Category Archives: poverty
▶ Remarks by Senator Warren on Citigroup and its bailout provision – YouTube
Published on Dec 12, 2014
Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke on the floor of the Senate on Dec. 12, 2014 about the provision that Citigroup added to the omnibus budget package.
America in Decline. Prepare Yourself Accordingly – Stefan Molyneux interviews Gerald Celente
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBV5-wxXNhw
Published on Dec 9, 2014
Many economists have discussed the impending economic collapse of the United States for years – but why hasn’t it happened yet? Were they wrong – or is there something else going on? Stefan Molyneux and Gerald Celente discuss the dangers of the current economic system, who’s really running the show, the disastrous military blow-back and the impact of never-ending war on a worldwide stage.
Gerald Celente is the Publisher of the Trends Journal. For more information on Mr. Celente and Trends Journal go to: http://www.TrendsJournal.com
via America in Decline. Prepare Yourself Accordingly. – YouTube.
28% of Men and 40% of Women – Stefan Molyneux
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPD3mw2QUKs&feature=player_detailpage
What is currently impacting approximately four out of ten Americans – or 92 million people?
28% of men, 40% of women and 39% of youth simply don’t want a job.
Over ninety-two million Americans age sixteen and older are no longer participating in the labor force – meaning they’re not currently employed or actively searching for work. This is the highest amount of individuals opting out of employment in thirty-six years.
Approximately one out of every six American men in their prime working years – 25 to 54 years old – does not have a job.
Only 47% of working-age Americans have full-time jobs.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for latino Americans is 142% that of white Americans. The unemployment rate for black americans is 215% that of white Americans. The black unemployment rate hasn’t been this high in over five years. Asian Americans are 17% more likely to be employed than white Americans.
The unemployment rate for those over twenty years old is 13% higher for women than it is for men.
The last few years are the only back-to-back years on record when the number of Americans taking food stamps has outnumbered the amount of women working full-time year-round.
Over seven million Americans are employed as involuntary part-time workers due to their hours being cut, or simply being unable to find full time employment.
Approximately one out of every four involuntary part-time workers is living below the poverty line.
One out of every ten jobs is filled by a temp agency.
According to a recent survey, 60 percent of unemployed Americans claim that looking for work has been harder than expected – while 47 percent of unemployed Americans have “completely given up” looking for a job.
36 percent of Americans have not saved a dime for retirement including 69% of all 18-29 year olds and 14% of people 65 and older. What is going to happen to them?
An astonishing 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. 22% of the people surveyed had savings of less than $100 to cover a possible emergency, while 46% had less than $800. What happens to these people if and when that emergency happens?
Over half of all working Americans make less than $30,000 a year – and almost a quarter shockingly make seventy-four hundred dollars or less per year.
In February 2014, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that only 32.9 percent of youths aged 16 to 19 were working or actively looking for a job; this is the lowest record since the bureau started tracking the data in 1948.
Compared to the general population, 18 to 29 year olds are twice as likely to be unemployed.
Unemployment rates for recent college graduates increased by about 160% between 2008 and 2010. Young people without a high school diploma had 33% unemployment in 2010.
37 percent of college graduates are in jobs requiring a high-school diploma or less. Over two million college graduates with at least a bachelor’s degree level education are working in retail sales, as cashiers, waiters/waitresses, as stock clerks or – as janitors.
Of the twenty fastest growing occupations in America, only four require a Bachelor’s degree or better, while ten don’t even require a high school diploma.
Half of all college graduates – two years out of school – are still financially dependent on their parents. 16% of those surveyed reporting living on their own as unimportant to them.
Median household income, when adjusted for inflation, is approximately $53,000, which is about 7% lower than it was in 2000.
The number of foreign-born individuals holding jobs in the United States has hit a recorded high of 24,639,000.
Charity builds ‘Lego houses’ to tackle UK rent crisis – YouTube
One of the UK’s leading housing charities has come up with a novel way to beat London’s housing crisis, in the form of ‘Lego-style’ housing.
Haas&Hahn: How painting can transform communities – TED Talk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCXfJVCg1LA
Artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn create community art by painting entire neighborhoods, and involving those who live there — from the favelas of Rio to the streets of North Philadelphia. What’s made their projects succeed? In this funny and inspiring talk, the artists explain their art-first approach — and the importance of a neighborhood barbecue.
The Election In 1 ‘Uncomfortably Divided’ Nation Chart | Zero Hedge
via The Election In 1 ‘Uncomfortably Divided’ Nation Chart | Zero Hedge.
… As Bloomberg’s Richard Breslow noted this morning,U.S. midterm elections yday turned out pretty much like the polls suggested; I was a little surprised to see how many stories led with economy and how many exit polls said that — it may have been the economy, but it’s not that it’s doing particularly poorly. If anything, the numbers are doing ok, it’s that people felt the distribution of the “ok” had got the balance out of whack, that neither party was listening to Main Street, aka, the citizenry.
Democrats had the bad misfortune of being the Ins, and the Ins got thrown out. This really was a wakeup call for the establishment writ large, not particularly a poke at the Democrats other than more is expected from them.
Having said that, elections have consequences, so we’re in for an interesting period; I did read one portfolio manager in Europe saying this would be good for the economy, decision making would pick up. I don’t see it – I think you just have an electorate that felt deserted by the people they thought would protect them, and Washington became synonymous with Wall St. Helps explain a lot of more populous frustrations globally.
