The Criminalization of Poverty as Hungry Americans Flood Major American Cities

Hunger in the US is now the highest since the era of the Great Depression as real unemployment is much higher than the 5.6% rate reported in the mainstream media (closer to 40-50% if you include the marginally employed); as earnings are stagnant or declining for 90% of the work force; as inflation of food prices spiral out of control, not to mention a significantly compromised social safety net and the subtle, yet continuous effort to criminalize poverty.  

Unlike now, during the Depression tightly knit communities and family farms stretched across the nation to provide a safety net that served to catch some or many of those who suffered the worst consequences of the failed economy.   Unlike now, people knew the entire nation was struggling.  They knew that times were hard and were less likely to fault the individual. 

Today, society is fragmented and the establishment media is taking advantage of that by deceiving people into believing our economy is improving and anyone who is not making ends meet...well, it's their fault! They're not trying hard enough!   In fact, the criminalization of poverty is a growing trend in America.

“But many things have changed in the last 50 years, some of them so recently as to have gone largely unnoticed by pundits and policy makers. The poor, and especially poor people of color, have long been over-represented in the prison population. This used to be attributed to the fact that the poor are more likely to be tempted by criminal activities such as theft and drug dealing. Just in the last ten years, however, it has become apparent that being poor is in itself a crime in many cities and counties, and that it is a crime punished by further impoverishment. As Karen Dolan explains in this hard-hitting report, a simple traffic violation – such as a broken tail-light – can bring down a cascade of fees and fines, which mount quickly if not paid on time and can lead to incarceration.

The mid-00s were a turning point in the criminal justice system’s treatment of misdemeanors. Local governments increased the fees, fines and court costs they levied for minor transgressions, and at the same time, increased the number of possible misdemeanors to include truancy (for which parents can be punished), driving with an expired license (as is the case in Washington, DC), putting one’s feet up on a subway seat (in New York City), and a variety of other minor infractions. The latter two are grounds for immediate arrest, leading to the imposition of fines and court costs. If the defendant cannot pay, he or she may be jailed and, in the ugliest twist of all – later charged for the cost of room and board, then re-jailed for failing to pay that. If the defendant is put on probation, he or she must pay for the probation officer and anything else required for monitoring, like an ankle bracelet.

Ferguson, Missouri helped bring attention to the extent of “offender-funded” criminal justice services. The city was relying on fees, fines, and court costs for 20 percent of its budget, effectively turning it into an occupied territory, with a 95 percent white police force supporting itself by forcibly preying on a nearly 70 percent black population.

Who benefits from this “criminalization of poverty”? In the short-term, municipalities and counties may appear to benefit, as well as the private companies that increasingly provide probation services and operate detention facilities and prisons. In addition, the increasing barriers, such as drug testing and criminal record searches, to social benefits like public housing, SNAP, and TANF may also temporarily help relieve cash-strapped local governments. But the overall effect is to perpetuate poverty and even expand the poverty population, to no possible good effect. Poor and indigent people cannot afford to pay for the means to coerce and incarcerate them, and nothing is gained by repeatedly jailing them. The criminalization of poverty – and increasing impoverishment of people judged to be criminals — amounts to a system of organized sadism.

This is the real “cycle of poverty:” Poverty leads easily to criminal charges from unpaid debts, unrenewed licenses and the like. Criminal charges in turn lead to ever-mounting debt and, despite laws prohibiting debtors’ prisons, to incarceration. There is no mystery about where government needs to intervene — first, by stopping the persecution of people who are already struggling to get by, and second, by mitigating that struggle

So, big cities across the nation are struggling to keep up with the growing number of homeless, hungry Americans. Washington, D.C., our capital wins this contest as it increased its homeless population by more than 60% in 2015. 

“The past year has marked the year of homelessness in the US as Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Seattle — America's most populated areas — hosted a huge jump in the number of people on the streets, according to the Hunger and Homelessness study. Washington, D.C. ranks first in the list of cities with homeless as figures say it has 28 percent more homeless and 60 percent more transient families. The demand for food for the hungry rose 27 percent over last year's.

The survey said that across twenty-two cities including Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, homelessness rose by 1.6 percent overall and handouts increased by 3 percent over the past year.

The recently released US Conference of Mayors Hunger and Homelessness Survey presents the results of a survey of 22 of the citie s whose mayors serve on The U.S. Conference of Mayors' Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness.

A number of important findings emerged from the survey:

• Emergency food assistance requests rose by an average of 2.8 percent during the survey period in more than half, 61 percent, of the cities involved in the survey.
• Twenty-three percent of requests for emergency food assistance in the cities surveyed went unmet.
• Food pantries and emergency kitchens had to cut back on the amount of food given out as groceries or meals in 47 percent of cities involved in the survey. Additionally, in far more than half of cities surveyed, 57 percent, families and individuals had to cut down on the number of visits to charitable food outlets they could make each month. The same percentage of cities were unable to meet food requests by homeless and hungry residents demand because they lacked sufficient resources.
• Lack of affordable housing, an issue that continues to worsen in many places around the country, was the primary reason given for homelessness among families with children. Poverty, unemployment and low-paying jobs were the reasons that followed.
• In 50 percent of cities surveyed, mayors indicated they expected homelessness to rise “moderately” next year. Similarly, 65 percent of cities say they expect emergency food requests to “moderately” increase over the coming 12 months.

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75.4% of All U.S. Wealth is Owned by by the Top 10%!

