one person, one vote

One person, one vote.  So just when does the "one vote" over rule
thousands of opposing votes?  The answer is, Super Person!  Super
Person can jump higher than the Space Needle and never needs a
telephone booth in which to change clothes.
Here's a couple of articles that demonstrate the might of corporate
Person-hood.
Cordially,
Carl Jarvis
*****

Bottled water is packaged for shipment at the Nestlé Water bottling
plant in Stanwood, Mich.

Steven M. Herppich /AFP/Getty Images

In a much-watched case, a Michigan agency has approved Nestlé's plan
to boost the amount of water it takes from the state. The request
attracted a record
number of public comments — with 80,945 against and 75 in favor.

Nestlé's request to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality
to pump 576,000 gallons of water each day from the White Pine Springs
well in the
Great Lakes Basin was "highly controversial," member station
Michigan Radio reports.
But despite deep public opposition, the agency concluded that the
company's plan met with legal standards.

"It is very clear this permit decision is of great interest to not
only residents in the surrounding counties, but to Michiganders across
the state as
well," MDEQ Director C. Heidi Grether said in approving the permit.

"In full transparency, the majority of the public comments were in
opposition of the permit," Grether added, "but most of them related to
issues of public
policy which are not, and should not be, part of an administrative
permit decision."

Under the plan, Nestlé will be approved to pump up to 400 gallons of
water per minute from the well, rather than the 250 gallons per minute
it had been
extracting. The company first applied for the new permit in July 2016.
"The state says Nestlé has to complete a monitoring plan and submit it
to the DEQ for approval," MR reports of the
58-page final memo
 from the Michigan agency.

Water is a complicated and sore subject in many areas, but in few
places more so than in Michigan, where a crisis has raged for years
over
high levels of lead
 and other dangerous heavy metals in the water in Flint. And back in
2014, Detroit resorted to
shutting off water
 to thousands of customers as it fought bankruptcy.

With that recent history as a backdrop, Nestlé's plan to boost the
amount of water it takes from the Great Lakes State drew attention and
added another
dimension to a debate over whether water should be seen as a
commodity, a commercial product — or a human right.

Nestlé's well is in western Michigan, near the town of Evart, as
Michigan Radio's Lindsey Smith reported on
The Environment Report podcast.
The company bottles the water for sale under its Ice Mountain label.

To get through the massive and unprecedented public response for
comment, Smith said, the state's environmental quality department
created categories of
responses, after reading several thousand of them. The resulting
themes dealt with a range of ideas, from the potential environmental
damage of the water
plan to calls for a public vote on the increase.

"The interesting thing to me," Smith said, "was the top three themes —
by far — are: [one,] corporate greed versus people and the
environment; two, water
is not for profit; and three, worries about privatizing water."

Smith added, "about 40,000 people wrote about each of those concerns."

Even with those comments taken into consideration, the Michigan agency
was still bound to make its final determination on the legal merits of
Nestlé's
request.

"And that's the end of it," the agency's source water supervisor, Matt
Gamble, told Smith last month. "We don't have the power to say no
arbitrarily. We
can't just say no for reasons that aren't attached to the law."

The agency can't say no, Smith added, "even if the vast majority of
the public wants them to."

*******

Protests continue over Nestle pumping and sale of ground water
By
Marc Montgomery
 |
27 November, 2017 ,

Permit expired, but pumping continues

People in and around the west-central Wellington County in Ontario
held a protest this weekend at the controversial Nestle wellsite of
the Middlebrook
Rd. property in Central Wellington, near Guelph.

The site had been sought by the county for its own needs and put in an
anonymous bid for the property, but Nestle which operates other
extraction sites
in the area, had a previous conditional offer on the property and when
learning of the bid, exercised its right of first refusal and
purchased the Middlebrook
property.

group start A large group marched to the Middlebrook well site in
Central Wellington, Ontario, to demand the province not issue a permit
for commercial
water bottling, and that it be bought back from Nestle and given to
the community for their water needs.  ©  Wellinton Water Watchers
A large group marched to the Middlebrook well site to demand the site
never be used for commercial water bottling, and that it be bought
back from Nestle
and given to the community for their water needs.
group end

The group of citizens, environmentalists, farmers and others has long
been concerned about commercial extraction of vast quantities of
acquifer water by
commercial operations in the province..

The vast amount of water is extracted for pittance amounts of permit
fees, and then bottled and sold in plastic containers that usually end
up as waste
littering the landscape, lakes, and oceans.

group start Protest posters on the gates of Nestle's contested
purchase of a well property in Middlebrook.  ©
saveourwater.ca
Protest posters on the gates of Nestle's newly purchased well property
group end

Previously the fee was a mere $3.71 per million litres of groundwater.
Strong public protests resulted in the provincial government putting a
temporary
moratorium on new or expanded permits and raised the fee to $503.71,
per million litres, which most people still consider to be far too
low.  Most groups
in fact would like such commercial extractions stopped altogether.

There are currently nine expired contracts with seven extraction
companies in the province, which are still in operation and which can
extract up to 7.6
million litres per day, although the Ontario environment ministry says
they only pumped about half that amount.

One billion litres extracted on expired permits.

Nestle alone can pump some 4.7 million litres out of Ontario
acquifers, every day.

Today the Nestlé operation will bottle its one billionth litre of
water since the permit for the Aberfoyle well expired last year on
July 31st , 2016.
 Another well permit in Erin, expired on August 31 of this year.
Various concerned groups say the government is allowing continued
extraction even though the permits are expired.

The government says it is giving the companies time, up to 18 months
to amend their renewal applications in order to be compliant with new
rules.

The Canadian Bottled Water Association says they're being unfairly
targeted as they only take 0.2 per cent of all groundwater.

Meanwhile Nestlé is coming under fire for something called "bluewashing".

In October, Nestlé announced it was planning to certify 20 factories
with the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) in Africa, Asia, Canada,
Europe, Latin
America, and the United States.
"It's outrageous and laughable that Nestlé is claiming that its water
bottling is sustainable," says Maude Barlow, Honorary Chairperson of
the Council
of Canadians. "Nestlé is not only a member but also a founding partner
of the Alliance for Water Stewardship, which Nestlé is seeking
'certification' from.
Certifying Nestle makes the whole AWS scheme essentially meaningless.
I think communities around the world will see right through Nestlé's
blue-washing:.
 sources
Water Association

Re: [blind-democracy] Re: [blind-democracy] RE: [blind-democracy] Liberals’ furor against Trump fuels voice of the ‘war party’

If we want to see what goes on in the "veddy, veddy Exclusive, and
veddy veddy private club, after all the Flunkies have been patted on
the head and sent home, all we need do is to watch "The Donald".
Donald Trump is the first president among a number of Ruling Class Men
in the White House, to bring the rough and tumble backroom brawling
into the public limelight.
The Empire's Ruling Class is one big dysfunctional family. And Donald
Trump may be one of the most dysfunctional members of this noble clan.
He certainly is not a team player.
Other members of the Ruling Class to sit in the Oval Office, in my
lifetime, were George Bush, Big Daddy George Bush, John Kennedy, and
FDR. I'm not certain of Jimmy Carter, but if he is a member he's only
small potatoes...uh...peanuts.
Obama, Clinton, Reagan, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Eisenhower and Truman
were all Pawns of the Ruling Class. They were well paid Lackeys for
jobs well done.
Because there many divisions among the Ruling Class, members do become
involved in the day to day politic. Some accept appointed posts such
as Ambassadors or agency heads or even sitting on the Supreme Court.
But for the most part they stay in the background and hire "frontmen"
to do their bidding. And, in many cases, they actually marry from
among the Lackey Ranks. But one thing is for certain, these bully
boys may turn on one another, but when their Rule is challenged, they
become one mighty fist.

