EconomyBeat.org » consumers

Of bulls and dogs

Jon Brooks — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:05:47 +0000

From the blog EV Grieve: Something that all the foreclosed homeowners out there might not find so amusing. A 13,000-square foot dog facility is opening up near Wall Street. The Fetch Club will include an indoor dog park, “social club,” hotel/spa, and boutique. Great. The Fetch Club. When they open up The Kvetch Club, gimme a call.

Steal this web video

Jon Brooks — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 22:52:41 +0000

QuestionCopyright.org, is an organization that seeks to “highlight the economic artistic, and social harm caused by distribution monopolies, and to demonstrate how freedom-based distribution is better for artists and audiences.”

To that end, here’s an animated video it released a couple of weeks ago called “Copying Is Not Theft,” spelling out one argument against certain copyright restrictions.

Of course, you should feel free to download, repurpose, and sell this any way you can.

Dismantling consumer protection – a history

Jon Brooks — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:38:06 +0000

“Federal regulatory functions all had become dominated by political pressure from the providers of services promulgating ‘free markets’ and ‘lifting the regulatory burden’, greased by millions of dollars of campaign contributions and lobbying.”

One of the sticking points in the Senate in enacting the financial reform bill is the creation of a new consumer financial protection agency, which Republicans have ardently opposed.

This post by former World Bank and Federal Reserve economist Barbara N. Opper, on the financial sector policy blog Finance: Facts and Follies, summarizes the dismantling of consumer protections in the mortgage and credit card industries in the 2000s.

Many of the steps violating unsophisticated consumers’ protections against predatory lending came from a cascade of federal, not state, regulatory actions and legislation.

The financial industry’s influence on Washington, evident in the late 1980s when Alan Greenspan went to Chair the Fed, gained momentum between 2000 and 2008 when the industry ‘captured’ the administration and Congress. Investors sophisticated or not lost protection, as did consumers, especially the unsophisticated. As the famous post-Napoleon expression goes, this was “worse than a crime it was a blunder” because US financial institutions’ ability to attract profitable business worldwide rested on the trust that had been the outcome of our once-effective regulation.

To set the stage, in the 1970s a lot of consumer protection came into place. States enacted “Truth in Lending Laws” and the Fed was to handle consumer protections related to bank lending. By then, 64% of residents owned their homes, financed by self-amortizing home mortgages most of which carried fixed rates. With regulators enforcing strict underwriting standards, delinquency and foreclosure rates were very low. Credit cards were issued only to those with very strong credit records.

So when we started hearing about consumers being lured into very disadvantageous credit card and mortgage loans, it was reasonable to ask how so much predatory lending could prevail against Truth in Lending and other consumer protection in place. The answer is two rulings from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). One in 2003 prohibited states from enforcing their own truth in lending laws. Eliot Spitzer, former NY State Attorney General, said “Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye … all 50 state attorneys general and all 50 state banking superintendents actively fought the new rules.” It took until June 29, 2009 for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule in favor of the states. The other, in 2004, prohibited state bank supervisors from inspecting, supervising and overseeing national banks located in their state.

The impact of this regulatory approach on the examination and supervision functions should not be ignored. Examiners used to look at samplings of loan underwriting that would have caught “liars’ loans”, no-down-payment loans, wishful thinking property valuations, and other abuses of the go-go-mortgage lending years from 2003 to 2008. Instead, they focused more on the way banks handled Bank Secrecy Act and Patriot Act laws monitoring customer transactions.

Between 2000 and 2008, the economy was stagnating. Encouraging consumption with ready access to debt evidently turned into a policy tool to maintain economic growth. Household debt doubled. That growth was fueled not just by mortgages but also by credit card use as federal regulators looked the other way while credit cards were issued to youth and other elements of the population ill-equipped to handle such ‘easy’ credit. By then, states could not effectively offset federal regulators’ inaction because of the OCC rulings and the domination of the banking industry by national banks. Also, interest-sensitive home building with its collateral durable goods purchases is always a standard Fed policy tool. With more-than-accommodative monetary policy and lax underwriting standards, home property values rose at a pace never before seen. This was the kind of bubble the Fed was created to prevent. It was possible to track GDP growth with and without consumption fueled by home-equity draws.

Securitization was once a reasonable approach to improving the marketability of a home mortgage portfolio but it became destructive. One reason is lenders’ eliminating the free prepayment option to improve predictability of the payment stream for the investor. That removed a long-standing valuable right of borrowers, especially those who woke up too late to the predatory terms of their mortgages.

