![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/images/quotes_7a.gif)
Shut Them Down! – Payday Loan Companies Are Making Billions Preying On The Misery Of The Poor
Would you take out a loan that has an annual percentage rate of 391 percent? Yes, I know that sounds absolutely crazy, but millions of Americans do it every single year. The typical payday loan requires borrowers to pay about 15 dollars for every $100 that they borrow for two weeks. That comes out to a yearly rate of about 391 percent. And the payday loan companies know exactly who to target. They have set up thousands of shops in the poorest communities all over the nation over the last several decades. Each year, approximately 12 million Americans take out payday loans and they pay approximately 7.4 billion dollars in interest and fees on those loans. Sadly, once you get hooked on payday loans they are very hard to stop. In fact, one study found that only 13 percent of payday borrowers get two loans or less per year. All other borrowers take out more loans than that. In fact, more than a third of all payday borrowers take out between 11 and 19 loans during the course of a single year. And as was mentioned earlier, the interest rates on these loans are beyond exorbitant. Payday loans are estimated to be about 20 times more expensive than bank loans, with annual interest rates that are sometimes as high as 500 percent. The payday loan companies circle the poor like vultures, because they know that the poor are the only ones desperate enough to agree to such terms. This is why we need to shut them down. The payday loan companies are making billions preying on the misery of the poor and it needs to be stopped.
And it just isn’t small, disreputable banks that are involved in these practices. The truth is that some of the largest banks in America are now making payday loans…
Some, including U.S. Bank, Fifth Third Bank and Wells Fargo, offer payday loans under names such as Ready Advance, Fast Loan and Early Access, according to the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL). They can carry interest rates averaging between 225 and 300 percent, CRL said.
Others major banks not making such loans directly, but instead they are investing millions of dollars in the companies that do make the loans. Bank of New York Mellon Corp., JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America are just some of the major banks that have invested large amounts of money in the payday loan industry.
These financial institutions are making billions of dollars by exploiting the people in our society that are the most vulnerable. As I showed the other day, the bottom 90 percent of America is systematically getting poorer, and many Americans in desperate financial situations have found the easy cash provided by the payday loan companies to be irresistible. The following are some statistics about payday loans from a recent Pew Research study...
-Fifty-eight percent of payday loan borrowers have trouble meeting monthly expenses at least half the time. These borrowers are dealing with persistent cash shortfalls rather than temporary emergencies.
-Only 14 percent of borrowers say they can afford to repay an average payday loan out of their monthly budgets.
-Seventy-eight percent of borrowers rely on information from lenders—who sell these loans as a safe, two-week product—when choosing to borrow money. This reliance reinforces the perception that payday loans are unlike other forms of credit because they will not create ongoing debt. Yet the stated price tag for a two-week, $375 loan bears little resemblance to the actual $520 cost over the five months of debt that the average user experiences.
-While payday loans are often presented as an alternative to overdrafting on a checking account, a majority of borrowers end up paying fees for both.
-Some borrowers ultimately turn to the same options they could have used instead of payday loans to finally pay off the loans. Forty-one percent need an outside cash infusion to eliminate payday loan debt– including getting help from friends or family, selling or pawning personal possessions, taking out another type of loan, or using a tax refund.
-By almost a three-to-one margin, borrowers favor more regulation of payday loans. A majority of borrowers say the loans both take advantage of them and that they provide relief. Despite feeling conflicted about their experiences, borrowers want to change how payday loans work.
But those statistics don’t really convey the real world consequences that these predatory loans have. Many Americans have lost everything that they had after they turned to payday loans. In fact, it is estimated that at least 50,000 Americans a year go bankrupt due to payday loans.
A recent NBC News article profiled Raymond Chaney, a 66-year-old military veteran that had his life totally destroyed by these predators…
For Raymond Chaney, taking out a payday loan was like hiring a taxi to drive across the country. He ended up broke — and stranded.
The 66-year-old veteran from Boise lives off of Social Security benefits, but borrowed from an Internet payday lender last November after his car broke down and didn’t have the $400 for repairs. When the 14-day loan came due, he couldn’t pay, so he renewed it several times.
Within months, the cash flow nightmare spun out of control. Chaney ended up taking out multiple loans from multiple sites, trying to to stave off bank overdraft fees and pay his rent. By February, payday lenders — who had direct access to his checking account as part of the loan terms — took every cent of his Social Security payment, and he was kicked out of his apartment. He had borrowed nearly $3,000 and owed $12,000.