Carl Jarvis

On 7/24/18, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@freelists.org> wrote:
> I think the Militant's position on the attacks on Trump is that they are
> red herrings. That is, whoever the ruling class allows to be president
> is going to look after the interests of the ruling class and the rest of
> us should be concentrating on other issues like getting rid of the
> ruling class altogether. I tend to agree. After all, what if Trump is
> impeached and removed from office? Would Pence be any better? I don't
> think so. We would have to oppose him and his policies too. I will
> admit, though, that some of these articles that try to make that point
> have come perilously close to defending Trump and that makes me a bit
> uncomfortable. This article started out the same, but by the second half
> of it I think it was explaining what Trump really is all about. On my
> own part, though, I will say that Trump is a bit different from other
> presidents in that in this case rather than the ruling class installing
> one of their flunkies to administer the bourgeois state a member of the
> ruling class has decided to dabble in administering the bourgeois state
> himself. Another president may represent one or more factions of the
> ruling class, but when the president is a member of the ruling class
> himself he is more likely to represent only one faction and Trump may be
> a faction of his own. If this causes a rift in the ruling class then it
> could offer opportunities for the working class to take advantage of.
> The trouble is that if the rift becomes big enough then I suppose you
> can guess who will be forced to fight their civil war.
>
>
> On 7/24/2018 7:58 AM, Bob Hachey wrote:
>> Hi Roger,
>> Interesting read here.
>> While I do believe that Russia did attempt to influence elections here and
>> still are trying, I agree that it is more important for Putin and Trump to
>> deal with other issues like Syria and nuclear stockpiles on both sides.
>> Trump ought to be working on all three issues here.
>> I did think the post was too easy on Trump. Do you really think that Trump
>> wants peace? IF so, then why is he advocating for yet more military
>> spending? In his campaign, he rightly complained about how we ought to
>> throttle back on bases around the world.
>> Trump keeps claiming that all investigations against him and his campaigns
>> are witch hunts. IF that is so, then he should be willing to release his
>> tax returns. The fact that he will not informs me that he has something to
>> hide.
>> I am no fan of our military, FBI or CIA, but I'll also not take the side
>> of a dictator like Putin. For a guy who claims to be tough, he really did
>> look like Putin's poodle in Helsinki.
>> Bob Hachey
>>
>>
>
>
>

Re: [acb-chat] Welcome to the United States of Inequality.

i only tipped a access a ride river when he helped me into the co op where my friend lives in riverdale the bronx, he went out of the way for me, yea i give to a lot at ccristmas and chanakah, and birthdays too. its my nature, not much but thoughts there, i dont tip all, well thats me,

On Monday, July 23, 2018, 9:54:36 AM EDT, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@gmail.com> wrote:

Helen,

In my opinion tipping is not the problem.  If you believe that you

have received special attention above and beyond that which you

expected, then by all means add a few dollars to your bill.  But I

wonder if anyone has tipped their doctor lately?  Do we tip our

Landlord when the broken pipes are promptly repaired?  Do we offer the

transit driver a dollar for arriving at our bus stop a fraction early?

Do we arrive at Parent Teacher Night with an envelope containing a

tip for doing such a fine job of teaching our child?

So it seems that we are selective as to whom we tip.

And to make matters worse, those we tip most often are the waitstaff

in restaurants, or Cabbies and hotel staff.  Business owners are quick

to seize upon this opportunity to cut overhead.  They encourage

tipping, even to the point of including 18% or more on our bill.  But

instead of our tip thanking a particular person for their service, we

are underwriting their salary...as well as the salaries of the entire

staff, whether deserving or not.  We pay for the meal, which includes

labor costs along with food costs and all other overhead, and then we

pay extra toward the employee's wages.

Next time you go to the bank and draw out a few dollars...or pay a

bill, slip a dollar to the Teller and thank her/him for the good

service.  When you find that the grocery checker is moving folks

along, slip her/him a couple of bucks and thank him/her for the good

service.

And, since Cathy and I are contract employees of the State,  you might

do me the favor of writing the State of Washington and asking them to

allow employees the opportunity of accepting tips.  State Law makes it

a serious violation.  Convicted of receiving gratuities from clients

will end up with the state employee being fired.

And yet, many times my wife and I serve a new client who has been

deeply depressed, and as we take our leave they grab up their wallet

or purse and demand that we accept a token of their gratitude.  We

explain that we are not allowed to accept such offerings, no matter

how well deserved they might be(smile), but they can show their

appreciation with a contribution to the Talking Book and Braille

Library.

Well, full disclosure forces me to admit that I have eaten chocolate

chip cookies, when offered.

Carl Jarvis

On 7/22/18, Helen Murphy <murphyhm123@yahoo.com> wrote:

>  I REMEMBER ONE WOMAN SAYING ON FACE BOOK, TIPPING SUCKS, I WROTE BACK, IT

> IS SO VERY DESERVING TO TIP, THEY EARNED IT, NO ONE DOES NOTHING FOR

> NOTHING, I AS A RULE GIVE BIG TIPS FOR GOOD SERVICE, ITS THE RIGHT THING TO

> DO HERE, THOSE ARE THE VERY ONES WHO CRY IF ITS LATE, IM WELL KNOWN AT MY

> SUPERMARKET AS A EXCELLENT TIPPER, AND I ALWAYS HAVE WATER IN A BOTTLE OR

> THEM, THE GUYS FROM GRISTEDES ARE ACES, LOVE THAT STORE, THEY ARE A ASSET TO

> MY AREA, IT READS MEGA STORE THEY ARENT LIEING, NEVER RUNS OUT OF STUFF,

> STOCKED WELL, POOR LEFTY LEFT BUT WE HAVE A EXCELLENT MANAGER MANNY, I

> ALWAYS SAY, TIP THE DRUGEST THE SUPER MARKET , THE DELI , I HAVE A PURSE

> MARKED TIPS ONLY, DO ONCE A MONTH SHOPPING, I DO JUST THAT, I NOT ONLY PLAY

> ODDS WITH THE WEATHER, I SAVE MONEY, MY FRIENDS ALL SAY NOW HELEN LEAVE SOME

> ITEMS FOR THE STORE,  IF I HAD MORE MONEY I WOULD GET THE WALL ST JOURNAL

> AND THE NY TIMES, MY FAVORITES BUT MY INCOME IS LOW INCOME, I LOVE ALL

> MAGAZINES THE ATLANTIC , READERS DIGEST, CONSUMER REPORTS, I JUST LOVE TO

> READ, TO READ IS THE TOOL TO KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWLEDGE IS SUCCESS , HAVE A

> GREAT DAY I SURE AM IN MY NICE COOL END APT, FACING THE FRONT, THANKS TO A

> FOND COUPLE IN AL CUTOLO AND PAULA DERTOUZOS THEY TOLD ME ABOUT IT, THEY ARE

> SUCH A WONDERFUL PAIR, THEY WILL HURT NO ONE, IF WE HAD 100 OF PAULAS AND

> ALS LIVING HERE IT WOULD BE A 100 % PEACEFUL BLDG, I HAPPEN TO LIKE THEM

> BOTH VERY MUCH SO, THEY ARE VERY PLEASANT TO TALK TO HERE AND THERE, THEY

> HELP EACH OTHER OUT,  ME IM IN THE FRONT HALL WITH SECURITY,  IN MY LOBBY, I

> LOVE MY END APT MANAGEMENT AND MY END APT,  THANKS TO PAULA AND AL I SLEEP

> PEACEFULLY,  8 HOURS STRAIGHT, PAULA AND AL HAVE BEEN ULTRA GOOD TO ME AND

> STILL ARE, AGAIN HAVE A NICE DAY IM IN MY APT NOW PEACEFULLY AT MY COMPUTER,

> NOW BACK TO READING FACE BOOK. GOOD THING ITS HERE IT STOPS CRIME, WHEN EVER

> THERE IS SOME ONE WANTED THEY POST IT AND THEY ARE CAUGHT , WE ALL MAKE IT

> GO VIRAL ITS THE RIGHT THING TO DO, ITS OUR CIVIC DUTY, AND BOY AM I SO VERY

> PROUD OF MY NEPHEW WHO IS CAPTAIN OF A UP TOWN PCT, IM VERY PRO NYPD I THINK

> THEY ARE DOING GREAT WORK ALONG WITH PATRIC LYNCH THEIR PRESIDENT AND MIKE

> PALADINO  WE ALL HAD A FEW DRINKS TOGETHER AT A BIG NYPD PARTY ,  WE ALL

> GOT TOGETHER AND JUST HAD FUN WHAT SWELL GUYS THE NYPD,

>

>    On Sunday, July 22, 2018, 10:36:59 AM EDT, Carl Jarvis via acb-chat

> <acb-chat@acblists.org> wrote:

>

>  Almost too many statistics to follow, but the bottom line is that the

> Empire is in serious trouble.  And as the American Empire goes, so

> goes most of our basic security.  This government was established to

> care for its people...the White, Male, Landholders 21 years of age and

> older.  It has done its job, but now is rushing to the brink of self

> destruction.  It's past time when the Working Class has a major voice

> in its own future.

>

> Carl Jarvis

> *******

>

> National (In)Security in the United States of Inequality

> from Rajan Menon / TomDispatch

>

> So effectively has the Beltway establishment captured the concept of

> national security that, for most of us, it automatically conjures up images

> of terrorist groups, cyber warriors, or "rogue states."  To ward off such

> foes, the United States maintains a historically unprecedented

> constellation

> of military bases abroad and, since 9/11, has waged wars in Afghanistan,

> Iraq, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere that have gobbled up nearly $4.8

> trillion.

