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US Middle Class No Longer the Wealthiest

By Derek Thompson
From the Atlantic

America's middle class has been richest in the world for decades, but as David Leonhardt and Kevin Quealy write in the Times' new site The Upshot, we've lost that distinction to our neighbors from the north.

Canada is officially home to the richest middle class on the planet, according to figures crunched from the Luxembourg Income Study Database. Here's the last 30 years of America's dwindling income advantage in a handy chart.

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How did we lose the lead? The authors blame three broad factors: (1) Canada's education attainment is outpacing the U.S. and most of the world; (2) American middle-class market wages aren't keeping up with overall economic growth; and (3) Other governments are doing more to redistribute income to poorer families in other countries, particularly in western and northern Europe. 

One word that doesn't appear in the article, however, is housing. The U.S. is emerging from a catastrophic collapse of the housing market that obliterated household wealth for millions of middle-class families. Canada, however, is in the midst of a delirious housing boom and a personal debt craze that reminds some economists of the U.S. market exactly a decade ago (before you-know-what happened).

Here's a look at Canadian home prices from Jason Kirby, a columnist for Toronto's Maclean'smagazine, using data from Robert Shiller through January 2014. (It assumes that Canada's home prices behaved like U.S. home prices before 1990, which is barely plausible, but whatever, just focus on the end of the graph.)

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And here's an index of American home prices, using the same Shiller data. Note that the U.S. collapsed just before scratching 200, the red line that Canada is approaching.

One year ago, Matt O'Brien calculated that Canada's price-to-rent ratio was the highest among advanced economies, making it the "biggest housing bubble" in the world. Canada's historic housing boom (and our historic bust) comes at the precise moment in history that they pass us to grab the title of World's Richest Middle Class. Just a coincidence? 

Maybe. As the LIS data in the Upshot article shows, Canada's median earner has been gaining on America for decades, powered by a strong service economy, supported by a disproportionately large energy industry. Remarkably, U.S. GDP-per-capita has been more than 15 percent richer than Canada's for the last 25 years (see graph below), even as the median American worker has fallen behind the median Canadian earner. That's a pretty clear indictment of U.S. income inequality.

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Still, as many economists like Atif Mian and Amir Sufi have have argued, strong housing markets support middle-class income growth just as housing busts wreck middle-class income growth. The effect can be direct (more houses means more construction jobs*) and indirect (when families feel richer from rising housing prices, they spend more across lots of industries, raising incomes). As Reihan Salam writes, "the central driver of the decline in employment levels between 2007 and 2009  was the drop in demand caused by shocks to household balance sheets."

On a personal note: I'm used to ending articles like this by writing "The upshot is..." This practice seems kind of cheeky when the article I'm writing about comes from a Times mini-site with the same name. So I'll do it just this once: The upshot is that Canada is a modern, energy-rich country (with more open doors to high-skilled immigration) whose riches are better shared between the upper- and middle-classes—and this has been to its credit for decades. But if you're seeking a proximate reason why Canada has passed the U.S. as the world's richest middle class this year of all years, it seems to me you have to consider the opposite trajectories of our real estate fortunes and household wealth. Canadians are standing on their rooftops screaming for more debt while too many Americans are buried under their houses.

Al Jazeera Alleges Ethnic Cleansing In Tel Aviv

On April 16th Mairav Zonszein wrote an article published on Al Jazeera's English website titled Israel's "Ethnic Cleansing" of Jaffa City, republished bellow. Mr. Zonszein's article reports on the gentrification of the city of Jaffa, a Muslim enclave to the south of Tel Aviv along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. The article purports that the sum of the continuing gentrification and lack of affordable housing in the city has led to the displacement of many low income Israelis who are dis-proportionally Muslim. The article refers to this process as the ethnic cleansing of Jaffa.

Before reading the article, a few points and thoughts.

The term "ethnic cleansing" first came to prominence during the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the violence between the plurality of ethnicities that ensued. It was a way of applying the international laws and legal norms of Genocide against Serbian combatants that were committing war crimes against the Muslim population in certain areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in an attempt to create a homogeneous population within those areas.

In Jaffa there is no war, or armed conflict, between the Jewish and Muslim populations. By the article's own admission, housing prices and living costs are rising sharply in the area due to the continued gentrification of Jaffa. As the article also points out, the rise in the housing costs in the city hasn't been precluded to Muslims, but has also affected the impoverished Jewish population.

The City of Jaffa

Were we to give the term "ethnic cleansing" the broad definition that this article purports to do, most major cities throughout both the developed and developing world would be guilty of the crime. In New York City the neighborhoods like Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant were communities known for a large impoverished population. Today, sections of those neighborhoods have experienced gentrification with home prices and the cost of rent rising.

The increased costs of living has brought a more affluent population into the area, while squeezing the less affluent out.

