one-third to one-half of us. Remember that one in ten of those of us who are living in poverty have a talent for surgery, science, engineering, or composing that is among the upper 10% of all persons. Our mutual society is restricting itself by restricting the contributions of many of us.

We form social groups because of the unspoken certainty we have that combining our efforts in a mutually beneficial exchange of help makes for a better life than going it alone. This certainty is unspoken because it is innate. The exchange of help in a just manner–to do as the other did and to expect the other to do what you did–is the glue that creates our society, and our society is re-created by this glue with each generation. Society and this just exchange are synonymous in that neither occurs–or even begins–without the other. As it is said, one can choose to live alone as a hermit on a mountain but nobody has consciously to choose to live with a group of people: this is what we do naturally because it has proven to be mutually beneficial. Our social system is not “everybody for themself.”

We have been pooling efforts in a mutually beneficial society for a few million years because we have found that it makes life better for all of us. Still today, our society is the pooling of efforts in a mutually beneficial collection and our civilization operates only through the combined, lifetime’s efforts of all of us. This pooling of our efforts is visible as the simple traffic that occurs as everyone goes about their daily business. The next time you sit in your car cursing the stop lights and traffic and looking at hundreds of persons doing the same thing, you might amuse yourself by considering the hundreds of occupations being performed that day by those visible persons. It takes the efforts of all of us to operate today’s civilization. We naturally experience a warm feeling with each effort that we contribute and have acknowledged.

At any time or in any place around the planet, whenever hundreds or thousands of us humans get together to form a tribe or chiefdom, we build earthen mounds–for example, see Poverty Point or here–irrigation systems, and stone monuments. Whenever tens of thousands of us get together, we build temples, palaces, cities, and city-states such as occurred in Cahokia near today’s St. Louis. What are billions of us now building? What should be the priorities for our mutual efforts?

Ask most any person on the planet what in life matters most to them and they will answer “happy and healthy children, families, and communities.” We live for our children. Everyday, stop and ask yourself how do you gauge success in life and what priorities and goals do you have for your own life and for your community, nation, and planet-wide civilization. What do you want to contribute to our mutual efforts? What are the priorities of your political and business leaders? (For a list of topics of special concern to the voters of the U.S. and the world, visit here.)

The president’s cabinet includes two war departments–defense and homeland security–but no department whose sole concern is the well-being of our children. Do you think the needs of our children should be a cabinet level concern for our government?

In The Social Health of the Nation, How America is Really Doing, Marc Miringoff and Marque-Luisa Miringoff explain that in many parts of the industrialized world, a range of social policies serve to prevent widespread poverty and ensure that very few children live in extreme conditions. The child poverty rate in France had been about 25% until government programs reduced it to 7%. This has not yet occurred in the United States. The performance of the United States is the nearly the worst of any industrialized nation. During the 1950s and 1960s, a strong U.S. economy and a range of public policy interventions began to reduce our child-poverty rates to new lows, but through the last few decades, about 20% of our children have grown in poverty.

Many of us agree that our mutual efforts should result, first of all, in healthy and happy children, families, and communities and that this begins with having healthcare and education for each of us. Yet college education costs about ten times as much in the U.S. as it does in most any other industrialized nation–$5,000 to $50,000 compared to $0 to $3,000 per year. Students in the U.S. spends as much as half their income on college. Colleges in many European nations charge no tuition. England has just raised the cap on tuition from £1,000 to £3,000 per year. Rather than mutually financing education, the U.S. has chosen the scheme in which many students pay for college by getting $100,000 in bank loans and then, after interest is added, pay back $200,000 to the bank. If the wages of the graduate are insufficient to repay the loan, lifelong debt occurs because the law states that a person cannot declare bankruptcy on these bank loans. (Visit here for an international comparison of educational funding.)

A nation’s progress is tied to the education of its citizens. Education is important–for everyone, for each individual, and for our mutual society. With each new thing we learn or accomplish, we become a fuller person and contribute a larger amount to our mutual society. Food keeps us alive, love makes us live, and education enables us to grow, to better understand ourselves, and to better contribute to our community.

By the way, if the K-12 school system were run “like a business” it would mean that a few corporations would own most of the schools, that there would be 500 students per teacher, that seven of ten schools would be closed, and that the CEOs would keep half of all funds as their own income.

Universal health care occurs in most every industrialized nation except the United States where about one in seven of us do not have any health insurance. In fact, about 20,000 of us die every year because we can not afford to go to the doctor; this is 1% of the two million persons who die every year in the U.S. People in the U.S. spend twice as much on health care as do people in Europe and ten or twenty times as much as do the people in most every other nation. Medical care consumes 3% of the personal budget in Japan. Since 1970, the average portion of family income spent on healthcare has increased from 2% to 20%. In 1960, the national health expenditure was $28 billion (in current dollars) but in 2004 it was $1.9 trillion; about 2% of this amount was spent on research, see here or here. Health care has become so expensive that increasing numbers of employers are dropping health insurance for their employees. Some are also dropping retirement pensions. As health insurance costs increased, we were required to carry automobile insurance that would pay the $100,000 hospital bills resulting from an accident. (In practice, this means that traffic no longer consists of dented cars as it did before car insurance became required. Is that beneficial?) The people of a nation pay for health care either with direct wages from their employers or from the indirect wages that come from the taxation of their employers who manage to pay insufficient wages. In either case, the money and effort comes from all of us. We have already have learned that the health-care industry is no place for corporate profit seeking. (Notice that the goals and operation of our police force, firefighting groups, and military and such have relatively little to do with maximizing business profits despite the fact that those of us who think that only money makes the world go cannot imagine any other solution or motivation.)