> The 2018 Pentagon budget already totals $647 billion - four times what

> China, second in global military spending, shells out and more than the

> next

> 12 countries combined, seven of them American allies.  For good measure,

> Donald Trump has added an additional $200 billion to projected defense

> expenditures through 2019.

>

> Yet to hear the hawks tell it, the United States has never been less

> secure.

> So much for bang for the buck.

>

> For millions of Americans, however, the greatest threat to their day-to-day

> security isn't terrorism or North Korea, Iran, Russia, or China.  It's

> internal - and economic.  That's particularly true for the 12.7% of

> Americans (43.1 million of them) classified as poor by the government's

> criteria: an income below $12,140 for a one-person household, $16,460 for a

> family of two, and so on. until you get to the princely sum of $42,380 for

> a

> family of eight.

>

> Savings aren't much help either: a third of Americans have no savings at

> all

> and another third have less than $1,000 in the bank.  Little wonder that

> families struggling to cover the cost of food alone increased from 11% (36

> million) in 2007 to 14% (48 million) in 2014.

>

> The Working Poor

>

> Unemployment can certainly contribute to being poor, but millions of

> Americans endure poverty when they have full-time jobs or even hold down

> more than one job.  The latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

> show that there are 8.6 million "working poor," defined by the government

> as

> people who live below the poverty line despite being employed at least 27

> weeks a year.  Their economic insecurity doesn't register in our society,

> partly because working and being poor don't seem to go together in the

> minds

> of many Americans - and unemployment has fallen reasonably steadily.  After

> approaching 10% in 2009, it's now at only 4%.

>

> Help from the government?  Bill Clinton's 1996 welfare "reform" program,

> concocted in partnership with congressional Republicans, imposed time

> limits

> on government assistance, while tightening eligibility criteria for it. So,

> as Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer show in their disturbing book, $2.00 a

> Day:

> Living on Almost Nothing in America, many who desperately need help don't

> even bother to apply.  And things will only get worse in the age of Trump.

> His 2019 budget includes deep cuts in a raft of anti-poverty programs.

>

> Anyone seeking a visceral sense of the hardships such Americans endure

> should read Barbara Ehrenreich's 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not)

> Getting By in America.  It's a gripping account of what she learned when,

> posing as a "homemaker" with no special skills, she worked for two years in

> various low-wage jobs, relying solely on her earnings to support herself.

> The book brims with stories about people who had jobs but, out of

> necessity,

> slept in rent-by-the-week fleabag motels, flophouses, or even in their

> cars,

> subsisting on vending machine snacks for lunch, hot dogs and instant

> noodles

> for dinner, and forgoing basic dental care or health checkups.  Those who

> managed to get permanent housing would choose poor, low-rent neighborhoods

> close to work because they often couldn't afford a car.  To maintain even

> such a barebones lifestyle, many worked more than one job.

>

> Though politicians prattle on about how times have changed for the better,

> Ehrenreich's book still provides a remarkably accurate picture of America's

> working poor.  Over the past decade the proportion of people who exhausted

> their monthly paychecks just to pay for life's essentials actually

> increased

> from 31% to 38%.  In 2013, 71% of the families that had children and used

> food pantries run by Feeding America, the largest private organization

> helping the hungry, included at least one person who had worked during the

> previous year.  And in America's big cities, chiefly because of a widening

> gap between rent and wages, thousands of working poor remain homeless,

> sleeping in shelters, on the streets, or in their vehicles, sometimes along

> with their families.  In New York City, no outlier when it comes to

> homelessness among the working poor, in a third of the families with

> children that use homeless shelters at least one adult held a job.

>

> The Wages of Poverty

>

> The working poor cluster in certain occupations.  They are salespeople in

> retail stores, servers or preparers of fast food, custodial staff, hotel

> workers, and caregivers for children or the elderly.  Many make less than

> $10 an hour and lack any leverage, union or otherwise, to press for raises.

> In fact, the percentage of unionized workers in such jobs remains in the

> single digits - and in retail and food preparation, it's under 4.5%.

> That's

> hardly surprising, given that private sector union membership has fallen by

> 50% since 1983 to only 6.7% of the workforce.

>

> Low-wage employers like it that way and - Walmart being the poster child

> for

> this - work diligently to make it ever harder for employees to join unions.

> As a result, they rarely find themselves under any real pressure to

> increase

> wages, which, adjusted for inflation, have stood still or even decreased

> since the late 1970s. When employment is "at-will," workers may be fired or

> the terms of their work amended on the whim of a company and without the

> slightest explanation. Walmart announced this year that it would hike its

> hourly wage to $11 and that's welcome news.  But this had nothing to do

> with

> collective bargaining; it was a response to the drop in the unemployment

> rate, cash flows from the Trump tax cut for corporations (which saved

> Walmart as much as $2 billion), an increase in minimum wages in a number of

> states, and pay increases by an arch competitor, Target.  It was also

> accompanied by the shutdown of 63 of Walmart's Sam's Club stores, which

> meant layoffs for 10,000 workers.  In short, the balance of power almost

> always favors the employer, seldom the employee.

>

> As a result, though the United States has a per-capita income of $59,500

> and

> is among the wealthiest countries in the world, 12.7% of Americans (that's

> 43.1 million people), officially are impoverished. And that'sgenerally

> considered a significant undercount.  The Census Bureau establishes the

> poverty rate by figuring out an annual no-frills family food budget,

> multiplying it by three, adjusting it for household size, and pegging it to

> the Consumer Price Index.  That, many economists believe, is a woefully

> inadequate way of estimating poverty.  Food prices haven't risen

> dramatically over the past 20 years, but the cost of other necessities like

> medical care (especially if you lack insurance) and housing have: 10.5% and

> 11.8% respectively between 2013 and 2017 compared to an only 5.5% increase

> for food.

>

> Include housing and medical expenses in the equation and you get the

> Supplementary Poverty Measure (SPM), published by the Census Bureau since

> 2011.  It reveals that a larger number of Americans are poor: 14% or 45

> million in 2016.

>

> Dismal Data

>

> For a fuller picture of American (in)security, however, it's necessary

> todelve deeper into the relevant data, starting with hourly wages, which

> are

> the way more than 58% of adult workers are paid.  The good news: only 1.8

> million, or 2.3% of them, subsist at or below minimum wage.  The

> not-so-good

> news: one-third of all workers earn less than $12 an hour and 42%earn less

> than $15.  That's $24,960 and $31,200 a year. Imagine raising a family on

> such incomes, figuring in the cost of food, rent, childcare, car payments

> (since a car is often a necessity simply to get to a job in a country with

> inadequate public transportation), and medical costs.

>

> The problem facing the working poor isn't just low wages, but the widening

> gap between wages and rising prices. The government has increased the

> hourly

> federal minimum wage more than 20 times since it was set at 25 cents under

> the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.  Between 2007 and 2009 it rose to $7.25,

> but over the past decade that sum lost nearly 10% of its purchasing power

> to

> inflation, which means that, in 2018, someone would have to work 41

> additional days to make the equivalent of the 2009 minimum wage.

>

> Workers in the lowest 20% have lost the most ground, their

> inflation-adjusted wages falling by nearly 1% between 1979 and 2016,

> compared to a 24.7% increase for the top 20%.  This can't be explained by

> lackluster productivity since, between 1985 and 2015, it outstripped pay

> raises, often substantially, in every economic sector except mining.

>

> Yes, states can mandate higher minimum wages and 29 have, but 21 have not,

> leaving many low-wage workers struggling to cover the costs of two

> essentials in particular: health care and housing.

>

> Even when it comes to jobs that offer health insurance, employers have been

> shifting ever more of its cost onto their workers through higher

> deductibles

> and out-of-pocket expenses, as well as by requiring them to cover more of

> the premiums.  The percentage of workers who paid at least 10% of their

> earnings to cover such costs - not counting premiums - doubled between 2003

> and 2014.

>

> This helps explain why, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only

> 11% of workers in the bottom 10% of wage earners even enrolled in workplace

> healthcare plans in 2016 (compared to 72% in the top 10%). As a restaurant

> server who makes $2.13 an hour before tips - and whose husband earns $9 an

> hour at Walmart - put it, after paying the rent, "it's either put food in

> the house or buy insurance."

>

> The Affordable Care Act, or ACA (aka Obamacare), provided subsidies to help

> people with low incomes cover the cost of insurance premiums, but workers

> with employer-supplied healthcare, no matter how low their wages, weren't

> covered by it.  Now, of course, President Trump, congressional Republicans,

> and a Supreme Court in which right-wing justices are going to be even more

> influential will be intent on poleaxing the ACA.