Here in the United States the more affluent tend to be people of Caucasian background, while the less affluent tend to be African American and Hispanic. This doesn't mean that the United States government, the various state governments or local governments are implementing a systemic public policy of ethnic cleansing (although that isn't to say that some governments are not engaging in racist segregationist policies). Rather it speaks to a much larger problem of income inequality between the different racial backgrounds of the country.

The use of the phrase "ethnic cleansing" to describe the events in Jaffa implies that there is a concerted Israeli government effort to forcibly remove the Muslim population of the city by relocation, extermination or both. But there is no extermination, and the relocation is a product of socio-economic factors not a government policy directed at a specific population. That is not to say that there aren't government policies that have indirectly impacted a specific group of people.

The larger and more pertinent underlying issues are a) the lack of affordable housing being constructed in Israel; and b) the wide income gab between the Jewish and Muslim populations throughout the country. These are important and relevant issues which are unfortunately being forgotten and drowned out by the overuse of phrases that have no applicability to the situation whatsoever. Instead the improper use of this sensationalist phrase sparks resentment in the Jewish community and serves to fan further discontent in the Muslim community.

Al Jazeera's careless characterization of the situation in Jaffa is a disservice to both the Jewish and Muslim communities, but read for yourself.

From Al Jazeera English 

Jaffa, Israel - Yasmin Abu Kawad, a Palestinian single mother of six, relies on social benefits and whatever jobs she can find to make ends meet. Earlier this year, her landlord changed the locks after she couldn't make rent; with nowhere to go, she and her children found shelter in the Wolfson Medical Center for two weeks. "For the first five days, no one even noticed we were there," she told Al Jazeera.

Two weeks later, thanks to a fundraising effort by Palestinian-Jewish organisation Darna - the Popular Committee for Housing Rights in Jaffa, they moved into an apartment in south Jaffa. But for a tiny, 20sqr m dwelling, Abu Kawad pays NIS 3,000 ($860) a month. Her children, aged 1-15, sleep side-by-side on mattresses in one room, while she sleeps on the porch. "I am convinced I'll be out on the street again soon," Abu Kawad said.

While gentrification has affected both Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel, middle and working class, it has hit Palestinians much harder: They have fewer alternatives, less socioeconomic mobility, and on average, are poorer than Jews in Israel. Those forced to move out of Jaffa normally go to Ramle and Lod - mixed cities that lack the funds and resources of Tel Aviv.

"This is ethnic cleansing," said Yudit Ilany, the coordinator of legal defence at Darna. "At this rate, Palestinian Jaffa as we know it will cease to exist."

She said she has seen countless cases over the years in which Palestinian families were evicted from their home. 

Jaffa, like other Palestinian cities, came under Israeli occupation after the 1948 war. This led to the expulsion of much of the city's 120,000 residents - more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forcibly evicted from their homes at the time. Many had their properties confiscated by the newly-formed Israeli state, and its Absentee Property Law (1950). Approximately 15 percent of all Palestinian refugees trace their origins back to Jaffa.

From 1949 to 1992, the Tel Aviv municipality - which officially absorbed Jaffa following Israel's establishment in 1948 and forced the city's Palestinian population into one fenced-off area - declared it a slum zone slated for demolition.

It was illegal for the population, comprised of middle- and low-income Palestinians and Jewish immigrants (mostly from Bulgaria, Romania and Arab countries), to renovate or expand, forcing them to live in neglected homes, or to turn to illegal construction.

Jaffa - one of the oldest port cities in the world, dating back to the Bronze Age - is currently home to around 18,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel, about a third of the total population of Jaffa and four percent of Tel Aviv.

Abu Hasan, a veteran Palestinian family restaurant serving hummus, is one of the few vestiges of pre-gentrified Jaffa that has survived the transition to what is now a trendy neighbourhood with burgeoning rental prices, upscale cafes and organic markets.

A ritzy new hotel is being built across from the Ottoman-Era clock tower at the entrance to Jaffa, and further south, a towering new construction site overlooking the sea will soon be a W Hotel and Residences. The Jaffa Port, still inhabited by old-timer fishmongers, is now a marketed tourist location dominated by Israeli chains and trendy eateries.

These changes have all taken place in the last decade.

As opposed to other "mixed" cities in Israel, Jaffa is unique in its proximity to Tel Aviv and the sea, so it has especially high land values. The inflated housing prices that forced middle class Jews to move to cheaper areas were the pretence for the massive tent protests of 2011, and have already taken their toll on the low-income residents of Jaffa - both Palestinian and Jewish.

The difference between them, however, is that Palestinians cannot relocate to cheaper communities, such as neighbouring Bat Yam, because they require Palestinian schools, mosques, services and centres that only an area with a strong Palestinian population can offer.