“I’m not dumb, but I did a dumb thing,” said Chaney, who is now homeless, living in a rescue mission in Boise.
Is there anyone out there that still wants to argue that we should not shut these predators down?
Sadly, many Americans in poor communities have very few alternatives to the payday loan companies. In recent years, the large banking chains have been systematically closing down branches in poor neighborhoods while expanding in wealthy neighborhoods at the same time. Since the Federal Reserve is paying banks not to lend money, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for them to make high-risk loans to poor Americans who may not be able to pay them back. And recent regulations passed by Congress have made it not very profitable to offer checking accounts to poor people. In many poor communities all over the country, it has now gotten to the point where it is becoming extremely difficult to find a bank branch anywhere.
So payday loan companies have been more than happy to fill the void.
But don’t look down on those that have taken out payday loans. The truth is that almost all of us have willingly allowed ourselves to become enslaved to the system at one point or another.
For example, in a previous article entitled “Money Is A Form Of Social Control And Most Americans Are Debt Slaves“, I pointed out the utter foolishness of constantly carrying a balance on a credit card. In that article, I included a great explanation from a former Goldman Sachs banker about how incredibly crippling credit card debt can be…
On the debt side of things, how much does your credit card company earn if you carry just an average of a $5,000 credit card balance, paying, say, 22% annual interest rate (compounding monthly) for the next 10 years?
In your mind you owe a balance of only $5,000, which is not a huge amount, especially for someone gainfully employed. After all, $5,000 is just a quick Disney trip, or a moderately priced ski-trip, or that week in Hawaii. You think to yourself, “how bad could it be?”
The answer, including the cost of monthly compounding, is $44,235, or about 9 times what it appears to cost you at face value.
This is why one of the top things that I recommend for getting prepared for the economic crisis that is coming is to get out of debt.
You do not want to be enslaved to financial predators when everything starts falling apart all around you.
So do any of you have any payday loan or credit card horror stories to share? Please feel free to share what you have to say by posting a comment below…
View full post on The Economic Collapse
Help Poor People in Bangladesh by Buying the Clothes They Make
K. William Watson
The tragic building collapse in Bangladesh two weeks ago, killing over 900 people, has focused public attention on working conditions for garment workers around the world. The attention has intensified calls for Western clothing brands to insist on better working conditions in the factories around the developing world where their products are made. According to the New York Times, some companies are responding to consumer concerns by marketing their “fair labor” practices on product labels.
The development of a fair trade movement for clothing is in many ways encouraging. It demonstrates the power of consumers in a free market to impose their preferences on the supply chain. Businesses succeed or fail based on how well they meet consumer demand, and if consumers demand certain labor practices enough to cover the added costs, businesses will respond.
This voluntary mechanism does a much better job than government mandates. Even a requirement that companies merely put labels on their clothes does a poor job of informing consumers. Any mandated label is insulated from accuracy-enhancing, consumer-driven competition and vulnerable to capture by special interests.
On the other hand, refusing to buy clothes made in “sweatshops” is a terrible way to help the people of Bangladesh. The fact remains that despite the terrible working conditions, workers chose their sweatshop jobs over worse alternatives. Outlawing sweatshops or refusing to buy things made in Bangladesh removes those workers’ best option and forces them to settle for less. (LearnLiberty.org has an excellent video explaining the “Top 3 Ways Sweatshops Help the Poor Escape Poverty.”)
More foreign investment in industrial production would help the people of Bangladesh even more. It’s true that Bangladeshis’ poverty enables you to buy cheap t-shirts because they will work for next to nothing in dangerous factories. But the systemic effect of Western investment means more opportunity, and opportunity is the opposite of poverty.
That said, consumer demand for “fair trade clothing” may actually help factory workers, whereas a flat-out refusal to trade would not. This particular disaster seems to be largely the result of rampant cronyism, inept bureaucracy, and official corruption—problems that could be alleviated by reducing the discretion of local middlemen. If concerned consumers have more specific information about labor practices, they won’t have to rely on purely origin-based information. It would be a shame if someone decided not to buy a shirt just because it was “Made in Bangladesh.” Positive and voluntary inducements to improve working conditions are much, much better than refusing to do business with poor people.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Agriculture • Britain’s farmers are facing the third poor harvest
Beleaguered farmers’ third poor harvest in a row mean British shoppers will rely on imported food
Crops from potatoes and peas to cereals are being hit, leading to increased reliance on imported produce
ANDREW JOHNSON MONDAY 01 APRIL 2013
Britain’s farmers are facing the third poor harvest on the run as the coldest March in 50 years plays havoc with crop planting – already significantly down because of last year’s wet weather.