The U.S. does not have affordable health care or affordable college education; instead, it spends its money on a really big military force. For example, where another country, say Britain, has but fifteen of a certain type of warship, the U.S. has four hundred. The U.S. did not have much of a military force at all until forced to build one in response to Hitler, and then its size never decreased. Eisenhower warned about the dangers of what he called the military-industrial complex. The money spent today by the U.S. on its military is about the same as the combined military spending of all other nations. What do we get out of being the only still-un-bankrupted Superpower? Do other empires send money to your home every week? Just as military spending was bankrupting the Soviet Union, it can also bankrupt the U.S.

The U.S. might soon have trouble funding its half-trillion dollar (1% of the World’s Gross Product) per year army from citizens earning mostly minimum wage. As manufacturing moved overseas, U.S. citizens exchanged their $25 per hour manufacturing jobs for $9 per hour service-sector jobs. Some companies recently announced plans to move three-fourths of science and engineering jobs to India and China where wages are 65% less. In a few years, 90% of the world’s scientists and engineers will be in Asia. Are CEO jobs next to move overseas? What is left for the U.S. worker besides a job as a clerk in a retail store? Would any of our businesses want to reap great profits from low cost, overseas labor for a few decades if it meant they bankrupted the nation in the process? (Remember that decreased wages are followed by decreased purchases by workers and subsequently decreased manufacturing and servicing.)

The size of the U.S. economy will soon be exceeded by those of each of China, India, and the European Union. The Euro is already more widely used than is the dollar. The economic position of the U.S. is already decreasing in the world. (Today, the U.S. accounts for ten of the fifty trillion dollar Gross World Product, the annual budget of the U.S. government is $3 trillion dollars, and the U.S. military expenditure is $0.5 trillion dollars, which is 1% of the Gross world Product.) As corporate budgets come to exceed those of most of the world’s governments, we might find that the economies of each of the nations of the world are in fact functionally united long before politicians get around to more formal agreements. But the trouble with mega-corporate control of the world’s economy is that its owners and operators are not elected and are concerned only about their own income and about removing competition.

It is suicidal policy for the U.S. government to obtain 20% of its annual funds by borrowing money as it has through the last few decades. As the U.S. imports more than it exports, its economic power is decreasing. The trade deficit has grown to three-quarter trillion dollars per year.

Inequality of wealth and income

There has been about a 15% drop in our wages during the last few decades, and as a result, both mom and dad now have to work to earn enough money for rent and food. The average wage of the U.S. worker peaked in 1973, and by 2002, our wage had fallen to the average earned in 1963. Effectively, this means we have not had a raise in fifty years–but our business owners and operators have had their income increase several-fold during this time. Notice also that this decrease in wages also means that we were able to purchase about 15% less goods and services, thus shrinking business. The annual Economic Report of the President shows our average weekly earnings for each year since 1964 in table B-47 here (search for "hours and earnings" in volume "Economic Report of the President) or go here. Since the figures for some years has recently been removed, a complete table is reproduced here.

The Ratio of the income of the richest 10% of population to that of the poorest 10% for every country can be seen here. For the percentage of the population living below the poverty line, see here. The world’s 800 billionaires have a combined wealth of $2.6 trillion which is an amount equal to 5% of the World’s $50 trillion dollar GDP. The number of billionaires in the world was 145 in 1978, 358 in 1994, and 700 in 2004. The number of U.S. billionaires rose from one in 1978 to 120 in 1994. According to the Merrill Lynch and the Capgemini Group’s World Wealth Report, almost eight million persons, which is about 1% of us, hold more than one million dollars in financial assets, for a total of almost $30 trillion dollars. Since the wealthiest 0.5% of us own one-third of all stock–the wealthiest 10% own 80%–whenever we talk of

Average Income of the Top 1 percent and of Everybody Else, 1913-2002

“corporate income” we are really talking about the income of the wealthiest 1% of us. The graph shows that the average reported income of the wealthiest 1% of us quadrupled between the years 1913 and 2000 while that of the rest of us stayed about the same. This graph was prepared by Emmanuel Saez of the University of California. You can see many of his reports here.

A few decades ago, the annual compensation of a CEO of a Standard & Poor's 500 company was twenty times that of the workers, but today’s $12 million average CEO compensation has driven that ratio to somewhere between 250 and 400. The ratio of CEO to worker income has grown to fifty in much of the world. You might like to compare your pay with that of your company's CEO. Each year we see a new record for the highest compensation of a corporate head. For example, in 1993 the leader of the Disney corporation was paid $200 million out of the corporation's $300 million profits. In 1998, the median annual CEO compensation of 350 surveyed corporations was $1.6 million. The CEOs of most corporations own three to twenty times that amount in its stock.

The world’s 500 largest companies comprise the bulk of the global economy that is being directed by the owners and operators of those companies. The trouble with having these few persons controlling the economic aspects of the lives of six billion persons is that they are not elected by us. Taken to that extreme, capitalism is contrary to democracy. If the wealthiest of us are allowed to legislate economic policy, we will arrange it to benefit ourselves. Should government policy and action guide everything in life except for our jobs and income? If the government does not regulate business, will business strive to take as much as possible as fast as possible before the system is unraveled by their very own actions, as was demonstrated in the California power outage scam? Capitalism works great for the 1% of us who are greedy enough to be capitalist and behave as if it is “everybody for themself.” Maybe we should drop all regulation of business, let them unravel our social system and create a depression in just a few years through profit seeking, and then in response design proper controls. Extreme wealth is nothing but proof of your ability, or that of your recent ancestors, to overcharge other people.

