#and who made a person living below the poverty line pay almost 200€ for food on them despite them having 10-15k in money

[mcrrox]

Not my exes Partner texting me that's stupid lol

[politijohn]

The Stock Market is not the Economy w/ Dan Price

Airlines spent 96% of free cash flow on stock buybacks for a decade, then cut 90,000 jobs when trouble hit. Then they got a $50 billion bailout

GE promised its CEO a huge bonus if stock hit $19. It didn’t, so GE re-did contract so the bonus kicks in at $10/share The CEO cut 20% of aviation staff to increase profits and raise the stock to $10 His bonus: $47M. If it goes up again, he gets $270M

JCPenney - April: furloughed 85,000 employees, May 10: Gave CEO $4.5M bonus on top of $17M/yr in pay, May 15: went bankrupt, Oct: laid off 15,000 people, Dec: closed 150 stores, Now: CEO left with $4.5M bonus after stock fell 88% in her 2 yrs

Boeing spent almost all of its cash on stock buybacks over the prior decade. In the past year, it cut 27,000 employees. It also fired its CEO over 2 deadly plane crashes and ensuing coverup, and gave him a $81 million exit package

On Jan. 6, when the mob stormed the Capitol, the stock market went up 250 points to a new record, handing the richest 1% an extra $300 billion. Also that day, a new report showed employment dropped for the first time since April and a then-record 3,900 people died of covid

Albertsons, US’ 2nd-largest grocery chain: *Profit is up 256% in pandemic *Stock at record high *Owned by private equity *CEO made $29M last year *Fired all California non-union drivers to replace them with gig workers with no benefits/min wage

The stock market for the 500 biggest companies ended the year up 15%, among the biggest gains ever. Also in that span, those companies lad off a record number of people, and wait times for food banks hit a record high

As part of the first stimulus, the Fed pumped about $3 trillion into the stock market, which helped it soar to record highs. At the same time, a record 30% of small businesses failed and unemployment tripled

Since 2009, stock market is up 233%. Since 2009, the federal min. wage is up 0%

Coca-Cola - This decade, it spent $48B on dividends and over $20B on stock buybacks 2018: CEO got 58% pay increase 2019: CEO got 12% pay increase, to $18.7M 2020: Company makes $8.3B profit…and it just laid off 12% of workers

Among the biggest 50 companies, they spent 79% of profits on stock buybacks and dividends in recent years to enrich executives and mostly-wealthy shareholders. Last year, those companies combined to lay off over 100,000 workers

Disney stock is up 21% in the past year to a new record high. In recent months they laid off 32,000 people. One of our employees lives near Disney World. Recently there was a line of cars outside his house for a drive-thru food bank 7.5 miles away

In the pandemic, total stock value has grown by $16.6 trillion. $8.3 trillion of that went to the richest 1%, and they pay a lower tax rate than those who are unemployed and need help

Salesforce - In the last 5 years, it has bought 27 companies for tens of billions of dollars. It just bought Slack for $27.7B. Its stock is at record high, up 23% in the past year after revenue surged 29%. And it just laid off 1,000 people

In November alone, the average member of the top 10% gained an average of $200,000 from the stock market while 7M people plunged into poverty

On one day in November: *The stock market hit 30,000 for the first time *Elon Musk became first person to gain $100B in a year *A Census report revealed 6M people face imminent eviction

Uber + Lyft spent $200M on November election ads to convince Californians they shouldn’t pay drivers minimum wage or benefits. In the 2 weeks after passage, Uber stock went up 39% and Lyft stock soared 52%. In return, all drivers were denied basic benefits

Average stock gains over 10 years CEOs with above-average pay: stock up 160% CEOs with below-average pay: stock up 280% And yet CEOs are rewarded whether the stock goes up or down

AT&T - 2018-2019: bought Time Warner for $100B, cut 29,000 jobs May: gave departing CEO $64M pension ($274K/mo for life), laid off 4,700 more workers August: laid off 600 more workers, Now: laid off thousands more - news sent stock up 2%

Marriott - 2018-2019: made $3.1B in profits, spent $5B on stock buybacks April: furloughed most employees, paid $160M in dividends to shareholders, gave CEO a 8% raise and 200% bonus Sept: laid off 17% of HQ staff Now: made $100M profit

