The US Paradox Of Poverty Is Almost Impossible To Escape. Minimum-wage jobs are physically demanding, have unpredictable schedules, and pay so meagerly that workers can't save up enough to move on. Fifty years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson made a move that was unprecedented at the time and remains unmatched by succeeding administrations. He announced a War on Poverty, saying that its “chief weapons” would be “better schools, and better health, and better homes, and better training, and better job opportunities.” So starting in 1964 and for almost a decade, the federal government poured at least some of its resources in the direction they should have been going all along: toward those who were most in need.
Longstanding programs like Head Start, Legal Services, and the Job Corps were created. Medicaid was established. Poverty among seniors was significantly reduced by improvements in Social Security. In their view, government programs could do nothing to help the poor because poverty arises from the twisted psychology of the poor themselves. $15 minimum wage for fast food workers? Here's what it means for living wages, food prices and jobs - NaturalNews.com. Billionaires Dumping Stocks, Economist Knows Why. A handful of billionaires are quietly dumping their American stocks . . . and fast. Warren Buffett, who has been a cheerleader for U.S. stocks for quite some time, is dumping shares at an alarming rate. He recently complained of “disappointing performance” in dyed-in-the-wool American companies like Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and Kraft Foods. Buffett’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, has been drastically reducing his exposure to stocks that depend on consumer purchasing habits.
Berkshire sold roughly 19 million shares of Johnson & Johnson, and reduced its overall stake in “consumer product stocks” by 21%. With 70% of the U.S. economy dependent on consumer spending, Buffett’s apparent lack of faith in these companies’ future prospects is worrisome. Unfortunately Buffett isn’t alone. Fellow billionaire John Paulson, who made a fortune betting on the subprime mortgage meltdown, is clearing out of U.S. stocks too.
See the Proof: Get the Full Interview by Clicking Here Now. Anthony Hopkins, 'Hitchcock' Star, On Oscar Season Glad-Handing: 'It's Disgusting' Sir Anthony Hopkins doesn't suffer fools gladly. Not even icons like Sir Alfred Hitchcock. "I think later in his years, he could have retired because some of the films became terrible," Hopkins told HuffPost Entertainment in a recent interview. For the record, Hopkins prefers Hitchcock's fertile period between 1954 and 1960, when the director produced "Rear Window," "Vertigo," "North By Northwest" and "Psycho. " That last film is at the center of Hopkins' newest effort, appropriately titled "Hitchcock. " Directed by Sacha Gervasi ("Anvil: The Story of Anvil"), "Hitchcock" focuses on the making of "Psycho," as well as the relationship Hitchcock had with his wife, Alma Reville.
Hopkins plays Hitch in the film, transforming his features and voice to embody the oft-imitated director; fellow acting legend Helen Mirren plays Reville. "She was exactly what I expected," Hopkins said about his co-star. You've played historical figures before. What was the most difficult part of preparation? Sagan on the Decline of America. Is Wal-Mart Destroying America? 20 Facts About Wal-Mart That Will Absolutely Shock You. America absolutely loves Wal-Mart. 100 million customers visit Wal-Mart every single week in this country.
But is Wal-Mart good for America? That is a question that most people never stop and ask. Most of us love shopping in big, clean stores that are packed with super cheap merchandise, but the truth is that Wal-Mart is destroying America in a lot of ways. As you will see below, Wal-Mart has destroyed tens of thousands of small businesses and countless manufacturing jobs over the past couple of decades. Wal-Mart has become a gigantic retail behemoth that sells five times more stuff than any other retailer in the United States. The following are 20 facts about Wal-Mart that will absolutely shock you…. #1 The average U.S. family now spends more than $4000 a year at Wal-Mart. #2 In 2010, Wal-Mart had revenues of 421 billion dollars. . #3 If Wal-Mart was a nation, it would have the 23rd largest GDP in the world. #4 Wal-Mart now sells more groceries than anyone else in America does. NASA Bake Sale: Scientists To Stage Demonstrations Over Budget Cuts.
By: Clara Moskowitz Published: 06/07/2012 06:10 PM EDT on SPACE.com Scientists are trading telescopes for aprons this week to sell Milky Way cupcakes, Saturn cake, and chocolate chip Opportunity cookies in an effort to salvage U.S. planetary science projects. The 2013 budget proposal submitted by the Obama administration earlier this year would cut funding for NASA's planetary science projects by about $300 million. While Congress is still deliberating over the federal budget, groups of scientists are planning a series of demonstrations — in the form of bake sales, car washes and other events — for Saturday (June 9) to plead their case. Though planet-studying spacecraft usually cost millions, or even billions, of dollars, every penny helps.
That's the reasoning behind the Planetary Exploration Car Wash and Bake Sale to be held by University of Central Florida students and professors who hope to sway lawmakers into providing more money for studying the solar system. The Weakening of Nations: How Tax Work-Arounds Undermine Our Society - Eric Garland - International. Loopholes, poor regulations, and off-shore havens allow corporations and the very wealthy to draw on the benefits of a strong nation-state without fully paying back in, eroding a system that's less tested than we might think.
The Ugland House of Grand Cayman Island houses the office of the Cayman's largest law firm, Maples and Calder, and is the registered office of some 18,000 companies / Reuters Millions of dollars of Mitt Romney's personal wealth have been recently tied to bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, a Caribbean UK territory with decent SCUBA diving and spectacular don't-ask-don't-tell banking regulations. The Romney campaign protests, weakly yet amusingly, that "the accounts provide no tax advantage to American investors like Romney" but are there purely for the convenience of foreign investors who might wish to invest in Bain Capital without the "entanglements" of the United States tax system. Romney's situation is actually quite typical for a man in his societal position. People Aren't Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say | Why the Best Candidate Never Wins | Psychology. The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they see it.