I've always believed that we, the American, live in the best of all possible worlds and much to my surprise, after all I've learned, and after all I've complained about,  I still do, although to a much lesser degree, of course.  I realized this when I came across the headline," America Is the Most Inhumane Developed Country on the Planet..."  My immediate reaction, at the gut level, was shock.. that is, until I had time to think about the extraordinary incarceration rate, the millions and millions of people without health insurance, the millions and millions of people without  enough food to eat, without safe shelter, without  the means to pay off exorbitant student loan debt, without full employment, or in an increasing number of cases, without employment at all....

However, if I didn't know just how inhumane our nation has become, the fourth edition of the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook (2013) cinched it for me.  The report ranked the US as the most unequal of all advanced economies. The Gini coefficient-, the standard measure of a nation's wealth-inequality (a Gini coefficient of zero expresses perfect equality) in the U.S. is 85.1.  That's right,  we're thee number one most unequal of the 20 developed nations in the world! 75.4% of all U.S. wealth is owned by by the top 10%!   Followed by:

Denmark, with 72.2% of its wealth owned by the top 10%,
Switzerland, with 71.5% of its wealth owned by the top 10%,
Sweden, with 71.1% of its wealth owned by the top 10%,
Israel, with 68.9% of its wealth owned by the top 10%
Norway, with 65.9% of its wealth owned by the top 10%,
Germany, with 61.7% of its wealth owned by the top 10%,
Singapore, with 61.1% of its wealth owned by the top 10%
Ireland, with 58.4% of its wealth owned by the top 10%,
New Zealand, with 57.6% of its wealth owned by the top 10%
Canada, with 57.4% of its wealth owned by the top 10%,
Netherlands, with 54.6% of its wealth owned by the top 10%
Spain, with 54% of its wealth owned by the top 10%
U.K., with 53.3% of its wealth owned by the top 10%,
Italy, with 49.8% of its wealth owned by the top 10%
Japan, with 49.1% of its wealth owned by the top 10%,
Finland, with 44.9% of its wealth owned by the top 10%

Hell, we even beat Chile (72.5%), India (73.8%), Indonesia (75.0%), and South Africa (74.8%)!

At the other end of the wealth spectrum, the bottom 90% of the U.S. population own only 24.6% of all the privately held wealth in our nation, whereas in most of the other developed nations, the bottom 90% own, on average, approximately 40% of the wealth.

Moreover, not surprisingly, this so-called "economic recovery" has only benefited the richest Americans, as the richest 1% of Americans have received 95% of the income-gains since the 2008 financial crash, raising their incomes by 31.4%.

Once again, this should come as no surprise in a world where the richest 300 people on earth have more money than the poorest 3 billion.

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Why is Government Trying to Cripple the Second Largest Employer in America?

I do a lot of shipping for my business, therefore, I must interact with the post office on a daily basis. Over the past year or so, many of the items I ship come back stamped, "return to sender" falsely claiming there is no such address, amongst other equally irritating reasons.  This had never happened before, so I asked one of the postal workers, "What's going on, here?"  He told me ever since they've had to lay off their top tier employees, errors abound.  So I decided to do some research and here's what I found.

Firstly, if you depend upon the  mainstream media for news about the post office, the second largest employer after Walmart, you're led to believe the post office is on its last legs.  Politicians claim it's in crisis and therefore USPS must layoff thousands of workers and reduce services, right down to taking the courtesy scotch tape off the counter. However, the truth of the matter is the self-supporting post office has been doing very well over the last couple of years despite email, due mostly to the booming e-commerce sector and the ever increasing number of people shopping online...all of those items must be shipped!

Second, since 1981--under the Reagan administration--the postal service has been required by law to be entirely self-sufficient.  In other words, the post office receives NO taxpayer funding, while having to adhere to caps on the rates they can charge.

Third,  if that wasn't enough, under the Bush administration, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA)  forcing USPS  to “prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years in an astonishing ten-year time span” — meaning that it had to put aside billions of dollars [$5.5 billion per year] to pay for the health benefits of employees it hasn’t even hired yet, something “that no other government or private corporation is required to do.”  As of now, they have set aside $50 billion to pay for future retiree health benefits.  How many corporations can claim the same?

Although, President Obama had nothing to do with this outrageous burden put upon the post office, he hasn't done anything to remedy the situation.  In fact, Obama pushed for the end of Saturday delivery in his budget proposal  even though the institution receives NO funding from the government. Meanwhile, another attempt is being made to put profit ahead of public interest:  H.R. 2748: Postal Reform Act of 2013 by Rep. Darrell Issa and S. 1486: Postal Reform Act of 2013 by Sen Thomas Carper.

Most of us take the Post Office for granted because it's always been there. However, aside from the great number of people it employs and the convenience it provides, when you consider that the cost of mailing a letter to any area in the country cost only .46 cents versus mailing that same letter to any area in the country through let's say, UPS or Fedex--which cost at the very least costs $9, it becomes clear just how important this institution is. In addition, few realize that the post office actually delivers packages for UPS and Fed Ex (25% of all packages) to places they refuses to go, for instance, rural and other non-profitable areas. The USPS has always been and will continue to be a VITAL connection for those who live in rural areas.

Also, keep in mind, the post office is the only government bureaucracy mentioned in the Constitution.

“In June 1788, the ninth state ratified the Constitution, which gave Congress the power “To establish Post Offices and post Roads” in Article I, Section 8. A year later, the Act of September 22, 1789 (1 Stat. 70), continued the Post Office and made the Postmaster General subject to the direction of the President. Four days later, President Washington appointed Samuel Osgood as the first Postmaster General under the Constitution. A population of almost four million was served by 75 Post Offices and about 2,400 miles of post roads.

