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But that is also where it comes down to loyalties. If someone (no matter where they are from) is more loyal to the dollar, than to people, country, culture... then they will find a way to hide, horde and exploit wealth.

You can argue that the old have less income. True. But why? Because they bought into the public support idea that our government (and our society) still sells. But the very fact that it is no longer sustainable is not just a call to fund the existing system more heavily; it's a call to become more self-sufficient and plan for our own futures.

Upper level mananagement/CEO's can close American companies and use the justification of lower salaries overseas (just look at China as one example) as their mantra. The benefits of globalization tend to end at the boardroom door. In doing that, in destroying the manufacturing base of their own country, they are richly rewarded.

American workers (in essence) have to compete directly with Third World workers, while American CEO's are world leaders in the salaries and benefits they receive. I'm sure we could hire an entire board of directors from India or China, for the price of one companies executive lunch program.

The CEO's and Board of Directors are not just accountable to the employees. They are accountable to shareholders, to consumers, to federal regulations. In some industries that are heavily unionized, it is FAR cheaper to export the labor, particularly to countries where the regulations are not as strict.

Average CEO compensation at the 50 firms outsourcing the most service jobs increased by 46 percent in 2003, compared to a 9 percent average increase for all CEOs at the 365 large companies surveyed by Business Week. Top outsourcers earned an average of $10.4 million in 2003, 28 percent more than the average CEO compensation of $8.1 million. From 2001 to 2003, the top 50 outsourcing CEOs earned $2.2 billion while sending an estimated 200,000 jobs overseas.

Political contributions also appear to pay off. CEOs of the 69 companies that sponsored this summer’s Democratic and Republican National Conventions saw their pay jump 52 percent in 2003, far outpacing the 9 percent raise for the average large company CEO. Similarly, the 38 CEOs who have personally raised at least $100,000 for either the Bush or Kerry presidential campaigns earned an average of $15.2 million in 2003, 88 percent more than the average large company CEO.


One sign of the political clout of corporate leaders is the current effort in Congress to block new rules that would require corporations to report all stock option grants as expenses in their financial statements. Current accounting rules have encouraged lavish options grants to executives. The report calculates that corporations have claimed an estimated $3.9 billion in tax deductions related to stock options exercised by 350 leading CEOs since 1997.

After two years of narrowing, the CEO-to-worker wage gap is rising again. The CEO pay to worker pay ratio reached 301:1 in 2003, up from 282:1 in 2002. If the minimum wage had increased as quickly as CEO pay since 1990, it would today be $15.76 per hour, rather than the current $5.15 per hour.

Bank of America, for example, cut nearly 5,000 US jobs while outsourcing up to 1,100 jobs to India in 2003. In July 2004, the firm announced that it planned to cut another 12,500 U.S. jobs in the next two years. Meanwhile, CEO Kenneth Lewis received $37.9 million in compensation in 2003, nearly 110 percent more than in 2002. Bank of America’s PAC has made $576,319 in contributions in the 2003-2004 election cycle.

The outsourcing of service jobs to low-wage countries has further widened the pay gap between workers and their bosses. Currently, the pay gap between U.S. CEOs and American call center workers is 400:1, while the gap between U.S. CEOs and Indian call center workers is 3,348:1.

http://www.faireconomy.org/press/2004/EE2004_pr.html

Bush's 2008 budget proposes a 76 million dollar cut in mental health social services. Prepare for the upcoming flood of poor and homeless Iraq war vets..... you won't be able to place them in minimum wage jobs.

You try getting on to Disability without ever paying anything into it. Just like trying to get an insurance co. to cover you for things you never paid for. Won't happen. We all are required to PAY for that insurance. The only reason SS is not overflowing with cash right now is because the government has quietly 'taken' it for other uses, thus not cutting out popular vote getting uses, or funding new ones at SS expense. There is now a movement to be able to shift your own payments into your own private acct. earning far more than the governments measly gains. And I didn't like forced insurance before, and I still don't like it. But I have to live with it, I have no choice.

Sassymiss: Where ever the Mexicans live they trash the building and where ever they work they trash the restrooms. Fact, not fiction.

