by Roxanne -

Fresh, the Movie

Here’s another Lenten idea. Want to see an uplifting movie about improving the world while we enjoy the food we eat? Watch Fresh! It’s just 90 minutes. You can watch it with your book club or anywhere that thoughtful people gather.

Unlike Food Inc., the film Fresh focuses on a vision of how things can be different, how much power we have as consumers and how we vote with each dollar we spend.

Envision the kind of healthy food you would like to eat every day. Envision the kind of world you would like to live in. Both are possible.

Thanks to my friend L. I can recommend another excellent short film about food, “The Dark Side of Chocolate.” This film documents how much of the chocolate we eat (Nestle, Kraft, Cargill, ADM) is harvested using child slave labor. These corporations refuse to enforce the laws against child slave labor with their cocoa growers.

YOU can make a difference by resisting chocolate ingredients from these companies and buying Fair Trade chocolate like Divine Chocolate or Fair Exchange Chocolate brands. As a consumer you have power. You vote for the kind of world you want to live in with every food dollar you spend!

You may also like Of Passion Fruit, Persimmons and Pomegranates, Lent – Into the Desert and What Can You and I Do? and Spend Less on Groceries – Eat Better

by Roxanne -

Poverty is a Luxury We CanNOT Afford

In this time of the Great Recession, if we are cutting budgets, saving more and using our brains, we should be realizing that poverty is expensive. In fact it’s way too expensive! We just can’t afford it anymore.

I have been reading about the poverty that our economic system creates – within our country and around the globe. Most of the poverty we have in the world is caused by human beings. Even hunger from natural disasters, such as famines, can be remedied with insurance for farmers, as we do in this country. Poverty is caused by our imperfect economic systems, laws, international laws, apathy and lack of political will.

I’ve also been thinking about the side effects poverty including growing up without good nutrition, without access to preventive health care, without stable income and within environments of violence and abuse – frequently from those who fear the poor.

Growing up hungry, or in a home where parents work numerous jobs, or where meals aren’t served regularly, makes it difficult for children to concentrate in school. It makes it difficult or impossible to do homework. It makes children more susceptible to illness and it takes longer to recover. While there are always those who are exceptions to these kinds of circumstances, they are exceptions.

Eating nutritious food costs more. Our country’s farm policies subsidize highly processed and prepared food high in corn sugar and fat (corn oil). By extension we subsidize corporations (Cargill, ADM, Kraft, McDonald’s, Coca Cola, etc.) who use these ingredients. We do not subsidize nutritious fruits and vegetables, but we could.

Owning a car is expensive and many of the poor can’t afford it. But, as a nation, we do not promote public transportation. This makes taking the bus time consuming and arduous for those who use public transport to get to work, buy groceries, do laundry or take children to school or the doctor. Imagine having to do all of your errands using the bus. Many do.

On the other hand imagine a city where buses have the right of way, can change stop lights and move people quickly. Cities in South America have just such a system. A subway above ground – if you will. Read Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy to see how efficiently and inexpensively it works using what we already have.

With regard to housing, more than one expert has observed that the banking industry could make far more money betting that sub-prime mortgage securities would fail than in the actual income from mortgages and servicing them (read here and here). The existence of the working poor and lack of affordable housing made it a strong probability that greedy elites drove the sub-prime mortgage securities market boom, short & crash and the resulting bank bail-out costing taxpayers trillions.

Living on a planet where so many are hungry certainly isn’t good for me as a person with wealth – and we are all rich, by two thirds of the world’s standards, if we live on more than $2 a day. Living in a different part of the city I experience an “unreal” reality. I do not see life as it really is for most human beings. My focus stays in my small world, acquiring things for my small life. My gifts remain useless to the larger community – since I do not connect there. I am separated in many ways from the larger human family. My heart is thus, hardened. My life and relationships are less full and rich than they are meant to be. Therefore, I become less human than I am meant to be. I become more self-centered and self-focused, the opposite of what it means to be a truly human person.

We simply can’t afford the luxury of poverty anymore. The costs are too high; the costs in human talents lost from both the poor and rich, the costs in emergency room health care and disease, and the costs in human physical, mental and spiritual disabilities of both poor and rich alike.

