Friday, January 30, 2015
1979-2012 1% percent's incomes grows by 181%
The headline article of the autobot web paper Inequality is "5 Charts That Show How the Middle Class Is Disappearing." Of course, this is OLD news to most of you readers. The charts of the article are well produced and the most dramatic one for me was the one captioned "From 1979-2012, the 1 Percent's Incomes Grew by 181 Percent" hence the title of this posting. The article was written by Katie Rose Quandt and published by the billmoyers.com. You might note that Ralph Nader shared this article with Inequality and I am the publisher. Am I gazing at a digital whirlpool or caught in one? With this post I feed the spiders and web crawlers. Ponder and enjoy your day.
Monday, January 26, 2015
The Expense of Being Poor
I came across this January 19, 2015 NYTimes Charles M. Blow opinion article "charles-blow-how-expensive-it-is-to-be-poor" that I now recommend to you. I was particularly struck by this restatement from the St. Louis Federal Reserve in 2010:
"Unbanked consumers spend approximately 2.5 to 3 percent of a government benefits check and between 4 percent and 5 percent of payroll check just to cash them. Additional dollars are spent to purchase money orders to pay routine monthly expenses. When you consider the cost for cashing a bi-weekly payroll check and buying about six money orders each month, a household with a net income of $20,000 may pay as much as $1,200 annually for alternative service fees — substantially more than the expense of a monthly checking account."
Disclosure: As a middle class individual having sufficient cash flow issues that require a banking need for me, I recommend First Republic Bank to you the reader. I discovered this bank when I became irate at the 4% fee on a $50 cash withdrawal from any ATM endowed banks. First Republic reimburses me the ATM fees charged by all banks world-wide. It is regrettable that I must keep a minimum balance in my checking account - - however if I go under, First Republic customer service is so responsive that they almost always waive the fee retroactively.
"Unbanked consumers spend approximately 2.5 to 3 percent of a government benefits check and between 4 percent and 5 percent of payroll check just to cash them. Additional dollars are spent to purchase money orders to pay routine monthly expenses. When you consider the cost for cashing a bi-weekly payroll check and buying about six money orders each month, a household with a net income of $20,000 may pay as much as $1,200 annually for alternative service fees — substantially more than the expense of a monthly checking account."
Disclosure: As a middle class individual having sufficient cash flow issues that require a banking need for me, I recommend First Republic Bank to you the reader. I discovered this bank when I became irate at the 4% fee on a $50 cash withdrawal from any ATM endowed banks. First Republic reimburses me the ATM fees charged by all banks world-wide. It is regrettable that I must keep a minimum balance in my checking account - - however if I go under, First Republic customer service is so responsive that they almost always waive the fee retroactively.
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