>

> It's housing, though, that takes the biggest bite out of the paychecks of

> low-wage workers.  The majority of them are renters.  Ownership remains for

> many a pipe dream.  According to a Harvard study, between 2001 and 2016,

> renters who made $30,000-$50,000 a year and paid more than a third of their

> earnings to landlords (the threshold for qualifying as "rent burdened")

> increased from 37% to 50%.  For those making only $15,000, that figure rose

> to 83%.

>

> In other words, in an ever more unequal America, the number of low-income

> workers struggling to pay their rent has surged.  As the Harvard analysis

> shows, this is, in part, because the number of affluent renters (with

> incomes of $100,000 or more) has leaped and, in city after city, they're

> driving the demand for, and building of, new rental units.  As a result,

> the

> high-end share of new rental construction soared from a third to nearly

> two-thirds of all units between 2001 and 2016.  Not surprisingly, new

> low-income rental units dropped from two-fifths to one-fifth of the total

> and, as the pressure on renters rose, so did rents for even those modest

> dwellings. On top of that, in places like New York City, where demand from

> the wealthy shapes the housing market, landlords have found ways - some

> within the law, others not - to get rid of low-income tenants.

>

> Public housing and housing vouchers are supposed to make housing affordable

> to low-income households, but the supply of public housing hasn't remotely

> matched demand. Consequently, waiting lists are long and people in need

> languish for years before getting a shot - if they ever do.  Only a quarter

> of those who qualify for such assistance receives it.  As for those

> vouchers, getting them is hard to begin with because of the massive

> mismatch

> between available funding for the program and the demand for the help it

> provides.  And then come the other challenges: finding landlords willing to

> accept vouchers or rentals that are reasonably close to work and not in

> neighborhoods euphemistically labeled "distressed."

>

> The bottom line: more than 75% of "at-risk" renters (those for whom the

> cost

> of rent exceeds 30% or more of their earnings) do not receive assistance

> from the government.  The real "risk" for them is becoming homeless, which

> means relying on shelters or family and friends willing to take them in.

>

> President Trump's proposed budget cuts will make life even harder for

> low-income workers seeking affordable housing.  His 2019 budget proposal

> slashes $6.8 billion (14.2%) from the resources of the Department of

> Housing

> and Urban Development's (HUD) by, among other things, scrapping housing

> vouchers and assistance to low-income families struggling to pay heating

> bills.  The president also seeks to slash funds for the upkeep of public

> housing by nearly 50%.  In addition, the deficits that his rich-come-first

> tax "reform" bill is virtually guaranteed to produce will undoubtedly set

> the stage for yet more cuts in the future.  In other words, in what's

> becoming the United States of Inequality, the very phrases "low-income

> workers" and "affordable housing" have ceased to go together.

>

> None of this seems to have troubled HUD Secretary Ben Carson who happily

> ordered a $31,000 dining room set for his office suite at the taxpayers'

> expense, even as he visited new public housing units to make sure that they

> weren't too comfortable (lest the poor settle in for long stays).  Carson

> has declared that it's time to stop believing the problems of this society

> can be fixed merely by having the government throw extra money at them -

> unless, apparently, the dining room accouterments of superbureaucrats

> aren't

> up to snuff.

>

> Money Talks

>

> The levels of poverty and economic inequality that prevail in America are

> not intrinsic to either capitalism or globalization. Most other wealthy

> market economies in the 36-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and

> Development (OECD) have done far better than the United States in reducing

> them without sacrificing innovation or creating government-run economies.

>

> Take the poverty gap, which the OECD defines as the difference between a

> country's official poverty line and the average income of those who fall

> below it.  The United States has the second largest poverty gap among

> wealthy countries; only Italy does worse.

>

> Child poverty?  In the World Economic Forum's ranking of 41 countries -

> from

> best to worst - the U.S. placed 35th.  Child poverty has declined in the

> United States since 2010, but a Columbia University report estimates that

> 19% of American kids (13.7 million) nevertheless lived in families with

> incomes below the official poverty line in 2016.  If you add in the number

> of kids in low-income households, that number increases to 41%.

>

> As for infant mortality, according to the government's own Centers for

> Disease Control, the U.S., with 6.1 deaths per 1,000 live births, has the

> absolute worst record among wealthy countries. (Finland and Japan do best

> with 2.3.)

>

> And when it comes to the distribution of wealth, among the OECD countries

> only Turkey, Chile, and Mexico do worse than the U.S.

>

> It's time to rethink the American national security state with its annual

> trillion-dollar budget.  For tens of millions of Americans, the source of

> deep workaday insecurity isn't the standard roster of foreign enemies, but

> an ever-more entrenched system of inequality, still growing, that stacks

> the

> political deck against the least well-off Americans.  They lack the bucks

> to

> hire big-time lobbyists.  They can't write lavish checks to candidates

> running for public office or fund PACs.  They have no way of manipulating

> the myriad influence-generating networks that the elite uses to shape

> taxation and spending policies.  They are up against a system in which

> money

> truly does talk - and that's the voice they don't have.  Rajan Menon /

> TomDispatch

> _______________________________________________

> acb-chat mailing list

> acb-chat@acblists.org

> http://www.acblists.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-chat

>

>

Re: [acb-chat] Welcome to the United States of Inequality.

Helen,
In my opinion tipping is not the problem. If you believe that you
have received special attention above and beyond that which you
expected, then by all means add a few dollars to your bill. But I
wonder if anyone has tipped their doctor lately? Do we tip our
Landlord when the broken pipes are promptly repaired? Do we offer the
transit driver a dollar for arriving at our bus stop a fraction early?
Do we arrive at Parent Teacher Night with an envelope containing a
tip for doing such a fine job of teaching our child?
So it seems that we are selective as to whom we tip.
And to make matters worse, those we tip most often are the waitstaff
in restaurants, or Cabbies and hotel staff. Business owners are quick
to seize upon this opportunity to cut overhead. They encourage
tipping, even to the point of including 18% or more on our bill. But
instead of our tip thanking a particular person for their service, we
are underwriting their salary...as well as the salaries of the entire
staff, whether deserving or not. We pay for the meal, which includes
labor costs along with food costs and all other overhead, and then we
pay extra toward the employee's wages.
Next time you go to the bank and draw out a few dollars...or pay a
bill, slip a dollar to the Teller and thank her/him for the good
service. When you find that the grocery checker is moving folks
along, slip her/him a couple of bucks and thank him/her for the good
service.
And, since Cathy and I are contract employees of the State, you might
do me the favor of writing the State of Washington and asking them to
allow employees the opportunity of accepting tips. State Law makes it
a serious violation. Convicted of receiving gratuities from clients
will end up with the state employee being fired.
And yet, many times my wife and I serve a new client who has been
deeply depressed, and as we take our leave they grab up their wallet
or purse and demand that we accept a token of their gratitude. We
explain that we are not allowed to accept such offerings, no matter
how well deserved they might be(smile), but they can show their
appreciation with a contribution to the Talking Book and Braille
Library.
Well, full disclosure forces me to admit that I have eaten chocolate
chip cookies, when offered.