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via The Election In 1 ‘Uncomfortably Divided’ Nation Chart | Zero Hedge.
The Economy Is So “Strong” It Just Cost Obama The Senate | Zero Hedge
via The Economy Is So “Strong” It Just Cost Obama The Senate | Zero Hedge.
…
While we enjoy the humor that someone will dare to touch the goose that lays the golden market, we wish to make a small correction: it’s not two words. It’s three: “get to work.” Because after a few days, when the excitement and the drama wears off, the people will once again realize they have been fooled, the only winners are Wall Street, the wealthy and their political marionettes in D.C. As for everyone else, well there is 2016, and then 2018, and so on… because the lie must go on.
via The Economy Is So “Strong” It Just Cost Obama The Senate | Zero Hedge.
Adair Turner: The Consequences of Money-Manager Capitalism – INET Economics
In the wake of World War II, much of the western world, particularly the United States, adopted a new form of capitalism called “managerial welfare-state capitalism.”
The system by design constrained financial institutions with significant social welfare reforms and large oligopolistic corporations that financed investment primarily out of retained earnings. Private sector debt was small, but government debt left over from financing the War was large, providing safe assets for households, firms, and banks. The structure of this system was financially robust and unlikely to generate a deep recession. However, the constraints within the system didn’t hold.
The relative stability of the first few decades after WWII encouraged ever-greater risk-taking, and over time the financial system was transformed into our modern overly financialized economy. Today, the dominant financial players are “managed money”—lightly regulated “shadow banks” like pension funds, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, and university endowments—with huge pools of capital in search of the highest returns. In turn, innovations by financial engineers have encouraged the growth of private debt relative to income and the increased reliance on volatile short-term finance and massive uses of leverage.
What are the implications of this financialization on the modern global economy? According to Adair Lord Turner, a Senior Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking and a former head of the United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority, it means that finance has become central to the daily operations of the economic system. More precisely, the private nonfinancial sectors of the economy have become more dependent on the smooth functioning of the financial sector in order to maintain the liquidity and solvency of their balance sheets and to improve and maintain their economic welfare. For example, households have increased their use of debt to fund education, healthcare, housing, transportation, and leisure. And at the same time, they have become more dependent on interest, dividends, and capital gains as a means to maintain and improve their standard of living.
Another major consequence of financialized economies is that they typically generate repeated financial bubbles and major debt overhangs, the aftermath of which tends to exacerbate inequality and retard economic growth. Booms turn to busts, distressed sellers sell their assets to the beneficiaries of the previous bubble, and income inequality expands.
In the view of Lord Turner, we have yet to come up with a sufficiently robust policy response to deal with the consequences of our new “money manager capitalism.” The upshot likely will be years more of economic stagnation and deteriorating living standards for many people around the world.
Millionaire Politicians: Trading Influence for Cash – YouTube
The poverty rate in the United States has risen by about 33% since the year 2000, while the income gap between the top 1 percent earners and the rest has widened by 17 percent for the same period. How have those socioeconomic changes affected America’s politicians?
As it turns out, for the first time in history, more than 50 percent of U.S. Congress members are millionaires.
Furthermore, the median net worth in 2012 for all 535 members of Congress in office was a little over $1 million. The value of all their combined assets, minus liabilities, was about $4 billion, and many of them are in the nation’s top 1 percent richest people.
The top 25 wealthiest senators and representatives each have an estimated net worth of more than $35 million, with the richest – Darrell Issa (R-Calif) – topping the list with nearly half a billion dollars.
U.S. lawmakers earn a base annual salary of $174,000, not counting benefits, and many of them invest in Wall Street.
In 2012, the 10 most popular stock investments for members of Congress included the technological giant General Electric (1st), the bank Wells Fargo (2nd), Bank of America (6th), and JPMorgan Chase (7th).
Do politicians use their privileged position to engage in insider trading? As University of Chicago Professor Luigi Zingales points out, “Not only can members of Congress legally trade on confidential information; they do, despite the potential cost to their reputations.”
A 2004 study published in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis revealed that U.S. senators trading in stocks beat the market by 12 percent a year. “Since even the best hedge-fund managers find it hard to achieve comparable results, we must conclude that these senators either are better than hedge-fund managers, or that they benefit from privileged information,” writes Zingales. U.S. congressmen and their staffers also collect privileged information and sell it to hedge-fund managers for millions of dollars.
Peter Schweizer, the President of the Government Accountability Institute, wrote in his 2011 book Throw Them All Out: “Insider trading is illegal on Wall Street, yet it is routine among members of Congress. Normal individuals cannot get in on IPOs at the asking price, but politicians do so routinely. The Obama administration has been able to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to its supporters, ensuring yet more campaign donations. An entire class of investors now makes all of its profits based on influence and access in Washington.”
Sources:
https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/pover…
http://topincomes.g-mond.parisschoolo…
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/us/…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01…
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2014…
http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds../ove…
http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds../ove…
http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.c…
http://www.walkerd.people.cofc.edu/40…
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepav…
http://www.amazon.com/Throw-Them-All-…
Millionaire Politicians: Trading Influence for Cash – YouTube.