The Post Office received two one-year extensions by the Acts of August 4, 1790 (1 Stat. 178), and March 3, 1791 (1 Stat. 218). The Act of February 20, 1792 (1 Stat. 232), continued the Post Office for another two years and formally admitted newspapers to the mails, gave Congress the power to establish post routes, and prohibited postal officials from opening letters. Later legislation enlarged the duties of the Post Office, strengthened and unified its organization, and provided rules for its development. The Act of May 8, 1794 (1 Stat. 354), continued the Post Office indefinitely.

The Post Office moved from Philadelphia in 1800 when Washington, D.C., became the seat of government. Two horse-drawn wagons carried all postal records, furniture, and supplies.

The last three decades have proved that the world’s most efficient mail system not only does quite well on its own, but even in the face of Machiavellian forces trying its absolute best to destroy the well-established fundamental part of our society.

Links:

Don't Shrink the US Post Office; Expand It!

Community and Postal Workers United

Delivering for America

Delivering the Truth: Postal Service Myths and Facts

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Extravagant Federal Unemployment Packages for Laid Off Boeing Employees.

While the state of Washington learned that their unemployment benefits were cut by 21%, laid off Boeing employees in Seattle Washington will receive unemployment pay for for up to 2½ years...5 time longer than the normal 6 months, or in Washington's case, 4 months!

The benefits are funded by a federal program called the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program, which is designed to assist American employees who lose their jobs as a result of outsourcing or foreign trade. In addition the federal government will pay:

• 90% reimbursement for travel expenses incurred while searching for a job.
• 90% reimbursement for moving expenses if new job requires relocation.
• Tax credit for nearly three-quarters of their health-care premiums.
• Eligibility for 25,000 grant toward the cost of a degree.
• $10,000 over two years in supplementary pay for workers over 50, if they have to take a pay-cut.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm all for paying unemployment benefits, especially in an economy where the jobs just aren't there.  But plumping up unemployment benefits for a select few?  Clearly, some people are more important than other people, who work for the military industrial complex even amongst the rank and file.

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Are We Slowly being Converted to a Part-time Worker Society?

To be sure, job cuts--and some might say, massive job cuts--are a daily event, but what about jobs created? According to the Household Survey, of the 953,000 jobs created in 2013, 77%, or 731,000 are part-time (full-time=35 hours or more per week, part-time=less than 35 hours per week) so as Zero Hedge has been saying for over three years, the workplace in America is radically changing right before our eyes, although, unlike Zero Hedge, I certainly don't think Obamacare is the reason behind the transition to a part-time work force. Jobs were sent away a long time ago and our current economy was/is a creation decades in the making. Don't forget that the financial crisis started under 'W' who started two wars, created the TSA, passed the Patriot Act, pushed for the bailouts, and spent more than every president prior to him.

Moreover, we're fighting for full-time jobs that should be paying at least 40-60k but are instead paying 15-30k with less benefits and no job security, not to mention, the huge student loan debt that most people have to pay off no matter what kind of job they get.

Sadly, for the first time ever, this generation will not be better off than its parents, and paradoxically, the cost of living can be higher, much higher for the poor, a segment of our population that is growing larger everyday, a segment of our population that our younger generations can look forward to inclusion because Good luck finding full-time employment!

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As Full-time Employment Becomes a Relic, Part-time Server Jobs Explode!

Sky-high college debt, unpaid internships, part-time low-wage jobs with no benefits, no medical insurance...does any of this sound familiar? Well, that's what's facing our young generations. As for older generations, the only thing they have going for them are shorter sentences. In fact, I heard one middle-aged woman say that she and her husband plan on mugging a postman. At the very least, they'll get three square meals a day. You know, "Club Fed". Although, I think those cushy accommodations are reserved for top 1%. If you have to mug a postman, you are definitely not in that category.

Meanwhile, media "analysts," politicians and academics paint a very rosy picture, telling us a "robust" recovery is on the way, maybe even as early as 2014. Really? For whom?

Therefore, it should not surprise anyone that manufacturing jobs continue to collapse , however...

... not to worry, there are enough below-minimum-wage server jobs to take their place. It would appear that all the depressed unemployed, underemployed and fearing-for-their employment are self-medicating.

The bottom line, college degrees, for the most part, are/will be about as useful as used toilet paper. So, forget about sending your kids to college; just teach them to say, "Would you like fries with your order?"

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Criminalizing Poverty: Debtor's Prison For the 99%.

Today, it was reported that the unemployment rate declined even as those not in the labor force grew by over 660,000 to 90 million.  However, the real unemployment rate is 23%. if you include, "estimated long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994," and "short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment."

No jobs, stagnant wages, soaring food prices, soaring food stamps, millions of underwater home owners and millions of homes in shadow inventory, etc., but, despite all this "the economic recovery is on track" according to the mainstream news. The simple truth is the dream of a new home, a new car, secure retirement and nice vacations is just that, a dream. The new more attainable dream is a frugal lifestyle demanding sacrifice and hardships, simply to ensure survival, that is, without ending up in debtor's prison,.

No, this isn't 1830. It's 2013, and thousands of Americans are sent to jail because they can't afford to pay their bills.  That's right, courts and judges in states across the U.S. are incarcerating people for not being able to pay debts such as traffic tickets, medical bills and court fees.

At the same time that the economy worsens, and poverty increases, the financial and legal penalties for being poor in America are only getting worse. Apparently, people are supposed to earn money despite the fact that jobs were shipped overseas decades ago to ensure corporate profits by the same sadistic class of people who plundered the wealth of the people. Well, they need a scapegoat, and who better than those who cannot protect themselves: the poor. Meanwhile, the plundering class is squirreling away trillions in offshore accounts.