Fixing poverty may mean fixing mindset

March 20, 2007

By Mel Huff Times Argus Staff

MONTPELIER – There's little disagreement that poverty acts as a brake on the state's economy, devours tax dollars and undermines the health of communities.

The question is what to do about it.

Philip DeVol, co-author of "Bridges Out of Poverty," told a group of some 20 social service providers, business people and legislators Monday that solutions to poverty must be worked out with the poor and be rooted in an understanding of their "mental model" of reality.

Bridges Out of Poverty concepts are gaining increasing credibility in Vermont. This was DeVol's sixth trip to the state; more than a thousand Vermonters have attended his trainings. The event Monday was sponsored by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and the Northfield Savings Bank.

DeVol characterizes economic class not by conventional means – income levels, for example – but by how stable people's lives are. The lives of the poor are unstable.

"They spend all their time solving immediate, concrete problems," he said. Although people living in generational poverty – poverty that passes from one generation of a family to the next – are good problem-solvers, their problem-solving is reactive. They are subject to "the tyranny of the moment," DeVol said.

Preoccupation with continual crises, such as cars breaking down, leaves the poor with no margin for planning for the future. "You are robbed of your future story," he said.

Unlike the middle class, who define themselves by their work, the jobs of the poor are often part- time and patchwork. Stress-related illness and depression are prevalent. Housing consumes a large proportion of income. In one group with whom DeVol worked, 40 percent to 79 percent of the participants' income was spent on housing.

One woman observed to him, "You know, the arithmetic of life doesn't work for us."

Although people who live in poverty get "stuck in the concrete," when they are helped to examine their lives from an abstract point of view – to analyze their lives – they "get it" and make changes, he said.

In contrast to the mental outlook of the middle class, which is centered on work and achievement, the mental model for the poor revolves around relationships, DeVol said. Those models affect attitudes toward work, time, money and entertainment.

The poor may make choices that are anathema to their middle-class employers. If a man living in poverty gets a call from his brother-in-law saying that his car won't start, the man will typically help his brother-in-law get the car on the road and come to work late. Or a Licensed Professional Nurse might take a telephone call while she is caring for a patient. For these people, the central value in life is the relationships they depend on for survival.

The most important way out of poverty is education, DeVol observed, but the distraction created by instability makes it difficult to focus on its distant rewards. While the children of the middle class usually complete four years of college in a block, the children of the poor often stretch their post-secondary education out over many years, stopping to work, care for sick relatives or respond to other needs, he said.

Solving the problems of the poor requires including them at the planning table, DeVol argued. The results of excluding them from planning can be seen in the evacuation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck: If the poor had been included in the evacuation planning, buses would have been provided, he observed.

DeVol said employers are often surprised to learn that the mental model of poverty applies to their low-wage workers. Clarion Health Partners, the largest health care provider in Indianapolis, found 500 employees who qualified for help buying Christmas presents for their children, he said. When they started looking more closely at the economic situation of their employees, they also discovered that 1,700 of their workers were eligible for the federal earned income tax credit, a payroll tax refund for low-income workers.

DeVol cited a World Bank study that found the best return on investment came from focusing resources on issues of equity – making sure everyone in a country "had a fair shot" at getting a good education or accessing health care. Those were the conditions associated with economic growth. "You don't think of the community as being responsible for the prosperity of everybody," he observed.

The Bridges Out of Poverty strategy for helping the poor out of poverty is providing the supports they need so that they can build resources and assets. "Today, getting out of poverty is not anything anyone can pull off by himself," he said. The results can be substantial for businesses as well as for nations.

DeVol, who lives in Ohio, cited the example of changes made by Cascade Engineering, a privately owned plastics company with headquarters in Grand Rapids, Michigan that had many poor people an expensive problem with retention: In 1991, it retained only 29 percent of employees for 60 days or more. By 1999, the company had increased its retention rate to 80 percent by improving education efforts.

DeVol acknowledged that the cost was high, but noted that "you get payback in the end. If we're working with people in poverty, don't you think we should be good at it?" he asked.

I think you confuse racist generalization bullshit with fact

THAT IS A FACT