Economic Justice

Although the conference is over, the conversation continues. Margaret Wheatley will appear in Detroit on December 10, 2011 for a forum and conversation on new forms of organization, leadership and grassroots movements. The websites www.reimaginingwork.org and www.boggscenter.org will continue to be hubs for more information. Videos of ‘ReImagining Work’ guest speakers are available at the following links: Vandana Shiva : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J78EqTTbDA&feature=youtu.be Grace Lee Boggs : http://vimeo.com/30514311

The following are 19 statistics about the poor that will absolutely astound you....

#1 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of "very poor" rose in 300 out of the 360 largest metropolitan areas during 2010.

#2 Last year, 2.6 million more Americans descended into poverty.  That was the largest increase that we have seen since the U.S. government began keeping statistics on this back in 1959.

#3 It isn't just the ranks of the "very poor" that are rising.  The number of those just considered to be "poor" is rapidly increasing as well.  Back in the year 2000, 11.3% of all Americans were living in poverty.  Today, 15.1% of all Americans are living in poverty.

#4 The poverty rate for children living in the United States increased to 22% in 2010.

#5 There are 314 counties in the United States where at least 30% of the children are facing food insecurity.

#6 In Washington D.C., the "child food insecurity rate" is 32.3%.

#7 More than 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry.

#8 One out of every six elderly Americans now lives below the federal poverty line.

#9 Today, there are over 45 million Americans on food stamps.

#10 According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly 15 percent of all Americans are now on food stamps.

#11 In 2010, 42 percent of all single mothers in the United States were on food stamps.

#12 The number of Americans on food stamps has increased 74% since 2007.

#13 We are told that the economy is recovering, but the number of Americans on food stamps has grown by another 8 percent over the past year.

#14 Right now, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#15 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.

#16 More than 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid.  Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid.  Today, approximately one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.

#17 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one government anti-poverty program.

#18 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.

#19 It is estimated that up to half a million children may currently be homeless in the United States.

Show Me the Money Day is an annual event in Michigan connecting individuals and families with community resources to help them increase income, navigate the financial mainstream, and save and build assets.

The 2012 event will begin with a statewide press conference at the Michigan State Capitol on Friday, January 27, and continue with resource fairs and free financial workshops at events held in communities across Michigan on Saturday, January 28.

Go to www.ShowMeTheMoneyDay.org to learn more!

The chart below shows income inequality in the 818 largest counties in the U.S. Use the search box to find your county by address or ZIP code.

It uses what is known as the Gini index, a statistical measure that ranges from zero, which would describe a community in which every citizen has precisely the same income, to one, which would describe the opposite extreme, in which one person receives literally all of the income.

One of the tactics the 99 Percenters are using to take back the country from the 1 percent is to move their money from big banks to credit unions, community banks, and other smaller financial unions that aren’t gambling with our nation’s future.

Now, the Credit Union National Association (CUNA) reports that a whopping 650,000 Americans have joined credit unions since Sept. 29 — the date that Bank of America announced it would start charging a $5 monthly debit fee, a move it backed down on this week.

To put that in perspective, there were only 600,000 new members for credit unions in all of 2010. “These results indicate that consumers are clearly making a smarter choice by moving to credit unions where, on average, they will save about $70 a year in fewer or no fees, lower rates on loans and higher return on savings,” said CUNA President Bill Cheney.

The latest invention from Second Life founder Philip Rosedale launches today, and it's no virtual world. Coffee & Power is an online marketplace that lets people buy and sell small jobs from each other. It's also a network of real-world co-working spaces - called "workclubs" - where users can meet to make arrangements or just stay and work.

Coffee & Power is what Rosedale calls a "meta-company," a framework for doing business with no managers or middlemen, all arranged through a website, an iPhone app and the workclub. The site, the app and the first workclub on Market Street in San Francisco all go live today after a rapidly developed beta period starting this summer. Workers of the world, take notice: this San Francisco startup wants to make each of us the boss.

A participatory action research project identified that a key area of need was for residents to have access to unskilled casual work. 

A critical review of a previous employment initiative showed that a traditional 'job creation' model that employed a number of residents as ‘workers’ for the duration of a specific program was deficient in a number of ways, including:

• It did not respond to the residents desires for casual work opportunities. The long term unemployed have usually developed survival systems and life styles that make full time employment an unattractive proposition. The potential for earning small amounts to supplement benefits is though highly desirable.

• There was no opportunity for residents to take personal responsibility for executing a work program. The majority of ‘employment programs’ result in ballooning labour costs, and the continuation of a ‘master/servant’ attitude to work.

In 2006, the World Institute on Disability (WID) put forward a variety of policy proposals to improve the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) system, aimed at ensuring that people with disabilities have the opportunity to fully participate in the workforce and be economically self-sufficient. A central proposal that came out of this project is the creation of a work support and supplemental income insurance program that would help to decrease attachment to the SSDI system and increase attachments to the workforce.

In 2010, the Center for American Progress (CAP) and The Hamilton Project (THP) jointly released a paper outlining a similar policy proposal, with key differences in approach. What follows is WID’s response to the CAP/THP paper, written with the intention of furthering the public discussion on this important issue.

BACKGROUND
Over the past three decades, the World Institute on Disability (WID) has been a thought leader on how to provide better work supports for people with disabilities.i In 2006, WID led a collaborative project, funded by the JP Morgan Chase Foundation and The California Endowment. The project began with a series of policy discussions with social insurance and tax policy analysts, which developed into a set of policy proposals to transform Social Security, Medicare, and disability tax law. The proposals were documented in “Being American: the Way Out of Poverty,” by Bryon R. MacDonald and Megan O’Neil.

In December of 2010, the Center for American Progress (CAP) and The Hamilton Project (THP) jointly released a paper entitled “Supporting Work: A Proposal for Modernizing the U.S. Disability Insurance System,” by David H. Autor and Mark Duggan.

WID would like to commend the CAP/THP report for its role in continuing this important public discussion on the need to reform the U.S. disability insurance system and to strengthen the connections between people with disabilities and the workforce.

The never ending story of work incentives.....

The legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday would phase out the controversial practice over three years.

If enacted, the bill would immediately force the Labor Department to stop approving new businesses for certificates to pay subminimum wage. Companies already paying less to workers with disabilities would have up to three years to increase their wages to the federal minimum.