Federal imprisonment for unpaid debt has been illegal in the U.S. since 1833. But it is legal in one-third of the states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Washington. However, it doesn't really seem to matter if it's legal or not; Ohio's not listed, yet, "several courts in Ohio are illegally jailing people because they are too poor to pay their debts and often deny defendants a hearing to determine if they're financially capable of paying what they owe, according to an investigation released Thursday by the Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union."

Links:

Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA)

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28% of Americans are Raiding Their 401k Plans

Millions of Americans are drawing down their 401(k)s for non-retirement needs in record numbers just to keep their heads above water as they struggle due to stagnant wages on an inflation adjusted basis since the early 1980s--that is if they have a job--and increasing expenses on essential items. Rising food prices, escalating tuition, escalating medical costs...you name it, are drowning hard-working Americans in debt.  

"In 2010, 28 percent of participants reported having an outstanding loan against their retirement accounts, an all-time high, according to a survey of 110 large employers by Aon Hewitt, a human resources consultancy. And nearly 7 percent of employees took hardship withdrawals that year — roughly a 40 percent increase since the recession, while 42 percent of workers cashed out their plans rather than rolling them over when they changed jobs.

Here are some of the best comments from the Washington Post article... because the comments are much more truthful than the article (if you want to read comments for yourself just click here and sort comments by "most liked").

Sean2020 wrote:

"This article misses the mark in a major way. For example, the author says there are efforts underway to cut Social Security benefits as a means of reducing the deficit, but Social Security doesn't add to the deficit. He also suggests employers are overpaying employees with regard to retirement benefits, but employers significantly cut overall employee compensation when they switched from DB to DC plans. Many employees didn't figure out that their overall compensation had been cut (still haven't!), because their salaries weren't reduced, and they thought DC plans would offer similar benefits to DB plans - they don't. I do agree with the author about the importance of establishing an emergency fund, but the real problem is that with wages stagnant on an inflation adjusted basis since the early 1980s, many workers have little to no money to save after paying essential expenses. The bottom line is that DCs should be used as they were originally intended - as a supplement to a pension, not as the primary vehicle for retirement income. To be blunt, they benefit Wall Street much more than Main Street. Research has shown DB plans, which enjoy professional management, lower costs, and economies of scale, do a much better job of managing money and providing benefits. The average worker needs a pension in retirement - no ifs, ands, or buts about it. The only way they're going to get them is to form unions to pry the money loose from executive salaries and perks, which have grown exponentially since the early 80s. There's collective bargaining or individual begging. Oh, by the way, conservative trolls on this blog have suggested this is all Obama's fault. Get real. For starters, try reading "Retirement Heist," by Ellen Schultz, a former Wall Street Journal reporter.

ScottFromOz wrote:

"Workers are in debt up to their eyeballs, with mortgages underwater, savings are gone and now they're dipping into their 401K's to pay the bills. Meanwhile, businesses and the 1%ers are drowning in oceans of cash that they WON'T spend. They keep tightening the screws on wages and then wonder why demand falls.

ticked wrote:

"Second great depression brought to you by the war criminals and war profiteers and oil profiteers and enablers of the financial crooks= bush/cheney/rove/gramm/paulsen...et al......

Oil under clinton averaged $28.00 a barrel
Oil under bush went to a high of $147. and averaged around $100-110

In 1999, CEO pay averaged 30-40 times worker pay
Today CEO pay averages 343 times worker pay

When Clinton left office there was a surplus
When the crooks left office the debt was $10 TRILLION and the financial crooks tole over ten trillion

And still five plus years later and the financial crooks are still not regulated and toxic derivatives are not regulated and according to goldman suxs are 5-6 times what they were when the bubble burst in 2007....that's over $1.2 QUADZILLION or more money than in all the world....

Wake up Americans the colluding politicians and special interests are stealing more of your money every day.

Here are the sums of total compensation for the most recent fiscal year- 2011 according to S&P

Capital IQ based on as reported total executive compensation:

• JPMorgan Chase CEO James Dimon: $23.1 million
• Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf: $19.8 million
• Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein: $16.2 million
• Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit: $14.9 million
• Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan: $8.1 million

JPMorgan Chase's Dimon clearly brings home the biggest haul, but it's also the largest U.S. bank, largely due to his leadership.

Time will tell if the national outrage over bank CEO pay will result in changes in how the compensation is structured.

ccs53 wrote:

"When I started working 40 years ago, my savings account paid 5% interest and had zero fees. What's a savings account paying today? Less than 0.5% and fees if the balance falls below a minimum. A 401(k) plan is only as good as the employer that (who? Citizens United) sponsors it makes it. The employer chooses the investment vehicles (for better or worse), chooses the match level (or zero match), employees get the gains and pay the losses (2008 anyone?) MINUS fees and loads on the investments (employee can't control). What's the "average" rate of return for the typical American employee’s 401k over the last two decades? I found quotes of 3.5%-6.5%. A lot less or only slighly more than my savings account earned 25+ years ago, and back then I didn't have to risk losing half of it when the stock market tanked like it did in 2008 and will do again in the future. So how good is your 401(k)? Without nationwide standards, a 401(k) is only as good as the employer makes it -- do you trust your employer with your retirement money?

KarenLS wrote:

"Retirement was "guaranteed" relative to the contract individuals had with the companies....whether they were union or non-union jobs. Some form of retirement was part of the compensation packages given to each worker. What we have found over the decades is that these contracts are meaningless in the eyes of the courts which is why these corporations have been able to go to court and get judges to toss them without input from the workers who were losing the benefits without any equivelent compensation. Just all that "money" wiped off the books. First such major corporation I read about was back in the mid-90's in fact. I'm not just talking about going from defined pension plans to so called investment plans (which can tank and it`s just considered oh well the risk of investing.....when we have no choice) but all terminating health insurance coverage that had been promised as part of the compensation packages.