The Israeli government has created few new public or affordable housing projects in recent years, and rent control tools are anachronistic, leaving the market essentially unregulated. According to a recent report by the International Monetary Fund, housing prices in Israel surged by 80 percent in the last seven years.

Jesse Fox, an urban planner living in Jaffa, said although the state is responsible for providing public housing, it stopped building such apartments about 20 years ago, while the list of those waiting for public housing continues to grow. "Efforts by city governments, including Tel Aviv's, to provide affordable housing for the young and middle class have been repeatedly blocked by the national government, which has thus far refused to pass legislation giving cities the power to do so," Fox told Al Jazeera.

According to Mira Marcus, international press director for the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Municipality, 76 affordable housing units were built throughout the city in 2013. She said the city takes the special needs of the Palestinian community into account when investing in development. For example, a youth centre being built in Jaffa will have "an Arab manager" and the revamping of the promenade "did not disrupt the fishermen's areas", she told Al Jazeera.

Asked about the dynamics between local and national policies on the housing crisis, and whether the city is concerned about Palestinians being forced out of Jaffa, Marcus said: "The municipality does not distinguish between Arabs and Jews. Everyone is a resident."

Ilany said that around 60 percent of residents of the Ajami neighbourhood of Jaffa require monthly social security stipends just to make ends meet.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that in recent years, the Israel Lands Authority (ILA) issued hundreds of eviction orders to tenants who breached contract conditions, even if they had little other choice. For example, any tenant who renovated without permit, or overstayed the protected tenancy agreements (which expire past the third generation) were forced out.

According to a report by Israeli organisation Bimkom-Planners for Planning Rights, about 40 percent of the Palestinian population in Jaffa live in homes expropriated by the ILA following the 1948 war, and one in four of these homes currently face demolition.

Asked why this is the case, Shani Agami-Cohen, the spokesperson for the public housing authority Amidar, told Al Jazeera that as the operating arm of the government, they are subject to its policies, which do not include any plans to expand public housing.

While there are cases in which Jewish-Israeli contractors or companies try - and at times succeed - to build Jewish-only residential projects in Jaffa with the explicit goal of Judaising the area, they have been resisted by local residents.

Efforts by various NGOs in Jaffa have prevented some evictions of both Palestinian and Jewish residents, and managed to amend new housing projects so as to limit the damage to low-income communities. But this has only taken place on a case-by-case basis.

Muhammad Jabali, a Palestinian artist and activist involved in myriad educational and cultural projects in Jaffa for the last decade, said the problem goes much deeper than gentrification. "I'm interested in contributing to Arab culture, not Israeli culture, and that is hard to find in Jaffa," Jabali, who ultimately left Jaffa due to the high cost of living, told Al Jazeera.

In recent years, several locations opened up that cater to young Palestinians and strive to revive Arab culture in Jaffa - from the AnnaLouLou bar, which plays Middle Eastern music, to the Yafa Cafe, which sells contemporary books in Arabic and offers Arabic language classes, to projects like "Echoing Jaffa", which offer tours of pre-1948 Jaffa.

Ironically, some of these initiatives were launched by young Jewish Israelis who moved in. While Jabali believes any initiatives encouraging intellectual and cultural exchanges between Palestinians and Jews are positive, they are not sufficient. "There is not a single independent public Arab institution in Jaffa," he said.

Assad Set On Holding Sham Elections

By John Beck
From Vice News

From @Patrick_Baz, via Twitter.

Despite an ongoing civil war that has divided the country and left more than 150,000 people dead as well as millions displaced, Syria’s government is preparing a democratic farce. Amid persisting reports of bloodshed and turmoil, officials have announced that a presidential election will be held on June 3.

“I tell the Syrian people that the time for the presidential elections has come,” parliament speaker Mohammed Laham proclaimed on Monday morning, according to the state-run SANAnews agency. “We declare that presidential elections will be carried out on schedule with no delay, heedless of what some are saying from abroad in a bid to undermine our self-confidence and break down our political and democratic track.”

LA gang ‘homies’ claim to be fighting in Syria. Read more here.

Syrian parliament speaker Mohammed Laham announces June 3 as the date for the country’s presidential election.

Laham defended the legitimacy of the election; he called on Syrians at home and abroad to vote and, if they wish, to stand for president. Candidates who wish to run will be able to register from Tuesday until May 1. Only those who have resided in Syria for the last ten years will be eligible, blocking any major opposition figures from running.

Meanwhile, mortar attacks by rebel forces killed at least five civilians and injured dozens near the parliament building in central Damascus this morning. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported heavy casualties in Aleppo due to sustained government airstrikes and attacks using “barrel bombs” — crude, un-targeted explosive weapons usually rolled out of helicopters — which have caused widespread devastation in the city. The monitoring group said that 29 people were killed in Aleppo’s Al-Ferdous district on Sunday, while another 14 died in the city’s Baeedeen neighborhood.

