For a deeper dive – over 500 posts on life, mind, body & spirit
Marceline has a large, but very old stone in her kitchen. It’s from her grandmother, who got it from her mother – so it has been passed down through many generations. With this stone and its accompanying stone roller she can quickly grind spices, grains, even make tomato sauce as you can see in the picture. What you can’t see is that this stone is right next to the microwave! It’s an interesting accommodation of old and new.
How’d they do it? Easy – gave homes to the homeless and gave everyone a basic income – and they will save BIG money doing it. To see how, read on.
And so we begin….to be a real community.
Appropriate reminder for the Fourth of July –
From “What American Dream?: One in Four People Now Live in High Poverty Neighborhoods” on recent Census Bureau data:
The Bureau found that in the decade between 1990 and 2000, the percentage of people living in these concentrated low-income communities dropped from 20.0 percent to 18.1 percent. However, in comparison, from 2000 to 2010, that percentage grew from a whopping 18.1 percent to 25.7 percent. And, “while the overall population grew by 10 percent over the decade, the number of people living in poverty areas grew by about 56 percent.” In raw numbers, more than 77 million people lived in these poor neighborhoods in 2010.
Roxanne here: We can no longer afford the high cost of poverty we create by diverting money from the public purse to corporate welfare.
How does your state create poverty? Here’s an example of how we create poverty “Minnesota-style.” Read this Bloomberg article on the death of shopping malls (“Goodbye, Malls of America“):
” . . . Minnesota’s legislature approved $250 million in tax benefits to help pay for a doubling in size of the country’s second-biggest mall, Mall of america. The money came from a fund set up to reduce economic disparities between rich and poor areas.” (bold added)
This money was designated for helping Minnesota’s poor communities. Now it’s going to corporate welfare queens. Inequality doesn’t just “happen.” We create poverty. People don’t just happen to be poor. People are made poor – by the collective action or inaction of all of us.
You may also like What is White Privilege? and Poverty is a Luxury We CanNOT Afford.
We call it “voter ID” – but we should really call it by its true name – voter racism.
What does systemic racism look like? Continue reading to find out.
Overt legal efforts to limit voting are underway by the Republican party along with a denial of the higher than whites black turnout voting rate –
Summary: The Republican Party is thus more officially racist than it was in Nixon’s day. Back then, at least they had Jackie Robinson and Sammy Davis Jr. And at least, back then, the Republican Party did these things in code, and not via the law. It was not so brazen as to think it could on the one hand be waging efforts in half the states to keep black people from voting and on the other be improving its “outreach.” The black vote will dip a bit when Obama retires, but as long as Republicans insist on these tactics, they will be doing more than they know to keep turnout high and keep hope alive.
Reality: state tracking demonstrates that voter fraud is so small as to be almost statistically invisible. However, requiring photo ID eliminates the possibility to vote for most of the weakest among us; the working poor, indigent, homeless. Not surprisingly these groups are primarily people of color – those made poor by racist policies just like this.
Click all the voter suppression efforts currently on offer across the country to see just how bigots work to incorporate racism systemically into our legal system.
Why are we short of revenue to balance the national budget? Why can’t we collect enough in revenue to improve our schools, public transportation or health insurance? Because corporations like Apple dodge paying their fair share of U.S. income taxes (estimated in the Financial Times at $9 billion just for Apple alone). You and I pay our fair share – and it’s collected directly from our paychecks, right up front. Why not for Apple? Apple benefits from our national infrastructure including things like education, transportation, security, communications networks and more.
Instead Apple issues bonds thereby keeping billions off-shore where it won’t be taxed. In this way Apple externalizes the real cost of running their business onto individual taxpayers and communities – keeping bigger bonuses for Apple executives and bigger dividends for stock holders.
Tax evasion corporate-style.
All too often we worry about welfare programs for those made poor (of which the entire program for low income individuals is relatively small) but prefer to remain oblivious to undeserved MASSIVE CORPORATE WELFARE worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
As consumers, we are morally culpable if we choose to do nothing. One can not be neutral. Either we demand that Apple, and all corporations, pay their fair share of taxes for the privilege of using our infrastructure and resources or, in doing nothing, we actively demonstrate our belief that corporate shareholders and executives deserve to take steal wealth from us, our families and communities.
Read the entire Associated Press article here.
You may also like Wealth Inequality – Meet the Reality and Women and Children are Made Poor – By Men.