{"id":3242,"date":"2010-02-04T09:10:06","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T14:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/?p=3242"},"modified":"2010-02-04T09:10:06","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T14:10:06","slug":"repostborn-poor-santa-fe-reporter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/2010\/02\/04\/repostborn-poor-santa-fe-reporter\/","title":{"rendered":"rePost::Born Poor? &#124; Santa Fe Reporter"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\u201cInequality,\u201d she says, \u201creally holds us back.\u201d<br \/>\nBowles offers a key reason why this is so. \u201cInequality breeds conflict, and conflict breeds wasted resources,\u201d he says.<br \/>\nIn short, in a very unequal society, the people at the top have to spend a lot of time and energy keeping the lower classes obedient and productive.<br \/>\nInequality leads to an excess of what Bowles calls \u201cguard labor.\u201d In a 2007 paper on the subject, he and co-author Arjun Jayadev, an assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts, make an astonishing claim: Roughly 1 in 4 Americans is employed to keep fellow citizens in line and protect private wealth from would-be Robin Hoods.<br \/>\nThe job descriptions of guard labor range from \u201cimposing work disc<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sfreporter.com\/site_images_upload\/upload\/Newchart.jpg?resize=450%2C307\" alt=\"\" hspace=\"10\" vspace=\"5\" width=\"450\" height=\"307\" align=\"left\" \/>ipline\u201d\u2014think of the corporate IT spies who keep desk jockeys from slacking off online\u2014to enforcing laws, like the officers in the Santa Fe Police Department paddy wagon parked outside of Walmart.<br \/>\nThe greater the inequalities in a society, the more guard labor it requires, Bowles finds. This holds true among US states, with relatively unequal states like New Mexico employing a greater share of guard labor than relatively egalitarian states like Wisconsin.<br \/>\nvia <a href=\"http:\/\/sfreporter.com\/stories\/born_poor\/5339\/all\/\">Born Poor? | Santa Fe Reporter<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cInequality,\u201d she says, \u201creally holds us back.\u201d Bowles offers a key reason why this is so. \u201cInequality breeds conflict, and conflict breeds wasted resources,\u201d he says. In short, in a very unequal society, the people at the top have to spend a lot of time and energy keeping the lower classes obedient and productive. Inequality &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/2010\/02\/04\/repostborn-poor-santa-fe-reporter\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;rePost::Born Poor? &#124; Santa Fe Reporter&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,90,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reposts","category-social-sciences","category-society"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/onthe8spot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}