Many criticize the patchwork of overlapping banking regulatory authority involving several federal agencies and the state where a bank did business. But these two OCC rulings show the value of that overlap. Federal regulatory functions all had become dominated by political pressure from the providers of services promulgating ‘free markets’ and ‘lifting the regulatory burden’, greased by millions of dollars of campaign contributions and lobbying. If it had not been for these two OCC rulings, state authorities could have prevented the predatory terms foisted on unwitting borrowers.

The United States system had been designed by people who understood the dangers of concentration of wealth and power, moral hazard, conflict of interest and self dealing. It was a lesson learned from the Pecora hearings, and is the lesson to be relearned by the Angelides Commission.

Happy all the time

Jon Brooks — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 16:38:47 +0000

March 3, 2009

March 3, 2010

Fast food is not only recession-proof, it’s recession-enabled. From an AP news story last year, during the heart of the downturn:

Recession helps boost McDonald’s sales

McDonald’s Corp. said Monday its same-store sales rose 7.1 percent in January, as cash-strapped consumers lined up for the fast-food company’s burgers and breakfast items. Total sales in January rose 2.6 percent. In the U.S., same-store sales, or sales at stores open for at least 13 months, rose 5.4 percent during the month. Overseas, same-store sales rose 7.1 percent in Europe, the U.K., France and Russia, and rose 10.2 percent in the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East and Africa.

But no matter what your financial situation, you might want to think twice (or thrice) before you use fast food as a way to stretch your budget. Why? Well take, for instance, Nonna’s Happy Meal Blog, from Baby Bites, an ezine for parents of picky eaters. Nonna purchased a Happy Meal in 2009 to “see if the claim that (it) will last for years is true.” Selected entries from this year-long relationship below:

March 3, 2009

My newly purchased Happy Meal smells yummy and it’s very colorful. I receive a PetShop virtual pet dog in a yellow plastic doggie carry-case, along with my child-size hamburger, small fries, and a soft drink. On one side of the cardboard box the meal comes in are cutouts for a pet shop window and door. What little girl wouldn’t absolutely love it? The boy’s side of the box has a Spider-Man scene. The Spider-Man side states, “Meet the spectacular Spider-Man in McWorld at HappyMeal.com and go on your own superhero adventure!” WOW what fun. As colorful as my Happy Meal is, the food is mostly colorless. French fries are made from starchy white potatoes and a hockey puck-size brown hamburger is served on a mini-white-bread bun. There’s no lettuce, cheese, or otherwise healthful topping, just a dab of ketchup and a slice of pickle.

March 4

Happy Meal greets me as I walk into my office this morning. It’s perched on a shelf behind my desk and there is a faint smell of French fries as I enter the room. My husband is concerned about the odor. I ask, “What do ya mean?” After all it smells yummy. He says, “What about when it putrefies, decomposes, and turns rancid?” I answer, “That’s the point of my experiment. It’s NOT supposed to decompose, only a natural food would do that! If it does, I’ll move it into a glass container, to control any unpleasant smell. Then, I’ll have more to report.

March 5

Day three, my cheery Happy Meal’s yummy smell is hardly noticeable as I come into my office. I can’t help but think about the hidden ingredient in much of McDonalds’ food. It’s even in their fries …MSG. MSG is an excitotoxin, which over-stimulate brain cells to the point that they die. Many people experience headaches when this occurs. MSG is an excitatory neuro-transmitter or “excitotoxin.” Excitotoxins are chemical transmitters allowing brain cells to communicate. Unfortunately, excitotoxins over-stimulate your brain cells and they die. It’s a toxic substance. As you would guess, children are most at risk from ingesting MSG in Happy Meals. It can pass the blood brain barrier and even the placental barrier, affecting unborn children. Morgan Spurlock, from the movie SuperSize Me, experienced extreme headaches on his McDonald’s diet. In his movie and book, he says his health team was at a loss for the reason. It’s a shame they missed the connection to MSG.

March 6

YIKES, I’m becoming a regular McDonalds’ costumer! Yes, I went back there today and purchased a second tiny hamburger. Yesterday, I realized my experiment hamburger had ketchup and a slice of pickle on it. I was afraid these two toppings would alter the result, so I went back and purchased a PLAIN tiny burger. It cost me another 89 cents, plus 6 cents tax. Now, I have a control burger without toppings, albeit three days fresher. While I was there, I checked out what it would cost to purchase a small order of fries: $1, plus 7 cents tax. That means that the FOOD and PAPER portion of my original Happy Meal cost me $2.02 and the toy $1.00.