$3B: what Jeff Bezos cashed out in stock in one day, as Amazon profits tripled in the pandemic. $2.1B: cost to give all Amazon warehouse workers 2 weeks paid sick leave and a year of hero pay (they got none of either now)

84% of stock market value is owned by richest 10% “but what about 401(k)s” Half of Americans don’t have one The average 401(k) balance has *declined* $5,000 in 6 years after inflation, because employers put in less & people can’t afford contributions

MGM - Laid off 18,000 people while giving its CEO $700K in stock. The value of the stock doubled to $1.4M after the stock went up, partly because of increased profitability due to the layoffs

Wells Fargo made $10B in staff cuts, meaning tens of thousands of employees lost their jobs. Wells Fargo also made a $2B profit, did $24B in stock buybacks last year, and paid its CEO $36M

Black and Latino Americans make up about 32% of the population but own only 1.7% of all stock value

1948-1979: Worker productivity: up 108%, Stock market: up 603%, Worker pay: up 93%.  Since then, worker productivity: up 70%, Stock market: up 2,200%, Worker pay: up 12%. Corporations and workers used to get richer together. Now companies just keep the money

Deere - Construction sales are down 25%. Yet, it is posting a $2.25B profit as it cuts thousands of jobs. The result: Its stock grew 23% in a year to a record high. In the week after it announced job cuts, its stock grew 9%

Walmart - Stock is at record high, up 23% in a year. The Waltons have gotten over $20B richer in the pandemic. Online sales are up 74% and market share has grown…and it cut hundreds of corporate jobs

Macy’s - Its stock was down 60% in a year and they cut 3,900 jobs. So what did it do? Gave its CEO a $3.7M bonus, and gave about $1M each to 5 other execs

CEOs justify huge pay by saying they’re worth it. But there’s no correlation between profit and CEO pay at 61% of corporations. Since 1990, stock market: up 300%, CEO pay: up 550%

Stock for the parent company of Ann Taylor, Loft and Lane Bryant is down 75% in a year. It closed all 2,800 stores. So what did it do? Gave executives $5.5M in bonuses, including over $2M to the CEO

Where proceeds from stock buybacks + dividends went over the last 15 years: White people: $13 trillion, Black people: $0.18 trillion Hispanic people: $0.21 trillion When we talk about the systemic racial wealth gap, this is a pretty good place to start

Amid the early days of the pandemic, stocks grew 38%, the most ever in a 50-day span. At the same time, thousands of small businesses closed each day while thousands of people died from covid

Google - Stock at all-time high. $6.8B profit last year. Founders Page + Brin added $10B+ to fortunes in a year. Offered jobs to over 2,000 people and axed them w/ no severance before they ever worked a day - after they already left their prior jobs

Companies did $62B/year in stock buybacks in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Now they do $730B/year in stock buybacks. Worker pay increases are far smaller now than they were in the ‘80s and ‘90s

Chevron - Its CEO made $33.1M/year. 5 other execs made a total of $59M. It spent $13B on stock buybacks and dividends in a year then laid off 10-15% of its staff

Big companies don’t just spend profits on manipulating stock. They are a record $10 trillion in debt - mostly for stock buybacks + dividends to enrich themselves. When the bill comes due, layoffs typically ensue

In April, a record 30M people lost their jobs and small businesses lost 55% of their revenue. At the same time, the stock market rose the most since 1987 and billionaires gained $308B

[viennaenosarts]

They tell you about the kid who graduates from college while homeless, but you don’t get to hear about what happens after graduation.