A free market is a system of companies competing to sell the most product and service for the least price. This describes much of small business operations but has little to do with the operations of large corporations. In each industry–such as oil, steel, copper, chemicals, sugar, alcohol, grain, or tobacco– about three corporations have come to control more than half of the sales (which is the definition of a monopolized industry) and so are able to forcibly decrease costs and increase prices to maximize their own profits. Mergers will soon result in a single corporation that runs the economic aspect of civilization. (Since there is little competition among the corporations within a monopolized industry, the greatest competition among corporations today occurs as each separate industry struggles to be one that obtains half of our monthly income throughout life. That is, the still-separate corporations controlling each of the food, automobile, fuel, communications, and utility industries and such each want half of our monthly income.)

The ten richest persons have the same wealth as the poorest one billion of us. On the last day of a lifetime spent accumulating, such a wealthy person can shout "I am as rich as the poorest one billion persons" and then die just like the rest of us do. Rather than seeking to obtain the wealth of a billion persons, most of us gauge success in life in terms of healthy and happy children, families, and communities.

Today, the richest 20% have 80% of the wealth while one in four of us do not have access to improved drinking water sources or access to improved sanitation facilities, see here. (You might also read Water and Food Security here.) Two out of six billion of the world’s people go hungry.

Those of us who own and operate our global corporations maximize profit, which is their own income, by paying as little as possible for the raw materials, crops, and labor of the newly-industrializing world and then transport the resulting products to North America, Europe, and Japan to sell for as high a price as possible to the one-quarter of the world's population who are among the older-industrialized peoples of the world and can come up with the money to pay those prices.

Notice that the Asian factory worker who is paid a few dollars per day to make shoes and such can not buy the $100 retail priced item they make for the global corporation. Out of the entire world's population, three-quarters of us cannot afford to purchase the items the global corporations sell because these items cost a year's worth of spare money. Corporate leaders maximize profit by shutting down high wage, say $150 per day, U.S. factories and instead paying $5 per day in wages to a factory in Asia. This is a huge cost saving but produces little decrease in the price that consumers pay. The finished product is transported to the U.S. and sold for a price that is not correspondingly less but instead continues to increase each year. This “globalization” process greatly increases profit for that corporation and decreases the average wage in the U.S. This increase in profit is great for the corporation for a few decades but soon, the U.S. workers are making too little money to buy manufactured products. In turn, this closes the factories.

What have been the highest levels of inequality in the U.S.? In The New Politics John Buenker explained that the social legislation occurring in the 1890s was in response to the perception of the growing inequalities of U.S. society. During the 1890s, those of us among the richest 1% of the population owned 51% of real and personal property; the upper 12% owned 86%, while those of us among the poorest 44% owned just 1.2%. The poorest half of our families received just one-fifth of all wages. On pages 61-63, Korten shows that just before the stock market crash of 1929, those of us among the richest 1% of the population had grown to control 59% of the wealth–the richest 0.5% of us had 32.4%. Today, the United States has its highest level of income inequality in the last fifty years–higher also, than in any other industrialized nation. This should not be such a secret. This can continue to occur only as long as it is such a secret. This should be discussed in the daily press and by our political leaders so that it will cease to be such a secret.

The profits of our factories becomes the income for those of us who own the factories, which mostly involves the 1% of us who are the most wealthy. The upper 1% of us have an average annual income of $1 million and a combined income that matches that of the lower 40%. The upper 5% of us have an average annual income of $217,000, which is about the average income of a medical doctor. The upper 20% of us have an average annual income of $125,000, while the lower 20% of us have an average annual income of just $11,500. The top 20% of us receive half our nation's total income while the poorest 20% receive just 4% (see here). The upper 20% of us now receive as much money as the combined total of the middle 60% of us. From 1970 to 2001, the income of the richest fifth increased from 7.6 to 11 times the income of the lowest fifth. The income of the middle 60% also declined during that period. For income inequality by population fifths during the years 1967–2001, see here, and for other aspects of historical income data see here. Some comparisons with our past are given in the following paragraphs.

Mills reports that in 1951, both spouses were wage-earners in just 16% of the homes, there were only twenty people who grossed more than a million dollars per year, and only 379 persons made over a half a million dollars per year. There were 1,383 persons who made one-fourth a million dollars and only 11,490 who made more than $100,000 per year. The highest incomes were obtained from property, dividends, sale of stock and businesses, estates, and trusts. The middle-highest incomes were received as the salaries of chief executives. Mills also explains that the wealthiest of us can take advantage of the tax shelters we lobbied to create. For example, a trust fund is a tax-deductible block of money given to a named charity, often a grandchild. The charity receives the principle but the giver continues to receive the interest while they are alive.

What is the level of inequality in income and wealth globally? The 400 richest people in the U.S. had a combined net worth of $328 billion in 1993. This was a larger amount than the combined worth of one billion persons in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. The average income of the poorest 20% of the world's people is $163 per year. The six richest persons in the world have the same wealth as the poorest 300 million of us. Korten reports that during the years 1950 to 1989, the level of income inequality doubled in the recently industrializing nations. In 1992, the United Nations Development Programme reported that the average income of the richest 20% of us is 150 times the average income of the poorest 20% of us. Today, the three wealthiest of us has the same amount of wealth as do the 600 million poorest persons. The richest 20% have 80% of the wealth while one in four of us do not have access to clean water. (The United Nations maintains an estimate of the percentage of us who have access to improved drinking water and proper sewage, see here.You might also read Water and Food Security here.) For the lowest one-third of us, how does the average cost of living compare to our annual wage? The answer is that two out of six billion of us humans today go hungry due our income being lower than our cost of living. For the percentage of the population living below the poverty line, see here. You can see many U.N. reports at the websites here and here. For the latest news, visit www.worldwatch.org.