With the cold snap set to continue through April farmers say crops such as potatoes, peas, tomatoes and ornamental flowers have either not been planted, are not growing or are being stunted by the lack of light.
This follows low winter planting levels of cereal crops – a fifth down on last year because of the wet weather. A shortage of spring seed is adding to the problems.
Lower UK crop yields will make UK consumers more reliant on imports and the vagaries of the international markets, which could push up prices. Livestock farmers have been struggling to cope for some time with feed shortages due to poor grass growth in the summer, and continuing snow hampering deliveries.
Farmer’s Weekly columnist David Richardson, who farms near Norwich in Norfolk, said: “Last year our acreage was in the ground by 2 March. This year, with snow falling every day and frosts most nights, there’s no hope of drilling anything. 2013 will be the third poor year in succession.”
Lincolnshire farmer Mark Pettit told the magazine that slug damage and dead patches meant the wheat harvest would be down by 30 per cent – from 15m tonnes to 10m.
The results of the winter planting survey by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board showed that until December in England and Wales wheat planting was down by 25 per cent on the previous year, barley down by 19 per cent and oats down 30 per cent. Overall cereal crops were down by 19 per cent.
The board’s senior analyst Jack Watts said: “Traditionally, following a difficult autumn planting spring barley is the most popular ‘go to’ spring crop. However, the availability of seed could be a limiting factor.”
He added: “It is important to remember that UK grain and oilseed markets operate in a global market. It is critical to monitor the global situation.”
Reports from the National Farmers Union Board for Horticulture and Potatoes, which represents growers, provides a snapshot of the difficulties farmers are facing. Growers of potatoes, peas and flowers for garden centres all saying their planting was late and existing crops were being hampered by the cold and poor light.
The board’s chairman, Guy Poskitt, a Yorkshire farmer who grows root vegetables wrote: “The main concern is the land being very wet and cold. Nothing is growing and the prospect of early crops or high yielding summer crops now looks low. Another year of shortage is highly likely.”
He told The Independent: “We’re about a fortnight to three weeks behind. Nature’s a wonderful thing and it might turn around with a warm summer. But if not we’ll need more imports and that means prices go up.”
Tim Papworth, who farms in Norfolk, added: “We are well behind on planting potatoes and drilling peas which will push the whole season back.”
Soft fruit grower Anthony Snell of the West Midlands said: “Yields and production will inevitably be down, but there will be a consistent programme of production throughout the season to ensure that we have enough soft fruit for every summer event.”
Tomato farmer Paul Simmonds of East Anglia added: “Light is significantly down on levels expected for this time of the year.”
Flower growers are facing huge energy bills as they struggle to keep crops warm and supplied with light.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho … 56131.html
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Mon Apr 01, 2013 3:44 pm
View full post on opinions.caduceusx.com
Yes, School Choice Does Help Poor Kids
Jason Bedrick
Yesterday, WaPo’s Valerie Strauss accused scholarship tax credit (STC) programs of operating as Reverse Robin Hoods, robbing from the poor to give to the rich.
Call it welfare for the rich. Why? Wealthy businesses and individuals are the folks who get the tax credits for putting up the cash to pay the tuition. Furthermore, the amount of money for tuition made available for tuition by private scholarship organizations often does not actually cover the full cost of attending a private school. Poor families can’t make up the difference. Guess who can.
The reality is almost exactly the opposite. Donors are not benefitting financially at the expense of the poor or anyone. And while it is true that tax-credit scholarships do not always cover the full cost of tuition at private schools, thanks to low-cost options and needs-based tuition breaks, low-income families are the primary beneficiaries of STC programs.
STC Donors Do Not Benefit Financially
It is odd to claim that “wealthy businesses” are financially benefitting by receiving a tax credit for their donations. Even a 100% tax credit means that they are simply no worse off than before. A corporation with a $10,000 tax liability that made a $10,000 donation to a scholarship organization would then owe no state taxes but it would still have $10,000 less than it did before. Whether the $10,000 went to the government or a nonprofit is irrelevant to its bottom line.
