Writer and artist John Berger noted, “The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied, but written off as trash.”
Federal Food Stamp and free and reduced lunch programs shroud poverty from view. Because the cheapest food also happens to be the unhealthiest, malnourishment is more often draped in obesity rather than emaciation. There aren’t bread lines in the streets or folks in overcrowded welfare or unemployment offices – they are online, call-in only. The poor are rarely found lobbying inthe halls of government but they are plentiful in morgues and prisons. Women and children make up the largest segment falling into poverty. One in four children under the age of five is food insecure. Poverty’s impact on children is immeasurable – how do you calculate immorality? Quantify psychological destruction? Measure the violence of broken families? Measurement don’t fix problems. You can only describe it. Anxiety isn’t always necessarily mental illness. Sometimes it is a normal reaction to life’s deprivations. Medicalising and pathologising what’s obvious and normal. People in desperate circumstance feel anxious, as they should.
In the United States today, there are millions upon millions of young people that can’t find jobs, that are living in poverty, that have no hope for a better future. African Americans, who saw their net wealth decrease at a rate more than four times faster than whites, according to a recent report by United for a Fair Economy. White families lost 6.7 percent of their average net wealth from 2007 to 2010, net wealth for black families dropped by 27.1 percent. The legacy of white supremacy in the United States, are among the largest, most persistent, and damaging aspects of racial inequality,” the report stated. According to the report, net worth of white families is more than six times higher than the average net worth of black families.
An estimated 1 in 10 American workers are employed in the restaurant industry. It's been one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy, even during the economic crisis. But it also has 7 of the 10 lowest-paying jobs in America. Actually, the two absolute lowest-paying jobs in America are restaurant jobs: fast food cooks and dishwashers. Largely due to the power of the National Restaurant Association, which has been named the tenth-most-powerful lobbying group in Congress, the minimum wage for tipped workers has been stuck at $2.13 at the federal level for the last 21 years.
Texas is one of the largest and most important construction markets in the U.S. and although the majority of workers labor at least 40 hours a week, 52 percent still live in poverty. Widespread payroll fraud of misclassifying workers as independent subcontractors, rather than actual employees, has become a common practice in the industry.
Wealth and education are "hereditary" in Germany, according to a study from Deutsches Institut für Wirschaftsforschung, which found that in 40% of cases, lower household incomes can be attributed to the family’s origins. In Chile: 1% of the population possesses one-third of the nation's wealth. Over the last three decades, 90% of society has increased their salaries by only 15%, while that proverbial 1% has increased by 150%, and the very top 0.1% by 300%. In 1990 the difference between the average income of the 1% and the poorest 10% was 158 times. In 2009 it was 260 times. In Canada the top 1% in 2010, account for 10.6 per cent of the nation's total income. The latest research suggests that inequality between income earners has increased, in some cases dramatically, over the past three decades. "One of the problems with a permanent upper class is that it doesn't have much stake in the public school system or public health care," Andrew Sharpe, executive director of Centre for the Study of Living Standard said.
It’s a common refrain in the media papers. Pension funding crisis! Retiree benefits out of control! Public pensions bog down taxpayers! Pension costs seem to loom over the economy like a sinister sword of Damocles. Politicians are inciting disgruntled citizens into a bitter rage toward civil servants and public sector workers who have managed to hold onto a modicum of hard-earned retirement security while secure pensions are going the way of the dinosaur in the private sector.
Monique Morrissey, an economist at Economic Policy Institute, explained "With very few exceptions, all of the cities and states where there are severe problems, it's because the politicians for many years have neglected to make the pension payments. And this really doesn't have much to do with the pensions or the public sector workers. It doesn't reflect the pensions being too lavish or being expensive or being unaffordable or anything to do with that."
The bottom line is that pension reform is a political Trojan horse. The Communications Workers of America blasted pension proposals as “anti-worker and anti-union” because it not only attacked benefits, but contained provisions that eroded unions' collective bargaining rights, potentially undermining their leverage in future contract talks. The percentage of U.S. workers belonging to unions is the lowest it's been in 76 years, according to government figures recently released. The Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the union membership rate in 2012 was 11.3 percent, down from 11.8 percent the previous year. That comes out to about 14.4 million wage and salary workers who belong to unions. According to CNBC, the last time the rate was so low was in 1936. The report also found that full-time unionized workers made about 27 percent more in weekly earnings than those whose pay was not collectively bargained.
Robert Bruno, professor of labor relations at the University of Illinois, said a growing number of laws that make organizing workers more difficult were part of the reason for "an incremental erosion" of the labor movement. "It goes back a couple of decades, that there has been a growing number of anti-labor policies," Bruno said. "We have the weakest labor law and enforcement of labor law in the entire Western industrialized world," he said.
The market economy's ultimate goal is profit and personal enrichment of the wealthy few. All of the profit from the efficiency and productivity go towards a small group of people. This elite profit off of our ignorance. They write the laws, one set for themselves and another set for you and me, laws which allow bankers who crash the economy to walk free. The rich minority run the corporations and the banks, they own and control the media. We are left with the feeling that nothing can really change. This is not by accident.
''God to Hungry Child''
Hungry child,
I didn't make this world for you.
You didn't buy any stock in my railroad.
You didn't invest in my corporation.
Where are your shares in standard oil?
I made the world for the rich
And the will-be-rich
And the have-always-been-rich.