The Government has been doing the same with the military workers. "Free health care for life" was caveated back in 1957 and they (DOD) have been marching forward over the decades to elimination of coverage for retirees. Latest and greatest is to restrict the "miiitary health care" management companies from negotiating with medical organizations outside XXX miles of military treatment facilities for the best (Prime) rates. That makes the retiree or dependent have to pay a higher co-share of the bills which are not at the lowest negotiate rates. Kind of like going out of your plan. Won't be the retirees option.

So breaking faith with employees is not unique to the civilian world or the gov`t. What I find unsettling is that we employees don`t seem to care or perhaps notice. We certainly don`t seem to call it out. All while, at least in the civilian world, the top tiers of manangement are walking away with tens of millions of dollars in benefits whether they do a good, bad or indifferent job. We are Sheeple folks."

Centsorsense wrote:

"First employers raided pensions to pay their bills, then The government raided the social security trust fund to pay its bills, now workers are raiding their savings to pay their bills . . .
I wonder where they got that idea?

Also since many employers pay employees less salary based on their retirement benefits, employees are being repeatedly ripped off.
They are paid less in order to have a pension or 401k. Then the company steals the pension money leaving the retiree high and dry. Then Congress tanks the market again and again so the 401k loses value, instead of gaining.
Then just to be especially nasty the retiree gets bilked on their social security benefits too.
Meanwhile the CEO that raided their pension gets a bonus, Congress gets a six figure salary and healthcare for life, and then the retiree is called one of the 47% who paid into the system.

The game is rigged, these guys are right to cash out their 40lk. Otherwise they will never see their money it will be wasted by politicians and executives. So at least by spending it now they get something for their work."

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Undermining the Quality of Jobs in America:The Trend Toward the Part Time Work Force.

Let's face it, American jobs are much less rewarding and secure than those of our parents and/or grandparents. For one generation after WWII until approximately 1973 American workers, empowered through union contracts, achieved a somewhat harmonious balance with their employers. Good wages, benefits and expectations of job security were the norm there for a while.

In contrast, in addition to the fact that wages have not been/are not increasing in line with expenses despite increasing productivity and skyrocketing executive pay, today's employees are now viewed merely as factors of production, subject to the whim of their employer for the most part. Workers can be fired arbitrarily, forced to work off the clock,  forced to work as so-called independent contractors or part-time, etc.   American workers have truly become an afterthought or invisible. So, why, in the world's most affluent nation, are so many corporations squeezing their employees dry? The answer in a nutshell, greed.

According to New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse, since 2006, the U.S. has cut a million full-time jobs while adding more than 500,000 part-time jobs. Eager to cut costs in a very competitive global economy, the explosion of sophisticated scheduling software make it simple for today's employers to align staffing to customer traffic, therefore making it easy to increase the use of part time work.  Lower hourly wages, unpredictable hours, and few if any benefits make this trend anything but advantageous to workers.

“Over the past two decades, many major retailers went from a quotient of 70 to 80 percent full-time to at least 70 percent part-time across the industry,” said Burt P. Flickinger III, managing director of the Strategic Resource Group, a retail consulting firm.

Moreover, our national statistics underestimate involuntary part-time employment because they only ask if you work  35 or more hours per week. It doesn't matter whether or not that 35 hours is a result of one job, two jobs, three jobs or four jobs... if your hours add up to over 35 hours, you're classified as full-time.

The Affordable Care Act will only worsen this  part-time trend as employers do not have to pay that shared responsibility fee if their workers average fewer than 30 hours per week. Big incentive for employers to substitute part-time positions or full time.

The bottom line is that the fear of unemployment and the fear of falling back from the "middle class" into the ranks of the poor are being used by employers to take unfair advantage of working people. It's created an atmosphere of abusive treatment and total disrespect for working people that now permeates our society and the globe.  This increasing trend to part-time workers is of course, fueling the income gap/income inequality, funneling more profits and capital gains to those at the top.

About 50% of the population is now poor or near poor and there are not enough jobs to get them out of the hole. Gone are the days of earning a living wage with benefits.

A comment exchange from Zerohedge:

"I remember back in the 1970s that the futurists thought our biggest problem would be finding things to do with all our spare time, as computers were going to radically increase productivity and we'd all be working part-time. Of course they assumed that workers would see most of the benefit of that increase in productivity...

"Damn, I'm glad to see somebody else mention this. It was hugely accepted in the 60s and 70s that the benefits of automation would be shared throughout society and we would all be working fewer hours while also enjoying a higher standard of living.

But nobody imagined the kind of wealth accumulation that we see today. Nobody imagined something like a Walmart where one family acquires $100 billion in wealth on the backs of millions of minimum wage workers.

Also that was a more idealistic time. Back then we didn't know just how cold-blooded and greedy people can be. Most rich people are perfectly happy to put the screws down on workers and drive wages down below a subsistence level if it means they can buy a 10th luxery car or a 5th mansion or whatever. There are no limits to the greed of those who are already well off it seems.

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While the 99.9% Continue to Struggle the Wealthiest .01% Keep Getting Wealthier.

Why is it that while America is supposedly in crisis - or jobless "recovery" - the rich continue to increase their wealth at a rate that is creating staggering wealth inequality? The net worth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans grew by 13% in the past year to $1.7 trillion, as the gap between rich and poor continues to widen at a staggering rate.