In Aleppo it used to rain Scuds, now it rains barrel bombs. Read more here.

Footage shows the aftermath of airstrikes on Aleppo’s southern Al-Ferdous district.

The shelling of parliament by rebels was likely symbolic, meant to strike at the heart of President Bashar al-Assad’s power base. Armed opposition groups have also recently staged a concerted offensive in coastal province of Latakia, a stronghold of Assad’s supporters. Nevertheless, government forces have recently made significant advances into rebel-held areas, taking advantage of rebel infighting and their continued lack of equipment.

Assad, who assumed office following the death of his father Hafez in 2000, is expected to announce his pursuit of another seven-year term, defying the mass uprising against his rule that recently entered its fourth year.

He ran unopposed in 2007, but an electoral law that could potentially allow other candidates to run was approved by parliament earlier this month. Few opposition figures can expect anything approaching a normal democratic process, however. An image being widely shared on social media sites neatly illustrates the perceived lack of choice.

Syria was ranked 164th out of 167 in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2012.

President Bashar al-Assad visited the Christian town of Maaloula in Syria on April 20 to mark Easter Sunday.

Assad seems to be in the campaigning mood. Reflecting confidence following his army’s advances against the rebels, he paid an Easter Sunday visit to the historic town of Maaloula, north of Damascus, which has a large Christian population. He continues to portray himself as a protector of Syria’s minorities and culture against “terrorist” opposition groups.

Syrians living outside the country can vote beginning on May 28. But it remains to be seen how the election will be managed during a war that has involved brutal fighting in the country's major cities, displacing at least 6.5 million of its citizens and causing another 2.6 million to flee the country, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Ethnic Slaughter in South Sudan

From BBC News

Hundreds of people were killed because of their ethnicity after South Sudan rebels seized the oil hub of Bentiu last week, the UN has said.

They were targeted at a mosque, a church and a hospital, the UN Mission in South Sudan said in a statement.

It added that hate speech was broadcast on local radio stations, saying certain groups should leave the town and urging men to rape women.

The Nuer community are seen as supporters of rebel leader Riek Machar.

President Salva Kiir is a member of the country's largest group, the Dinka.

Although both men have prominent supporters from various communities, there have been numerous reports of rebels killing ethnic Dinkas and the army targeting Nuers since the conflict broke out in December 2013.

Since then, more than a million people have fled their homes in what was already among the world's poorest nations.

'Piles of bodies'

South Sudan analyst James Copnall says that in a civil war marked by numerous human rights abuses, the reports from Bentiu are among the most shocking.

Non-Nuer South Sudanese and foreign nationals were singled out and killed, the UN Mission in South Sudan (Unmiss) said.

Some 200 civilians were reportedly killed at the Kali-Ballee mosque where they had sought shelter.

At the hospital, Nuer men, women and children, who hid rather than cheer the rebel forces as they entered the town, were also killed, it said.

The UN's top humanitarian official in South Sudan, Toby Lanzer, was in Bentiu on Sunday and Monday.

He told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme that the scenes in Bentiu were "perhaps [the] most shocking set of circumstances" he had ever faced.

He said he saw "piles of [the bodies of] people who had been slaughtered" last week, adding that they all appeared to be civilians.

Many of those killed were Sudanese traders, especially from Darfur, Mr Lanzer said.

Analyst James Copnall says they could have been targeted because rebel groups in Darfur are alleged to back President Kiir against the rebels.

One rebel source said many of those killed in the mosque were actually soldiers who had taken off their uniforms.

Video footage from the UN shows bodies lying in the streets of Bantiu

The situation in South Sudan is "in a downward spiral", Mr Lanzer said, describing the stakes as "very, very high".

There are now more than 22,000 people seeking refuge at the UN peacekeeping base over the border in Sudan, he said, including families from the majority community in the state.

"When I asked them why [they were seeking refuge] they said: 'When the violence has such a cycle of revenge you can't tell what will come next'," Mr Lanzer said.

He added that the UN base was not built for such large numbers, and that there was currently only one litre of drinking water for each of the 22,000 civilians in the base, and one latrine for every 350 people.

Upsurge in fighting

Bentiu, capital of the oil-rich Unity State, has changed hands several times during the conflict.

Control of the oilfields is crucial because South Sudan gets about 90% of its revenue from oil.

A ceasefire was signed in January but there has been a recent upsurge in fighting.

Last week, the UN said an attack on one of its bases in the central town of Bor in which at least 58 people were killed could constitute a war crime.

Fighting broke out last year after Mr Kiir accused Mr Machar of plotting to stage a coup.

Mr Machar, who was sacked as vice-president last year, denied the charges but launched a rebellion.

The UN has about 8,500 peacekeepers in South Sudan, which became the world newest state after seceding from Sudan in 2011.