Carl Jarvis

On 7/22/18, Helen Murphy <murphyhm123@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I REMEMBER ONE WOMAN SAYING ON FACE BOOK, TIPPING SUCKS, I WROTE BACK, IT
> IS SO VERY DESERVING TO TIP, THEY EARNED IT, NO ONE DOES NOTHING FOR
> NOTHING, I AS A RULE GIVE BIG TIPS FOR GOOD SERVICE, ITS THE RIGHT THING TO
> DO HERE, THOSE ARE THE VERY ONES WHO CRY IF ITS LATE, IM WELL KNOWN AT MY
> SUPERMARKET AS A EXCELLENT TIPPER, AND I ALWAYS HAVE WATER IN A BOTTLE OR
> THEM, THE GUYS FROM GRISTEDES ARE ACES, LOVE THAT STORE, THEY ARE A ASSET TO
> MY AREA, IT READS MEGA STORE THEY ARENT LIEING, NEVER RUNS OUT OF STUFF,
> STOCKED WELL, POOR LEFTY LEFT BUT WE HAVE A EXCELLENT MANAGER MANNY, I
> ALWAYS SAY, TIP THE DRUGEST THE SUPER MARKET , THE DELI , I HAVE A PURSE
> MARKED TIPS ONLY, DO ONCE A MONTH SHOPPING, I DO JUST THAT, I NOT ONLY PLAY
> ODDS WITH THE WEATHER, I SAVE MONEY, MY FRIENDS ALL SAY NOW HELEN LEAVE SOME
> ITEMS FOR THE STORE, IF I HAD MORE MONEY I WOULD GET THE WALL ST JOURNAL
> AND THE NY TIMES, MY FAVORITES BUT MY INCOME IS LOW INCOME, I LOVE ALL
> MAGAZINES THE ATLANTIC , READERS DIGEST, CONSUMER REPORTS, I JUST LOVE TO
> READ, TO READ IS THE TOOL TO KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWLEDGE IS SUCCESS , HAVE A
> GREAT DAY I SURE AM IN MY NICE COOL END APT, FACING THE FRONT, THANKS TO A
> FOND COUPLE IN AL CUTOLO AND PAULA DERTOUZOS THEY TOLD ME ABOUT IT, THEY ARE
> SUCH A WONDERFUL PAIR, THEY WILL HURT NO ONE, IF WE HAD 100 OF PAULAS AND
> ALS LIVING HERE IT WOULD BE A 100 % PEACEFUL BLDG, I HAPPEN TO LIKE THEM
> BOTH VERY MUCH SO, THEY ARE VERY PLEASANT TO TALK TO HERE AND THERE, THEY
> HELP EACH OTHER OUT, ME IM IN THE FRONT HALL WITH SECURITY, IN MY LOBBY, I
> LOVE MY END APT MANAGEMENT AND MY END APT, THANKS TO PAULA AND AL I SLEEP
> PEACEFULLY, 8 HOURS STRAIGHT, PAULA AND AL HAVE BEEN ULTRA GOOD TO ME AND
> STILL ARE, AGAIN HAVE A NICE DAY IM IN MY APT NOW PEACEFULLY AT MY COMPUTER,
> NOW BACK TO READING FACE BOOK. GOOD THING ITS HERE IT STOPS CRIME, WHEN EVER
> THERE IS SOME ONE WANTED THEY POST IT AND THEY ARE CAUGHT , WE ALL MAKE IT
> GO VIRAL ITS THE RIGHT THING TO DO, ITS OUR CIVIC DUTY, AND BOY AM I SO VERY
> PROUD OF MY NEPHEW WHO IS CAPTAIN OF A UP TOWN PCT, IM VERY PRO NYPD I THINK
> THEY ARE DOING GREAT WORK ALONG WITH PATRIC LYNCH THEIR PRESIDENT AND MIKE
> PALADINO WE ALL HAD A FEW DRINKS TOGETHER AT A BIG NYPD PARTY , WE ALL
> GOT TOGETHER AND JUST HAD FUN WHAT SWELL GUYS THE NYPD,
>
> On Sunday, July 22, 2018, 10:36:59 AM EDT, Carl Jarvis via acb-chat
> <acb-chat@acblists.org> wrote:
>
> Almost too many statistics to follow, but the bottom line is that the
> Empire is in serious trouble. And as the American Empire goes, so
> goes most of our basic security. This government was established to
> care for its people...the White, Male, Landholders 21 years of age and
> older. It has done its job, but now is rushing to the brink of self
> destruction. It's past time when the Working Class has a major voice
> in its own future.
>
> Carl Jarvis
> *******
>
> National (In)Security in the United States of Inequality
> from Rajan Menon / TomDispatch
>
> So effectively has the Beltway establishment captured the concept of
> national security that, for most of us, it automatically conjures up images
> of terrorist groups, cyber warriors, or "rogue states." To ward off such
> foes, the United States maintains a historically unprecedented
> constellation
> of military bases abroad and, since 9/11, has waged wars in Afghanistan,
> Iraq, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere that have gobbled up nearly $4.8
> trillion.
> The 2018 Pentagon budget already totals $647 billion - four times what
> China, second in global military spending, shells out and more than the
> next
> 12 countries combined, seven of them American allies. For good measure,
> Donald Trump has added an additional $200 billion to projected defense
> expenditures through 2019.
>
> Yet to hear the hawks tell it, the United States has never been less
> secure.
> So much for bang for the buck.
>
> For millions of Americans, however, the greatest threat to their day-to-day
> security isn't terrorism or North Korea, Iran, Russia, or China. It's
> internal - and economic. That's particularly true for the 12.7% of
> Americans (43.1 million of them) classified as poor by the government's
> criteria: an income below $12,140 for a one-person household, $16,460 for a
> family of two, and so on. until you get to the princely sum of $42,380 for
> a
> family of eight.
>
> Savings aren't much help either: a third of Americans have no savings at
> all
> and another third have less than $1,000 in the bank. Little wonder that
> families struggling to cover the cost of food alone increased from 11% (36
> million) in 2007 to 14% (48 million) in 2014.
>
> The Working Poor
>
> Unemployment can certainly contribute to being poor, but millions of
> Americans endure poverty when they have full-time jobs or even hold down
> more than one job. The latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics
> show that there are 8.6 million "working poor," defined by the government
> as
> people who live below the poverty line despite being employed at least 27
> weeks a year. Their economic insecurity doesn't register in our society,
> partly because working and being poor don't seem to go together in the
> minds
> of many Americans - and unemployment has fallen reasonably steadily. After
> approaching 10% in 2009, it's now at only 4%.
>
> Help from the government? Bill Clinton's 1996 welfare "reform" program,
> concocted in partnership with congressional Republicans, imposed time
> limits
> on government assistance, while tightening eligibility criteria for it. So,
> as Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer show in their disturbing book, $2.00 a
> Day:
> Living on Almost Nothing in America, many who desperately need help don't
> even bother to apply. And things will only get worse in the age of Trump.
> His 2019 budget includes deep cuts in a raft of anti-poverty programs.
>
> Anyone seeking a visceral sense of the hardships such Americans endure
> should read Barbara Ehrenreich's 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not)
> Getting By in America. It's a gripping account of what she learned when,
> posing as a "homemaker" with no special skills, she worked for two years in
> various low-wage jobs, relying solely on her earnings to support herself.
> The book brims with stories about people who had jobs but, out of
> necessity,
> slept in rent-by-the-week fleabag motels, flophouses, or even in their
> cars,
> subsisting on vending machine snacks for lunch, hot dogs and instant
> noodles
> for dinner, and forgoing basic dental care or health checkups. Those who
> managed to get permanent housing would choose poor, low-rent neighborhoods
> close to work because they often couldn't afford a car. To maintain even
> such a barebones lifestyle, many worked more than one job.
>
> Though politicians prattle on about how times have changed for the better,
> Ehrenreich's book still provides a remarkably accurate picture of America's
> working poor. Over the past decade the proportion of people who exhausted
> their monthly paychecks just to pay for life's essentials actually
> increased
> from 31% to 38%. In 2013, 71% of the families that had children and used
> food pantries run by Feeding America, the largest private organization
> helping the hungry, included at least one person who had worked during the
> previous year. And in America's big cities, chiefly because of a widening
> gap between rent and wages, thousands of working poor remain homeless,
> sleeping in shelters, on the streets, or in their vehicles, sometimes along
> with their families. In New York City, no outlier when it comes to
> homelessness among the working poor, in a third of the families with
> children that use homeless shelters at least one adult held a job.
>
> The Wages of Poverty
>
> The working poor cluster in certain occupations. They are salespeople in
> retail stores, servers or preparers of fast food, custodial staff, hotel
> workers, and caregivers for children or the elderly. Many make less than
> $10 an hour and lack any leverage, union or otherwise, to press for raises.
> In fact, the percentage of unionized workers in such jobs remains in the
> single digits - and in retail and food preparation, it's under 4.5%.
> That's
> hardly surprising, given that private sector union membership has fallen by
> 50% since 1983 to only 6.7% of the workforce.
>
> Low-wage employers like it that way and - Walmart being the poster child
> for
> this - work diligently to make it ever harder for employees to join unions.
> As a result, they rarely find themselves under any real pressure to
> increase
> wages, which, adjusted for inflation, have stood still or even decreased
> since the late 1970s. When employment is "at-will," workers may be fired or
> the terms of their work amended on the whim of a company and without the
> slightest explanation. Walmart announced this year that it would hike its
> hourly wage to $11 and that's welcome news. But this had nothing to do
> with
> collective bargaining; it was a response to the drop in the unemployment
> rate, cash flows from the Trump tax cut for corporations (which saved
> Walmart as much as $2 billion), an increase in minimum wages in a number of
> states, and pay increases by an arch competitor, Target. It was also
> accompanied by the shutdown of 63 of Walmart's Sam's Club stores, which
> meant layoffs for 10,000 workers. In short, the balance of power almost
> always favors the employer, seldom the employee.
>
> As a result, though the United States has a per-capita income of $59,500
> and
> is among the wealthiest countries in the world, 12.7% of Americans (that's
> 43.1 million people), officially are impoverished. And that'sgenerally
> considered a significant undercount. The Census Bureau establishes the
