The "Income Revolution" - an exchange

...The 1954 Statistical Abstract explains on page 323: At four different times it has been necessary to bring the "market basket" up to date and to modernize the samples and methods of calculations...

...Pachter, or the reader, can check the official BLS sources to verify that the definition of "maintenance" has not been changed to keep pace with the so-called income revolution...

...Weights used from January 1950 to December 1952 represented estimated 1949-50 spending patterns...

...It still is possible that the change in income levels and consumer habits is entirely deceptive...

...Subsequently, while the percentage weights given to the various items in the cost of living index were kept stable, the quality definitions of the various consumer goods bought by the representative family were constantly adjusted to current consumer habits...

...Pachter that he is not entirely fair in stating that today's average weekly production worker's wage of $80 is sufficient to meet the required 1951 average BLS decency minimum of $4,166, or $80 a week...

...The items included in the budget were determined in large part by studies of family spending in the 1930's...

...Perhaps it will disturb devotees of his point of view to know that on January 30, 1957, Governor Harriman, surely no radical, announced that in 1949 30 per cent of the families and 50 per cent of the single persons in the state of New York, with the fourth highest per capita income in the union, earned incomes below the conservative standard set by that state's relief agencies...

...The change was brought about through a nonviolent direct action campaign by the Baltimore CORE group...

...Today they are, in the strictest sense of the word, "underprivileged...

...his argument is that in times of depression and of prosperity the gap between the classes remains equally wide and one half of the population must always be classified as "poor...

...The American "maintenance level" now is $4,118, or nearly $80 weekly, which is about the average factory wage...

...Whether this is an income revolution will depend on the ability of the system to continue growing at this rate of 2 per cent every year...

...4) social mobility again seems to increase in the middle ranges (while at the top new status classes are forming...

...The riddle's solution is simple...

...When members of the group were harassed by management strongarm men (as in St...

...20c...

...The average factory worker's income in 1951 was $65 and the BLS level today undoubtedly requires much more than $80...

...A significantly large percentage of under-normal families in 1937 were undercmployed, underpaid and relief cases...

...At this level a car, a TV and kitchen appliances are conveniences bordering on necessity, and either the wife need not work regularly, or the children can go to college...

...Nor does Mr...

...Kolko should be interested in the fact that economic hardship is not the result of a "free" play of economic laws, but of monopolistic practices against minorities...

...Not only are the conclusions which Mr...

...4) and 6) many competent sociologists doubt the short-term existence of significant social mobility either in the "middle" or any other "range...

...Pachter define what he takes "mobility" to mean...

...Louis CORE group integrated not only all downtown dime store lunch counters but also a number of other eating places...

...6) as long as large population groups participate in a steady improve...

...Somewhere near $80 weekly must be a threshold where greater economic freedom allows a family greater freedom in making a basic decision as to its style of life...

...No matter how steep or flat the pyramid's slope, there should be a basic difference between a society where the median income is so low that fear of starvation is the economic motor for the largest section of the population, and another society where the median income is tolerably high and a certain measure is taken for granted...

...A third observation, however, is equally important...

...In fact, the real family income after taxes rose from $3,730 in 1929 to $4,980 in 1955 (both in 1955 dollars...

...It is based largely on pre-World War 1I patterns of living...

...A young Ph.D...

...As a result of these adjustments, the percentage of families below the assumed norm rose from 48.6 per cent in 1947 to 51.3 per cent in 1950...

...Kolko give to the difference between a sub-maintenance population largely on relief and another partly on college campuses...

...Of all these, three are more today than in 1947...

...the official definition of 'maintenance' has kept pace with the income revolution...

...Yes, is the answer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), pioneer of nonviolent direct action techniques in race relations...

...If they were not served the first time, they returned again and again until management agreed to change its policy or at least to negotiate...

...The crucial quote cited in Mr...

...i.e., their poverty is the result of special circumstances rather than capitalist economic exploitation: as Kolko points out, invalids, divorced women and widows...

...CORE has been effectively fighting bias here (in New York) on the Gandhi non-violence principle," Ted Poston pointed out in his series of articles in the New York Post, entitled "Prejudice and Progress in New York...

...CORE feels gratified that this technique with which it has been experimenting over the years is proving so successful in Montgomery as well as in Tallahassee...

...I think it also errs on a second count...

...Nor did I state that actual living standards in 1935 were as high as in 1950...

...When the WPA defined "maintenance level" in 1937 it tried to approximate the expenses of the median family ($1,261 a year...

...Could anybody who has looked around seriously maintain that "the concentration of large families below maintenance level has remained constant since WPA" and that living standards during the 1935/6 depression years equalled the post-war boom years...

...Kolko draws from these statistics erroneous, they should have been the opposite...

...Pachter consider the quality of life-in human terms-facing the millions retiring on the grossly inadequate benefits of social security...

...Today Negroes can eat at the lunch counters of all downtown dime stores and the 38 Read drugstores, the biggest local chain...