Fighting erupted in the South Sudan capital, Juba, in mid-December. It followed a political power struggle between President Salva Kiir and his ex-deputy Riek Machar. The squabble has taken on an ethnic dimension as politicians' political bases are often ethnic.

Hundreds of School Children Abducted in Nigeria

From Al Jazeera English

The actual number of girls are missing from the northeast Nigerian school attacked last week is 234, significantly more than the 85 reported by education officials, parents have told the state governor.

The higher figure came out on Monday, a week after the kidnappings when the Borno state governor insisted a military escort take him to the town, AP news agency reported.

Parents told the governor that officials would not listen to them when they drew up their list of names of missing children, reaching 234. The discrepancy in the figures could not immediately be resolved.

The kidnappings are believed to have been carried out by Nigeria's Islamic rebels, Boko Haram, which has been violently campaigning to establish an Islamic Shariah state in Nigeria. Security officials had warned Governor Kashim Shettima that it was too dangerous for him to drive to Chibok, 130 kilometres from Maiduguri, the Borno state capital.

Borno state education commission Musa Inuwo Kubo and the principal of the Chibok Government Girls Secondary School had initially said 129 science students were at the school to write a physics exam when the abductors struck, after midnight on April 14.

Twenty-eight pupils escaped from their captors between Tuesday and Friday. Then another 16 were found to be day scholars who had returned to their homes in Chibok before the attack, leaving 85 missing students, according to school officials.

No rescue

The latest confusion of numbers comes after the military had reported last week that all but eight of those abducted had been rescued but then retracted the claim the following day.

Security sources have said they are in "hot pursuit" of the abductors, but so far they have not rescued any of the girls, aged between 16 and 18. Parents and other town residents have joined the search for the students in the Sambisa Forest which borders Chibok town and is a known hideout for the fighters suspected of the abduction.

Baseball's Human Trafficking Secret

Yasiel Puig (Getty Images)

Baseball's ugliest secret is now out in the open, and it is even worse than imagined. Not only does the sport find itself in the middle of a human-trafficking scheme in which men and women have allegedly been kidnapped, held hostage, forced to sign binding documents at gun- and knifepoint, threatened with mutilation and terrorized by those from some of the world's most murderous gangs, top officials from Major League Baseball and the players' union have shown little inclination to remedy even the smallest of problems in the web of chaos involving Cuban defectors.

More than two decades of misguided policy have left the league in an untenable situation, surrounded by sociopolitical mines. While the past is irreversible, MLB and the union's present misplacement of priorities – of not spending time, energy and resources to better understand what it can do to untie the knot it cinched – is egregious and must soon be remedied. Just because no clear solutions exist does not excuse the sport from shoving the Cuban paradox under the carpet as it has for years, particularly considering the latest news that a gang might want to kill one of its biggest stars.

Los Angeles Magazine and ESPN this past week recounted the story of Yasiel Puig's tortuous path to the United States, which included the bullet-riddled corpse of a smuggler, the involvement of the dangerous Mexican crime syndicate Los Zetas and a knock on Puig's door at Dodgers spring training from a heavy who wanted money – or else. Take that threat, and the alleged kidnapping of Rangers center fielder Leonys Martin and his family, and smugglers warning they would break Yuniesky Betancourt's legs in 2005 when he defected, and story after story of out-and-out mistreatment of Cuban players trying to leave their country and play baseball, and the silence from the league and the union, the two parties charged with protecting the sport's sanctity and the players' health, is deafening.

Baseball's version of human trafficking doesn't resemble the typical atrocities across the world, in which people, particularly women, are sold and traded, often into sexual slavery. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have left the country to escape Fidel Castro's regime, traversing perilous waters in search of freedom. The price for a typical escape today: $10,000 per person. Baseball players are different, prized by smugglers as diamonds to be sold on the secondary market. Simply because the sport's victims often leave of their own volition and ultimately come into millions of dollars does not lessen the crimes committed by those looking to leverage themselves into a cut of the riches.

The problem is very real and very difficult, and the United States' embargo on Cuba only complicates the situation. Still, in no way does it justify baseball spending man-hours fining players for wearing untucked jerseys or the union launching an investigation into which executives might have talked publicly about Kendrys Morales' and Stephen Drew's depressed free-agent values when a system the league endorses invites criminals to play middleman.

In vowing to clean up youth baseball and the pervasive corruption in the Dominican Republic, baseball took a moral stance on a broken system. Whether it was simply lip service or actually helps undo decades of enabling leeches to take advantage of impoverished teenagers, at least MLB acknowledged to the public that, yes, this is something worth trying to remedy.

Neither the sport nor the union has done so regarding Cuba. Nor did either side, when contacted by Yahoo Sports, offer assurances that change was in the offing, even though both surely understand the stakes. During the last collective bargaining talks in 2012, sources said, they discussed the Cuba problem only to table the issue. Late last summer, as the extent of Puig's issues started to leak thanks to a lawsuit against him in Florida, potential discussions ended before they began.