Not for you.
Hungry child.
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
Federal Food Stamp and free and reduced lunch programs shroud poverty from view. Because the cheapest food also happens to be the unhealthiest, malnourishment is more often draped in obesity rather than emaciation. There aren’t bread lines in the streets or folks in overcrowded welfare or unemployment offices – they are online, call-in only. The poor are rarely found lobbying inthe halls of government but they are plentiful in morgues and prisons. Women and children make up the largest segment falling into poverty. One in four children under the age of five is food insecure. Poverty’s impact on children is immeasurable – how do you calculate immorality? Quantify psychological destruction? Measure the violence of broken families? Measurement don’t fix problems. You can only describe it. Anxiety isn’t always necessarily mental illness. Sometimes it is a normal reaction to life’s deprivations. Medicalising and pathologising what’s obvious and normal. People in desperate circumstance feel anxious, as they should.
In the United States today, there are millions upon millions of young people that can’t find jobs, that are living in poverty, that have no hope for a better future. African Americans, who saw their net wealth decrease at a rate more than four times faster than whites, according to a recent report by United for a Fair Economy. White families lost 6.7 percent of their average net wealth from 2007 to 2010, net wealth for black families dropped by 27.1 percent. The legacy of white supremacy in the United States, are among the largest, most persistent, and damaging aspects of racial inequality,” the report stated. According to the report, net worth of white families is more than six times higher than the average net worth of black families.
An estimated 1 in 10 American workers are employed in the restaurant industry. It's been one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy, even during the economic crisis. But it also has 7 of the 10 lowest-paying jobs in America. Actually, the two absolute lowest-paying jobs in America are restaurant jobs: fast food cooks and dishwashers. Largely due to the power of the National Restaurant Association, which has been named the tenth-most-powerful lobbying group in Congress, the minimum wage for tipped workers has been stuck at $2.13 at the federal level for the last 21 years.
Texas is one of the largest and most important construction markets in the U.S. and although the majority of workers labor at least 40 hours a week, 52 percent still live in poverty. Widespread payroll fraud of misclassifying workers as independent subcontractors, rather than actual employees, has become a common practice in the industry.
Wealth and education are "hereditary" in Germany, according to a study from Deutsches Institut für Wirschaftsforschung, which found that in 40% of cases, lower household incomes can be attributed to the family’s origins. In Chile: 1% of the population possesses one-third of the nation's wealth. Over the last three decades, 90% of society has increased their salaries by only 15%, while that proverbial 1% has increased by 150%, and the very top 0.1% by 300%. In 1990 the difference between the average income of the 1% and the poorest 10% was 158 times. In 2009 it was 260 times. In Canada the top 1% in 2010, account for 10.6 per cent of the nation's total income. The latest research suggests that inequality between income earners has increased, in some cases dramatically, over the past three decades. "One of the problems with a permanent upper class is that it doesn't have much stake in the public school system or public health care," Andrew Sharpe, executive director of Centre for the Study of Living Standard said.
It’s a common refrain in the media papers. Pension funding crisis! Retiree benefits out of control! Public pensions bog down taxpayers! Pension costs seem to loom over the economy like a sinister sword of Damocles. Politicians are inciting disgruntled citizens into a bitter rage toward civil servants and public sector workers who have managed to hold onto a modicum of hard-earned retirement security while secure pensions are going the way of the dinosaur in the private sector.
Monique Morrissey, an economist at Economic Policy Institute, explained "With very few exceptions, all of the cities and states where there are severe problems, it's because the politicians for many years have neglected to make the pension payments. And this really doesn't have much to do with the pensions or the public sector workers. It doesn't reflect the pensions being too lavish or being expensive or being unaffordable or anything to do with that."
The bottom line is that pension reform is a political Trojan horse. The Communications Workers of America blasted pension proposals as “anti-worker and anti-union” because it not only attacked benefits, but contained provisions that eroded unions' collective bargaining rights, potentially undermining their leverage in future contract talks. The percentage of U.S. workers belonging to unions is the lowest it's been in 76 years, according to government figures recently released. The Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the union membership rate in 2012 was 11.3 percent, down from 11.8 percent the previous year. That comes out to about 14.4 million wage and salary workers who belong to unions. According to CNBC, the last time the rate was so low was in 1936. The report also found that full-time unionized workers made about 27 percent more in weekly earnings than those whose pay was not collectively bargained.
Robert Bruno, professor of labor relations at the University of Illinois, said a growing number of laws that make organizing workers more difficult were part of the reason for "an incremental erosion" of the labor movement. "It goes back a couple of decades, that there has been a growing number of anti-labor policies," Bruno said. "We have the weakest labor law and enforcement of labor law in the entire Western industrialized world," he said.
The market economy's ultimate goal is profit and personal enrichment of the wealthy few. All of the profit from the efficiency and productivity go towards a small group of people. This elite profit off of our ignorance. They write the laws, one set for themselves and another set for you and me, laws which allow bankers who crash the economy to walk free. The rich minority run the corporations and the banks, they own and control the media. We are left with the feeling that nothing can really change. This is not by accident.
''God to Hungry Child''
Hungry child,
I didn't make this world for you.
You didn't buy any stock in my railroad.
You didn't invest in my corporation.
Where are your shares in standard oil?
I made the world for the rich
And the will-be-rich
And the have-always-been-rich.
Not for you.
Hungry child.
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
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