...Certainly $4,166 is no fabulous income, but it bought more in 1951 than $1,261 did in 1935...

...But the student population has tripled since 1935, whereas the farm population has been halved...

...Instead he chooses to point to non-economic factors, a tendency which others have utilized to imply that the poor are responsible for poverty and what is needed is not so much social and economic change as human engineering-Dale Carnegie rather than Tawney or Marx...

...Similarly, Mr...

...Pachter is heartened, however, by the fact that many of the low income families are impoverished due to "special circumstances" and not the capitalist system...

...But in 1935 they seemed hopelessly on the skids...

...But above all, they are ethnic minority groups who are discriminated against...

...To put it more concretely: In Germany the average weekly factory wage is now the equivalent of $40.00 in real value...

...I can refer Mr...

...Pachter, that the unions in 1950 forced a revision of the definition of the BLS maintenance budget...

...5) the dynamism and capacity for adjustment of the capitalist society seems far from being exhausted...

...No wonder, then, that in 1947 we again find approximately half of the families below and the other half above "maintenance," then $3,300, rising to $4,166 in 1951...

...According to the authoritative AFL-CIO Collective Bargaining Report of April 1956: "Unfortunately, the study [of the maintenance budget] was behind the times even back in 1951...

...Kolko will not agree to call this an income revolution-well every professor has his semantic privileges and some will go as far as to build systems out of terminological differences...

...Another depression may wipe out all the gains made in the last twenty years...

...It is fixed at a level based on patterns of spending in the 1930's, as well as scientifically determined minima, and the present habits of the median family have nothing to do with the BLS standards now used...

...Either as a socialist or as a sociologist (or even as an economist, thought that species seems to be particularly obtuse), Mr...

...For example, in Baltimore as recently as 1953 not an eating place outside of the railroad station was integrated...

...per copy from CORE...

...From 1935 to January 1950 time-to-time changes in retail prices were weighted by 1934-36 average expenditures except for certain wartime adjustments...

...The effective Montgomery protest against bus segregation has spotlighted the technique of nonviolence to the entire world...

...I do think, however, that a socialist might be interested in a development which tends to blur the older definitions of economic classes...

...PACHTER'S ASSERTION, that there has been an equalization of tastes, values, and expenditure standards, is too lengthy a problem to be considered here, but suffice it to say I do not think such an equalization has (or can have) occurred between groups with sharply unequal incomes, even taking credit into account...

...This increase reflects more than the price inflation...

...The story of CORE action is carried in a quarterly news bulletin, the CORElator...

...Long before Montgomery joined the passive resistance movement...

...2) the laboring classes are more closely identified with capitalism and its consumer values...

...The post-New Deal shift has brought the following changes in the class situation: 1) income classes no longer can be considered as largely identical with status classes...

...MR...

...Recent credit spending is also mentioned, and this is very important...

...To confuse arms, inflation, and credit for the achievement of a rational and democratic economy is specious, no matter how many persons share this confusion...

...Suffice it to say, Mr...

...Kolko's argument...

...In brief, Mr...

...I do not cite discrimination as an excuse for misery anywhere...

...Nor does this budget try to approximate what the median family actually spends at any given time...

...But I would like to remind Mr...

...CORE is circulating the story of Montgomery as widely as possible through "Our Struggle," a panphlet by Martin Luther King, leader of the bus protest action...

...Or they are young couples, students, social security beneficiaries, retired and over-age people...

...Louis, by adherents of Gerald L. K. Smith's Christian Nationalist Party) they stood their ground without resorting to physical violence...

...The present BLS maintenance level, according to the official government source, is set, with the minor changes I indicated on page 47...

...Gabriel Kolko's article, "The American 'Income Revolution' " in the Winter 1957 issue of DISSENT shows its scientific apparatus to be faulty...

...Further, he asserts that this definition is based on the cost of maintaining a family at the recent median (exact middle) income...

...Pachter's assertions and my own results from the fact that he has confused the BLS minimum health and decency standard with the Consumer Price Index, something altogether unrelated to my article...

...but I shall confine my criticism to the tables on pages 48-49, which are central to the article...

...Results have been particularly significant in the borderline states...

...But that is not Mr...

...Or what would he call an economist who proclaims these two things equal, as he does in the only italicized passage of his article...

...this is different from median family income, but Mr...

...Pachter's categorical six laws of American social relations, their breadth forces me to answer them in the same offhand manner in which they were made: 1) if by "status" class Pachter means "prestige," almost every serious empirical and theoretical study of the problem indicates the correlation between prestige and wealth is very close...

...He ignores my assertion that 84 (not 88, as printed) of the 94 sales (not "salaried"), clerical, and blue collar occupations listed in Census data for 1949 had average incomes below the BLS maintenance level for four persons...

...Nor does Mr...

...may earn no more than a subsistence farmer...

...We discover that income classes are not purely economic classes, but must he defined, at the lower end, either in terms of special situations and racial discrimination, or in terms of a considerable improvement in opportunity, status and security...

...consequently, the children do not go to college, and a car is a luxury...

