WORLD REPORT FINDS AMERICANS LESS HAPPY

“ . . .  the U.S. doesn’t just have income inequality. It has happiness inequality, too. The report [of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network] found that the gap between the most and least-happy Americans was significant: We came in 85th out of 157 countries.

“There is a very strong message for my country, the United States, which is very rich, has gotten a lot richer over the last 50 years, but has gotten no happier,” Jeffrey Sachs, head of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which developed the report, told Reuters. “The message for the United States is clear. For a society that just chases money, we are chasing the wrong things. Our social fabric is deteriorating, social trust is deteriorating, faith in government is deteriorating.”

Martha C. White, “Why Americans Have Gotten a Lot Less Happy Over the Past Decade,” Time magazine, March 16, 2016, Money Section.

AVERAGE HOURLY EARNINGS ROSE 2.56 PERCENT IN 2015

“It is worth noting that this doesn’t necessarily mean that pay is rising by that much for the typical worker. After all, the pay for chief executives and other highly paid people counts in those compensation numbers.

“Still, paired with other evidence, it doesn’t look as if this is solely a phenomenon of the highest-paid workers making more. For example, average hourly earnings for non-managerial private sector workers rose 2.56 percent in 2015 in a year of very low inflation. That number was only 1.69 percent in 2012, when inflation was higher.”

Neil Irwin, “Workers Are Getting a Bit More of the Economic Pie,” New York Times, May 3, 2016 [in print May 6, 2016, page B1].

EVICTED RENTER KILLED HIMSELF

“Evictions are brutal. [Matthew] Desmond watches as an armed deputy knocks and a mother pleads vainly for time. The mover says she can pay to store her possessions or have them left on the street. She can’t afford storage. ‘Curbside service, baby!’ the mover tells the crew. Three children watch their mother pace. ‘Her face had that look,’ Desmond writes. ‘The movers and the deputies knew it well. It was the look of someone realizing that her family would be homeless in a matter of hours.’ One woman from the trailer park spent $1,000 on the storage bills but fell behind and lost her belongings anyway. About 70 percent of evicted tenants who opt for storage do. A week earlier, a man asked the deputy for a private moment, then shot himself in the head.”

Jason DeParle, “Kicked Out in America,” a review in the New York Review (March 10, 2016, pp:25-27) of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, by Matthew Desmond.

COMPANIES HAVE TO PAY MORE

“Part of the reason corporate profits are falling appears to be that companies are having to pay their employees more.

“Hiring has been quite strong over three years, with millions of Americans getting jobs. That has pushed the unemployment rate steadily downward, to about 5 percent. Very gradually, a labor market that was very much tilted in favor of employers is tilting the other way.

“That means companies are having to work harder to attract good employees. They do that by paying higher wages and salaries (up 10 percent in 2015 compared with 2013) and more generous benefits package (up 6 percent over the two-year period).”

Neil Irwin, “Workers Are Getting a Bit More of the Economic Pie,” New York Times, May 3, 2016 [in print May 6, 2016, page B1].

PROPORTION OF NATIONAL INCOME FOR WORKERS HAS RISEN

“At the start of 2013 . . .  61 percent of national income went to pay and benefits for workers. But by the end of 2015, that had risen to 62.6 percent. (That said, in the early 1990s, that figure was around 66 percent.)

“If the proportion of national income going to workers in early 2013 had stayed constant, there would now be $251 billion a year less flowing into Americans’ paychecks than is the case. That is about $1,900 a year per household.”

Neil Irwin, “Workers Are Getting a Bit More of the Economic Pie,” New York Times, May 3, 2016 [in print May 6, 2016, page B1].

WORKERS ARE GETTING A BIT MORE OF THE ECONOMIC PIE

“American workers are reaping fewer of the gains of a growing economy in the form of pay and benefits. Shareholders are reaping more in the form of corporate profits. That shift has been one of the most important economic stories of the last several decades, and it is the key to understanding stagnant wages for middle-class workers and a soaring stock market in the last quarter-century.

“Here is what is less widely understood: That trend appears to be reversing itself.

“It is early and the reversal may not last. And it certainly hasn’t fully undone the shift underway since the 1980s. But the numbers are quite clear that in the last couple of years workers have claimed a bigger piece of the economic pie and shareholders a smaller one.

“The evidence available so far in 2016 — steady growth in wages and weak earnings for publicly traded companies — suggests that the reversal is continuing this year.”

Neil Irwin, “Workers Are Getting a Bit More of the Economic Pie,” New York Times, May 3, 2016 [in print May 6, 2016, page B1].

PARALLEL ISOLATION OF THE TOP AND BOTTOM

“ . . .  the United States has a double-edged problem — the parallel isolation of the top and bottom fifths of its population. For the top, the separation from the middle and lower classes means less understanding and sympathy for the majority of the electorate, combined with the comfort of living in a cocoon.

For those at the bottom, especially the families who are concentrated in extremely high poverty neighborhoods, isolation means bad schools, high crime, high unemployment and high government dependency.

Thomas B. Edsall, “How the Other Fifth Lives,” New York Times, April 27, 2016, Op-Ed Page.