March 8

It’s day five, and somehow I don’t feel consoled by McDonald’s website reassurances: “McDonald’s offers a range of menu options to help meet your family’s nutrition needs. When it comes to eating with your kids at McDonald’s, you can feel good knowing that our Happy Meals and Mighty Kids Meals contain important nutrients that growing kids need. Many of the foods we serve at McDonald’s are the same trusted brands you might purchase for your family at your local grocery store.

My Happy Meal looks pretty much the same as the day I purchased it. The only difference I can tell is the ketchup and the pickle are being absorbed into the mini-white bun. Of course, the plain burger I purchased looks the same, so do the fries. If this were real food, there should be some decomposition…

Could the lack of decomposition be because of trans fat? I thought McDonalds said they no longer use trans fat, but according to the McDonlds website their French fries are prepared in hydrogenated soybean oil, corn oil, or canola oil. Any hydrogenated oil is a trans fat!…

March 10

Today, is day 7. My Happy Meal still looks happy. The fries haven’t changed a bit, although the French fry smell is faint. The hamburger itself looks like it did on day one. The ketchup and slice of pickle have dried. The mini-white bun is now hard and has split. If you look closely at my original photo at the top of this blog, you can see a vertical crease in the bun. It looked as if it had been squished or bent before the patty was placed on it. The split is in the crease. (My second PLAIN Burger, purchased three days after is still perfect.)

March 16

My Happy Meal is 12 days old. I’m taking it off my shelf, just for a little peek to see how it’s doing. Ya’d think that there would be some sort of decomposition going on by now. I don’t see any…nope none at all. My Happy Meal still looks perky.

March 19

It’s too bad that even in the midst of the recession, parents are finding the financial wherewithal to keep their kids supplied with Happy Meals. February’s sales were up 5.4 percent above last year. January’s global comparable sales leaped 7.1 percent. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if parents cooked whole foods at home? Not only would they save during these tight financial times, but their kids would be healthier, too.

March 31

I’m taking my Happy Meal on its first field trip. It’s going to be my show-and-tell for tonight’s presentation to preschool moms in Littleton, Colorado. No one will believe my Happy Meal is one day shy of four week’s old! It looks as good as it did on day one.

April 29

Since I began this blog, I’ve written another post about Monosodium Glutamate. MSG is a common ingredient in McDonald’s food. Click Here to read “Hidden Toxin in Food.” Unappetizing as it is, my Happy Meal is just as perky as the day I bought it, nearly two months ago!

December 14

I wish I could say that my Happy Meal has changed in some way. But it looks pretty much the same nine months after I purchased it. The bread is crusty. That’s all!

March 3, 2010 – Happy birthday to my Happy Meal

I know it’s hard to believe. Time flies, doesn’t it? My eyes tear when I think today, March 3, is my Happy Meal’s first birthday. They grow up so fast, don’t they?

I purchased a Happy Meal, not to eat, but to observe and blog about. Yes, I bought a Happy Meal and then placed it on my office shelf, right behind me and my computer. It sat on my shelf for a year as a silent witness to our fast food industry.

It smelled delicious for a few days. I’d get a whiff of those yummy French fries every time I walked into my office. After a week or so, you could hardly smell it. My husband worried that when the food began to decompose, there would be a terrible odor in our home. He also worried the food would attract ants and mice. He questioned my sanity.

NOPE, no worries at all. My Happy Meal is one year old today and it looks pretty good. It NEVER smelled bad. The food did NOT decompose. It did NOT get moldy, at all.

This morning, I took it off my shelf to take a birthday photo. The first year is always a milestone. I gave it one of my world famous Nonna hugs as we’ve been office mates for a year now!

…Because Colorado has an arid climate, over the year the moisture has been slowly pulled from the Happy Meal. The bread is crusty and if you look closely, you will see a crack across the top. The hamburger has shrunk a bit and still resembles a hockey puck. Yet, the French fries look yummy enough to eat. I never had an odor problem, after a couple of weeks, I couldn’t even smell the fries.

Picky eaters universally love junk foods. They won’t touch veggies and sometimes refuse to eat the food their moms prepare. Out of desperation, parents give in and purchase the food their picky eaters will eat…junk food.

The next time you’re tempted to purchase a Happy Meal for your child, think about these photos. Food is SUPPOSED to decompose, go bad and smell foul…eventually. When I was a kid, I remember our garbage pail for the left over food scraps was kept by our back door. After a couple of days, flies deposited their larvae (maggots) in the meat. When I would lift the lid, I would see the recently hatched maggots wiggling on the putrid mess. A fly never bothered to land on the tiny hamburger patty on my office shelf.

