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
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