Handelman shows some figures from the 1998 World Bank report for the income distribution of the poorest 40% and the richest 20% of various nations. These two values are 12% and 60% in Mexico, 15% and 64% in Brazil (the world's highest inequality), 15% and 48% in China, and 21% and 41% in Egypt. (The World Bank reports can be found at http://www-wds.worldbank.org/default.jsp.) The Ratio of the income of the richest 10% of population to that of the poorest 10% for every country of the world can be seen at http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/indic/indic_136_1_1.html.

Handelman also shows figures from the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report for 1998. This report rates the ability of the governments of the world to put their economic gains into improved living standards through education, sanitation, and health care. A positive value means the nation's government is performing well. The values for several nations are Vietnam +26, Cuba +17, Grenada +17, France +12, South Korea +6, Mexico +5, Brazil +1, China +1, United States -1, Cameroon -13, Egypt -20, Brunei -36, and Oman -49. These figures show that Kuwait and Oman are failing to turn oil-money into a general well-being of the population and that the United States government is performing poorly for most of its citizens. The current United Nations Human Development Index is shown at the website http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data/indic/indic_8_1_1.html. The complete list of U.N. reports is given at http://hdr.undp.org/statistics/data.

High School

We see in the Miringoffs figure that our high school drop out rate has improved, but again, our performance ranks among the worst of the older industrialized nations. In the United States, 72% of us complete high school, while in New Zealand, Finland, and Japan 93%, 98% and 99% of us do so. (For international comparisons, you might like to visit www.unicef.org/sowc03/tables/index.html.) In the United States, about 28% of those of us aged 25–29 have completed college. But for the people of forty-five out of fifty states today, one person in ten cannot afford to attend any college at all.

Today's average annual earnings are $15,000 for high school drop outs, $22,000 for high school graduates, $38,000 for college graduates, and $61,000 for professionals. Since the average annual wage of all persons is $24,000 we see that our wage depends on our educational level: high school graduates earn about the average wage, college graduates earn 50% more, and those of us who do not finish high school earn 50% less than that average. Recent unemployment rates are 0.7% for professionals, 2.4% for college graduates, 5.5% for high school graduates, and 10.9% for high school drop outs. For a comparison of unemployment rates around the world, see http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/socind/unempl.htm. By the way, simply becoming unemployed today means that one’s creditors will likely charge $1,000 in penalties and late fees during the next sixty days; this can be enough to send a person into bankruptcy–except that the banking industry has recently convinced our government to make it harder to declare bankruptcy.

Our children had better be given as much education as possible before they reach the seventh grade and begin to make the life-and-death decisions of today's big cities–as we saw for Lafeyette and Pharoah. Education decreases economic misery and increases opportunities and choices in life. This should not be such a secret. It should be mentioned every day in high school as one reason to stay in school. Those of us who do not finish high school have little choice in occupation. We are forced to take whichever job comes along and barely have money for food and rent. This drop-out rate affects the lives of individuals–and of their children’s, too–through reduced wages, reduced civic participation, and higher unemployment.

The average annual income of the entire population is $24,000 while for medical surgeons it is $180,000, see www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291067.htm. (See www.bls.gov/oes/oes_emp.htm for wages by industry or region and see www.bls.gov/ncs/ocs/sp/ncar0002.pdf for a list of 450 occupations ranked by wage.) If you obtain all of your income from wages then $24,000 per year corresponds to $12 per hour, and $5.15 per hour, which is the minimum wage, corresponds to $10,700–as long as no vacation is taken during the year. The annual earnings considered to fall at the poverty line are $7,500 for an individual but $9,500 for a two-person home and $16,400 for a four-person home. This is 1.5 times the annual wage of $10,700 for a person earning the minimum wage of $5.15 per hour. In the United States, the minimum wage was raised regularly from 1974 to 1981 but we allowed it to remain unchanged from 1981 through 1989 though the cost of living was increasing.

Actually, the economic benefit of education makes for trite bait compared with the rewards that come from knowledge and knowledgeable citizens.

Elderly poverty

The international definition of poverty is having an income less than half a nation's median amount. If half of us make more money than you do, and half make less, then you are earning that median income. (This is a bit different than the average wage.) Each of us making less than half that median income is considered to be living in poverty. The percentage of a population living below the poverty line is a measure of economic inequality in the social system of that people, and indicates the number of persons being left out of the actions, goals, and priorities of the system. (For information, see http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032004/pov/toc.htm or www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty.html. www.lisproject.org/keyfigures/povertytable.htm has some international comparisons.)

The Miringoffs explain that from 1970 to 1996, the Social Security System of the people of the United States reduced the portion of our elderly that live in poverty from 25% to 11%. But this still means that about one in ten of our grandparents are living in poverty; many other nations have better records. (We saw in Chapter 15 that the U.S. Social Security program began in the 1930s in response to the poverty of older workers.) A recent trouble for our elderly is that they are spending 20% to 50% of their income on medicine. This recently increased expense cancels part of their increased income. Many more would be considered to be living in poverty if we instead compared their income that remained after medical fees to the nation's median income. The elderly poverty rate is a measure of how we live in the last decades of our lives. The Miringoffs state that the future challenge will be to live long well.

