paulstraw

ilyagerner:

CAP does a nice job responding to a much-touted “let them eat cell phones!” Heritage Foundation report, which argued that widespread ownership of consumer appliances meant America’s poor weren’t really struggling:

Indeed, the rising cost of paying for electricity for the very appliances that Heritage thinks are indicators of luxury are eating a bigger and bigger hole into the pockets of the poor. Today struggling families are spending at least 15 percent of their household budget to pay their electric bills, and the poorest of the poor shell out an even higher percentage of their income for this basic expense. Somehow Heritage manages to completely ignore the fact in America, the U.S. Department of Agriculture found in 2008 that half (50.3 percent) of poor households with children said there were days when they didn’t know how or if they could pay for their next meal.

And these families are paying an extraordinary share of their income for basic housing, too. While the average renter makes about $13.52 an hour, the national average wage needed to afford a fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment is around $18.46 an hour. This problem is exacerbated for minimum wage working parents who earn just $7.25 an hour.

The fact that household conveniences can now be purchased with many fewer hours of work is a great mark of progress, but it also means that the ownership rates of refrigerators and cell phones are a poor standard by which to measure deprivation.

(via moorewr)

myeviltwin:

cognitivedissonance:

Click through twice to enlarge

If FDR approves, I approve.

Now we’re talking.