Baseball, then, is left staring at a system it created within the confines of the embargo rules. The evolution of the Cuban smuggling market from what seem like the halcyon days of agents helping players escape from international tournaments to criminal collectives shoehorning themselves into the process – and, often under duress, goading players into signing documents that shave 30 percent off the top of the contracts worth tens of millions of dollars they sign once in the U.S. – didn't happen overnight. Years of inaction from baseball and the union fostered the current system, and the festering wound grows worse by the case.

Part of the current problem involves baseball's policy with Cuban players, whose value skyrocketed when the league capped spending on the draft and international amateurs. Cubans age 23 and older are the last true free agents, encumbered only by the country from which they must escape. And escaping now, with the dollars so mighty, draws even more nefarious characters vying for the lucrative business than in the past.

MLB's rules offer a twist: Cubans who defect straight to the United States are thrown into the June draft, whereas those who instead establish residency in another country – Mexico, like Puig and Martin, or anywhere else – are exempt and can sign with no limits. For potential frontline players, the likes of whom have been guaranteed $289.9 million over the last 4½ years, according to Y! Sports research, the incentive to involve a third country is enormous. The highest-paid player in the 2013 draft was Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant at $6.7 million. Less than four months later, the White Sox gave Cuban first baseman Jose Abreu a six-year, $68 million contract.

Never mind that Abreu was represented by Bart Hernandez, the same agent who, according to Martin's lawsuit, worked with the smugglers – the sort of alleged behavior that warrants an investigation far more than some executives spitballing free-agent value.

The teams are plenty culpable, too, engaging in baseball's version of the don't-ask, don't-tell policy. When Puig defected, Dodgers scout Paul Fryer told the Los Angeles Times, the team "had to find the real decision-maker" because Puig and his agent apparently weren't choosing where he would play. It takes no logician to surmise Puig's smugglers steered him toward the biggest payday, and when a $2 billion corporation like the Los Angeles Dodgers opens itself up to the possibility of doing business with a homicidal cartel, and it's sloughed off with a wink, it speaks to passive acceptance of something nobody in the sport should tolerate.

MLB and the union must get together immediately and hatch a plan that at the very least does better than their present-day do-si-do. That, after all, was the idea seven years ago when former MLB executive Lou Melendez told the L.A. Times the pervasive smuggling could "require us to take a good look, hard look at the policy."

Each concern, unfortunately, comes with its own set of similarly tricky – or at least unpalatable to one side – repercussions. One MLB official raised the possibility of eliminating the foreign-residency rule, which theoretically would eradicate organizations such as the Zetas from involving themselves with ballplayer smuggling. That, of course, presumes the U.S.-based criminals who partake of the human trafficking will be any less dangerous or harmful than those from other countries, a flimsy-at-best premise. Moreover, one source familiar with the Cuban-smuggling trade said getting into Mexico or Haiti is far easier than evading the U.S. Coast Guard, and that the risk of getting caught by authorities might keep the third countries as preferred destinations.

Another solution works in theory: If baseball were to lessen the money offered to Cuban players, it could likewise disincentivize the larger-scale criminal enterprises, which seek higher-margin business, from continued involvement in ballplayer smuggling. Already some players question why those in their prime years are granted free agency simply because they were born in Cuba. The union, on principle alone, would object to this idea – not just to tightening any free market but opening the Pandora's Box to an international draft – and the recompense it would demand in loosening the market elsewhere would make it either a non-starter or an exceedingly difficult compromise to strike.

Baseball can sit around hoping the problem works itself out through attrition – that the great talent drain to the U.S. over the past five years robbed Cuba of top-flight talent. It's true; many of the best Cuban players are in the big leagues today. And yet for every Puig and Abreu and Martin, there are just as many lower-level talents who leave Cuba in the hands of smugglers hoping to reap millions and end up stranded, victims of their captors' greed and ignorance toward how baseball truly values defectors.

Rangers outfielder Leonys Martin was held hostage in Mexico, according to a lawsuit. (Getty Images)

Value comes from talent, and the influx of talent has been great for baseball. Aroldis Chapman throws harder than anyone. Puig inspires more chatter and debate. Yoenis Cespedes won last year's Home Run Derby. Abreu someday may win a home run title. Martin throwing out baserunners from center field is a thing of beauty. Cuban ballplayers enrich baseball. The wake their defections leave behind, however, turns great stories into sordid ones and commingles the game with characters in any other situation it would outright reject.

The Catch 22 comes in taking a stand, and it's why MLB and the union must get together and hammer out the best tack, the right solution for something that will take years to fix. Too much, too soon will not work; it has the potential to endanger the players, the last thing anyone wants. Remember: When Puig's ransom allegedly wasn't paid, smugglers suggested he might get a machete whack to show their seriousness.