Infant mortality rate and life expectancy

In previous centuries, a person was far more likely to die before reaching the age of one, but if you managed to survive through childhood then you were likely to live to a ripe old age. In the U.S. around the year 1800, about one in six of us died before reaching our first birthday and about one in four or five of us would die before reaching the age of twenty-one. A simple cut might become infected and cause death within one or two weeks. During the 1940s, antibiotics were discovered that put an end to unnecessarily shortened lives. In the last century, the infant mortality rate within industrialized nations decreased by a factor of fifty through the application of basic sanitation. The short average life span of previous centuries was due infant and childhood deaths. In 1900, anyone who lived to be sixty-five years old could expect to live another twelve years to age 77. The Miringoffs report that today, that has increased by 5.5 years to 17.5 years. The heart attacks, strokes, and cancer that used to end a life at age 65 instead result in a $50,000 hospital stay that is often followed by a second hospital stay. The average health care cost of a retiree in the U.S. today is $100,000. It is misleading to say that health care “miracles” have extended average lifetimes from 40 to 75 years. More exactly, sanitary infant environments and antibiotics and such keep more of us alive until $100,000 hospital stays avoid death.

The infant mortality rate, which involves death within the first year of life, has been found to be a sensitive measure of our society's sanitary and health conditions and of our ability to protect the most vulnerable of us. Since it has been found to be sensitive even to small changes in technology and public policy, it is also a measure of the effectiveness of our public policies in applying our base of technical health knowledge. A poor rate has been seen to be easily improved. The Miringoffs explain that in the U.S. by 1996 it has been reduced 64% from its 1970 value of 7.3 deaths per 1,000 births (there was a total of 28,487 infant deaths in 1996). The latest available figure, which is for the year 2004, show that our infant mortality rate is 6.5. This is an all-time low, but thirty other nations have a lower rate, see how all nations compare at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html. Visit https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/profileguide.html to see other comparisons.

We saw that in the early 1800s, about one in five or six (180 per 1,000) of us died before reaching our first birthday. In the year 1900 the rate was still about one in six (160 per 1,000) but became twenty-five times better by the year 2000. We also have seen that a recent benefit of our science and technology has been that we less often die of simple illnesses. A meaningful goal for our civilization is to reduce the number of us whose life is unnecessarily shortened. We hate to think of a child dying from a simple cut only because antibiotics were not available and affordable. We all agree that each human born is as equally deserving of a full life as is every other human.

The Centers for Disease Control have found that the infant mortality rate is 60% higher when the mother lives in poverty–regardless of the mothers age, smoking habits, or amount of prenatal care. The gap between white and black mortality rates has increased since 1970. Congenital anomalies, prematurity, low birth-weight, Respiratory Distress Syndrome, and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, whose reduction is accounting for much of the recent improvement, are the four leading causes of infant death. The low birth-weight problem has worsened since 1984. It accounts for two-thirds of infant deaths that occur in the first twenty-eight days.

Handelman shows that the governments of some nations have performed very well in reducing infant mortality rates. During the years 1970 through 1995, Oman has succeeded in reducing its rate from 280 down to 25–a 90% reduction. Saudi Arabia reduced its rate by 82% from 185 down to 34. Chile's rate dropped 87%, being reduced from 105 to 15. The rate in Barbados dropped 81%, from 81 to 10. South Korea dropped its rate from 71 to 9, which is an 87% decrease. Cuba cut its rate by 81%, from 54 to 10. And Singapore's rate dropped from 30 to 6, which is an 80% decrease.

People in the U.S. today spend more on health-care than does anyone anywhere else in the world but one-quarter of the nations of the world have a longer life expectancy than occurs in the U.S., see https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html. The life expectancy of a newborn in the United States varies from 57.9 to 89.5 depending on our race, gender, and location (there is much less variation in Europe). For some affluent Asian counties, the life expectancy of men and women is 89.5 and 95 years. For those of us Native American males who live in South Dakota reservations, our life expectancy is 56.5. For those of us black American males who live in central cities, our life expectancy is 57.9. These two life expectancy rates are among the worst in the industrialized world. This indicates that there is much to be done in the United States to attain the ideals stated in our founding documents. When we get serious, we will accomplish this in a single generation. We already know that it simply begins with the care of our newborn infants.

Prison

The U.S. now has the highest incarceration rate in the world. For an international comparison, see www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/r188.pdf. This report shows that the incarceration rate per 1,000 persons is 0.3 in India, 0.5 in western Africa and Japan, 0.7 in southern Europe, 1.0 in South America and China, 2.0 in eastern and central Europe, 4.0 in central Asia and South Africa, and 6.18 in the U.S. Of the six billion people in the world, about nine million (0.1% of the total) are in jail. Half the world’s prisoners are jailed in the U.S., Russia, and China.

We expend immense energy and resources prosecuting crime. We now spend 100 billion dollars per year in our local, State, and Federal justice systems. This makes $7500 for each of the thirteen million crimes that occur, and means that each of us pays $385 per year for this cost. We spend as much as $30,000 per year to house and feed each prisoner; this is also what it would cost to send each prisoner to one of the higher-priced universities. Excluding community colleges, in 1996 California spent more on criminal corrections than on higher education.

