Where Americans—Rich and Poor—Spent Every Dollar in 2012 - Derek Thompson. Food, clothes, and housing account for more than 60 percent of all spending among the poor.
In Climbing Income Ladder, Location Matters. The hand that feeds you. How Poverty Taxes the Brain - Emily Badger. Human mental bandwidth is finite.
You’ve probably experienced this before (though maybe not in those terms): When you’re lost in concentration trying to solve a problem like a broken computer, you’re more likely to neglect other tasks, things like remembering to take the dog for a walk, or picking your kid up from school. In Reality, Middle-Class Blacks And Middle-Class Whites Have Vastly Different Fortunes. Income Gap Grows Wider (and Faster) Could You Survive on Fast-Food Wages? Try Our Calculator. Chief among the demands made by the hundreds of fast-food workers who walked out of their jobs this week: A raise to a "livable" wage of $15 an hour.
Currently, the median hourly wage for the cooks, cashiers, and crew who deliver your value meals is $8.94, according to a new report from the National Employment Law Project. That's hardly enough to get by in most cities. And while $15 might sound like a big jump, it's still not enough to meet living wage standards in many areas. Poverty and cognitive impairment: Study shows money troubles make decision-making difficult. Photo by Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters How much money do I waste in a given month by doing most of my grocery shopping at the Whole Foods that’s directly on my route home rather than taking the three-minute detour to Safeway?
I have no idea. As a business writer, I’m aware that the Whole Foods markup is big on some items and small on others. I know that it sometimes reflects genuinely higher quality and sometimes doesn’t. Rich Kids Of Instagram. Charts: The economic gap between blacks and whites hasn’t budged for 50 years.
Our colleague Zachary Goldfarb published a big piece over the weekend noting that the United States hasn't made much progress in closing the economic chasm between blacks and whites over the past 50 years.
"Many of the most overt forms of racial discrimination and bias have faded," Goldfarb writes, "but yawning economic gaps have persisted since 1963" — that's the year, note, that Martin Luther King Jr. led the The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It's an excellent story, worth reading in full. The Burdens of Working-Class Youth - The Chronicle Review. By Jennifer M.
Silva Brandon, a 34-year-old black man from Richmond, Va., labels himself "a cautionary tale. " Resources for building an active sociological imagination. Viral Video Shows the Extent of U.S. Wealth Inequality. How The Poor, The Middle Class And The Rich Spend Their Money : Planet Money. For a historic look at spending in America, see our post What America Buys.
For more, see our Graphing America series. How do Americans spend their money? The States with the Widest Gap Between Rich and Poor. While some income inequality is generally considered necessary in a free market economy, extreme inequality is not.
In the United States, there are far more poor people than wealthy ones — and the gap between the rich and poor is growing. Income inequality is a problem among more developed countries, but the U.S. is among the worst. The U.S. has the fourth worst income inequality compared to other developed countries, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation. Though some are better than others, all 50 states have higher inequality than most of the developed world. 24/7 Wall St. examined the 10 states with widest gap between the rich and poor. SNAP Average Monthly Benefits per Person. RichVPoor : Welfare misconceptions: the... Illustrating Wealth Inequality. By Lisa Wade, PhD, Mar 9, 2013, at 12:00 pm.
Don’t fall for Wal-Mart’s latest hypocrisy. This piece has been corrected since it first published.
Last month, amid the flap enveloping disgraced celebrity chef Paula Deen, Wal-Mart put on a face of corporate responsibility. “We are ending our relationship with Paula Deen Enterprises and we will not place new orders beyond those already committed,” its official statement read. Yet, behind the appearances of zero tolerance for the kind of hostile work environment — rife with racial slurs, discrimination and harassment – that Deen allegedly fostered, was a deep irony. Wal-Mart, like Deen, was engaging in its own bullying right around the same time. Just days before ditching the TV personality, Wal-Mart was busy entering into a standoff with the Washington, D.C., City Council over its proposal for a living wage law.
80% of U.S. Adults Face Near-Poverty, Unemployment. Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream. Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend. The findings come as President Barack Obama tries to renew his administration's emphasis on the economy, saying in recent speeches that his highest priority is to "rebuild ladders of opportunity" and reverse income inequality. The High Cost of Poverty: Why the Poor Pay More. You have to be rich to be poor. The Cost of Being Poor. For most Americans, gay equality trumps religious objections.
Same-sex marriage supporter Vin Testa of the District waves a rainbow flag in front of the Supreme Court.Bill O’Leary / The Washington Pos In the wake of two favorable Supreme Court decisions, gay rights proponents got another boost this month with the release of “State of the First Amendment: 2013,” a public opinion survey supported by the First Amendment Center. According to the new poll, a majority of Americans (62 percent) now agrees that religiously affiliated groups receiving government funds can be required to provide health benefits to same-sex couples, even if the group has religious objections to same-sex marriage or partnerships.
Support for equal treatment of gay couples is highest among young people ages 18-30 (68 percent) and among Americans who identify as liberal (82 percent). When government funds aren’t involved, public support for equal treatment of gay couples drops to a slim majority. What Happened to Economic Mobility in America? - David Rohde. The Wealth of Nations: The U.S. is No. 1 in Inequality.
Cross-posted at Reports from the Economic Front.