This starts with targeting agents who pay smugglers. MLB and the union have nothing to lose by cleaning up that area. Dry up the market for smugglers to make massive profit off ballplayers, and the behavior could evolve as well. If it encouraged the defection of players on trips with the Cuban national team – the far safer route taken by past players – all the better.

Baseball and the union can affect change. It's time. Stop playing uniform police. Cut the nonsense about some loose-lipped executives. Don't waste everyone's time with fake problems when a real one exists and could lead to people losing their lives. It's a situation with which …

1. Yasiel Puig must live every day, an unfathomable and unfortunate truth with a dark background. Again and again Puig tried to escape, one of his failures documented by Yahoo Sports in the first story that detailed his efforts to leave Cuba. He got caught time after time, too, and ended up on the wrong side of the Cuban baseball apparatus.

What helped him get in their good graces, according to a Florida lawsuit, was turning state's evidence. The suit accuses Puig of ratting on a Cuban citizen who he said wanted to help him defect. The man, sentenced to seven years in Cuban jail thanks to Puig's testimony, denies the accusation and is suing Puig for $12 million under the Torture Victims Protection Act. It's the same law by which …

2. Aroldis Chapman is being sued in Florida. U.S. resident Danilo Curbelo Garcia, a Cuban citizen, sits in a Cuban jail today serving a 10-year sentence after testimony from Chapman and his father suggested he hatched a plan to smuggle Chapman to the U.S. In his complaint, Curbelo Garcia admits only to telling Chapman that worse players than him were making millions of dollars in the major leagues.

Like Puig, Chapman tried multiple times to escape Cuba before defecting at an international tournament in Andorra. Before that, according to court documents, some suspected Chapman served as a government informant to stay in the good graces of Cuban baseball authorities.

Though the likelihood of the lawsuits succeeding is unclear, they establish a pattern among Cuban players who escape: Almost always is there some entanglement with the law, whether it's about one person allegedly helping jail another to foment his own freedom or, in the case of …

A's outfielder Yoenis Cespedes ended up in the Dominican Republic on his journey to the U.S. (USA Today)

3. Yoenis Cespedes fighting over money owed. The 30 percent figure mentioned above is not far-fetched. Cespedes ended up in the Dominican Republic under the stewardship of Edgar Mercedes, the gambling-hall owner turned teenage-prospect "trainer," and agreed to give him a 17 percent cut of his first contract, plus a 5 percent agent's fee.

A month after he sued Cespedes for nonpayment, Mercedes was arrested in the D.R. on suspicion of human smuggling. Charges were not filed, and the suit continued for nearly a year until a judge ruled Cespedes owed nearly $8 million of the $36 million deal he signed with Oakland. Cespedes contended he owed less because of taxes, union dues and other payments.

His case resembles others only in the litigiousness. When in the D.R., Cespedes attended barbecues in which whole hogs roasted on spits and seemingly avoided enduring the dread …

4. Leonys Martin lived during his voyage from Cuba to the U.S. He was held hostage in Mexico and his family in Florida, according to the lawsuit he filed against his alleged smugglers as well as Hernandez, his agent, and the agency that employs him, Praver-Shapiro Sports Management. And even after he escaped their clutches, reunited with his family and started playing for the Rangers, Martin has been the subject of suits seeking payment on the contract he signed when held by armed men.

The fear hasn't abated, even though two of the alleged smugglers sit in jail today. Martin said in his suit he believes they have sent threats from jail. His case might be the worst made public, though the alleged warnings to Puig by Zeta-affiliated men compare quite unfavorably.

It shows the incredible desire to leave behind Cuba for the riches of MLB, and the lengths to which players will go to succeed. Martin, 26, is beginning to resemble the player Texas hoped he would, adding a .322/.385/.441 slash line to his center field defense and ensuring the $15.5 million Texas guaranteed him doesn't turn into a …

5. Noel Arguelles-type situation. Since Jose Iglesias started the recent wave of defections in 2009, 13 players have signed major league contracts. Arguelles might be the biggest bust of all. He signed for the second-lowest amount – $6.9 million for a five-year deal with Kansas City, higher only than his best competition for most disappointing, Chicago Cubs pitcher Gerardo Concepcion – and following a strong first season in 2011 has walked more hitters than he has struck out.

This season has been particularly ugly. In each of his six outings at Double-A, Arguelles has allowed at least one run. Over 7 2/3 innings, he has allowed 13 hits, walked 13, allowed 12 earned runs and struck out eight. Opponents are hitting nearly .400 off him. At 24, Arguelles is a non-prospect, his near $7 million cost sunk.

