Corporations might not recognize income inequality, but workers sure do! Companies may profit while workers do not, as evidenced by this chart.
(Source: nytimes.com)
(via sarahlee310)
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Faced with flat federal financing and rising need, Arizona is one of 16 states that have cut their welfare caseloads further since the start of the recession — in its case, by half. Even as it turned away the needy, Arizona spent most of its federal welfare dollars on other programs, using permissive rules to plug state budget gaps.
The poor people who were dropped from cash assistance here, mostly single mothers, talk with surprising openness about the desperate, and sometimes illegal, ways they make ends meet. They have sold food stamps, sold blood, skipped meals, shoplifted, doubled up with friends, scavenged trash bins for bottles and cans and returned to relationships with violent partners — all with children in tow.
Esmeralda Murillo, a 21-year-old mother of two, lost her welfare check, landed in a shelter and then returned to a boyfriend whose violent temper had driven her away. “You don’t know who to turn to,” she said.
Maria Thomas, 29, with four daughters, helps friends sell piles of brand-name clothes, taking pains not to ask if they are stolen. “I don’t know where they come from,” she said. “I’m just helping get rid of them.”
To keep her lights on, Rosa Pena, 24, sold the groceries she bought with food stamps and then kept her children fed with school lunches and help from neighbors. Her post-welfare credo is widely shared: “I’ll do what I have to do.”
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N.Y Times: Welfare Limits Left Poor Adrift As Recession Hit
Nothing says family values like incentivizing desperate women to return to abusive partners out of economic necessity. But hey, bootstraps and all that.
(via letterstomycountry)
(via pantslessprogressive)
Economy strains neighborly feelings in North Carolina: The town clerk of Roper, population 617, knows the community has suffered from layoffs and foreclosures. When they don’t pay utility bills, she has to cut off their services — a job she hates.
Photo credit: David Zucchino / Los Angeles Times
(Source: Los Angeles Times, via pod313)
- world blues 2011 took these photos of the traverse city occupy movement event tonight
- world blues 2011 posts a few pictures from tonight’s even in traverse city of the occupy movement - it was very cool from 5 30 until around 11 pm …. I met a ton of new people there, and many have the same issues I have - like being homeless, or being foreclosed on, or having medical issues with no money to fix, and having moral issues with the unequal distribution of wealth and opportunity in this country….
- world blues 2011 posts pix i took from the traverse city occupy movement tonight…. check out more of these pix here…
world blues 2011 posts from cnn
This final request would increase the debt limit from its current level of roughly $15.2 trillion to $16.4 trillion. The government is expected to come within $100 billion of the current limit by the end of this week, the Treasury official said.
world blues 2011 adds - yep, one could spend 100 years trying to pay off the debt- it never will be… might as well just admit it now we need to change how the concept of money is faked and created in the 1st place
Saturday is the deadline for Bank Transfer Day, the call for a mass money exodus from big banks to credit unions and small community banks. So: How long does it take? Is it inconvenient? Are big banks freaking out? Here’s everything you need to know.
Workers on the verge of retirement continue to be worse off than before the recession
Last Friday, President Obama announced that the remaining American troops in Iraq will leave the country by the end of 2011. Here’s a quick reminder of the war’s price tag.
NBC Nightly News picked up our story from earlier in the week about the declining standard of living in the US.
What has led to the most dramatic drop in the US standard of living since at least 1960? One factor is stagnant incomes: Real median income is down 9.8 percent since the start of the recession through this June, according to Sentier Research in Annapolis, Md., citing census bureau data. Another is falling net worth – think about the value of your home and, if you have one, your retirement portfolio. A third is rising consumer prices, with inflation eroding people’s buying power by 3.25 percent since mid-2008.