You don’t hear about the panic that comes with graduation week, which should be a happy time. I was about to be the first person in my family to finish high school and the first person in my family to go to/finish college with a BFA. I got a full scholarship to NYU, and I was extremely lucky and grateful. I come from a family of 4 with an income that is about 10,000 dollars below poverty line. My dad’s been addicted to drugs since before I was born, and by the time I was a toddler my mom had been beyond fed up with his shit and she began physically, verbally, and emotionally abusing me while my dad was being neglectful to the point where I had to help wipe his bottom or help him get into his bed. They also physically, verbally, and emotionally abused each other. This only got worse and then the summer after my freshman year I returned home to Philly and tried to put my dad in rehab when he was so fucked up he was stuffing his poop into the bathroom sink and trying to beat my mom up while hallucinating. His insurance couldn’t cover rehab, and our house became so infested with bedbugs at the time that all the furniture had to be taken away. I had no bed anymore. I tried sleeping on the floor, but the bedbugs were in the rug and bit me from my forehead to my toes.  I couldn’t be the kid that infested an NYU dorm of 200-1200 people with bedbugs, and the violence of my parents was so much to handle, I packed up and told them I officially couldn’t live there anymore. I’d gotten hit by a car that following summer, the second day into my summer job and I had broken bones and a broken bike, with all my stuff in storage. I was homeless in NYC with 7 cents to my name, and stuck limping around sleeping in buildings where I wouldn’t get caught or sleeping on a friend’s couch. By senior year I had agreed to pay $200 a month to live with my best friend in his mom’s basement back in Philly once I graduated. He started being irresponsible in spring and his mom said she didn’t want to have another person in the house. He tried to persuade her and the week of graduation day, he finally said that she said yes again, but now I had to pay $400 a month. I was working multiple jobs each semester to pay my bursar and feed myself because meal plans were expensive, but I saved 200 dollars and made a collective 200 from family members upon graduating, so I would give her that while I looked for a job. Now my brother, who offered to take me home but couldn’t afford to rent a car and didn’t have one, couldn’t take me to Philly after graduating, so I had to scramble around looking for a ride back to Philadelphia. I rode the Chinatown bus home from college, and my boyfriend’s mom put my stuff in her truck with my boyfriend’s stuff. He rode the bus home with me.  The night before I was supposed to pack up and move my best friend told me there was no floor in the basement, so I couldn’t move in yet. Yes, the night before I was supposed to come live with him. Now I had nowhere to stay. I’ve moved several times, dragging my stuff with me, staying a few nights here, a couple weeks here, a month there, ever since graduating. I carry my diploma around with me in a tote and my clothes in bags. I literally have not been settled anywhere yet since graduating. I’ve done odd jobs like scenic carpentry for a month long theatre festival known as the Philly Fringe fest. Now I’ve finally started working at a place I love and looking for a second job, but it’s gong to take a while before I can actually afford my own place, and student loans are about to be due. So much more had gone wrong but this is the short version. No one tells you about the PTSD or the inability to feel safe or stable anywhere after you almost get arrested for sleeping in a train station, you get sexually harassed at homeless shelters’ entrances by old men, or after you continuously have to leave a place and adjust to a completely new set of people and household rules. 

You have to adjust to new spaces, new people, their hangups and demands for you, and their hygiene. One friend I stayed with never cleaned and had bugs and mice, and most of the time the mattress he had was flipped up on the wall in his music studio. The next family I’m with isn’t mine, and I only have a month to be here. It’s something but it hurts that I’m liking it here and I’m gonna have to leave yet again. It’s hard to plan for a budget for food or storage or work commute when you’re always changing spaces. My boyfriend and I have nowhere to be intimate or alone and we can’t afford to live together. He doesn’t know how to help so he says nothing, and I feel bad that nearly every time we talk I fill him in on where I’m staying and it stresses him out. My brother is states away and does what he can by paying me when I help him make music. We’re mixed race so any relatives around my area also happen to be classist and sexist and racist, so I wouldn’t be safe or allowed to stay with them. I’m constantly anxious and have trouble believing it when I’m not.

I feel so alone and like a complete failure because I graduated, but to what? All my problems came rushing back at me and now more than ever when I thought life would get easier, it feels harder than it’s ever been. It’s hard enough dealing with not being in school for the first time ever and not knowing what to look forward to, but it’s even harder when you don’t have a stable place to put your head at night, a closet to keep your clothes in, internet to reach people with, or any real consistent support system. I’m really hoping this diploma eventually starts being worth my while.

[omcik-blog]

New Post has been published on OmCik

New Post has been published on http://omcik.com/welfare-and-food-stamps-helped-this-homeless-single-mom-get-back-on-her-feet/

Welfare and food stamps helped this homeless single mom get back on her feet

by Ryan Prior   @CNNMoney May 5, 2017: 12:26 PM ET

Stephanie Land had next to nothing when she checked into a Port Townsend, Washington, homeless shelter with her baby daughter Mia almost nine years ago. Fleeing an abusive relationship, she had no family to turn to, no job and only about $200 to her name.