Moreover, Strauss fails to mention that most state STC programs do not grant 100% credits. In fact, only four of the fourteen STC programs do. The other credits range from 50% to 90%. In these states, corporations would be better off financially if they merely paid their taxes.
STC Programs Benefit Low-Income Students
It is telling that Strauss provides only one example to support her claim that rich people benefit from the scholarships instead of the poor: “[Pennsylvania families] eligible to receive money to pay private tuition can earn more than $72,000…”
The key words in that sentence are “can earn.” The relevant question is how much do the families of scholarship recipients actually earn. The nonpartisan Pennsylvania Legislative Budget and Finance Committee reported in 2010 that the average scholarship recipient’s family earned only $29,000 annually, less than half of what the program allowed at the time.
The available evidence shows that Pennsylvania is not unique. Scholarship recipients in Florida must earn less than 185% of the federal poverty line, which is the income threshold for the federal government’s free and reduced lunch program. Nevertheless, the average annual household income of Floridian scholarship recipients is only $24,250, just 12.3% above the federal poverty line. And though Arizona’s corporate STC program has no means-testing requirement, a 2011 study found that more than two-thirds of scholarship recipients earned less than 185% of the federal poverty line.
There is clear evidence that students benefit by participating in educational choice programs. Numerous randomized-controlled studies have demonstrated that students in choice programs exhibit higher academic performance while additional studies have found higher graduation rates, increased college enrollment, and increased civic-mindedness.
Conclusion
It should be noted that in addition to Strauss’ central arguments, her broadside contained numerous significant inaccuracies. Contrary to Strauss’ assertions, scholarship tax credit programs are not the same as vouchers. They differ greatly in terms of their funding mechanisms and administration. Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that STC programs use private money not public money. Every state supreme court to address the matter has agreed. Finally, well-designed STC programs such as those in Arizona, Florida, and Pennsylvania actually save states money by decreasing state expenditures more than they decrease state tax revenue.
Under the status quo, wealthy families already have school choice while low-income families do not. Wealthy families can afford to live in districts with high-performing government schools or send their children to private schools. By contrast, low-income families generally only have one choice: the local assigned government school.
The good news is that scholarship tax credit programs work as intended. As the Washington Post editorial board understands, STC programs expand educational opportunities for low-income families, empowering them to meet the individual needs of their children.
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
Tax Increases Hurt the Poor the Most, Leg Down in the World Economy Looms
The end of the payroll tax cut is hitting those struggling to get by the most. As the world teeters on another leg down in the economy many probably feel that they are already on the down slope.
Last week an internal memo from a Walmart executive said that February month to date sales were “a total disaster.” Walmart’s core customer is feeling pain. Sadly they are likely to feel more.
The world economy is misfiring in a big way right now. Both Europe and Japan are solidly in official recession. It is likely that we are also. The implementation of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare later this year is likely creating a drag also.
I just spoke with a friend who explained that her employer is cutting her hours back so that she didn’t hit the 30 hour threshold for providing healthcare. Now she will probably have to find an additional job or simply do with less income. Either way its a strain. Multiply this out by millions and one can see that this great healthcare experiment may have very real unintended consequences.
Add inflated gasoline and food prices and one has the recipe for a long hot summer.
If gas prices don’t reverse their current trend a serious leg down in the Great Recession is all but guaranteed. But reversing the trend is going to be hard to do with our central bank racing to devalue the dollar.
So settle in folks, it looks like we’ve got another all too “interesting” year in economics and politics ahead.
(From CSMonitor.com)
“It’s a big deal,” says Morgan Housley, a macroeconomic analyst with Motley Fool, an online financial education website. “The biggest impact is on lower-income households since the payroll tax is regressive, only applying to the first $113,000 of income. Wealthier households don’t feel the same pinch because the tax doesn’t hit all of their income. Lower-income households also spend a larger share of their income than wealthier consumers.… Low-income families are in one of the toughest spots they’ve been in since 2009.”
The post Tax Increases Hurt the Poor the Most, Leg Down in the World Economy Looms appeared first on AgainstCronyCapitalism.org.
