Social Waste

One billion people cannot support their families. More than 5 million men are in prison, waiting for trial, on probation, or on parole.

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When the ships of the conquistadors first appeared on coastal horizons in the late 15th century, the native populations of the Americas could not comprehend their import because the size of the ships was outside their frame of reference. Likewise, we do not perceive the nature or enormity of the threat presented by current employment patterns.

According to the International Labor Organization in Geneva, 1 billion people (about 30 percent of the world’s labor force) either cannot work or have such marginal and menial jobs that they can’t support themselves or their families. The United States is proud of its 5.4 percent unemployment rate — and should be. European unemployment hovers at twice this rate. But official U.S. figures mask a more complex picture.

According to Donella Meadows, who writes the syndicated column “The Global Citizen,” of the 127 million people working, 38 million work part time, and 35 million have full-time work that doesn’t pay enough to support a family. Then there are the actual unemployed, who number 7.4 million, as well as another 7 million who are discouraged, forcibly retired, or work as temps. Nineteen million people work in retail and earn less than $10,000 per year, usually without any health or retirement benefits. For the majority of workers, wages are no higher today than they were in 1973.

Employment percentages also disguise the jobless rate among inner-city residents. In When Work Disappears, sociologist William Julius Wilson cites 15 predominantly black communities in Chicago where only 37 percent of the adults are employed. Between 1967 and 1987, Chicago lost 326,000 manufacturing jobs; New York lost over 500,000. Fifty years after World War II, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Newark look bombed out, while Dresden, London, and Berlin are livable and bustling.

Meanwhile, the United States has quietly surpassed the erstwhile Soviet Union and its gulag as the world’s largest penal colony. Over 5 million men are in prison, waiting for trial, on probation, or on parole. We have become so inured to criminality that rural counties seek prison construction under the rubric “economic development.” Indeed, between 1990 and 1994, the prison industry grew at an annual rate of 34 percent; crime and crime-related expenses now constitute about 7 percent of the U.S. economy, according to Jonathan Rowe of Redefining Progress, a public policy think tank.

Isn’t there something terribly wrong with a society that, at astounding cost, stores so many people in concrete bunkers where they learn the finer arts of crime? (There is no cost difference between incarceration and an Ivy League education; the main difference is curriculum.)

While we can reasonably place individual blame on each drug user, felon, and mugger, or anyone who violates civil and criminal laws, assigning individual responsibility should not mean being blind to a wider view of cause and effect.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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