In my youth I was accused of being to focused on making money. Nothing unethical, just long hours, education, strategic moves being pushed by a fear of the poverty I saw my great-grandmother, grandmother and aunts live. A low cost, high quality education was the foundation to a professional career by opening up options, but did not guarantee success.

Escaping Poverty Requires Almost 20 Years With Nearly Nothing Going Wrong

Temin then divides workers into groups that can trace their family line in the U.S. back to before 1970 (when productivity growth began to outpace wage growth) and groups that immigrated later, and notes that race plays a pretty big role in how both groups fare in the American economy. “In the group that has been here longer, white Americans dominate both the FTE sector and the low-wage sector, while African Americans are located almost entirely in the low-wage sector,” he writes. “In the group of recent immigrants, Asians predominantly entered the FTE sector, while Latino immigrants joined African Americans in the low-wage sector.”

After divvying up workers like this (and perhaps he does so with too broad of strokes), Temin explains why there are such stark divisions between them. He focuses on how the construction of class and race, and racial prejudice, have created a system that keeps members of the lower classes precisely where they are. He writes that the upper class of FTE workers, who make up just one-fifth of the population, has strategically pushed for policies—such as relatively low minimum wages and business-friendly deregulation—to bolster the economic success of some groups and not others, largely along racial lines. “The choices made in the United States include keeping the low-wage sector quiet by mass incarceration, housing segregation and disenfranchisement,” Temin writes.

And how is one to move up from the lower group to the higher one? Education is key, Temin writes, but notes that this means plotting, starting in early childhood, a successful path to, and through, college. That’s a 16-year (or longer) plan that, as Temin compellingly observes, can be easily upended. For minorities especially, this means contending with the racially fraught trends Temin identifies earlier in his book, such as mass incarceration and institutional disinvestment in students, for example. Many cities, which house a disproportionate portion of the black (and increasingly, Latino) population, lack adequate funding for schools. And decrepit infrastructure and lackluster public transit can make it difficult for residents to get out of their communities to places with better educational or work opportunities. Temin argues that these impediments exist by design.

The introduction to the book The Vanishing Middle Class, Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy by Peter Temin

Farm Report
Made the first rhubarb crisp of the season today. Snacked on the asparagus growing wild at the edge of the driveway. Apple trees are in full bloom and buzzing with bees.

The irrigation pump was started on Sunday. It is the May thru September exercise routine. A stroll through the 16+ acres of fields, picking up and carrying 40 ft aluminum pipes or hauling the K-lines to the next set.

The lawn mowers have been put to work. As long as I protect the trees and shrubbery they use less petroleum products than the John Deere.

Found out why the chickens probably started leaving the cracked corn and commercial poultry feed blends late fall. Mid-winter their feed became supplemented with ground flours I had in the pantry to make dog food. The flours are from a restaurant supply distributor and meet human consumption requirements. Egg production went back to normal.

The spread of vomitoxin is concentrated in Indiana, Wisconsin, Ohio, and parts of Iowa and Michigan, and its full impact is not yet known, according to state officials and data gathered by food testing firm Neogen Corp. (NEOG.O)

In Indiana, 40 of 92 counties had at least one load of corn harvested last fall that has tested positive for vomitoxin, according to the Office of Indiana State Chemist's county survey. In 2015 and 2014, no more than four counties saw grain affected by the fungus.

And in a "considerable" share of corn crops tested in Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana since last fall's harvest, the vomitoxin levels have tested high enough to be considered too toxic for humans, pets, hogs, chickens and dairy cattle, according to public and private data compiled by Neogen. The company did not state what percent of each state's corn crop was tested.

Food storage tip for the week

Sauces or gravies made with rice four do not separate when reheated after freezing.
I substitute rice flour for wheat flour (1:1) as the thickener in any recipe I plan on freezing.