View full post on AgainstCronyCapitalism.org
An Elegant and Simple Explanation of Why Increasing the Minimum Wage Actually Hurts the Poor (Video)
Removing the bottom rungs of the economic ladder by raising the minimum wage only helps a very narrow band of wage workers and even then by a very small amount. Overall, for the unskilled, an increase in the minimum wage over the market indicated wage is destructive and leads to greater unemployment.
The post An Elegant and Simple Explanation of Why Increasing the Minimum Wage Actually Hurts the Poor (Video) appeared first on AgainstCronyCapitalism.org.
View full post on AgainstCronyCapitalism.org
“If Poor People Get Richer, They Won’t Have Anything to Eat”
K. William Watson
The nonsensical sentiment expressed in this post’s title seems to be the guiding belief among people in the United States and United Kingdom currently concerned that eating imported quinoa is harmful to the Bolivian farmers who grow it.
For the uninitiated, quinoa is a grain-like plant that grows only in the Andes Mountains and is possibly the most nutritious food on the planet. In recent years, health food enthusiasts in the United States and Europe have developed an affinity for the exotic import. The result has been a sharp rise in the food’s global price and a concurrent increase in production in Bolivia and Peru.
If you’re like me, you probably think this is a terrific outcome for the Bolivians, who can now sell their crop for three times what they could just five years ago. Major media outlets disagree. The New York Times ran a piece titled “Quinoa’s Global Success Creates Quandary at Home” that warns, “The surge has helped raise farmers’ incomes here in one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries. But there has been a notable trade-off: Fewer Bolivians can now afford it, hastening their embrace of cheaper, processed foods and raising fears of malnutrition in a country that has long struggled with it.”
The UK Guardian ran an article last week airing similar concerns and also published a commentary titled, “Can Vegans Stomach the Unpalatable Truth about Quinoa?” The commentary’s author laments that “the quinoa trade is yet another troubling example of a damaging north-south exchange, with well-intentioned health and ethics-led consumers here unwittingly driving poverty there.”
This is all par for the course in the interminable fair-trade, ethical-consumption conundrum in which the desire among affluent American consumers for things is pitted against their concern that production, commerce, and consumption breed injustice. While part of me finds this hand-wringing amusing, I can’t help but worry about the bigotry implied in the notion that poor foreigners will starve if they are allowed to sell food for money.
I came across a blog post recently by Stefan Jeremiah and Michael Wilcox, two photographers currently in Bolivia making a documentary. They do a really great job of putting the quinoa controversy in its place. After National Public Radio ran a story in November worrying about overpriced food for poor Bolivians and considering the possibility of growing quinoa in the United States, Jeremiah and Wilcox wrote this in response:
The overwhelming evidence suggests that as demand for quinoa increases, Bolivians growing quinoa is providing a viable way of working themselves out of poverty. Perpetuating these myths and half truths only serves to damage a growing economy and undermine hard working farmers’ efforts to lift themselves out of poverty in an honest and sincere endeavor.
What are your motives behind this article (and the others you reference)? It appears that you’d rather Americans didn’t buy from Bolivians and are making a concerted effort to turn Americans away from eating Bolivian quinoa. Convincing Americans that somehow boycotting Bolivian quinoa and taking away the bulk of international demand will do the farmers more good is unacceptable.
Is the American Dream restricted only for Americans of the United States? Is it that ambition, hard work, enterprise, blood, sweat and toil is only reserved for the people of your choosing? Is it because seeing farmers in the Developing World actually succeeding doesn’t fit with your own expectation of misery and starvation? Would you prefer the humble Bolivian quinoa farmer to stay poor and remain in his place?
[We] charge you that all these things are the rights of all the peoples of the Americas across both continents, North and South…if not the World.