Food is broken down into it’s essential nutrients in our bodies and turned into fuel. Our children grow strong bodies, when they eat real food. Flies ignore a Happy Meal and microbes don’t decompose it, then your child’s body can’t properly metabolize it either. Now you know why it’s called “junk food.”

I think ants, mice and flies are smarter than people, because they weren’t fooled. They never touched the Happy Meal. Children shouldn’t either.

That’s what I want…

Jon Brooks — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:55:42 +0000

From the UK artist Shardcore, a currency-defacing project called Money, that’s what I want.

For those of us living in a capitalist society, there is an inexorable link between our lives, our perceived happiness, and the bits of paper we exchange for goods and services. A banknote has no inherent value, it is merely a reference to a sum, held in our names, by the issuing authority – in the UK, the bank of England.

There is an imbalance of opportunity inherent in cash, the rich have access to more of the world than the poor. Many people are obsessed with money, the ‘creation’ and acquisition of wealth in-and-of itself. This is, of course, an illusion – the actual value of money is a flexible agreement within a society mediated by the shifting tides of the economy. When that agreement of trust is compromised the ramifications can be substantial. Witness the recent crash in world markets, leaving this country, and many more, with unimaginably large debts, created in our name to prop up ‘the banking system’.

I started a campaign of subtly defacing currency about two years ago. Using a custom ink-stamp and UV ink, I have been tagging all the money that passes through my hands. To date, that’s now well into the thousands of pounds. The stamp itself is invisible, until illuminated under a blacklight – commonly used in this country to check for counterfeit notes.

This work is really about how we use these pieces of paper as markers of our passage through time. We spend to live, and live to spend. Each note we hand over gets us a little closer to death…

Video:

It’s official

Jon Brooks — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:46:16 +0000

From the blog Pink Slip:

I was in CVS the other day – looking for Good ‘n Plenty, if you must know – when my eye was grabbed by a bright blue box that held a fish plaque that plays the McDonald’s “Give Me Back That Filet-o-Fish” jingle.

Only $19.99!

If people are back to frittering away good money on objects like this, then perhaps The Great Recession is over.

Yay!

Hatin’ on Nestle

Jon Brooks — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:21:55 +0000

The advertising, marketing, and media blog Thought Gadgets posts on a dust-up between users on the Nestle fan page on Facebook and a company rep. The Nestle page has been the target of an online anti-deforestation campaign by Greenpeace, as described here by the site Web Strategy, which also lays out a response plan for companies experiencing this type of social media attack.

Nestle’s Facebook meltdown

Oops. Nestle, or whoever runs their Facebook fan page, stepped on a social media landmine this weekend with this update:

Nestle: To repeat: we welcome your comments, but please don’t post using an altered version of any of our logos as your profile pic – they will be deleted. Fri at 2:26am

Nestle received 190 complaints within 24 hours on Facebook, and thousands of tweets reaching hundreds of thousands of consumers. You see, the surest way to tick off users of social media is to delete their comments. Yes, by the old standards of 20th century law, brands have a right to protect their intellectual property. But social media comprises fluid networks of users sharing and retweeting and mashing up material. Brands no longer command media channels or the spread of memes; if you want to win, you have to give users room to play.

Here are highlights from how it played out:

Paul Griffin: Not sure you’re going to win friends in the social media space with this sort of dogmatic approach. I understand that you’re on your back-foot due to various issues not excluding Palm Oil but Social Media is about embracing your market, engaging and having a conversation rather than preaching! Read www.cluetrain.com and rethink! Fri at 2:51am

Nestle: Thanks for the lesson in manners. Consider yourself embraced. But it’s our page, we set the rules, it was ever thus. Fri at 2:53am

Paul Griffin: Your page, your rules, true, and you just lost a customer, won the battle and lost the war! Happy? Fri at 2:56am

Nestle: Oh please .. it’s like we’re censoring everything to allow only positive comments. Fri at 2:58am

Darren Smith: Honey you need new PR Fri at 3:20am

Jagos Golubovic: I was a big fan of your products, but now, when I saw what you guys wrote, I think I’m gonna stop buying them. Fri at 3:55am

Helen Constable: I’d like to know if the person writing the comments for Nestle, actually has the backing from Nestle? I doubt it. Even a dumb ass company like them would get such an idiot to be their public voice. Fri at 4:10am

