Working 3 Jobs and 7 Days a Week to Get By - Massachusetts news. Sabrina Johnson misses sleep. The 23-year-old from Dorchester works three jobs to help support her mother, who is disabled, her niece and nephew, and her sister. “I’m not going to stop because my family needs me,” she told Boston.com. “I don’t want to see us in the street or nothing.” Born in Boston, but raised in South Philadelphia, Johnson moved home in 2013 because her mother, Christine Leeper, was returning to Boston with Johnson’s niece and nephew, who are in her custody. “I was like, OK, I’m not going to leave her with two kids, my niece and nephew, because she’s sick. I’m going to come and I’m going to help her out,” Johnson said. Johnson helps pay the bills and buy clothes with her paycheck from Chipotle, working as a wheelchair assistant at Logan Airport, and helping clients in their homes as a medical assistant. She works seven days a week, and she gets paid just above minimum wage for two of her jobs, making about $2,000 a month.
At Chipotle, she makes $9.57 an hour. Confederate flag at heart of why NAACP is upset at NCAA | The Dagger. South Carolina is hosting an NCAA tournament game for the first time in 13 years, and there are more than a few members of the NAACP who aren't happy about it. The Palmetto State is under an NCAA tournament ban because it flies the Confederate flag on the statehouse grounds. But the organization is allowing the SEC champion Gamecocks to host games this weekend because of a new format delegating home dates to top-16 seeds in March Madness.
So the home team gets to stay home even though the ban is still in effect. "If they were really serious about supporting the cause of justice, there would be no loopholes," said Lonnie Randolph, president of the state chapter of the NAACP. Randolph said he accepts the NCAA's decision, but he's upset his group was not informed until it was made. Confederate flags fly from a house on Church Street in downtown Charleston, S.C., in 2012. "I don't agree with how they handled it," Randolph said. Yet nothing could mitigate his resentment of the flag. Dealing with inequality. Asking the simplest question amid a sea of statistics about income gaps and metaphors about rising tides and economic ladders, Harvard Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood stumped a session that was called to discuss “The Growing Challenge of Inequality.” “What are we going to do about it?”
Ellwood asked at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum on Thursday. A moment of silence greeted the question, and then William Julius Wilson, the Lewis P. and Linda L. “The question is: What can we do realistically, given the present economic and political [reality],” he said. That includes quality public schools, minimal wage, and health care legislation, he said. Wilson sounded a theme that was repeated through the discussion: that the period of 1947 through 1970 was a time of great equalization in income level, when it seemed that a rising tide did lift all boats. Lawrence F. “When you talk to unmarried parents at the hospital, they definitely want to stay together and raise their children together. Bill Gates' solution to income inequality - Fortune. Why income inequality is America’s biggest (and most difficult) problem. Bold prediction: Rising inequality of income and wealth will be the most important political battleground over the next few decades.
Just take a look at the figures. The share of income accruing to the top 1 percent increased from 9 percent in 1976 to 20 percent in 2011. The richest 0.1 percent controlled 7 percent of the wealth in 1979 and 22 percent of the wealth in 2012. Meanwhile, there are a number of studies out there showing that the most effective way to reduce this inequality would be higher taxes on income and wealth, but the rich won’t let it happen. Consider also this: The rise of income inequality and wealth inequality are intimately connected, and causes all sorts of problem over the long term. As Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman write, That is, income is a flow, which quickly becomes a stock. In a comedy bit on wealth, Chris Rock claims, “You can’t get rid of wealth.” But, of course wealth and income inequality weren’t always as bad as they are today.
Most Americans are one paycheck away from the street. Americans are feeling better about their job security and the economy, but most are theoretically only one paycheck away from the street. Approximately 62% of Americans have no emergency savings for things such as a $1,000 emergency room visit or a $500 car repair, according to a new survey of 1,000 adults by personal finance website Bankrate.com. Faced with an emergency, they say they would raise the money by reducing spending elsewhere (26%), borrowing from family and/or friends (16%) or using credit cards (12%).
“Emergency savings are not just critical for weathering an emergency, they’re also important for successful homeownership and retirement saving,” says Signe-Mary McKernan, senior fellow and economist at the Urban Institute, a nonprofit organization that focuses on social and economic policy. [Get the Latest Market Data and News with the Yahoo Finance App] The findings are strikingly similar to a U.S.