Paying a fair wage is the first step in eliminating poverty. There is something morally and ethically wrong with an economic system that allows some to accumulate great wealth when so many children go hungry – especially in this country. Accumulating wealth is fine – once the basic needs of everyone have been met. Life is risky. People get sick, encounter tragedies, have accidents. We need adequate social safety nets, including health insurance, affordable housing and education, for everyone.

Eliminating poverty brings advantages to everyone. Health care costs are reduced for all. The level of education of our entire population improves benefitting everyone. Consequently the skill level of workers improves along with entrpreneurism and employment. Crime perpetrated by both rich and poor declines. Abuse, drug use and human slavery by both rich and poor decline. Self-determination and autonomy through democracy increase. Political and corporate terrorism and despotism no longer appeal with their promise of providing food.

Watch the movie Made in L.A. to see a true, but powerful story about how three young women changed the apparel industry. We each can make a difference.

Eliminating poverty is not just a religious imperative – although it is that. It is a human imperative. Even avowed atheists like philosopher Peter Singer promote the importance of caring for everyone and the impact it has on the whole of human society. Read his book The Life You Can Save for an eye-opening yet entertaining discussion.

We’ve created our economic system. We change the way it works by adjusting laws, regulating it and measuring what we think is important.

Our economy exists to care for the needs of human beings – not the other way around. This economic system can be an engine for growth with values that promote the good of all. Inhuman values of greed and selfishness can be replaced with values of concern and cooperation. Standards of fair trade, fair wages, health insurance for all and care of the environment can be implemented. These are not mutually exclusive interests. In fact they work together.

We are all interconnected and interdependent. When the poorest among us do well – we ALL do better. For the health and well being of all of us, poverty is a luxury we can no longer afford.

You may also like What Can You and I Do?, White Privilege and Where Do Our Clothes Come From?

by Roxanne -

Non-Profit Economy

Photo MarieClaire.com

Not too long ago our economy was primarily agricultural. Then we moved to an industrial economy. In the early part of the last century we became a manufacturing economy creating consumer goods. Within the past thirty years we have moved to a service economy to support selling consumer goods and services. Most of these goods are now manufactured elsewhere on the globe. Within the past decade, many of the services were moved off-shore as well. The advent of the Great Depression/Recession in 2008 demonstrated that service jobs will not provide the economic engine we need to move our economy forward.

Our economy is stuck. We need a new vision. A new idea about what will use our talents and resources to fulfill a need. Our biggest resource is people and their talents. The world’s biggest need is to solve poverty. Two thirds of the world’s people live in extreme poverty.

So how will we marry our resources with our world’s need to eliminate poverty?  Non-profit organizations have been doing this for a long time. Perhaps it is time for the U.S. to move to a non-profit economy.

This would focus the talents we have on those who need it most, while providing employment. Just as we have seen growth in environmental businesses we are beginning to see interest and growth in the work of non-profits. Witness the meteoric rise of micro-ending as an example of this. This is not about charity. Charity cares for the symptoms of poverty without removing the causes.

The problem of poverty is complex. Poverty can be situational, generational as well as systemic. So a real increase in our efforts to solve the causes of poverty would require many creative, effective solutions. Effective solutions involve careful listening to those who are struggling as well as creativity and imagination.

An example are the ESPERA Funds or community lending funds of Mary’s Pence, the women’s group receiving an ESPERA fund determines what interest rate works for them and decisions are made locally for loans within the fund. Ideally they will use the funds repaid to begin another ESPERA Fund. In other words the fund is not only sustainable, it has the possibility of being paid forward. “Local solutions” for “long-term change” work best.

I think it’s a pretty powerful idea and one that will move us forward – as a nation and as a global family.

by Roxanne -

Where Do Our Clothes Come From?

Photo BenefitsOfYogaNow.com

This article from Everything Yoga Blog asks where our yoga clothes come from. It was a good article as far as it went. Knowing the country of origin is important. But the author should have gone further. It’s not enough to know where our clothes come from. Singapore, China, India — it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is this – were the people who made these clothes paid a fair and living wage? Were they provided with good working conditions? Were they adults or children forced to work instead of going to school? Of course, we should also ask, what is the environmental impact of the clothes we buy? These are the questions we should be asking.