> poverty rate by figuring out an annual no-frills family food budget,
> multiplying it by three, adjusting it for household size, and pegging it to
> the Consumer Price Index. That, many economists believe, is a woefully
> inadequate way of estimating poverty. Food prices haven't risen
> dramatically over the past 20 years, but the cost of other necessities like
> medical care (especially if you lack insurance) and housing have: 10.5% and
> 11.8% respectively between 2013 and 2017 compared to an only 5.5% increase
> for food.
>
> Include housing and medical expenses in the equation and you get the
> Supplementary Poverty Measure (SPM), published by the Census Bureau since
> 2011. It reveals that a larger number of Americans are poor: 14% or 45
> million in 2016.
>
> Dismal Data
>
> For a fuller picture of American (in)security, however, it's necessary
> todelve deeper into the relevant data, starting with hourly wages, which
> are
> the way more than 58% of adult workers are paid. The good news: only 1.8
> million, or 2.3% of them, subsist at or below minimum wage. The
> not-so-good
> news: one-third of all workers earn less than $12 an hour and 42%earn less
> than $15. That's $24,960 and $31,200 a year. Imagine raising a family on
> such incomes, figuring in the cost of food, rent, childcare, car payments
> (since a car is often a necessity simply to get to a job in a country with
> inadequate public transportation), and medical costs.
>
> The problem facing the working poor isn't just low wages, but the widening
> gap between wages and rising prices. The government has increased the
> hourly
> federal minimum wage more than 20 times since it was set at 25 cents under
> the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. Between 2007 and 2009 it rose to $7.25,
> but over the past decade that sum lost nearly 10% of its purchasing power
> to
> inflation, which means that, in 2018, someone would have to work 41
> additional days to make the equivalent of the 2009 minimum wage.
>
> Workers in the lowest 20% have lost the most ground, their
> inflation-adjusted wages falling by nearly 1% between 1979 and 2016,
> compared to a 24.7% increase for the top 20%. This can't be explained by
> lackluster productivity since, between 1985 and 2015, it outstripped pay
> raises, often substantially, in every economic sector except mining.
>
> Yes, states can mandate higher minimum wages and 29 have, but 21 have not,
> leaving many low-wage workers struggling to cover the costs of two
> essentials in particular: health care and housing.
>
> Even when it comes to jobs that offer health insurance, employers have been
> shifting ever more of its cost onto their workers through higher
> deductibles
> and out-of-pocket expenses, as well as by requiring them to cover more of
> the premiums. The percentage of workers who paid at least 10% of their
> earnings to cover such costs - not counting premiums - doubled between 2003
> and 2014.
>
> This helps explain why, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only
> 11% of workers in the bottom 10% of wage earners even enrolled in workplace
> healthcare plans in 2016 (compared to 72% in the top 10%). As a restaurant
> server who makes $2.13 an hour before tips - and whose husband earns $9 an
> hour at Walmart - put it, after paying the rent, "it's either put food in
> the house or buy insurance."
>
> The Affordable Care Act, or ACA (aka Obamacare), provided subsidies to help
> people with low incomes cover the cost of insurance premiums, but workers
> with employer-supplied healthcare, no matter how low their wages, weren't
> covered by it. Now, of course, President Trump, congressional Republicans,
> and a Supreme Court in which right-wing justices are going to be even more
> influential will be intent on poleaxing the ACA.
>
> It's housing, though, that takes the biggest bite out of the paychecks of
> low-wage workers. The majority of them are renters. Ownership remains for
> many a pipe dream. According to a Harvard study, between 2001 and 2016,
> renters who made $30,000-$50,000 a year and paid more than a third of their
> earnings to landlords (the threshold for qualifying as "rent burdened")
> increased from 37% to 50%. For those making only $15,000, that figure rose
> to 83%.
>
> In other words, in an ever more unequal America, the number of low-income
> workers struggling to pay their rent has surged. As the Harvard analysis
> shows, this is, in part, because the number of affluent renters (with
> incomes of $100,000 or more) has leaped and, in city after city, they're
> driving the demand for, and building of, new rental units. As a result,
> the
> high-end share of new rental construction soared from a third to nearly
> two-thirds of all units between 2001 and 2016. Not surprisingly, new
> low-income rental units dropped from two-fifths to one-fifth of the total
> and, as the pressure on renters rose, so did rents for even those modest
> dwellings. On top of that, in places like New York City, where demand from
> the wealthy shapes the housing market, landlords have found ways - some
> within the law, others not - to get rid of low-income tenants.
>
> Public housing and housing vouchers are supposed to make housing affordable
> to low-income households, but the supply of public housing hasn't remotely
> matched demand. Consequently, waiting lists are long and people in need
> languish for years before getting a shot - if they ever do. Only a quarter
> of those who qualify for such assistance receives it. As for those
> vouchers, getting them is hard to begin with because of the massive
> mismatch
> between available funding for the program and the demand for the help it
> provides. And then come the other challenges: finding landlords willing to
> accept vouchers or rentals that are reasonably close to work and not in
> neighborhoods euphemistically labeled "distressed."
>
> The bottom line: more than 75% of "at-risk" renters (those for whom the
> cost
> of rent exceeds 30% or more of their earnings) do not receive assistance
> from the government. The real "risk" for them is becoming homeless, which
> means relying on shelters or family and friends willing to take them in.
>
> President Trump's proposed budget cuts will make life even harder for
> low-income workers seeking affordable housing. His 2019 budget proposal
> slashes $6.8 billion (14.2%) from the resources of the Department of
> Housing
> and Urban Development's (HUD) by, among other things, scrapping housing
> vouchers and assistance to low-income families struggling to pay heating
> bills. The president also seeks to slash funds for the upkeep of public
> housing by nearly 50%. In addition, the deficits that his rich-come-first
> tax "reform" bill is virtually guaranteed to produce will undoubtedly set
> the stage for yet more cuts in the future. In other words, in what's
> becoming the United States of Inequality, the very phrases "low-income
> workers" and "affordable housing" have ceased to go together.
>
> None of this seems to have troubled HUD Secretary Ben Carson who happily
> ordered a $31,000 dining room set for his office suite at the taxpayers'
> expense, even as he visited new public housing units to make sure that they
> weren't too comfortable (lest the poor settle in for long stays). Carson
> has declared that it's time to stop believing the problems of this society
> can be fixed merely by having the government throw extra money at them -
> unless, apparently, the dining room accouterments of superbureaucrats
> aren't
> up to snuff.
>
> Money Talks
>
> The levels of poverty and economic inequality that prevail in America are
> not intrinsic to either capitalism or globalization. Most other wealthy
> market economies in the 36-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and
> Development (OECD) have done far better than the United States in reducing
> them without sacrificing innovation or creating government-run economies.
>
> Take the poverty gap, which the OECD defines as the difference between a
> country's official poverty line and the average income of those who fall
> below it. The United States has the second largest poverty gap among
> wealthy countries; only Italy does worse.
>
> Child poverty? In the World Economic Forum's ranking of 41 countries -
> from
> best to worst - the U.S. placed 35th. Child poverty has declined in the
> United States since 2010, but a Columbia University report estimates that
> 19% of American kids (13.7 million) nevertheless lived in families with
> incomes below the official poverty line in 2016. If you add in the number
> of kids in low-income households, that number increases to 41%.
>
> As for infant mortality, according to the government's own Centers for
> Disease Control, the U.S., with 6.1 deaths per 1,000 live births, has the
> absolute worst record among wealthy countries. (Finland and Japan do best
> with 2.3.)
>
> And when it comes to the distribution of wealth, among the OECD countries
> only Turkey, Chile, and Mexico do worse than the U.S.
>
> It's time to rethink the American national security state with its annual
> trillion-dollar budget. For tens of millions of Americans, the source of
> deep workaday insecurity isn't the standard roster of foreign enemies, but
> an ever-more entrenched system of inequality, still growing, that stacks
> the
> political deck against the least well-off Americans. They lack the bucks
> to
> hire big-time lobbyists. They can't write lavish checks to candidates
> running for public office or fund PACs. They have no way of manipulating
> the myriad influence-generating networks that the elite uses to shape
> taxation and spending policies. They are up against a system in which
> money
> truly does talk - and that's the voice they don't have. Rajan Menon /
> TomDispatch
> _______________________________________________
> acb-chat mailing list
> acb-chat@acblists.org
> http://www.acblists.org/mailman/listinfo/acb-chat
>
>