HT: Courtney Patridge
View full post on Cato @ Liberty
The U.S. Has An Even Larger Gap Between The Rich And The Poor Than Downton Abbey Does
There are two very different Americas today. In one, the stock market is soaring, high end homes are selling briskly, big banks and hedge funds are rolling in money as if the last financial crisis never even happened, and life is really, really good. In the other America, good jobs are incredibly scarce, incomes are declining, and poverty is skyrocketing to levels that we have never seen before. The gap between the wealthy and the poor in America is getting wider with each passing day. In fact, it is my contention that the U.S. has an even larger gap between the rich and the poor than Downton Abbey does. If you have never seen Downton Abbey, you really should. It is one of the most extraordinary shows to appear on television in years. It is a drama set in the UK which follows the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants throughout the early part of the 20th Century. It can be a bit jarring to watch servants wait on their masters hand and foot and refer to them by such titles as “Lord” and “Lady”, but the truth is that in many ways there is more inequality today than there was back then. As far as people living in the worst areas of cities such as Detroit and Cleveland are concerned, the socialites that live on Fifth Avenue in New York City or in multi-million dollar homes out in the Hamptons might as well be from another planet. If you have lots of money, America is still a really great place to live. If you barely have any money, America can be really cold and cruel. Sadly, our politicians continue to pursue policies that make things even better for those working for the establishment in places such as Washington D.C. and Manhattan, and worse for all the rest of us. This has especially been true over the course of the past four years. If nothing is done, the gaping chasm between the rich and the poor will continue to get even worse, and in the end that will have some really severe consequences for our society.
So is the answer to raise taxes and “redistribute” more money to the poor? Of course not. Today, we are already paying dozens of different kinds of taxes every year and the government is handing out more money to people than ever before. But poverty just continues to explode.
What the poor in the U.S. desperately need are good jobs, but we continue to ship millions of good jobs out of the country and Barack Obama continues to pursue policies that are killing the U.S. economy.
There is not much help on the horizon for the poor or the middle class in America, and that should be distressing for all of us.
But things in the wealthy parts of America are going absolutely wonderfully right now. Let’s take a few moments and contrast what life is like in the two Americas right now…
In the “good America”, stocks are absolutely soaring. In fact, the S&P 500 closed above 1,500 on Friday for the very first time in more than five years.
In the “bad America”, poverty statistics just continue to get worse. According to a newly released report, 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.
In the “good America”, hedge funds are rolling in the profits. The Dow just had its best January since January of 1994, and many analysts are projecting that 2013 will be a banner year for the markets.
In the “bad America”, median household income has fallen for four years in a row, and millions of families are really struggling to find a way to pay the bills each month.
In the “good America”, expensive homes are selling at a pace that we have not seen in years. Just check out what is happening in the Hamptons. According to the National Association of Realtors, sales of homes worth at least a million dollars were 51 percent higher in November 2012 than they were in November 2011.
In the “bad America”, there are hordes of young adults that cannot find jobs and cannot take care of themselves. Shockingly, U.S. families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
In the “good America”, the “too big to fail” banks are partying like it was 2005 again. For example, revenues at Goldman Sachs increased by about 30 percent in 2012 and Goldman stock has soared by more than 40 percent over the past 12 months.
In the “bad America”, poverty is exploding and government dependence has become a way of life. If you can believe it, the number of Americans on food stamps has grown from about 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 million today.
In the “good America”, those working for the establishment will do just about anything to make a buck. For instance, Goldman Sachs made 400 million dollars driving up food prices in 2012 while hundreds of millions around the world existed on the edge of starvation.
In the “bad America”, millions of families are wondering how they will make it until next month. If you can believe it, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. This is the first time that has ever happened in our history.
In the “good America”, everyone has a good ride. In fact, sales of luxury German-made vehicles set new all-time records in 2012.
In the “bad America”, those that have lost everything are shunned and ostracized. In fact, many communities all over America are actually making feeding the homeless illegal.
The fact that there is poverty in America should not alarm you. Every country in the world has poverty. What should alarm you is how rapidly it is growing. Even though the Obama administration tells us that we are in an “economic recovery”, things just continue to get worse. The wealthy elitists in Washington D.C. and New York City may be doing wonderfully, but the truth is that the middle class continues to shrink and just about every poverty statistic that you can think of continues to rise.
If you are convinced that we do not have a “wealth gap” problem in the United States today, just check out the following statistics. Most of them are from one of my previous articles entitled “The Middle Class In America Is Being Wiped Out – Here Are 60 Facts That Prove It“…
-According to the Economic Policy Institute, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans households on average have 288 times the amount of wealth that the average middle class American family does.
-In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
-According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.
-The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have as much wealth as the bottom one-third of all Americans combined.
-At this point, the poorest 50 percent of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.
-The United States now ranks 93rd in the world in income inequality.
-The average CEO now makes approximately 350 times as much as the average American worker makes.