Nestle: I think you missed out the ‘not’ there, Helen Fri at 4:12am

Hyra Zaka: is a nestle rep running this page????? Fri at 4:39am

Nestle: We welcome debate, @Hyra – from any opinion. It helps us to know what people think and feel. Fri at 4:44am

ymann Lee: WFT !!!! This firm is a ugly creep !! trafficking and now censorship of my personal life. it seems pretty nazi !! Fri at 5:19am

Fernanda Shirakawa: I’m not using your logo… Fri at 5:55am

Fernanda Shirakawa: You deleted my comment anyway… Fri at 5:57am

Damien DeBarra: What a total train wreck. Sorry Nestle, but you really don’t seem to get it do you? Social media provides you with an opportunity to engage with your customers – to listen to them, to show that you actually care about ethical issues in business. Sadly it seems you have precisely the opposite attitude and seem determined to be as aggressive, patronising and corporatist as you can. And practically guaranteed that folks will now start shunning your products. Fri at 8:00am

Mark Watts-Jones: Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Case study in how not to engage with your customers. We’ll await the inevitable apology and climb down. Fri at 11:06am

Nestle: This (deleting logos) was one in a series of mistakes for which I would like to apologise. And for being rude. We’ve stopped deleting posts, and I have stopped being rude. Fri at 1:29pm

Food stamp foodies

Jon Brooks — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:20:52 +0000

Found on The Awl:

Salon readers respond to an article Hipsters on food stamps, subtitled “They’re young, they’re broke, and they pay for organic salmon with government subsidies. Got a problem with that? ”

Think of it as the effect of a grinding recession crossed with the epicurean tastes of young people as obsessed with food as previous generations were with music and sex. Faced with lingering unemployment, 20- and 30-somethings with college degrees and foodie standards are shaking off old taboos about who should get government assistance and discovering that government benefits can indeed be used for just about anything edible, including wild-caught fish, organic asparagus and triple-crème cheese.

Comments:

I have no problem with anyone who needs assistance, but come on… Those grocery stores already charge a premium for everyday items compares to the local A&P/Publix/Etc. Have some common sense to try to save some money…. Especially if it isn’t your money.

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At one time I was working so doesn’t that mean my taxes went to pay for government subsidies too? And now that I’m down can’t I get some help? And enjoy my organic conflict free coffee beans while i’m at it? I’ll be back on the neverending hamster wheel of working life again …

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Don’t these people have families? One of them is from Westchester. Almost all of them managed to, somehow, finance a post-graduate education. They live in “artsy,” “hip” (read: expensive) parts of town (are they on Section-8?). Yet, somehow, they can’t manage to feed themselves?

Of course people are going to be pissed that they’re busting their asses every day in real jobs so that some douchebag can satisfy his “flexitarian” gourmet diet. Did it ever cross their minds to look for a second job – say at McDonald’s or Home Depot or in janitorial services – so they could afford to satisfy their gourmet palate, instead of relying on government? Or do they seriously expect to be able to afford that kind of lifestyle working in the art/poetry world?

Of course, its entirely possible this is all some grand attempt at irony.

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I’m an AmeriCorps volunteer for 2010. I’m get 200/month in food stamps. I’m also in low income housing. Because of where I’m living (small, rural town) I don’t have the option of buying all my food at a specialty or high-end store. But at the local Safeway I’m buying the organic, free-range, all natural options whenever I can. I’m doing this because I believe that way of growing and producing goods is better for everyone. I also happen to have “foodie” tastes and I’ll buy the wedge of triple-cream over the brick of velveeta every time and I don’t see why anybody gives a sh*t.

It seems to me that there are way more important arguments over the use of tax dollars than what I’m eating.

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Having just finished teaching underprivileged elementary kids the difference between “wants” and “needs”, I am now wondering if my lesson was administered to the wrong demographic.

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I am a native Floridian. I am 62. I was laid off from a job, can’t find work, and now my unemployment has run out. My car is dead, and mass transit in my city is almost non-existent. I am barely making it, and in a couple of months I may not have enough “savings” left to pay my rent, utilities, and bills.

My food stamp (EBT debit card) allotment is keeping me alive – it is the only thing (aside from the non-expired unemployment) that I qualify for. As long as I don’t go over my EBT allotment for food, I will buy whatever I am allowed to buy.

Every four months, I am asked to “re-qualify” for the program whereupon I must fill out the same forms, submit my financial records, including name of bank AND account number, and wait to see if they will allow me to eat for another four months.

So, no, I don’t have a problem with what people choose to buy with their food stamp allotment. Rules are in place. And if you haven’t noticed, ALL food is expensive these days.