Re: [acb-chat] Welcome to the United States of Inequality.

I REMEMBER ONE WOMAN SAYING ON FACE BOOK, TIPPING SUCKS, I WROTE BACK, IT IS SO VERY DESERVING TO TIP, THEY EARNED IT, NO ONE DOES NOTHING FOR NOTHING, I AS A RULE GIVE BIG TIPS FOR GOOD SERVICE, ITS THE RIGHT THING TO DO HERE, THOSE ARE THE VERY ONES WHO CRY IF ITS LATE, IM WELL KNOWN AT MY SUPERMARKET AS A EXCELLENT TIPPER, AND I ALWAYS HAVE WATER IN A BOTTLE OR THEM, THE GUYS FROM GRISTEDES ARE ACES, LOVE THAT STORE, THEY ARE A ASSET TO MY AREA, IT READS MEGA STORE THEY ARENT LIEING, NEVER RUNS OUT OF STUFF, STOCKED WELL, POOR LEFTY LEFT BUT WE HAVE A EXCELLENT MANAGER MANNY, I ALWAYS SAY, TIP THE DRUGEST THE SUPER MARKET , THE DELI , I HAVE A PURSE MARKED TIPS ONLY, DO ONCE A MONTH SHOPPING, I DO JUST THAT, I NOT ONLY PLAY ODDS WITH THE WEATHER, I SAVE MONEY, MY FRIENDS ALL SAY NOW HELEN LEAVE SOME ITEMS FOR THE STORE,  IF I HAD MORE MONEY I WOULD GET THE WALL ST JOURNAL AND THE NY TIMES, MY FAVORITES BUT MY INCOME IS LOW INCOME, I LOVE ALL MAGAZINES THE ATLANTIC , READERS DIGEST, CONSUMER REPORTS, I JUST LOVE TO READ, TO READ IS THE TOOL TO KNOWLEDGE AND KNOWLEDGE IS SUCCESS , HAVE A GREAT DAY I SURE AM IN MY NICE COOL END APT, FACING THE FRONT, THANKS TO A FOND COUPLE IN AL CUTOLO AND PAULA DERTOUZOS THEY TOLD ME ABOUT IT, THEY ARE SUCH A WONDERFUL PAIR, THEY WILL HURT NO ONE, IF WE HAD 100 OF PAULAS AND ALS LIVING HERE IT WOULD BE A 100 % PEACEFUL BLDG, I HAPPEN TO LIKE THEM BOTH VERY MUCH SO, THEY ARE VERY PLEASANT TO TALK TO HERE AND THERE, THEY HELP EACH OTHER OUT,  ME IM IN THE FRONT HALL WITH SECURITY,  IN MY LOBBY, I LOVE MY END APT MANAGEMENT AND MY END APT,  THANKS TO PAULA AND AL I SLEEP PEACEFULLY,  8 HOURS STRAIGHT, PAULA AND AL HAVE BEEN ULTRA GOOD TO ME AND STILL ARE, AGAIN HAVE A NICE DAY IM IN MY APT NOW PEACEFULLY AT MY COMPUTER, NOW BACK TO READING FACE BOOK. GOOD THING ITS HERE IT STOPS CRIME, WHEN EVER THERE IS SOME ONE WANTED THEY POST IT AND THEY ARE CAUGHT , WE ALL MAKE IT GO VIRAL ITS THE RIGHT THING TO DO, ITS OUR CIVIC DUTY, AND BOY AM I SO VERY PROUD OF MY NEPHEW WHO IS CAPTAIN OF A UP TOWN PCT, IM VERY PRO NYPD I THINK THEY ARE DOING GREAT WORK ALONG WITH PATRIC LYNCH THEIR PRESIDENT AND MIKE PALADINO  WE ALL HAD A FEW DRINKS TOGETHER AT A BIG NYPD PARTY ,   WE ALL GOT TOGETHER AND JUST HAD FUN WHAT SWELL GUYS THE NYPD,

On Sunday, July 22, 2018, 10:36:59 AM EDT, Carl Jarvis via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org> wrote:

Almost too many statistics to follow, but the bottom line is that the

Empire is in serious trouble.  And as the American Empire goes, so

goes most of our basic security.  This government was established to

care for its people...the White, Male, Landholders 21 years of age and

older.  It has done its job, but now is rushing to the brink of self

destruction.  It's past time when the Working Class has a major voice

in its own future.

Carl Jarvis

*******

National (In)Security in the United States of Inequality

from Rajan Menon / TomDispatch

So effectively has the Beltway establishment captured the concept of

national security that, for most of us, it automatically conjures up images

of terrorist groups, cyber warriors, or "rogue states."  To ward off such

foes, the United States maintains a historically unprecedented constellation

of military bases abroad and, since 9/11, has waged wars in Afghanistan,

Iraq, Syria, Libya, and elsewhere that have gobbled up nearly $4.8 trillion.

The 2018 Pentagon budget already totals $647 billion - four times what

China, second in global military spending, shells out and more than the next

12 countries combined, seven of them American allies.   For good measure,

Donald Trump has added an additional $200 billion to projected defense

expenditures through 2019.

Yet to hear the hawks tell it, the United States has never been less secure.

So much for bang for the buck.

For millions of Americans, however, the greatest threat to their day-to-day

security isn't terrorism or North Korea, Iran, Russia, or China.  It's

internal - and economic.  That's particularly true for the 12.7% of

Americans (43.1 million of them) classified as poor by the government's

criteria: an income below $12,140 for a one-person household, $16,460 for a

family of two, and so on. until you get to the princely sum of $42,380 for a

family of eight.

Savings aren't much help either: a third of Americans have no savings at all

and another third have less than $1,000 in the bank.  Little wonder that

families struggling to cover the cost of food alone increased from 11% (36

million) in 2007 to 14% (48 million) in 2014.

The Working Poor

Unemployment can certainly contribute to being poor, but millions of

Americans endure poverty when they have full-time jobs or even hold down

more than one job.  The latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics

show that there are 8.6 million "working poor," defined by the government as

people who live below the poverty line despite being employed at least 27

weeks a year.  Their economic insecurity doesn't register in our society,

partly because working and being poor don't seem to go together in the minds

of many Americans - and unemployment has fallen reasonably steadily.  After

approaching 10% in 2009, it's now at only 4%.

Help from the government?  Bill Clinton's 1996 welfare "reform" program,

concocted in partnership with congressional Republicans, imposed time limits

on government assistance, while tightening eligibility criteria for it. So,

as Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer show in their disturbing book, $2.00 a Day:

Living on Almost Nothing in America, many who desperately need help don't

even bother to apply.  And things will only get worse in the age of Trump.

His 2019 budget includes deep cuts in a raft of anti-poverty programs.

Anyone seeking a visceral sense of the hardships such Americans endure

should read Barbara Ehrenreich's 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not)

Getting By in America.  It's a gripping account of what she learned when,

posing as a "homemaker" with no special skills, she worked for two years in

various low-wage jobs, relying solely on her earnings to support herself.

The book brims with stories about people who had jobs but, out of necessity,

slept in rent-by-the-week fleabag motels, flophouses, or even in their cars,

subsisting on vending machine snacks for lunch, hot dogs and instant noodles

for dinner, and forgoing basic dental care or health checkups.  Those who

managed to get permanent housing would choose poor, low-rent neighborhoods

close to work because they often couldn't afford a car.  To maintain even

such a barebones lifestyle, many worked more than one job.

Though politicians prattle on about how times have changed for the better,

Ehrenreich's book still provides a remarkably accurate picture of America's

working poor.  Over the past decade the proportion of people who exhausted

their monthly paychecks just to pay for life's essentials actually increased

from 31% to 38%.  In 2013, 71% of the families that had children and used

food pantries run by Feeding America, the largest private organization

helping the hungry, included at least one person who had worked during the

previous year.  And in America's big cities, chiefly because of a widening

gap between rent and wages, thousands of working poor remain homeless,

sleeping in shelters, on the streets, or in their vehicles, sometimes along

with their families.  In New York City, no outlier when it comes to

homelessness among the working poor, in a third of the families with

children that use homeless shelters at least one adult held a job.

The Wages of Poverty

The working poor cluster in certain occupations.  They are salespeople in

retail stores, servers or preparers of fast food, custodial staff, hotel

workers, and caregivers for children or the elderly.  Many make less than

$10 an hour and lack any leverage, union or otherwise, to press for raises.

In fact, the percentage of unionized workers in such jobs remains in the

single digits - and in retail and food preparation, it's under 4.5%.  That's

hardly surprising, given that private sector union membership has fallen by

50% since 1983 to only 6.7% of the workforce.

Low-wage employers like it that way and - Walmart being the poster child for

this - work diligently to make it ever harder for employees to join unions.