-Today, corporate profits as a percentage of U.S. GDP are at an all-time high, but wages as a percentage of U.S. GDP are near an all-time low.
Sometimes, when the “good America” and the “bad America” collide, the results are quite humorous.
For example, a 23-year-old homeless Brazilian man and his friends recently decided to “move in” to a 7,522 square foot house down in Florida that is valued at $2.1 million. The following is from a recent article in the Orlando Sentinel…
Bank of America has filed to evict nine squatters from a $2.5-million mansion in a posh Boca Raton neighborhood.
In a filing in Palm Beach County court that names 23-year-old Andre De Palma Barbosa and eight other unknown people, the bank claims rightful ownership of the home – despite Barbosa’s attempt to stake his claim on the foreclosed waterside property by using an obscure Florida real estate law.
Barbosa has been invoking a state law called “adverse possession,” which allows someone to move into a property and claim the title – if they can stay there seven years.
A signed copy of that note is also posted in the home’s front window.
Yeah, they will be able to get him and his friends out of there eventually, but in future years I fear that the conflicts between the rich and the poor will not be so nice.
Already, a very ominous “Robin Hood mentality” is building among the poor in this country. Many wealthy people don’t even realize that it is happening. But someday when desperate “flash mobs” are roaming through their neighborhoods looking to do a little “creative redistribution”, then they will get it.
Our society is starting to come apart at the seams, and there is an incredible amount of tension between the rich and the poor. This is unfortunate, but instead of calming things down many of our politicians are actually exploiting this tension.
When our economy crashes, the class warfare of today may actually turn into real war in the streets. Desperate people do desperate things, and when people are hungry and they can’t feed their families, many of them will not be afraid to go over to the wealthy neighborhoods and take what they want.
A lot of people don’t want to see them, but dark clouds are building. According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans are more negative about where America will be five years from now than they have ever been before. Most people know that we are on the edge of something really bad, even if they can’t really explain it.
It is time to get ready for what is coming. Even though the stock market is soaring right now, that could change at any moment. All of the long-term economic and societal trends are pointing to some really bad things in the years ahead, and sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that everything is going to be okay somehow is not going to help.
So what do you think about all of this?
Do you think that the U.S. has an even larger gap between the rich and the poor than Downton Abbey does?
Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below…
View full post on The Economic Collapse
35 Statistics About The Working Poor In America That Will Blow Your Mind
In America tonight, tens of millions of men and women will struggle to get to sleep because they are stressed out about not making enough money even though they are working as hard as they possibly can. They are called “the working poor”, and their numbers are absolutely exploding. As a recent Gallup poll showed, Americans are more concerned about the economy than they are about anything else. But why are Americans so stressed out about our economic situation if things are supposedly getting better? Well, the truth is that unemployment is not actually going down, and the real unemployment numbers are actually much worse than what is officially being reported by the government. But unemployment is only part of the story. Most American workers are still able to find jobs, but an increasing proportion of them are not able to make ends meet at the end of the month. Our economy continues to bleed good paying middle class jobs, and to a large degree those jobs are being replaced by low income jobs. Approximately one-fourth of all American workers make 10 dollars an hour or less at this point, and we see them all around us every day. They flip our burgers, they cut our hair and they take our money at the supermarket. In many homes, both parents are working multiple jobs, and yet when a child gets sick or a car breaks down they find that they don’t have enough money to pay the bill. Many of these families have gone into tremendous amounts of debt in order to try to stay afloat, but once you get caught in a cycle of debt it can be incredibly difficult to break out of that.
So what is the solution? Well, the easy answer would be that we need the U.S. economy to start producing more good paying jobs, but that is easier said than done. Our big corporations continue to ship huge numbers of good paying manufacturing jobs out of the country, and millions of Americans have been forced to scramble to find whatever work is available. Today, there are so many very talented American workers that are trapped in low wage work. According to the Working Poor Families Project, “about one-fourth of adults in low-income working families were employed in just eight occupations, as cashiers, cooks, health aids, janitors, maids, retail salespersons, waiters and waitresses, or drivers.” A lot of those people could do so much more for society, but they don’t have the opportunity.
Sadly, the percentage of low paying jobs in our economy continues to increase with each passing year, so this is a problem that is only going to get worse. So don’t look down on the working poor. The good paying job that you have right now could disappear at any time and you could end up joining their ranks very soon.