Federal Reserve survey of more than 4,000 adults released last year. The Secret History of Women in the Senate - Liza Mundy - POLITICO Magazine. Kay Hagan just wanted to swim. It was late 2008, and the Democrat was newly arrived on Capitol Hill as North Carolina’s junior senator-elect. But Hagan was told that the Senate pool was males-only. Why? Because some of the male senators liked to swim naked. It took an intervention by Senator Chuck Schumer, head of the Rules Committee, to put a stop to the practice, but even then “it was a fight,” remembers pollster Celinda Lake, who heard about the incident when the pool revolt was the talk among Washington women.
The pool wasn’t the only Senate facility apparently stuck in the Dark Ages. The great potty controversy received news coverage in both the Washington Post and the New York Times, where the female senators were reduced to raving perkily about their new facilities. Yet some indignities have nothing to do with a lack of accommodations. As they were talking in her office, the lobbyist, an older man, reached over and patted her hand. Inside San Jose's Tent City. Whole Foods Detroit: Can a grocery store really fight elitism, racism, and obesity? A couple of years ago, as winter gave way to spring, Toyoda Ruff began to think about changing how she ate. Ruff had always been heavy, but her son, Tarik, a freshman honor student, had recently crossed the 300-pound mark, prompting Ruff to ferry him to appointments at a children’s weight loss clinic, 11 miles away in Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood, and to document everything he ate for two months. At 270 pounds, her husband, Jermaine Harris, wanted to slim down, too.
Ruff was beginning to see her family’s weekly fast-food habit and visits to Golden Corral’s all-you-can-eat buffet as a problem. As Ruff mulled over these changes, a friend cajoled her into joining a healthy cooking class at their church. Ruff was on medical leave from her job as a probation officer due to an injury, and the break gave her time to consider her meals. The more she thought about eating healthy, the more intrigued she was by a new store: Whole Foods, which had just opened in Detroit. Staggering racial disparity in U.S. arrest rates.
As Ferguson, Mo., braces for the decision by a grand jury that is considering whether to indict a white police officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager — which sparked protests over alleged police bias — there is evidence the St. Louis suburb isn't alone when it comes to racial disparity. According to USA Today — which compared arrests reported by local police departments to the FBI in 2011 and 2012 with data from the 2010 U.S. census — at least 1,581 police departments arrest black people at a higher rate than Ferguson, where blacks are arrested nearly three times more than people of other races. (The FBI does not track arrests of Hispanics.) That includes police departments in cities like New York, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco and St. "Those disparities are easier to measure than they are to explain," USA Today's Brad Heath wrote. [Interactive: Compare arrest rates across America] The paper found one stunning example of racial disparity in Dearborn, Mich.
Wrong Zip Code Can Mean Shorter Life Expectancy. The Treme neighborhood is only a few miles from the Lakeview neighborhood in New Orleans, but in terms of life expectancy those few miles might as well be worlds away. While residents in Lakeview have a life expectancy of approximately 80 years, which is slightly more than the U.S. average of 79 years, the life expectancy for Treme residents is only 54.5 years, which is lower than the life expectancy in Cambodia, Gabon or Guinea. A series of maps recently released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest U.S. philanthropy organization devoted to public health, was designed to draw attention to the fact that, in many cities, different neighborhoods can have vastly different life expectancies, some on par with the life expectancies of developing countries.
In addition to New Orleans, the foundation also released maps for Washington, D.C., San Joaquin Valley, Calif., Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., and Kansas City, Mo. Is Obesity Destroying Life Expectancy Gains? Dr. Also Read. Candidate: ‘We Would be Totally Right’ to Stone Gays to Death - Nation. A little-known Oklahoma state house primary candidate is getting some national attention this week, after a local magazine found Facebook comments he made last year that appear to endorse killing homosexuals—via stoning, specifically. Republican Scott Esk made the comments on another user’s link to a BBC article which quotes Pope Francis last July telling reporters “if a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” Esk responds by quoting Bible verses from the book of Romans and Leviticus which some Christians interpret to condemn homosexual behavior.
Adam Bates, the Facebook user who posted the original link, replied that only God has final judgment over the sins of man. Advertisement—Continue Reading Below Esk was not having it. “Adam asked about the fitness to judge others,” he wrote. “So just to be clear, you think we should execute homosexuals (presumably by stoning)?” “I think we would be totally right to do it,” Esk replies. Differences in what, exactly? What's the Deal with...Food Deserts. The Atlas | Map of Human Struggle. McDonald's Employee and Single Mother Detained for Confronting Company President About Worker Pay. A single mother who has been working at McDonald's for 10 years was detained by police last week after she interrupted the company president's speech in Chicago to confront him about low worker pay.
