Why poor people stay poor: A firsthand account

[HT: GP].  My Tea Partying friends need to read this firsthand account of real life in America and try for one millisecond to get out of their own self-righteous skin and imagine the lives of America's working poor, who walk the knife edge of bankruptcy, joblessness and homelessness.

Related but unrelated... Sometimes I listen in the car to the show "Simply Money" on conservative talk radio, the running theme of which is useful and "true," as far as it goes: to have a household budget and stick to it. 

Often the hosts chastise their listeners for not setting aside an "emergency fund" of at least $20,000. And again, that's true as far as it goes, an emergency fund is definitely a good thing to have... assuming you could possibly manage, by Hurculean efforts and monastic self-denial, to earn and set aside such an amount if you're working two part-time jobs in America. Yet the real truth is that rainy day funds and savings accounts are a fantasy for most working Americans. We're all living hand to mouth.

Until conservatives and the GOP acknowledge real life in America, they will never be trusted by the majority. They may win midterm elections with low turnout in gerrymandered districts, but they won't be trusted, they won't win support except from the already comfortably converted.

Why Poor People Stay Poor

By Linda Tirado

December 5, 2014 | Slate

URL: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2014/12/linda_tirado_on_the_realities_of_living_in_bootstrap_america_daily_annoyances.html?wpsrc=fol_fb

Jimmy John's non-compete agreements are corporate BULLSHIT

Bullshit!  Non-compete agreements are a bullshit practice to begin with... but in the sandwich-making business? Gimme a break!

This is corporate heavy-handed baloney. These are at-will, hourly employees with zero job security, and yet they are pressured to sign two-year non-compete agreements with any company that might make a sandwich?!  (Probably their only career option if they get fired from Jimmy John's.) The gall of Jimmy John's just boggles the mind. 

I'm not buying any of their shityy sandwiches. You do the same, if you care about the working man.

Meanwhile, we need national laws banning non-compete agreements except in exceptional circumstances. I mean, for Christsake, if you can make a sandwich is that really top-secret company knowledge?! 

P.S. -- About a month ago I visited Jimmy John's near my house once just out of curiosity and there was a black guy at the cash register -- it doesn't matter that he was black, except that only 3.4 percent of people in my voting district are black... -- and he was leaning on a cane with a broken leg. I commiserated and asked how he was doing, we exchanged pleasantries and I wished him well, but... I worry about that guy and guys like him who have no choice but to work on broken legs just to earn minimum wage as a cashier, with all this non-compete and corporate baloney on top of it. 

UPDATE (10.22.2014): Just to be accurate and fair to individual JJ franchisees, it's up to each of them to decide to use these non-compete agreements or not. It's not clear how many JJ restaurants actually do, and if they do, for all their employees or just some. Regardless, it's a stupid corporate policy suggestion from Jimmy John's and is certainly winning them tons of negative PR and perhaps upcoming federal action. See: "Jimmy John's Noncompete Agreement Comes Under Congressional Scrutiny." 


Jimmy John's Makes Low-Wage Workers Sign 'Oppressive' Noncompete Agreements
By Dave Jamieson
October 13, 2014 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/1sIvxpS

Is Red Lobster an economic bellwether?

As you may recall, I'm a fan of Dead Lobster, (no snickering!), even though I've criticized Darden Restaurants (Red Lobster's owner) for trying in 2012 to cut back on employee hours to avoid giving them health insurance. Facing a 37 percent drop in revenue, Darden was apparently trying to scapegoat Obamacare for its restaurants' poor performance.

LZ Granderson sees ominous portents in Darden's plan announced late 2013 to spin off its 700 Red Lobster restaurants because they are losing money. He says this reflects poor and middle class families' shrinking wages and buying power. Especially black and Latino families.

My latest visit to Red Lobster was a bust: it was so busy that the wait time was one hour and 40 minutes. So my local Lobster seems to be doing OK.

At any rate, Granderson rightly laments the U.S. working class's 30-year fall from prosperity:

From November 2012 to November 2013, weekly earnings rose 1.1% while the consumer price index increased 1.2%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That small uptick may not seem like much until you factor in three years ago, wages increased 1.8%, and the CPI was up 3.5%. And that may not seem like much until you realize that almost every year since 1983, a series of small ticks like those two examples has been widening the gap between between what we earn and what we can buy.

Consider the poverty threshold.

For a family of four in 1983 it was $10,178. Adjusted for inflation, that should be $23,817.03 today. However, the actual 2013 poverty threshold is $23,492, a difference of $325.03.

When you're living check to check, that's a lot of money.

Indeed, a family of four can have a very nice meal at the Lobster for about 70-80 bucks. So $325 is about four trips to Red Lobster a year, now out of the picture. Or maybe it's money spent on something else, it doesn't really matter in macroeconomic terms. Multiply that $325 times 9.5 million poor households, and we're talking $3 billion in consumer demand sucked out of the U.S. economy. 

This is where the minimum wage, SNAP and unemployment benefits matter, because we have an economy built to serve the working poor and disappearing middle class, and if those people don't have income then businesses that cater to them will die, taking more jobs and income with them, in a vicious cycle. 

It's much easier to destroy than to create; and what's destroyed doesn't come back.

UPDATE (04.01.2014): Furthermore, Harvard economist Lawrence Katz recently estimated that the U.S. economy is losing $400 million to $1 billion every week  thanks to Republicans' decision to end long-term unemployment benefits for about 1.3 million Americans.

It hurts to lose Red Lobster, but money is tight

By LZ Granderson

January 1, 2014 | CNN

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/31/opinion/granderson-red-lobster/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7

Survey: U.S. workers suffer unprecedented anxiety

And it's all because of Obamacare and federal regulations.... Oh, and too-high taxes on corporations, can't forget that one.

Seriously though, Republicans are out of answers and Democrats are too pussy to do what's necessary, like expanding unemployment benefits, raising the minimum wage, expanding Social Security, offering real child care, etc.:

More than six in 10 workers in a recent Washington Post-Miller Center poll worry that they will lose their jobs to the economy, surpassing concerns in more than a dozen surveys dating to the 1970s. Nearly one in three, 32 percent, say they worry “a lot” about losing their jobs, also a record high, according to the joint survey, which explores Americans’ changing definition of success and their confidence in the country’s future. 

And this worry is especially strong among the working poor, aka the Little Guys:

Fifty-four percent of workers making $35,000 or less now worry “a lot” about losing their jobs, compared with 37 percent of ­lower-income workers in 1992 and an identical number in 1975, according to surveys by Time magazine, CNN and Yankelovich, a market research firm. Intense worry is far lower, 29 percent, among workers with incomes between $35,000 and $75,000, and it drops to 17 percent among those with incomes above that level.

Lower-paid workers also worry far more about making ends meet. Fully 85 percent of them fear that their families’ income will not be enough to meet expenses, up 25 points from a 1971 survey asking an identical question. Thirty-two percent say they worry all the time about meeting expenses, a number that has almost tripled since the 1970s.

And it's not even polite to talk about the health and social effects of such anxiety among the working poor, that often clouds their judgment and leads to depression. We haven't even attempted, as a society, to feel that level of empathy with our fellow Americans.

Among American workers, poll finds unprecedented anxiety about jobs, economy

By Jim Tankersley and Scott Clement

November 26, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/1evjLGj