As a result, they rarely find themselves under any real pressure to increase

wages, which, adjusted for inflation, have stood still or even decreased

since the late 1970s. When employment is "at-will," workers may be fired or

the terms of their work amended on the whim of a company and without the

slightest explanation. Walmart announced this year that it would hike its

hourly wage to $11 and that's welcome news.  But this had nothing to do with

collective bargaining; it was a response to the drop in the unemployment

rate, cash flows from the Trump tax cut for corporations (which saved

Walmart as much as $2 billion), an increase in minimum wages in a number of

states, and pay increases by an arch competitor, Target.  It was also

accompanied by the shutdown of 63 of Walmart's Sam's Club stores, which

meant layoffs for 10,000 workers.  In short, the balance of power almost

always favors the employer, seldom the employee.

As a result, though the United States has a per-capita income of $59,500 and

is among the wealthiest countries in the world, 12.7% of Americans (that's

43.1 million people), officially are impoverished. And that'sgenerally

considered a significant undercount.  The Census Bureau establishes the

poverty rate by figuring out an annual no-frills family food budget,

multiplying it by three, adjusting it for household size, and pegging it to

the Consumer Price Index.  That, many economists believe, is a woefully

inadequate way of estimating poverty.  Food prices haven't risen

dramatically over the past 20 years, but the cost of other necessities like

medical care (especially if you lack insurance) and housing have: 10.5% and

11.8% respectively between 2013 and 2017 compared to an only 5.5% increase

for food.

Include housing and medical expenses in the equation and you get the

Supplementary Poverty Measure (SPM), published by the Census Bureau since

2011.  It reveals that a larger number of Americans are poor: 14% or 45

million in 2016.

Dismal Data

For a fuller picture of American (in)security, however, it's necessary

todelve deeper into the relevant data, starting with hourly wages, which are

the way more than 58% of adult workers are paid.  The good news: only 1.8

million, or 2.3% of them, subsist at or below minimum wage.  The not-so-good

news: one-third of all workers earn less than $12 an hour and 42%earn less

than $15.  That's $24,960 and $31,200 a year. Imagine raising a family on

such incomes, figuring in the cost of food, rent, childcare, car payments

(since a car is often a necessity simply to get to a job in a country with

inadequate public transportation), and medical costs.

The problem facing the working poor isn't just low wages, but the widening

gap between wages and rising prices. The government has increased the hourly

federal minimum wage more than 20 times since it was set at 25 cents under

the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act.  Between 2007 and 2009 it rose to $7.25,

but over the past decade that sum lost nearly 10% of its purchasing power to

inflation, which means that, in 2018, someone would have to work 41

additional days to make the equivalent of the 2009 minimum wage.

Workers in the lowest 20% have lost the most ground, their

inflation-adjusted wages falling by nearly 1% between 1979 and 2016,

compared to a 24.7% increase for the top 20%.  This can't be explained by

lackluster productivity since, between 1985 and 2015, it outstripped pay

raises, often substantially, in every economic sector except mining.

Yes, states can mandate higher minimum wages and 29 have, but 21 have not,

leaving many low-wage workers struggling to cover the costs of two

essentials in particular: health care and housing.

Even when it comes to jobs that offer health insurance, employers have been

shifting ever more of its cost onto their workers through higher deductibles

and out-of-pocket expenses, as well as by requiring them to cover more of

the premiums.  The percentage of workers who paid at least 10% of their

earnings to cover such costs - not counting premiums - doubled between 2003

and 2014.

This helps explain why, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only

11% of workers in the bottom 10% of wage earners even enrolled in workplace

healthcare plans in 2016 (compared to 72% in the top 10%). As a restaurant

server who makes $2.13 an hour before tips - and whose husband earns $9 an

hour at Walmart - put it, after paying the rent, "it's either put food in

the house or buy insurance."

The Affordable Care Act, or ACA (aka Obamacare), provided subsidies to help

people with low incomes cover the cost of insurance premiums, but workers

with employer-supplied healthcare, no matter how low their wages, weren't

covered by it.  Now, of course, President Trump, congressional Republicans,

and a Supreme Court in which right-wing justices are going to be even more

influential will be intent on poleaxing the ACA.

It's housing, though, that takes the biggest bite out of the paychecks of

low-wage workers.  The majority of them are renters.  Ownership remains for

many a pipe dream.  According to a Harvard study, between 2001 and 2016,

renters who made $30,000-$50,000 a year and paid more than a third of their

earnings to landlords (the threshold for qualifying as "rent burdened")

increased from 37% to 50%.  For those making only $15,000, that figure rose

to 83%.

In other words, in an ever more unequal America, the number of low-income

workers struggling to pay their rent has surged.  As the Harvard analysis

shows, this is, in part, because the number of affluent renters (with

incomes of $100,000 or more) has leaped and, in city after city, they're

driving the demand for, and building of, new rental units.  As a result, the

high-end share of new rental construction soared from a third to nearly

two-thirds of all units between 2001 and 2016.  Not surprisingly, new

low-income rental units dropped from two-fifths to one-fifth of the total

and, as the pressure on renters rose, so did rents for even those modest

dwellings. On top of that, in places like New York City, where demand from

the wealthy shapes the housing market, landlords have found ways - some

within the law, others not - to get rid of low-income tenants.

Public housing and housing vouchers are supposed to make housing affordable

to low-income households, but the supply of public housing hasn't remotely

matched demand. Consequently, waiting lists are long and people in need

languish for years before getting a shot - if they ever do.  Only a quarter

of those who qualify for such assistance receives it.  As for those

vouchers, getting them is hard to begin with because of the massive mismatch

between available funding for the program and the demand for the help it

provides.  And then come the other challenges: finding landlords willing to

accept vouchers or rentals that are reasonably close to work and not in

neighborhoods euphemistically labeled "distressed."

The bottom line: more than 75% of "at-risk" renters (those for whom the cost

of rent exceeds 30% or more of their earnings) do not receive assistance

from the government.  The real "risk" for them is becoming homeless, which

means relying on shelters or family and friends willing to take them in.

President Trump's proposed budget cuts will make life even harder for

low-income workers seeking affordable housing.  His 2019 budget proposal

slashes $6.8 billion (14.2%) from the resources of the Department of Housing

and Urban Development's (HUD) by, among other things, scrapping housing

vouchers and assistance to low-income families struggling to pay heating

bills.  The president also seeks to slash funds for the upkeep of public

housing by nearly 50%.  In addition, the deficits that his rich-come-first

tax "reform" bill is virtually guaranteed to produce will undoubtedly set

the stage for yet more cuts in the future.  In other words, in what's

becoming the United States of Inequality, the very phrases "low-income

workers" and "affordable housing" have ceased to go together.

None of this seems to have troubled HUD Secretary Ben Carson who happily

ordered a $31,000 dining room set for his office suite at the taxpayers'

expense, even as he visited new public housing units to make sure that they

weren't too comfortable (lest the poor settle in for long stays).  Carson

has declared that it's time to stop believing the problems of this society

can be fixed merely by having the government throw extra money at them -

unless, apparently, the dining room accouterments of superbureaucrats aren't

up to snuff.

Money Talks

The levels of poverty and economic inequality that prevail in America are

not intrinsic to either capitalism or globalization. Most other wealthy

market economies in the 36-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation and

Development (OECD) have done far better than the United States in reducing

them without sacrificing innovation or creating government-run economies.

Take the poverty gap, which the OECD defines as the difference between a

country's official poverty line and the average income of those who fall

below it.  The United States has the second largest poverty gap among

wealthy countries; only Italy does worse.

Child poverty?  In the World Economic Forum's ranking of 41 countries - from

best to worst - the U.S. placed 35th.  Child poverty has declined in the

United States since 2010, but a Columbia University report estimates that

19% of American kids (13.7 million) nevertheless lived in families with

incomes below the official poverty line in 2016.  If you add in the number

of kids in low-income households, that number increases to 41%.

As for infant mortality, according to the government's own Centers for

Disease Control, the U.S., with 6.1 deaths per 1,000 live births, has the

absolute worst record among wealthy countries. (Finland and Japan do best

with 2.3.)

And when it comes to the distribution of wealth, among the OECD countries

only Turkey, Chile, and Mexico do worse than the U.S.

It's time to rethink the American national security state with its annual

trillion-dollar budget.  For tens of millions of Americans, the source of

deep workaday insecurity isn't the standard roster of foreign enemies, but

an ever-more entrenched system of inequality, still growing, that stacks the

political deck against the least well-off Americans.  They lack the bucks to

hire big-time lobbyists.  They can't write lavish checks to candidates

running for public office or fund PACs.  They have no way of manipulating

the myriad influence-generating networks that the elite uses to shape

taxation and spending policies.  They are up against a system in which money

truly does talk - and that's the voice they don't have.  Rajan Menon /

TomDispatch

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