...to maintain a level of adequate living according to prewar standards...

...I would call him either a demagogue or incompetent...

...Kolko does not claim that the weight of high incomes has increased, the difference is immaterial to this argument) rose from $1,059 in 1929 (I take the peak pre-depression year) to $1,553 in 1953...

...As for Mr...

...2) and 3) there are many competent, non-socialist sociologists who definite ly assert that American workers form a distinct class in objective fact and subjective attitude...

...It makes a world of difference whether or not a thirty-year-old worker must live with his parents, whether or not a worker can start a family at an early age, and retire on social security at a reasonable age...

...FINDING ONE MISTAKE, a reader is easily aroused to look more critically at the rest of the article...

...Pachter's generalized figures on average family income prove nothing when the economic differences between the richest and poorest families making up the average are not indicated...

...In computing its index, the Bureau of Labor Statistics took great pains to ascertain what the median family actually bought...

...median family income in 1955 was over $4,500...

...Pachter's fourth paragraph is taken from a discussion referring to the quite irrelevant Consumer Price Index, and the teacher can check this...

...today a significant number of them is hopefully climbing up...

...How many families now are motivated by a desire to keep up with the Joneses when they decide whether or not they need an additional income...

...How well it succeeded in doing so is confirmed by its findings: in effect, one half of the consumer units (48.8 is an extremely good approximation) spent more and the other half spent less than the assumed median...

...Unfortunate experience prompts me to conclude by saying that the so-called income revolution has not abolished either poverty or capitalism...

...But what name will Mr...

...merit of their living standards, their less fortunate neighbors will be content to fill their places, and their aim will be higher maintenance levels rather than economic equality...

...3) a "proletariat" in the pre-Marxian sense of "people torn loose from their subsistence" exists only among racial minorities whose social fight is directed against discrimination rather than exploitation...

...Kolko's tables on pages 48 and 49, therefore, prove nothing except the fact that the official definition of "maintenance" has kept pace with the income revolution, and in so far as, in fact, the official "bread basket" has been so adjusted, his tables also prove that this income revolution has taken place...

...Similar campaigns by the St...

...The crux of Mr...

...I do think, however, that in discussing "income revolutions" it is relevant to consider the social-political context...

...Average per capita real disposable income (i.e., the income per person after taxes figured in the prices of 1953...

...But even granting Mr...

...It is also incorrect to assert, as does Mr...

...This affirmative answer is based on 13 years of experience during which CORE groups have abolished discrimination at restaurants, theatres, skating rinks, dance halls, amusement parks, swimming pools and other public places in borderline states as well as in the north, middle west and far west...

...Negroes and whites sat at the counters until served...

...5) the dynamism and resilience of capitalism is, so far as my article is concerned, really another problem...

...Kolko's opponents correctly, they look at the income revolution not from one but from three different angles, only two of which concern the slope of the social pyramid, namely, a certain equalization of incomes over a wide proportion of the population and an even wider equalization of tastes, values and expenditure standards...

...The conflict between Mr...

...Pachter's criticism in his first five paragraphs is that...

...Poverty in special situations requires a different discussion, and different remedies, from poverty inherent in the inexorable laws of an economic system...

...If Mr...

...See, for example, the work of Sorokin and Richard Centers on these matters...

...Pachter's assertions on the matter leave something to be desired in the way of proof...

...Secondly, discrimination may slow down the trend toward greater equality...

...How were these statistics arrived at...

...As pointed out at the time, consumer habits had changed so fundamentally that new standards were needed...

...If that is not an income revolution, I don't know how to define one...

...They seem to show that nearly 50 per cent of American families had an income below the so-called "maintenance level" in 1935/6 as well as in 1947 and 1950...

...They have also worked to eliminate racial barriers in employment...

...Pachter and the reader to the BLS Survey of Consumer Expenditures or my article on the topic in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Sociology for a factual criticism of this theory of "massification...

...Pachter and almost all others greatly exaggerate their extent and ignore the fundamental similarity in income distribution within an economy with 12 million unemployed and an economy stimulated by war expenditures and a dangerously extended credit boom...

...There are such families at the lower end of the pyramid...

...Koko's enormous percentages for 1947 and 1950 include a half million veterans in colleges...

...Naturally there have been changes in the past 21 years, but Mr...

...Bad as that is, it is a political-racial problem-not an economic problem...

...To receive the CORElator, write CORE, 38 Park Row, New York 38, New York...

...If I understand the argument of Mr...

...Pachter, in addition to ignoring my points on the distribution of income and economic power most relevant to his assertion of an income revolution, also fails to substantiate his criticisms of my thesis on recent living standards of living...

...In 1950, namely, the percentage shares of various consumer goods in the total index were revised, at the insistence of the trade union lobby in Congress...

...CO 7-1076...

...Pachter's unbalanced emphasis, to ignore the economic impact of recent sociological changes is also to ignore the dynamic and interrelated factors in our total social structure working to strengthen or, in this instance, undermine the stability of the capitalist economy...