Truthfully, we should be asking these questions for everything we buy. We have a moral responsibility to ask these questions and require that answers be provided in order to make a decision to purchase. Once we know, we have a moral responsibility to purchase accordingly.

Watch this movie about the U.S. apparel industry, Made in L.A. to learn how three young women changed the industry. Be inspired!

We vote for a just world with every dollar we spend.

Follow-up article – this article details the toxic and banned chemicals showing up in clothes made by major clothing manufacturers. Because they are manufactured and shipped from overseas, the clothes arrive with the toxic chemicals already on them. They leach into our environment and onto our bodies when we wear and wash them.

“Samples of clothing from top brands including Adidas, Uniqlo, Calvin Klein, H&M, Abercrombie & Fitch, Lacoste, Converse and Ralph Lauren were found to be tainted with the chemicals, known as nonylphenol ethoxylates, the watchdog said at the launch of its report “Dirty Laundry 2”.

You may also like Kowalski’s Grocery Store and Fiji Water, Element a Green Hotel in Dallas Snow-Over and From Dublin to Juarez.

by Roxanne -

Home Prices Free-Fall

Welcome to the month of March and the middle of the home buying season. Having spent most of my adult life working in the marketing world I learned a few things. One of the things I learned is that the large population group called the “Baby Boomers” is like a pig in a python. They are so large (up to 76 million) that they dramatically affect products for every stage of life they move through. This includes housing.

You can read the details of why home prices will continue to free-fall here. Or you can consider that as the Boomers retire and downsize, the demographic group behind them is much smaller, earns far less and isn’t as interested in living in a large home in the suburbs.

Marketing forecasters have noted that young homeowners prefer urban living in order to develop richer relationships and social networks. A strong social network is an important asset in a high unemployment economy. Urban locations also have greater access to those jobs that are available as well as public transportation. Cars are a big expense today that not everyone can afford. Long suburban commutes take up time that young couples are not as willing to give up as their parents were.

In the end younger homeowners focus on developing relationships over acquiring “stuff” or square footage. This is a survival strategy as much as a lifestyle choice. But I think it’s a good one.

Not surprisingly, many retired Boomers often prefer urban areas for some of the same reasons, plus the added benefit of easy access to high quality healthcare.

In addition there is the general overall trend toward much smaller, easier living spaces (read more here, here and here).

Added to this is the nightmare title/foreclosure problems that exist with MERS (40% of mortgaged homes). It’s difficult to buy or sell if no one knows who owns the title.

Then we have the Too-Big-To-Fail banks’ total lack of interest in cooperating with consumers through loan modifications, but instead, a preference for foreclosures whenever possible. Why? Because these banks never experienced the consequences of their unethical and risky mortgage loan practices. Not only were bank executives never prosecuted, investors were actually made whole from all losses through the Republican-Democrat taxpayer bail-out. Can you say “good ‘ole boy network?”

Of course this was VERY expensive (trillions of dollars) and we, as taxpayers, will have to reduce our national spending to pay for it. One way this might happen is by the recently proposed elimination of the home mortgage tax deduction. Reduction in social security, medicare and education funding are other targets – not to mention any and all social safety nets for those in crisis – mainly women & children.

Longer term, this means big banks are highly motivated to continue selling risky mortgages, foreclose and resell any and all properties for as long as possible. No need to modify loans or stop shady loan practices. Where are the foreclosure fees or resale profits in that? Meanwhile, we the taxpayers, have already reimbursed them for failed mortgages – even as many of us are evicted from our homes. The rest of us are apparently in the wrong business! (Post Script added 3-2-11: But resigning ourselves to this outcome of events is not inevitable, only one choice, as Yves Smith writes about here.)

NET: This huge over-supply of super cheap homes will last decades.

This timely article provides another glimpse of the current state of the housing market.

All in all, you can readily see why suburban home prices will continue to drop, drop, drop for a LONG time.

So what will happen to all those 3 bdrm/2 bath McMansions? We haven’t seen anything yet.

You may also like Financial & Economic Crisis an Accident? and Why the Rich Get Richer.