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Your tax dollars are already subsidizing massive industrial corn farms, meat factories, soy farms, and so on, that use the least environmentally friendly, least consumer friendly methods possible.

Why should anyone get their panties in a bundle that these people are being subsidized by the government to eat food that is locally and organically grown by small-scale, family-run farms that don’t need to hire armies of illegal migrant workers to keep prices down?

I am currently in a volunteer corps that is similar to Americorps, and we get about $100 for groceries each month. My housemates and I buy local and organic and we are still operating with a budget surplus. The idea that buying real food is somehow inherently more expensive is BS in my experience.

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Since last summer, I’ve been on food stamps… Food assistance is supposed to accomplish two goals, allow people of lower income to purchase food (and I have been grateful to not have to worry about that), and to put money back into the local community. For that reason, I try to spend at least some of it at the grocery chain that has committed to the local inner city, and almost none of it at Walmart, even if I might get more food at the latter. But however people spend their allotment, they get the amount the standards say they qualify for. So if someone spends it all on the fixings for one big dinner at the fancy overpriced market, I guess that’s irritating, but then they have to figure out how to feed themselves for the rest of the month. They don’t get more just because they have pricier tastes.

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The purpose of welfare should be to maintain life, not support a lifestyle. If you can buy twice as much food at Safeway or Kroger than at Whole Foods, you need to go to Safeway. Don’t throw out this bull about “oh, we spend more money on x-and-x”. It’s the mentality of the hipster freeloader perpetuated across all generations that symbolizes how our society got here. And if you can’t afford grad school without food stamps, maybe you shouldn’t be in grad school.

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Let me get this straight. It’s wasteful and elitist to spend your food stamps on organic salmon and raw honey… but it’s OK to spend it on Pepsi, Little Debbie snack cakes, and Lay’s potato chips?

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Let me get this straight. It’s wasteful and elitist to spend your food stamps on organic salmon and raw honey… but it’s OK to spend it on Pepsi, Little Debbie snack cakes, and Lay’s potato chips?

Total strawman argument. If you think those are the only options, either junk or gourmet, you have a very distorted, polarized view. You don’t have to buy trendy, upscale, gourmet ingredients in order to eat healthy.

The real question is whether the state should subsidize people like this. It kind of seems like self-imposed poverty to me. If you’re capable of getting a Masters or PhD in art or poetry then you’re smart enough to know that its probably going to be very hard to find actual work in either of those fields. And if you do find such work, chances are its not going to be able to fund a lavish “foodie” lifestyle. These are able-bodied 20/30-somethings with education. Granted, the job market is extremely weak but I have a hard time believing these people truly exhausted their options. Did they look into fast-food, janitorial services, retail? Those types of jobs have lots of turnover, so there’s almost always something available. Did they look into picking up a trade? I would say the chances are No – these type of jobs don’t fit into their self-image as an artist or whatever. So, even though this is a situation of their own making – they’re expecting the government to subsidize their lifestyle. And its all being paid for by people who actually bite the bullet and work at jobs they don’t necessarily love do what they do in order to support themselves and their families and not be a burden to society. Yeah, its pretty appalling.

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These well educated young people who are used to affluence do not yet realize that poverty might be a lifelong condition. You can’t blame them for being young and naive; they’ve grown up being fed a fantasy about the American dream, perpetuated by rightwing lies about who deserves to be rich, and how the United States is the best nation on Earth. Like older unemployed Americans, many of these kids are faced with a bleak future for decades to come. Given that, they must learn to live like poor people and make their dollars stretch. No more wild caught salmon or triple cream organic Ben & Jerry’s. They need to learn how to cook dried beans and grains and root vegetables and greens. If they eat meat, they need to learn how to cook the offal that is usually tossed away or disdained by the wealthy. This is how poor people have always eaten. Call it peasant food or call it soul food, but accept it for what it is.

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Lost in the article is that many of these food choices are not expensive. I am not on food stamps, but am just about to start a new job after over a year of unemployment. We have been on a very tight budget. Food is also one of our greatest joys (as an aside – god I hate the term “foodie”). We’ve found that fresh local produce, certain local meats, local seafoods that are in season at the time are all pretty darn inexpensive. We care about what we eat, stay within our budget and eat well.

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I belong to the generation if not demographic that this article talks about and think that we have for so long been taught that in our beloved free enterprise you should take whatever you can get it.

My generation has grown up in an era where every faceless corporation is spending millions upon millions in research on how to manipulate, brainwash, and dominate us that we feel it’s only natural to try to get what you can out of government or whatever.