Crain's Chicago Business reports that 26-year-old Nancy Salgado was part of a group protesting the event, asking company officials to raise worker wages to $15 an hour and allow employees to form a union without fear of retaliation. Protestors were detained for an hour, threatened with arrest, and ticketed, according to Chicagoist. The Real News posted a video to YouTube that contains a clip of Salgado's outburst as well as an interview with her: Here's what Salgado said to McDonald's USA President Jeff Stratton: "I'm a single mother of two. Stratton's response: "I've been there [at McDonald's] 40 years. " "It gets harder and harder," she said. More from Business Insider: Where Americans—Rich and Poor—Spent Every Dollar in 2012. Here it is, fresh from the Bureau of Labor Statistics: all of American spending in one big color wheel.
Since some of you (inexplicably) don't like pie charts, here's the same data in bars. Averages are misleading, particularly when the rich are running away from the rest. So, digging deeper into BLS data, I broke out percent spending by category for the richest and poorest 20 percent. For the poor, food, clothes, and housing account for more than 60 percent of all spending. The term consumption takes on a more literal meaning when you see the difference between rich and poor spending. There has been a good amount of research recently about how being poor changes your thinking about everything. Thinking about the future is a form of luxury. Update: First graph edited to reflect housing's true share of spending. More From The Atlantic Loans. Richest 1 percent earn biggest share since '20s. WASHINGTON (AP) -- The gulf between the richest 1 percent and the rest of America is the widest it's been since the Roaring '20s.
The very wealthiest Americans earned more than 19 percent of the country's household income last year — their biggest share since 1928, the year before the stock market crash. And the top 10 percent captured a record 48.2 percent of total earnings last year. U.S. income inequality has been growing for almost three decades. And it grew again last year, according to an analysis of Internal Revenue Service figures dating to 1913 by economists at the University of California, Berkeley, the Paris School of Economics and Oxford University. One of them, Berkeley's Emmanuel Saez, said the incomes of the richest Americans surged last year in part because they cashed in stock holdings to avoid higher capital gains taxes that took effect in January.
The richest Americans were hit hard by the financial crisis. The changes have reduced costs for many employers. Save the Darfur Puppy. South Africa | Transitional Justice. Income Inequality vs. Wealth Inequality. Photo by Katrina Charmatz via Getty Images Paul Solman answers questions from the NewsHour audience on business and economic news here on his Making Sen$e page. Here is Friday’s query: David G: I keep seeing an argument that says that income inequality is not as bad as statistics make it appear because poor people receive government benefits (or can — perhaps they don’t).
Your friend Bob Lerman seems to feel this way. It is my position that the financial securities owned by a wealthy person are much closer to being actual income than any benefit a poor person may receive. Those financial securities are like money in the bank to them. The wealthiest in our society live off of their financial securities and they pay lower tax rates than most.
Shouldn’t we pay more attention to the wealth that the wealthy have access to and less attention to their incomes? It was to Dan Ariely’s inequality-of-wealth pie charts that economist Robert Lerman objected. Are you a former surveyor? Non-profit turns to Indiegogo to help spread clean water and women’s entrepreneurship - Inside the Hive. Today’s World Water Day, and one Innovation District non-profit is using the opportunity to tap Indiegogo to help expand its water purification efforts while helping launch a network of women entrepreneurs in rural Ghana. Since 2008, Community Water Solutions has worked with villages around Tamale, Ghana, to set up basic water purification systems. The systems are simple, inexpensive, and effective, according to co-founder and executive director Kate Clopeck: The consist of large, concrete basins and three large buckets. The water is then treated with chlorine and a coagulant called alum. Continue Reading Below Each system is given to women of the village — typically two per system — who then create a business cleaning and selling the water.
Clopeck, an MIT alumna, said that so far, about 49 of these small businesses had been created, with all of them remaining active. Now, the non-profit is trying to expand its work both north and south, to Walewale and Salaga in Ghana. Wal-Mart Workers' Black Friday Strike. Wealth Inequality in America. In Asking About Income Inequality, Obama Begins With The Wrong Question. People Power Section 6: Soweto, South Africa. Krpano.com - EBC_Pumori_050112_8bit_FLAT. Is There Really A 'Line' For Immigration? Why We Need Labor Unions After All | Daily Ticker. Truth and Reconciliation Commission. One billion slum dwellers. Wealth, Income, and Power. Comparing The United States to Honduras. Beta: Poverty rate. ChildrenHealth. Income Inequality Worse Under Obama Than George W. Bush. ZIPskinny - Get the Skinny on that ZIP (demographics by ZIP Code) South Africa | Transitional Justice. Mexico City: Spatial Inequality by chris henke on Prezi.