But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies. The research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. For example, if people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts.
They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments. As a result, no amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them. The hysterical American decline - American History. Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated — Japan’s attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example. Others are ignored, and we can often learn valuable lessons from them about what is likely to lie ahead. Right now, in fact. At the moment, we are failing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s decision to launch the most destructive and murderous act of aggression of the post-World War II period: the invasion of South Vietnam, later all of Indochina, leaving millions dead and four countries devastated, with casualties still mounting from the long-term effects of drenching South Vietnam with some of the most lethal carcinogens known, undertaken to destroy ground cover and food crops.
The prime target was South Vietnam. There are important lessons in all this for today, even apart from another reminder that only the weak and defeated are called to account for their crimes. The Iraq war is an instructive case. Gauging American Decline. America: The Grim Truth. What It's Like to Work in Walmart Hell. October 28, 2010 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email.
Thanks to recent teacher layoffs and the miserable job market, I've gone from substitute high-school teacher to Wal-Mart associate. Teaching gave me weekends off for more pleasurable activities like annoying the roommate's cat or plucking my nipple hair. But this Sunday, I spent eight hours playing Avoid the Customer. Why do I play this game? Customers may be the worst part of my job, but they're not the only part of this gig that sucks. See, like millions of Americans, I'm underemployed. And those numbers are pretty grim; the national unemployment rate is at 9.6 percent, with 15 million Americans looking for work. But I don't have children or major medical expenses, so I do OK with my pathetic paycheck.
My coworkers are a diverse mix. Still others are well past retirement age, requiring canes or shopping carts to move around the store. Stock photos images. Ron Paul "The Last Nail Is Being Driven Into The Coffin Of The American Republic" Ranking 37th — Measuring the Performance of the U.S. Health Care System | Health Policy and Reform.
Evidence that other countries perform better than the United States in ensuring the health of their populations is a sure prod to the reformist impulse. The World Health Report 2000, Health Systems: Improving Performance, ranked the U.S. health care system 37th in the world1 — a result that has been discussed frequently during the current debate on U.S. health care reform. The conceptual framework underlying the rankings2 proposed that health systems should be assessed by comparing the extent to which investments in public health and medical care were contributing to critical social objectives: improving health, reducing health disparities, protecting households from impoverishment due to medical expenses, and providing responsive services that respect the dignity of patients.
Despite the limitations of the available data, those who compiled the report undertook the task of applying this framework to a quantitative assessment of the performance of 191 national health care systems. Life Expectancy in U.S. Lags Behind Global Rates - in Public Health & Policy, Public Health from MedPage Today. Life expectancy at birth for American men was 75.6 years and 80.8 for women in 2007 -- 36th and 33rd in the world -- with wide variation from county to county, researchers said. County-level life expectancies for men ranged from 15 years ahead of an international average of top-performing nations to more than 50 years behind, Christopher Murray, MD, of the University of Washington in Seattle, and colleagues reported in Population Health Metrics.
The range for women was 16 years ahead to more than 50 years behind. "The U.S. picture, with its remarkable combination of poor health outcomes despite the highest levels of health spending per capita, is even more stark and disturbing when examined at the local level," Murray and colleagues wrote. There are wide geographic and racial disparities in the U.S., but data had not been updated since 1999, the researchers said. At the county level, life expectancy in 2007 ranged from 65.9 years to 81.1 years for men and 73.5 to 86 years for women. False. World Bank Balances.
America’s Poor: A Regional Look at Poverty In America. The Real Story of Our Economy: Why Our Standard of Living Has Stalled Out | Economy. Do public sector workers earn more than private sector workers? Who cares? This boneheaded question has us fighting over the crumbs. (And the answer is no -- all credible studies show that when you account for educational levels, the total compensation packages are about the same.) The real question is: Why have most workers seen their standard of living stall over the last generation? The answer is both obvious and appalling.
It wasn’t always so. Productivity is a crucial economic measure of the total output of goods and services in our economy per hours worked. Output per working hour, although imprecise, is the best way we have to measure our level of technique, organization, skill, effort and intellectual firepower. Productivity and who gets it is the story of the last two generations of the American middle class – one that saw a tremendous rise in its standard of living, and one that saw its way of life stall and even crumble.
Until it didn’t. How The Wealthy Plan to Finance The American Aristocracy With Middle Class Dollars - Rick Ungar - The Policy Page. How rich are the super rich? Wealth Disparity. America: The Hungriest, Most Imprisoned Developed Country on Earth - Derek Thompson - Business. America is Shutting Down. America is shutting down. Our political system is flawed and no longer benefits Americans. Our priorities have been completely displaced. How could we be so careless as to let the the U.S. descend in so short a time from being a wealthy and productive nation to one controlled by lobbyists, living on imports, selling our companies to our foreign competitors and living on ever increasing debt.
Our decline has been the result of decades of failed policies that are still running rampant: A lack of restrictions on imports (as practiced by other counties) has put many of our companies out of business and caused the wholesale liquidation of our best companies to foreign ownership. Our government and its leaders have developed no industrial policies (like most foreign countries do) to protect American owned companies or to be more instrumental in developing and creating more productive industries in our own country. A country’s companies are its wealth producers. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.