The U.S. reliance on the threat of prison and its harsh life has not been working. (For life in the harshest prisons, see http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/channel/blog/2005/03/explorer_maximum.html.) Crime rates in the U.S. are several times higher than in most other countries. The website www.nationmaster.com shows that one-third of the world’s 70 million crimes per year are committed in the U.S. Prison is not reforming criminals in the U.S. Within three years of their release about 70% of nonviolent offenders are arrested for a new crime, as explained in the report given at www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/pnoesp.txt). In response, some states are beginning to send drug offenders to treatment rather than to prison, as is done in many other nations. Reports show that crime is more effectively reduced by money spent in drug treatment than in jailing people who take drugs. Some nations reduce repeat-offender rates by working with inmates after their release.

Those of us humans living under this condition know that this hopeless situation is all that we have in store for our entire lifetime. The cause of crime is a harsh life and a bleak future with insufficient income to get by, making every day a struggle just to get enough money for food and rent. This sometimes results in the adoption of a life of drugs and crime–as Those of us who resort to crime or drug-usage are not "weak people." Together we will look carefully at the unjust causes of crime, drug-usage, hopelessness, and despair and show the strength of our human character in striving to create a more just civilization. How do you rate our progress during the last 10,000 years? As we begin to measure the success of our attempts at governing, we will find the approach that minimizes hopelessness and injustice.

How do we put an end to crime, drugs, and poverty? Removing guns will not remove crime. Increasing the size of the police force, even putting a cop in every home and on every street corner, will not end crime. The worst approach is to put one out of every one hundred members of the population into jail, as has been done in the United States–at an annual cost of $30,000 per inmate. These actions do nothing about removing the reasons for crime. We truly fight crime by striving to minimize hopelessness, the unequal access to the benefits of our civilization, and social and economic injustice–because these things are its general cause. A measure of the injustice of our civilization is given by the percentage of us who live in poverty or attempt to escape through drug usage, and also by the percentage of us who are imprisoned or are employed in police and military forces.

Conditions for Work

As a condition for employment, many employers today check your credit report, criminal background, medical history, driving record, require a medical checkup, ask if you have ever filed a Workman’s Compensation claim for being injured on the job, require that you not be in default on student loans and that you have registered for the draft, test you for drug use, test you for tobacco use, demand that you legally account for periods of unemployment, and give you a 200-question psychological test, asking questions such as “Does it make you mad when arrested criminals get away free on legal technicalities?” (To see this, go to the website of any retail store chain and click the button marked “apply for a job.”) None of this occurred a couple decades ago. Our corporations are beginning to use credit reports as a weapon of control. Even your car insurance rate depends on your credit rating.

Should our government allow our employers to require these conditions? What are the benefits and drawbacks of these requirements? Does this mean that committing a minor crime, taking a drug, smoking, being sick or injured, agreeing with the Right of Due Process, or being late on your credit card payment means that you should never work again? Will all people having jobs then be “picture-perfect” employees? Will all of us unemployed persons then be paid through welfare and additional taxes placed on employers and employees? (About one-third of the U.S. government is funded through employment taxes today.) If the half of us deemed unemployable have no money to purchase factory made products, will half the factories have to cease production?

The cultural elements of democracy

Since many groups within our democracy are trying to impose their way on the rest of us, here is a description of what political scientists have found to be the cultural ingredients of a people conducting a stable democracy. Democracy is more than voting and free speech. It is first of all a blending of views that partially satisfies everyone. There is a blending of views, priorities, and goals from many persons and groups, including political parties, the media, military, business, religious, university, labor, propertied, radical left and right, centrists, environmental, scientific, families, and professional interest groups. Imagine how our nation would be changed if only one of these groups or if only the Republican or only the Democratic Party was allowed to choose plans and actions because all opposing views and ideas were outlawed. Authoritarian or single-party states dictate a single view of priorities and actions and are able to force the nation down a single path because all other views and agendas are outlawed. (You might like to compare the number of political parties in the nations of the world. While the U.S. has just two, most every other nation has dozens–though two or three tend to dominate). Politics in the U.S. is becoming the science of getting one’s way despite democracy. As the Democratic and Republican Parties take turns holding the majority of the House or Senate, each has taken to excluding the minority party from as much of the legislative process as possible. Turning the U.S. into a single party state between elections.

The authoritarian state tries to control all political, economic, and social activity. No organization of any kind can be created without first obtaining the permission of the state. An organization can not serve any function already provided by the state, and it can not disagree with anything the state is doing. An approved group is given a meeting place and allowed to publicize its goals and events and to collect dues. Those persons taking part in any unauthorized organization that is attempting to be autonomous of the state will be either fined, jailed, or expelled from one's profession or from the country. These punishments usually keep the number of active dissidents very low. While single-party states outlaw all points of view that are contrary to those of the ruling person or party, democratic nations have multiple parties that not only allow multiple views but expect an open debate to occur among all parties and for a consensus to form.

Democracy functions only through the blending of views. Citizens of a democratic culture have a tolerance for different views, priorities, and lifestyles. Is this the case in the U.S. today? Many citizens expect politicians to be committed and uncompromising, but these are the characteristics that end democracy. It is also undemocratic behavior for a group to demand that their view be imposed on everyone and that everyone be just like them “or else.” How often do you hear citizens talk about ways to compromise on a specific issue? Democracy requires consensus building not a view that "only my way is right and I won't compromise." The opposite of forming a consensus is conducting civil war. Today, many persons are unwilling to compromise in the abortion issue. Will this issue result in a civil war? Once started, civil war ends when people grow tired of daily death and destruction and decide that compromise is not so bad after all. Civil war is avoided by the blending of views that is democracy.