Therefore it’s not morally reprehensible but rather a smart capitalistic choice; it’s simply cutting costs.

Health care – reactions

Jon Brooks — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:17:33 +0000

And so it is done.

The health care bill is on its way to President Obama for his signature, at which point it becomes the law of the land. Then, this week, the Senate will take up a series of changes that Democratic House members demanded in exchange for passing the Senate bill.

Reaction from our two go-to sites on reader health care commentary:

User comments on Ezra Klein’s policy blog on the Washington Post

A lot of Democrats voted for the Iraq war and then when things didn’t go as planned, they claimed that “Bush Lied” as a way to explain their vote. A few years from now when this health care legislation causes health care costs to soar and the deficit to explode, these same Democrats will claim that Obama lied and point to his speech tonight to prove it.
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1) No government healthcare program, here or in any other country, has even remotely stayed in the neighborhood of what it was originally projected/guessed to cost. Many overshoot by factors of 5 or 10. So talking about what this “will” cost in 2028 or even 2016 based on its proponents is dubious at best. Everyone knows those figures are stage managed just to get the law passed, because afterwards we’re stuck with it even as it skyrockets.

2) This bill is just the thin edge of the wedge, not the end of the story. President Obama has been candid when before sympathetic audiences that this is just the first step towards single-payer and government control over the entire healthcare system. We’ve left base camp, but we’re nowhere near the summit — yet. Costs to get there will fall somewhere between hilarious and ludicrious. Nobody seems to know what comes after ‘trillion’ but we’ll find out soon.

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People seem to act as if extending coverage to 32 million uninsured is like letting everyone into their private country club. As if they don’t crash it anyway.

In other words, I think it’s important to note what health care those newly 32 million Americans would normally consume if left uninsured. Do they just disappear when they get sick? Do they simply get better on OTC medications? Or are they somehow immune to all diseases and illnesses?

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-$437 billion dollar federal income tax increases. What few realize, it is actually the single largest tax increase in U.S. history. I am surprised this hasn’t been discussed more, because their are 7 tax increase provisions in the bill that will damn near bankrupt the middle class.

-forces businesses to provide full coverage insurance to all employee’s whether full time or part time (about $8,000 a year each). Not many will be able to survive that.

-severe expansion of Medicaid no state can afford. On average, every state must double income taxes to to stay solvent. Texas alone has scored it at $27 billion. Iowa, will be roughly $400 million more annually. California… Already not solvent, but the state will go into default within just a few months.

- must have full coverage health insurance for the right to exist… just to be alive…. This is called servitude.

- expansion of the IRS… It is provisioned in the bill to hire 16,000 more IRS employee’s to enforce the financial aspects and enforce compliance under threat of criminal prosecution.

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The President and the Democrats have painted the insurance companies as the source of all evil but it is the medical delivery system that has to be reformed so that coverage can be extended to all, not the “rapacious” insurance companies. The bill is almost entirely medical insurance company “reform” when what we needed was medical delivery reform.

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From the New York Times Health Care Conversations site

I woke up this morning and what has changed for me? I still have the same health insurance, pay the same rates, go to the same doctor, have the same drug plan and the same deductibles. I estimate that for 80% of the population, that is the same. The only changes we may be affected by are we can no longer be dropped for a pre-existing condition or lifetime limit, and if we are wealthy enough, pay a very small amount more in taxes.

I am not sure how or when this government take over of my health care will occur, maybe before we find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

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Yesterday, the President and Congress opened the pathway to universal health care, an ideal first called for about 100 years ago by President Theodore Roosevelt. This is truly historic event benefiting the economic security of all Americans.

What is sad is that so many media folks are not much more than Spiro Agnew’s nattering nabobs of negativism. Columns today in the New York Times are filled with predictions of troubles ahead like lawsuits or states rights claims. Lawsuits and states rights claims as well as patently false demagoguery describe the opposition to social security, medicare and medicaid both before and after enactment. The same is true for civil rights.

None of the opposition efforts were successful. Indeed, social security and medicare are, today, popular and well-supported programs.

Do we really need the negatiivism?

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It’s all the wrong direction. We have just lost at least one freedom! Slavery has beed reintroduced to the country, without one shot being fired. A great man once said “Give me liberty or give me death” We have just made a mockery of his words! The chains may be soft,but they are what they are! Liberty lost for a little temporary comfort alto, I believe the country is in for a rude awakening!

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It is a start. If the measure now clears the Senate, it will serve to break the inertia of the status quo.