And he is proof that just because a player is Cuban doesn't make him good, despite all the success stories in the game. Considering …

6. Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez still has not thrown a pitch for the Philadelphia Phillies, they may be the latest to call their import a lemon. Gonzalez's original deal, a six-year, $48 million blockbuster, fell apart when Philadelphia discovered problems with Gonzalez's arm. The term was halved and the dollars quartered, and even still, after a spring training in which Gonzalez's velocity dipped and his command was nonexistent, three years and $12 million may end up spiraling clockwise into the Philadelphia sewer system.

The latest reports are that Gonzalez is "feeling good" and "close to getting on the mound," and perhaps once he does, he'll prove the negativity much ado about nothing. Still, the presence of arm troubles before Gonzalez has thrown a single major league pitch does not portend good things, and anything the Phillies get out of him at this point will be a bonus. The organization tamping down expectations publicly says as much.

Gonzalez is just 27, so there is time for him to improve. At 27 …

7. Alexei Ramirez was in his second season since defecting and signing with the Chicago White Sox, the landing spot for so many Cubans. And his ascent toward his spot as one of the better, and most underappreciated, shortstops in baseball was beginning.

White Sox shortstop Alexei Ramirez leads the AL with a .360 batting average. (AP)

Ramirez certainly doesn't look the part. Now 32, he is still skinny bordering on emaciated. His power defies physics, though seeing as he's approaching 100 career home runs, it's very real. And while his incredible start this season is likely more anomaly than emergence of a great hitter – his .360 batting average leads the
 American League and his four homers and 14 RBIs are near the top – it speaks to Ramirez's staying power.
Barring injury, he'll cross the 4,000-plate appearance mark this season and jump past Yuniesky Betancourt to move into the top 15 of Cuban-born players. Carving out a career that long – and well productive – is the sort of thing …

8. Jose Abreu need not worry about at this juncture. He's in that adjustment stage every Cuban goes through, when life in the U.S. is so overwhelming, such a bounty of wonders, that excitement and temptations run the risk of bubbling over. Some players have trouble with those vices. Puig and Chapman, the two enfant terrible among recent defectors, love racing their cars fast. Abreu, 27, could well be past the youthful indiscretions.

His biggest change now is at the plate, where he fell into his first slump before a monster opposite-field home run highlighted a 3-for-6 day. It was the sort of home run only Abreu and a handful of other hitters can muster, a cannon shot propelled by the power purer than Ivory soap.
Abreu's arrival in the major leagues is what makes the human-trafficking implications so bittersweet. The embargo forces players of Abreu's talent to take shady routes, and even if he said his defection went smoothly, such instances are rarities. Those who go risk everything, and those who stay, out of loyalty or fear, end up like …

9. Alfredo Despaigne, playing in a lower-level league instead of the big leagues, where he belongs. Despaigne, a power-hitting outfielder, may return to the Mexican League, considered Triple-A. Frederich Cepeda, another longtime Cuban star, just signed with the Yomiuri Giants. They're two of the 10 or so players whose talents would assure them major league spots were they to defect.

Second baseman Jose Fernandez may be the best pro prospect left in Cuba, alongside infielder Yulieski Gourriel and young outfielder Yasmany Tomas. Pitchers Vladimir Garcia, in his early 30s, and Norge Ruiz, not even 20, would draw significant interest as well.

Plenty remain in the U.S., awaiting their certain arrival in the big leagues. The Dodgers' $53 million middle-infield combination of Alex Guerrero and Erisbel Arruebarrena bide their time at Triple-A and Double-A, respectively. Aledmys Diaz is with the Cardinals' Double-A team, and perhaps the best of the bunch, outfielder Jorge Soler, could join the wave of great Cubs prospects that will hit Chicago within the next two seasons.

Soon enough, an outfielder named Rusney Castillo could join them. Castillo, 26, reportedly defected in January. Since February, mentions of him publicly have disappeared. Part of that could be due to standard paperwork delays. Silence also could mean something else. When a player disappears, whether it was Leonys Martin or, for a shorter period of time …

10. Yasiel Puig it tends to bring out the worst thoughts. Because we now understand what it means for a Cuban baseball player to get here. There were always rumors, always stories, always the frightening idea that they might be half-true, because half of it – of death, kidnapping, threats – would be bad enough.

Now, from Puig's story, we know it's all true, and worse than imaginable. And considering it's far from unique, it is the latest clarion call for baseball. Seven years ago, the sport saw an agent, Gus Dominguez, convicted for smuggling ballplayers into the United States. No longer is he a certified agent. A conviction, it seems, is the threshold for revocation, which is an awfully low standard.

The league and union can change that. They don't have the solution, not yet, maybe never as long as the U.S. embargo exists and the Castro regime does not let its citizens leave, forcing them to seek alternate options. Baseball can go public with a statement it should've long ago: supporting a system that puts players in danger is not an acceptable standard, and they will do everything they can to ensure their ugly secret gets no worse.

From Yahoo Sports by Jeff Passan