The following are 35 statistics about the working poor in America that will blow your mind…
#1 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either “poor” or “low income”.
#2 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 57 percent of all American children live in a home that is either “poor” or “low income”.
#3 Back in 2007, about 28 percent of all working families were considered to be among “the working poor”. Today, that number is up to 32 percent even though our politicians tell us that the economy is supposedly recovering.
#4 Back in 2007, 21 million U.S. children lived in “working poor” homes. Today, that number is up to 23.5 million.
#5 In Arkansas, Mississippi and New Mexico, more than 40 percent all of working families are considered to be “low income”.
#6 Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
#7 Half of all American workers earn $505 or less per week.
#8 At this point, one out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less.
#9 Today, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does.
#10 Median household income in the United States has fallen for four consecutive years.
#11 Median household income for families with children dropped by a whopping $6,300 between 2001 and 2011.
#12 The U.S. economy continues to trade good paying jobs for low paying jobs. 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.
#13 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.
#14 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.
#15 There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.
#16 Low income families spend about 8.6 percent of their incomes on gasoline. Other families spend about 2.1 percent.
#17 In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance. Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance.
#18 According to one survey, 77 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time.
#19 Millions of working poor families in America end up taking on debt in a desperate attempt to stay afloat, but before too long they find themselves in a debt trap that they can never escape. According to a recent article in the New York Times, the average debt burden for U.S. households that earn $20,000 a year or less “more than doubled to $26,000 between 2001 and 2010“.
#20 In 1989, the debt to income ratio of the average American family was about 58 percent. Today it is up to 154 percent.
#21 According to the Economic Policy Institute, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans households on average have 288 times the amount of wealth that the average middle class American family does.
#22 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined.
#23 According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined.
#24 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.
#25 Sadly, the bottom 60 percent of all Americans own just 2.3 percent of all the financial wealth in the United States.
#26 The average CEO now makes approximately 350 times as much as the average American worker makes.
#27 Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at an all-time high. Meanwhile, wages as a percentage of GDP are near an all-time low.
#28 Today, 40 percent of all Americans have $500 or less in savings.
#29 The number of families in the United States living on 2 dollars a day or less more than doubled between 1996 and 2011.
#30 The number of Americans on food stamps has grown from 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 million today.
#31 Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.
#32 More than one out of every four children in the United States is enrolled in the food stamp program.
#33 Incredibly, a higher percentage of children is living in poverty in America today than was the case back in 1975.
#34 If you can believe it, the federal government hands out money to 128 million Americans every single month.
#35 Federal spending on welfare has reached nearly a trillion dollars a year, and it is being projected that it will increase by another 80 percent over the next decade.
View full post on The Economic Collapse
How Cash for Clunkers Hurt Both the Poor and Small Business People
I am a big fan of used cars generally. I just can’t bring myself to buy a new one given the immediate depreciation which occurs once I wave goodbye to the salesman. It’s just too painful for me. I prefer to buy my cars used.
The secondary market is also important for those who can’t afford a new car. Given that 2013 autos average over $25,000, that’s true for a good number of American families. The total amount paid of course, depending on the interest rate, is in the end a whole lot more than $25K too. The used car market is a key (but often overlooked) part of the economy, and a vital resource for millions of people.
Cash for Clunkers decimated this market because it took many functioning (and paid for) older cars off the road, while at the same time it encouraged people to take on heaps of debt in the midst of the worst recession in 70 years.
Sadly this brilliant scheme didn’t work so well and many people who bought new cars could not actually afford them. To boot, the good used vehicles which remained in the market rose significantly in cost. Many Americans found themselves with a repo man in their driveway and suddenly priced out of a once affordable market.
I suppose if people wait it out enough repossessions will hit the street eventually that used car prices will again edge down. But it sure seems like a lot of pain to get nowhere, and way too much time on the bus.
(From TriCities.com)
First, the program destroyed approximately 750,000 working vehicles. They were crushed and sold for scrap metal, primarily to China. This created a severe shortage of affordable, reliable cars for folks like my customers who cannot afford newer, expensive cars. For independent dealers like me, the availability of used cars to resell diminished drastically, while prices skyrocketed.
The post How Cash for Clunkers Hurt Both the Poor and Small Business People appeared first on AgainstCronyCapitalism.org.
View full post on AgainstCronyCapitalism.org