Over the next several years, Land relied on a system of federal benefits and tax credits, as well as assistance from non-profits and churches to build a new life. The patchwork of programs helped her pay for food, rent, child care, health care and eventually tuition — when she decided to pursue a bachelor’s degree at the University of Montana.

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“Without these programs,” Land said, “I would have probably lost custody of my daughter or would have been forced to live in a car somewhere.”

Related: CNNMoney readers save man from homelessness

A few months after checking into the homeless shelter, Land began taking online college courses. She paid for the courses using Pell Grants, student loans and the Women’s Independence Scholarship, which offers scholarships to survivors of domestic violence.

A couple of years later, she and her daughter moved into low-income housing in Missoula, Montana, where the University of Montana’s creative writing community seemed like a dream. But first, she had to take a year off school to establish residency so she could qualify for the cheaper in-state tuition.

To get by, Land cleaned houses. Her pay started at $8 an hour and gradually she earned a little more. “It is unaffordable to work for minimum wage. I spent so much time working for so little,” she said.

After paying for cleaning supplies and transportation to clients’ houses, Land would bring home $300 to $400 a month. She also had about $1,000 a month from her student loans. About $875 of that went toward rent for the two-bedroom apartment she and her daughter had moved into. Her other expenses — Internet, car insurance, cell phone service, gas and credit card debts — ate up much of the rest.

“We really didn’t have money for food at all,” Land said. So she turned to food stamps and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, to help buy the groceries each month.

For her, it was one of the most humiliating parts of being in poverty. “Everyone on welfare says buying groceries is horrible,” Land said. “You’re always being watched.”

The WIC checks she used were large and obvious so she often bought groceries late at night. “Even the cashier would grumble, and hated doing a WIC checkout,” she said.

Related: From shelter to startup: One Egyptian immigrant’s success story

The checkout process took much longer, leaving many disgruntled customers waiting behind her. “You’re welcome,” she recalled more than one customer snarling at her, as though they had personally paid for her family’s groceries.

The cost of childcare — at $650 a month — would have easily eclipsed her entire budget, but grants from the Child Care and Development Fund helped cushion the blow.

At times, she said, “it got really, really bad.” Desperate for even the smallest amount of aid to help pay a heating bill, she’d call every number she could. “You get really good at scrambling, relentless at finding programs.”

Even an unexpected bill for $10 could send her “over the edge,” she said.

So could taking a heavy course load at school.

Related: Once a boy from the Bronx, he now creates supersonic passenger planes

At one point, Land was taking a fairly full load of 15 credit hours per semester and her work hours dropped below the 20 hours per week required to qualify for food stamps.

“I lost my food benefits when I desperately needed them,” she said. “You make progress and then get pushed back, as though you are being put ‘in your place.'”

She felt the system made it nearly impossible to transition off welfare. Once one advanced toward the cusp of the poverty line, “you could gain $100 in income, and lose $500 in grants.”

This, she said, is where the perception of welfare recipients being lazy comes from. Leaders from across the political spectrum have also acknowledged this stigma, including President Obama, who said in a 2011 town hall, “I’ve seen it, where people weren’t encouraged to work, weren’t encouraged to upgrade their skills, were just getting a check, and over time their motivation started to diminish.”

Land said she wished her school credit hours could have been put toward welfare’s work requirement so that she could have still “earned” her benefits. In her eyes, getting a college education was helping her to become self-sufficient.

After six years of classes and struggling to get by, Land finally graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English in 2014. Her second daughter was born a month later. And she started writing. Her articles and essays have since appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Guardian and several other publications. Last year, an article she wrote for Vox about her time cleaning houses went viral. It later resulted in a book deal with Hachette Books.

The money she has earned enabled her to stop relying food stamps. At the time, she posted on Facebook: “I did it, guys. I wrote my way out of poverty.”

Land now brings in a steady income as a writer and can support herself and her children independently. She recently got married for the first time. And, she said, she and her husband are now looking to buy a home.

CNNMoney (New York) First published May 5, 2017: 12:26 PM ET

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