Meanwhile, average workers' wages haven't budged over the last 40-years, and the real minimum wage--adjusted for inflation--has declined over the same period.  According to the  Congressional Budget Office (CBO), between 1979 and 2007, the top 1% of Americans income grew by 275%!  And between 2002 and 2007, the income of the top 1% grew 10 times faster than the income of the bottom 90%. The CBO also found that between 1979 and 2005, after-tax income for middle-class Americans (adjusted for inflation) rose by 21% while the richest 0.1 per cent grew by 400%!.
How much longer can this obscene transfer of wealth to the privileged few from poor and hard-working Americans continue before most Americans become serfs if they're not already?

“We can have a democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1846 – 1941)

“Men did not make the earth… It is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property… Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.” — Thomas Paine

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Did You Know Failing to Join Facebook Means You are a Psychopath?

Not only are you a potential mass-murdering psychopath, good luck getting a job, because employers are wary of individuals without Facebook profiles. They want to read all of your comments and look at all of your pictures. "Peeping Tom", anyone?  This is nothing but an effort by Big Brother to increase the social acceptability of what would've been - just years ago - considered very creepy behavior. It's a total violation of privacy. In fact, the lack of a Facebook account, more than likely, translates to a mature person, who chooses to use his or her time wisely, someone who is beyond petty schoolyard drama.

"I asked Kluemper about the “personality red flags” that their reviewers looked for. He was a little vague but said that a person with obvious mood swings, who is overly emotional in their postings would not be an attractive candidate. Meanwhile, a person with a lot of Facebook friends who takes a lot of crazy photos would be rated as extroverted and friendly — which are attractive qualities in a candidate.

Key takeaway for hiring employers: The Facebook page is the first interview; if you don’t like a person there, you probably won’t like working with them. The bad news for employers, though, who are hoping to take the Facebook shortcut: “So many more profiles are restricted in what the public can access,” says Kluemper.

Oh, and according to the German magazine Der Taggspiegel "James Holmes and Norwegian mass murder Anders Behring Breivik have common ground in their lack of Facebook profiles".

Here is an interesting comment article:

"At my company we do not hire people who do not have Facebook accounts or who make their Facebook accounts inaccessible to H.R. and security personnel. It's very simple, we are looking for a certain type of employee, one who lives a lifestyle that is compatible with our values and corporate mission. If you have anything you need to hide, then seek employment elsewhere. Job seekers, remember that your Facebook is a marketing tool, and the product you are marketing is yourself. Every single post you make, every picture you upload, everything you 'Like,' it's all subject to employer scrutiny. What employers are looking for are physically fit, morally upright, non-political individuals who have enough discretion to avoid posting comments about controversial topics, and who do not feel it necessary to post pictures that might bring discredit to themselves or the organizations they are affiliated with.

- Jim Thompson, Seattle, WA , 08/8/2012

The real message here is, conform, conform, conform...or else!

Links:

Facebook can tell you if a person is worth hiring.

Beware, Tech Abandoners. People Without Facebook Accounts Are 'Suspicious.'

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Inmates Replacing American Workers.

As I have posted before, America is truly becoming an incarceration nation, as it funnels an ever-increasing number of human beings into slavery. Prisoners are even bundled up and sold as securities as each one is assigned a CUSIP (Committee on Uniform Securities Identification Procedures) number, and traded on the market for profit.

The DOJ and NCIA funded the making of this video to recruit private sector companies to take their operations or expansions to prisoners to save money, lower overhead and avoid benefits to employees. Thousands of private sector jobs are lost through this federal program known as Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP).




Yes, the plutocrats want all the serfs under total control, and that is the reason that incarceration is the largest growth industry in the USA today.

Bob Evans, the man who posted this video, wrote the following on Deep Politics Forum.

I am Ex. Dir. of the Voters Legislative Transparency Project (VLTP) and uploaded this video to our YouTube channel. My hope was that others would spread the video and information to draw attention to this practice condoned by our government. The NCIA who produced the video with the cooperation of the DoJ, have scrubbed every link to this video used to recruit after I linked to it and sent it out to Union groups. I had a copy and finally managed to get the huge file uploaded to YouTube so others could see what is going on with inmates replacing American workers.
I co-authored the award winning Prison Industry article for the Nation magazine last year in the ALEC Exposed project: "The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor"http://www.thenation.com/article/162...d-prison-labor and have been researching, writing and blogging about this subject for nearly 10 years.
I wanted to thank you for reposting this here on Deep Politics Forum and helping to expose how our jobs are being stolen and why our prisons are kept full with between 600,000 and 1 million prisoners working in more than 300 prison factories coast to coast.

Bob Sloan
Executive Director
VLTP, Inc.
Indianapolis, Indiana
www.vltp.net

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The Next Bubble Burst: Student Debt?

Private lenders have preyed upon unsuspecting young people desiring to further their education for years. Of course, they have intentionally targeted those coming from poor socio-economic backgrounds. What else is new?

Well, now that the student debt bubble has accumulated over $1 trillion in student loan debt, starting July 1, Federal Pell Grants are set to be cut for hundreds of thousands of students across the US. Whats more, the Senate "blocked President Obama’s student loan interest-rate reduction plan and also shot down a GOP proposal, leaving the chamber without a solution and little more than a month to go before rates are scheduled to double".

The reforms will save $11 billion over 10 years, according to reports. Students will lose the $5,550-a-year grants in order to find the savings.

"The loss of Pell Grants could put college out of reach" for many students with fiscal hardships, the newspaper reported.

Under old rules, students who had taken at least six units of college courses but who did not have a diploma were eligible for the loans. The new rule eliminates the Pell Grants as well as other subsidized loans for the students, known as "ability-to-benefit" students.