All appreciate that the legislation is not perfect. There are going to be problems. But by ending the status quo, we are now free to begin devising a wiser and more modern approach to delivering care.

As for criticism that the measure will harm Democrats in the November elections, I am hopeful it will not. Such a tremendous entitlement expansion will obviously benefit millions, and the credit will go to the Democrats. Republicans who debunk such entitlements will soon face the same counterforce that challenges changes to the Medicare program. Arguing opposition will very shortly reflect poorly on the Republicans. They have a choice — either come on the right side of the effort to reform, or remain stuck in shifting arguments in favor of the (breaking) status quo.

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I live in Costa Rica. A third world country, and yet we have universal health care here. Longevity here is equal to, if not greater than, the U.S. Costa Ricans scratch their heads wondering how a great Country like the U.S. does not cover all its people. I am proud to be an American, although years ago I came to Costa Rica in part because I could not be insured in the U.S. due to the fact that insurers perceived that an operation I had had which was voluntary surgery was a preexisting condition. I know my story is repeated a million times by others. Thank God for Obama.

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The health-care legislation as passed is a mammoth concession to the health insurance industry, the right wing of the Democratic Party, and a slap in the face to poor women of limited economic means vis-à-vis reproductive health!

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It’s pretty simple: We have no problem blowing through trillions of dollars to invade and occupy foreign lands and kill thousands of American soldiers along the way. Republicans sell this to us as “A Strong America”. But when you talk about a simple idea of healthcare for our own citizens, suddenly it’s un-American and the great un-doing of a strong America? Absurd. As much as I’m not a fan of Democrats the Republicans take the cake on stupidity.

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This vote was about preserving the Democratic and Obama brands and grabbing at the holy grail of the Democratic party going back decades–universal coverage. To heck with the costs, let’s just soak the “rich.” It wasn’t about the prudent changes in health care policy that most experts say are needed–the focus should be on reforming the structural problems that have caused the cost problems, and only secondarily on who pays.

Is there any mystery about what insurers are going to do now? They’re going to start jacking up premiums to bankroll the costs associated with the new mandated coverages. That means every Democratic politician, from now till the end of time or Obamacare, whichever comes first, will be responsible for insurance costs. That ought to make retaking Congress a lot easier, if not in 2010, then probably by 2012. Their Trojan horse hope, of course, is that when the inevitable happens and health care costs start to bankrupt the country that we’ll panic and let Washington, as the money of last resort, regulate the robber-baron insurance companies out of existence and go to single-payer.

The best that can be said about this monstrosity is that it’s remarkably unwise, particularly at this point in the economic cycle. In fact, while it’s an unpopular sentiment in official Washington these days, the whole thing is just remarkably un-American.

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It’s a start toward healthcare armageddon and then real reform. Hopefully employers will stop offering it as a benefit because it’s become so expensive and more people will be mandated to buy their own policy. Then there will be such an outrage that we will finally get a single payer system which
is what we really need.

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I heard a lot of young people on C-Span asking why they should have to buy health insurance when they are young and may not need it. For years I’ve heard senior citizens ask why they should have to pay for public schools when their children are grown. Now we see how these questions are related. Health care for the elderly is the flip side to education for the young. When young adults buy health insurance they are also returning a favor to all those older folks who supported their public school education. It’s a beautiful thing!

Google watching

Jon Brooks — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:02:59 +0000

One way to catch a glimpse of what ple are searching for is through the suggested queries that Google kicks up when you start typing in its search box. Start any search, and Google anticipates what you are looking for by offering 10 frequently searched-for options.

For example, type in “how to save money…” and the search engine suggests:

…every month
…on groceries
…fast
…on electric bill
…in college
…for a house
…with coupons
…on food
…at the grocery store
…on a wedding

Type in “unemployment,” and suggested topics include:

…California
…extension
…benefits
…Florida
…Ohio
…rate by state
…PA
…extension 2010

The search for “finding a job” kicks up these:

…after college
…in this economy
…in a recession
…you love
…with a felony
…online
…in another state
…while pregnant
…in NYC

You can try just about anything and find something of interest. Type in “Obama,” and the No. 2 suggestion is “birth certificate.” Enter “Sarah Palin,” and “hand notes” comes in No. 2. A “Bill Clinton” search yields “impeachment” and “scandal” in the top 10.

“Bill Clinton impeachment” and “Bill Clinton scandal”? Really, America? He’s just ten years out of office, but perhaps that’s an indication of which historical events related to the ex-President are going to stick. At least “Lewinsky” wasn’t on there…