While authoritarian states work quickly by skipping all debate, democratic systems move slowly because views are being debated and blended. Some of our recent presidents have tried to get their way by skipping all debate or by acting in secrecy. (We will know that our democracy is in trouble if a president ever mistakes himself for a king and goes to war on a whim.) Senator John McCain says that by excluding legislators from the Democratic Party, the Republican Party has been avoiding debate in the conference committees that are formed to reconcile the differences in bills passed by the senate and congress and that these committees have been adding items that appeared in neither the House nor Senate version of the bill. These are the actions that end democracy.

Democracy occurs when citizens not only tolerate different views but listen to those who offer opposing views. Democratic citizens believe that everyone has the right of dissent. Undemocratic citizens instead accuse dissenters of being unpatriotic. Democracy requires moderation, cooperation, bargaining, accommodation, and a flexibility that allows goals to be negotiable and to change through time. People of democratic character believe that no group or person has a monopoly on truth and that there is no absolute truth nor a single, correct answer to public policy issues. Restraining one’s ideology allows results to occur; otherwise, there is nothing but deadlock. Compromise makes all parties winners rather than having clear winners and clear losers. While the citizens of a stable monarchy must have a confidence in benevolent kings and queens, the members of a stable democracy must have trust in the motives and intelligence of other citizens and a distrust of power. Democracy limits power by spreading and balancing it among the three branches of government and among many persons. In the U.S., power is spread among some five hundred legislators, judges, and the president. The president has the greatest opportunity to set the agenda. This also means that the views, priorities, and agenda of no single group can monopolize the actions of the government.

Since no legislation occurs without the support of enough persons, much of daily politicking consists of the attempt to persuade a sufficient number of people that a specific action should be taken by the nation. Politics has become a science of getting one’s way. For example, a seemingly “off the cuff” remark or argument was most likely “test marketed” previously on a room full of people who listened to several possible versions of the remark and then described their emotional reactions to each of the presented possibilities. The heart rate of each listener might be monitored to help find the statements that best illicit emotional responses. Politicians and interest groups search for ways to press our emotional buttons so that they can get their way on a specific issue.

Democratic citizens have an ever-watchful attitude toward authority rather than a blind submission or a fatalistic acceptance of the actions and rules of the state. They have an intelligent distrust of leadership but they are not hostile toward the leadership. Authority must be questioned and challenged so that it does not become dictatorial, but it must also be supported or it will dissolve. The citizens and interacting groups offer alternative viewpoints rather than armed resistance. The members of a democracy prefer consensus building and moderation over revolt. For this nonviolent interaction to occur requires that the citizens of a democracy believe and feel that the state is responsive to their requests and stated needs.

Citizens however must participate in the debate before they can measure the responsiveness of their system. The more involved are the citizens, the stronger will be their democracy. In addition to voting, citizens must keep informed of political affairs and form political opinions to express through participation in public debates and organizations. (For a list of topics of concern to the variety of voters in the U.S. and the world, visit here. Our children can use such a list to learn about citizenship. For a list of campaign donations, see here.) Democracy is most appropriate and durable in a nation whose citizens have a working level of knowledge in politics, participate in political affairs, consider education for all to be beneficial to the nation as a whole, desire economic development, have political beliefs and attitudes rather than apathy toward everything political, have a belief in the legitimacy of the state, have interpersonal trust for the other members, do not view government as a caring and trusted parent or as an institution that has the divine right to rule, have goals for the nation, reject revolutionary change and instead use the existing system to make changes, want to cooperate and compromise rather than suffer civil war, and have trust in their mutually beneficial system and gain enough personal satisfaction from its existence to support it while it is temporarily performing poorly–for example, during an economic recession. How do you rate the citizens of your country in each of these characteristics? By the way, U.S. government publications define democracy and its cultural ingredients here. The United Nations defines meaningful goals for humanity.

With so many requirements for a successful and stable democracy, it is no wonder that a newly democratic nation's second election is even harder to obtain than was its first. History has shown that democracy is hard to begin and hard to sustain. The government of a newly democratic nation will not last if it does not perform to the satisfaction of its new citizen-critics who judge its performance in education, economic growth, social reform, the maintenance of law and order and judge its respect for the rules of the game and its ability to achieve legitimacy and govern invisibly. Will the new democracies in Irag and Afghanistan make it to their second, unoccupied election?

The political system of a people is another aspect of their culture. For example, the people of certain cultures believe that it is wrong to complain about public things because society might then unravel. The form of government that each person believes to be "natural" is that which existed during his or her childhood, whether it be a kingdom, dictatorship, theocracy, or democracy. For example, those of us who have always had helpful kings and queens believe that the only natural form of government is one run by a king and queen. This part of our culture cannot be instantly altered; it usually takes one or two generations for a people to believe in a new type of government. Democracy can not be externally imposed on a people because the imposed government will not be accepted as natural or legitimate for at least one generation–if the occupation lasts that long. It is ethnocentric imagination for a person from a foreign democracy to think that the people of every nation want to be just like them and will happily resort to armed rebellion today to discard their "wrong, nondemocratic system." It is just as silly for a foreigner to tell another group to abandon their "wrong culture."