Here's the thing. We're told the government can't find a way to pay for extending student loan rates, yet, we're not told that the government earns more money on these student loans than they pay out!  Meanwhile, half of all college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed.  And unlike a mortgage, one cannot walk away from one's student loan debt, even if one can't walk, can't talk...in other words,  in a coma, as student loan debt cannot be expunged, nor forgiven.

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The Diminishing Returns of a College Degree

Not all that long ago, a college education in America ensured not only a job, but elevated socio-economic status. In fact, just as recently as 2007, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, more than half of all  college graduates who had applied for a job received an offer by graduation day, albeit, without the elevated socio-economic status. In 2008, that percentage fell to 26%, and in 2009, less than 20%.  Moreover, not all that long ago, one person - usually, the father, even without a college degree - could provide for a family of six, eight, and even ten. Today, it takes two people, sometimes working two jobs, to support a family of four.

Meanwhile, student debt is the only sector growing at an ever-increasing rate since the 2008 financial crisis. The average annual tuition at a private nonprofit four-year college is about $35-40,000! So, now that student debt has reached the $1 trillion mark - the second biggest debt sector for US households - leaving college grads with unprecedented levels of college debt, not to mention, the youth unemployment rate in the US is rivaling many third-world countries, is a college education really worth it? Could it be that those who choose not to attend college may actually end up earning more than their college-degreed counterparts?

Over 17 million Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree according to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. For instance, over 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees (8,000 of those, doctoral or professional degrees), 80,000 bartenders, and over 18,000 parking lot attendants.

It should be more than obvious that public policy designed to create more college graduates isn't really concerned with sustainable jobs for future graduates. The purpose of the policies is to prop up the education bubble and the lending industry that supports it.

So, maybe it's time to reexamine our assumptions about the necessity of a college education, those ideological templates we use to understand the world, especially when, according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the US has one of the highest number of employees working in low wage jobs of high paying industrialized nations. One out of every four Americans employed work in jobs that pay less than $10 per hour.

Between NAFTA, tougher bankruptcy laws, the repeal of Glass Steagall, bubbles galore, and and a financial system that might as well be a roulette wheel, the best we can hope for is a low-wage recovery. Newly added jobs are coming from lower paying sectors while productivity increases and profits filter to the top of the economic class. 3,500,000 high-wage jobs lost during recession and only 179,000 have been added so far. Therefore, a college degree that's risen anywhere from 500-1000% since 1970,  in inflation adjusted dollars, is sure to sap  future earnings with few exceptions.

Older Americans are 47 times richer than younger Americans.

In 1984, households headed by people age 65 and older were worth just 10 times the median net worth of households headed by people 35 and younger.

But now that gap has widened to 47-to-one, marking the largest wealth gap ever recorded between the two age groups.”

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Narcissists Best Suited for Job Interview Success

Well, this should come as no surprise, especially considering the state of our globe. Narcissists, who are most likely to find employment it appears, no doubt, run the show. Being the first in line for job, to be sure they're first in line for promotions, and therefore, climb the ladder, quickly.

The business workplace is tailor made for the superficial charm of the vain and overly self-involved.

This is because narcissists come across as being confident, and engaging when speaking. Narcissists are also able to promote themselves in the interview setting as well.

"This is one setting where it's OK to say nice things about yourself and there are no ramifications. In fact, it’s expected,” Peter Harms, assistant professor of management at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and co-author of the study, said. "Simply put, those who are comfortable doing this tend to do much better than those who aren't."

Narcissists were also highly rated because of their use of gestures and smiles. These gestures and actions were determined to further establish the likability and credibility of the interviewee in the eyes of the interviewer.

“This shows that what is getting (narcissists) the win is the delivery,” Harms said. “These results show just how hard it is to effectively interview, and how fallible we can be when making interview judgments. We don’t necessarily want to hire narcissists, but might end up doing so because they come off as being self-confident and capable.”

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21-Hour Work Week?

The 40-hour work week standard has spanned more than 50-years, despite the rapid pace of technological advancement, which, as it increases efficiency, reduces the need for human labor. So, why are we still working 40 plus hours per week?

Well, after WWII, it was decided that the US should actively promote economic growth in order to provide Americans with 40-hour jobs, so corporations eagerly ramped up their advertising and production, while the federal government invested in infrastructure to stimulate that economic growth.

Well, 50-years later, thanks to a more than willing consumer society, we've more than doubled productivity to the point where economic growth has become a cancer on society. On the planet. As Michael Coren at Fast Company says, "It catches people in a cycle of consumerism and consumption where they "live to work, work to earn, and earn to consume things."

But is it really necessary to stimulate this malignancy in order to create jobs? In order to keep the 40-hour work week? Because evidence has shown, that beyond a certain point, economic growth does not increase our well being. It's time to rein in the growth because well-being has taken a huge nose-dive over the last 30 years.

So, what about reducing the standard work week from 40-hours? It's not as far-fetched as you might think. The New Economics Foundation (nef) has produced a study that encourages a 21-hour work week in order to "reset" societal and political norms.

A ‘normal’ working week of 21 hours could help to address a range of urgent, interlinked problems: overwork, unemployment, over-consumption, high carbon emissions, low well-being, entrenched inequalities, and the lack of time to live sustainably, to care for each other, and simply to enjoy life.

However, given prevailing wages and expenses, Americans might need three "full-time" jobs to make ends meet. Undoubtedly, in creating a 21-hour work week, developing "a new economic model that will help to engineer a ‘steady-state’ economy and address problems of transition to 21 hours" would be required.

Nevertheless, as good as reduced work week might sound, if the powers that be even consider this option, one must wonder, what's in it for them? More power? More wealth? After all, that's the only thing these people care about.

For instance, could this be the bait that lures us into a cashless society? Where all purchases are made by credit cards, charge cards, or microchip. What's so bad about that? Well, the establishment of international economic order, a one-world currency that gives the ruling class supreme power.

You see, as George Carlin calls it, the "Ownership Class" - when the 400 richest Americans have more wealth than the poorest 150 million Americans - has learned that it's much easier to create circumstances which lead to the masses begging for the change the elite class desire; rather than imposing these desired changes on hostile citizens.

In conclusion, while the 21-hour work week sounds like a solution to a multitude of problems, as Picasso once said, "Every positive value has its price in negative terms... the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima." The "Ownership Class" have consistently proven Picasso, right, time and again..

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Why Major Newspapers and Corporations Run Fake Job Ads To Undercut American Workers.

Every Sunday, major newspapers, websites and corporations run fake job ads. Why? The goal is to prove that no qualified Americans are available, so that green cards can be secured for H1B workers ("highly-skilled" foreign workers from "high tech" to architects to nurses and Kindergarten teachers).

The claim is H-1B is a remedy for "labor shortages" and as a means of hiring "the best and the brightest" from around the world. The reality is it's all about cheap labor.

The fundamental reason for the H1B Visa program, created in 1990, is to substitute cheap, imported, supposedly "skilled" (equivalent to American high school degree)  labor for more expensive American labor. The employer, who reaps a ton of tax advantages, doesn't have to pay medical benefits, overtime, social security, etc., can also force the departing US worker to train their foreign replacement.  The problem is not lack of enforcement or fraud. Instead, the problem is gaping loopholes in the law.

Congress has allowed the expansion of importation under all VISA programs. 125,000 work authorized visas per month. This includes green cards, L-1, H1-b, H2-b etc  and the state hands out about 320K J-1 student work visas yearly.

Body Shops:

According to Civil Defense Attorney James Otto, who poses the question: “Whether the U.S. should allow the replacement of U.S. workers with foreigners imported under the several visa programs and should Government hire foreigners in stead of U.S workers?”, there are eight main body shops which bring in foreign workers to take American jobs. One body shop, Infosys, faces a lawsuit by former employee Jack Palmer over charges that it abused US visa programs. Per the Economic Times of India "The Infosys charges illustrate the growing conflict between the desires of multinational corporations to source cheaply (even if “cheap” has been mismeasured by not not being adjusted for risk) and what actions need to take place at a country level to make sure these very same multinationals have decent market for their goods."

On December 7, 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, through the U.S. Embassy in India, announced that the State Department has authorized the U.S embassy to allow the admission of a limitless number of foreign workers into the U.S. to take jobs that millions of unemployed Americans could and would do.

The practical implications of the State Department’s conduct is that every U.S employer can now hire as many foreign workers as they desire to replace all American workers. Then, the U.S. taxpayer must pay more taxes to care for the unemployed and their children.

So even jobs that require face to face work are not safe from "outsourcing" because of "importing".

Of course, this is no more the fault of the imported foreign nationals than it is the fault of the workers employed in sweatshops overseas.  The corporations treat them horrendously.  While displacing American workers, the goal is to reduce the salary level to a point where they can get qualified professional American workers at the same cheap price. Just one more government policy that result in We the People suffering in order that corporate profits soar.

Immigration attorneys teach corporations how to  avoid hiring qualified Americans.

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America's Youngest Outcasts are Increasing

Child homelessness is up 33% in 3 years. One in 45 children in the USA — 1.6 million children — were living on the street, in homeless shelters or motels, or doubled up with other families last year, according to the National Center on Family Homelessness.

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Sluggish Job Growth with Backlog of Nearly 14 million Unemployed Workers

Given the enormous scope of the unemployment problem, this minimal level of job creation will keep us mired in disastrously high unemployment.

At the current sluggish rate of job growth, the unemployment rate will stay disastrously high.

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Screwflation: Screwing the Middle Class

"Screwflation", a term coined by Wall Street guru, Doug Kass, describes how falling wages and rising costs of basic goods are screwing squeezing the middle class. Moreover, the culture of greed that has escalated over the last three decades, leaving an unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the top one percent has negated any possibility of a robust  middle class America in the future. 

This younger generation of Americans -  saddled with college and housing debt, yet scarce job opportunities - now face the highest unemployment since World War II.   To make matters worse, older Americans are forced to stay in their jobs longer, limiting employment prospects even more.

The American middle class under stress.

• Middle-income jobs are disappearing from the economy. The share of middle-income jobs in the United States has fallen from 52% in 1980 to 42% in 2010. Middle-income jobs have been replaced by low-income jobs, which now make up 41% of total employment.
• 17 million Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree.
• Real wages have stagnated over the past two decades, and in recent months, have actually fallen. Over the past year, nominal wages grew only 1.7% while all consumer prices, including food and energy, increased by 2.7%.
• Wages and salaries have fallen from 60% of personal income in 1980 to 51% in 2010. Government transfers have risen from 11.7% of personal income in 1980 to 18.4% in 2010, a post-War high. There are 8.5 million people receiving unemployment insurance and over 40 million receiving food stamps.
• Health care spending increased from 9.5% of personal consumption in 1980 to 16.3% in 2010.
• The average cost of one year of college is $21,000. After adjusting for inflation, it has risen 72% since 1990.
• The share of personal consumption spent on food and energy has risen from 13.4% in 2002 to 15.3% in 2010.
• Household net worth declined from $65.7 trillion in the second quarter of 2007 to $56.8 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2010. The middle class, which has much more of its net worth tied up in home equity, has borne the brunt of this decline.
• Over the past three decades, household debt as a share of disposable income increased from 68% to 116%.

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