Though the years 1850 to 1948, which is a time-span of about four generations, English colonizers accustomed the people of India to its democratic system. Since the people of India had already developed a democratic culture, India became the world’s largest democracy upon independence. In contrast, the colonial powers showed only authoritarian governmental control to the people of Africa. After a century of autocratic rule in which Africans were allowed little role in government, the colonial powers abruptly left. Through the generation or two that has elapsed since independence, African nations have mostly continued with autocratic systems but they are increasingly experimenting with democracy because citizens are demanding it.

The source for the description of democratic culture contained in this article was Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries, edited by Larry Diamond, 1994, Lynee Rienner Publishers, Inc.

Increasing the minimum wage

One measure of economic injustice is given by the number of workers who contribute their lifetime's effort to our civilization but are paid the minimum wage. In the U.S., the federally mandated minimum wage is $5.15 per hour, which is $10,712 per year. Some states have a higher minimum wage but only Oregon and Washington (whose rate is now $7.63 per hour) annually increase the minimum wage to keep up with inflation. When adjusted for inflation, the 2005 minimum wage is nearly identical to its 1950 value, which means that those of us earning minimum wage have not had a raise since 1950. To see the minimum wage compared to the poverty level of income, visit here. After two decades with little increase, the federally mandated minimum wage of $5.15 per hour will soon increase to $7.25. This will give a long-awaited raise to 15 million out of the 126 million-person workforce in the U.S. (12% of all workers) earning below or near that wage, see here. After a few decades of wages below the poverty line, this is actually a raise up to but not over the poverty line for a family of three. The resulting increase in consumer spending will increase factory production. This is a trickle-up approach to the economy. For more information, see here.

Ancient Athenian Democracy

David Stockton explains in The Classical Athenian Democracy that in Athens, democracy meant that the people held power in common and that there was equality under the law for both rich and poor. Democracy was meant to protect the people from the random laws of a small, economically privileged portion of society and to serve the interests of all citizens, not just the privileged. Through the decades, classical Athens contained 25,000 to 40,000 adult males. About 40% of them were defined to be "citizens" because they held a minimal amount of assets and so were allowed to vote and to hold office–females could not. (Just before the Great Reform Act of 1867, only 40% of the adult males in England had been allowed to vote.) Though only males were allowed to be citizens, every male citizen was allowed to give his view during official, public meetings; women were not allowed to take part.

In Early Greece, The Bronze and Archaic Ages, M.I. Finley explains that democracy originated in response to the growing oppression of city residents by the rich few. The first step toward citizen-shared power was taken in 594 bc by the leader Solon. He complained that the unrighteous, privileged leaders could not restrain their excesses and grew rich by stealing for themselves. Solon warned that the widespread economic exploitation, discontent, corruption, and indifference of the powerful was in danger of causing civil strife or even tyranny. He said that he wanted to restrain and correct this unjust situation.

In The Origins of Greek Thought, Jean-Pierre Vernant describes how a royal palace system had began to develop in Mycenaen Greece around 2000 bc. This royal system was similar to those of the many city-states throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East. The Mycenaen palace system was destroyed around 1200 bc when the Dorian people migrated into Greece. This was followed by a political Dark Age lasting for several centuries, in which there were no kings. A dramatic change then occurred in Greece as some members of society grew rich conducting overseas trade with the older Middle Eastern states. Their display of wealth and luxury was furiously denounced by the people of Athens. The people said those who have the most today want twice as much tomorrow and that wealth makes one mad, has no object but itself, and is insatiable. At the root of wealth is a corrupted disposition–a perverse will. Wealth would bring injustice, oppression, and disorder by enslaving the masses.

Before Athens became democratic, politics consisted of the maneuvering combinations of the leading personages of the aristocracy. The people had no say in their government except that they were sometimes expected to rally behind a certain leader or group. Their new democratic wisdom would bring moderation, proportion, fair limits, the golden mean, and nothing in extreme. The people represented civic values as opposed to rich extravagance.

You may have heard of the ancient Greek tyrants. A tyrant was a town-boss who could have his way because he owned much of the town. Foreign trade had brought excessive wealth and social and economic injustice, and in response, the assembly of equal citizens was created. The citizens were equal in that law now applied equally to all. Each citizen could take part in the assembly and each person's vote counted equally. Each person could also take any other person to court.

In several ways, democracy in ancient Athens was more extensive than today's version. For one thing, the daily operations of the city–down to the smallest detail–were discussed in public meetings or assemblies. The entire voting public would meet to decide whether or not to construct a building and who would be paid to do the construction or whether or not to send a cargo ship to a certain port. They would also decide whether their city would go to war with another city. When the citizens voted for war, they knew that they themselves would be the soldiers who would fight and die. Each citizen was allowed to stand and speak during assembly meetings. Each speaker was expected to express his view in a short and to-the-point message. Each man could speak only once per issue and would be ridiculed if he talked too long or strayed from the issue. The leading citizens were those whose advice regularly proved to be good. These men were often expected to speak so that other citizens would know and follow their advised course of action. After this public debate, decisions were obtained by counting votes cast by a show of hands.

Citizens met in an assembly to vote on the issues of the week; there were about forty assembly meetings per year. These issues were preselected by a council of five hundred citizens, each of whom were selected by lot to serve for one year. The city of Athens was divided into ten districts, and to better guarantee a cross section of people throughout the city, the council of five-hundred consisted of fifty persons from each of these ten regions. Before each meeting, the council posted the current issues for all to see and discuss–literacy and public debate were essential. Any citizen could propose a new law or action but if it were shown to be inconsistent with previous laws he would lose his citizenship rights for a few years. Citizens were paid a small fee to attend the a