So I watched CNN all day yesterday waiting for the vote on the bailout bill, but I noticed that even though I don't have any money to really lose (just the hope that they may not notice how much debt I have) I still felt stressed out. I also realized that when rich people lose money, it is a national crisis. But poor folk have trouble making ends meet every single day. Where is our news coverage?
The thing with money stress, for most of us, it is always there. So why this panic and media frenzy? Because the Dow Jones dropped? Or because we need to sensationalize everything and create fake scenarios to see how our to be presidents will react? Now, I am not saying that the financial crisis isn't real. Giving out money that doesn't exist will lead to problems. But this has problem didn't happen over night. As Naomi Klein would suggest,
[R]ight-wing governments use the shock generated by disasters or other crises to push through unpopular free-market policies when the population isn't in a position to oppose such programs.
So instead of taking a jab at some shoddy economic analysis (which it seems like a lot of people are doing), I thought I would give you all a chance to share your thoughts on the economic crisis. I realized after watching the news all day I started to feel really panicked and started revisiting all my bills and stressing out about money. I also realized the spending on the war in Iraq is almost as much as the amount that is needed for the bailout.
Talk to me.
UPDATE: Listen to Naomi Klein explain the "shock doctrine."
We've cautioned before that "women voters" are not a monolithic bloc that can be won over with a single message. But as the economic downturn has hit women especially hard, it's easy to see why Barack Obama is trying to appeal to women by discussing the economy -- hitting on the issue of equal pay and highlighting Lilly Ledbetter's story.
Obama was an original co-sponsor of the legislation to reverse the result in Ledbetter's case; McCain opposes the bill because, he said in April, it "opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems." Well, yes, that would be the point of a law prohibiting pay discrimination.
The Obama campaign has asked Clinton to talk about Ledbetter when she campaigns for him. Obama, who didn't focus much on the issue during the primary campaign, hosted a meeting Monday on pay equity; the campaign released a memo contrasting Obama and McCain on women's issues. As I sat down to write this column, an e-mail arrived from the Democratic convention announcing that Ledbetter would be speaking there.
That's all well and good, but it's worth bringing up that it's tough for even the most impassioned campaign rhetoric to connect with real life. This piece from Salon last week, about a middle-class mother who takes her children to a soup kitchen for the first time, drives that point home. She describes her situation this way:
It had been a hard decision for me to go in the first place. We had a house full of food, mostly from the food bank, and some staples friends who were moving had given us. I was employed as a secretary for the county, a job that didn't make use of my graduate degree or my intelligence but had let me keep the kids in the same school and city after my divorce. I made a decent wage. I had health insurance and dental insurance. On my desk was a packet of new retirement and savings options. But summer child care was $1,800 a month for my three kids, and the child support I received from their father was a paltry sum mandated by the state. It didn't even begin to cover the cost of one kid's child care for a single summer month. We didn't qualify for WIC vouchers or food stamps. The previous week, I had swallowed my pride and driven my old Subaru to a local food bank. The women there were kind and gave me a box filled with cans of tuna and bags of pasta. I was only allowed to get one box per month, though, and what they gave me would last a week, maybe 10 days. I was looking into weeks of hunger. The Dining Room served dinner to families only twice a week.
And the experience leads her to this conclusion,
But the moment I walked into the soup kitchen -- the moment I acknowledged, publicly, that I could not provide food for myself or my children (which is why the soup kitchen is so much more difficult than the food bank) -- is the moment that my ability to believe in the politics of this country was forever altered. I know why poor people have historically low voter-turnout rates. If you vote, you acknowledge that you believe in the system. And to believe in the system when you're at the very bottom, when you've watched the chrome and ink-black SUVs drive by while you're packing your own beater with dried beans and lentils, to believe at that point is fucking painful. You either say the system works and you've earned your place, or you concede that there is something wrong and there might not be any way to fix it. The entire summer of 2007, as I struggled to keep us fed, I hated thinking of politics, an unusual characteristic for me. It hurt to listen to any presidential candidate talk about the working poor, and not because they weren't genuine, but because all their talk was just that -- talk. It was like listening to my former self, the one who didn't know how bad things could get.
Stories like this get across what's tough to convey with broad articles and polling about how the economy is affecting women. There's a wide gulf between the way the economy is discussed and how it's lived.
After leaving my last (very long) steady job, I was terrified about money. Because there’s no financial buffer but what I save. Even though I only have myself to support, it’s something I think about every day. That’s probably a result of knowing how hard my mom worked when I was growing up to give me everything I needed and some of the things I wanted. Really, I'm obsessive.
This is all only to say that I think about money a lot. So, discovering the blog Feminist Finance a few weeks ago was fantastic for me. The writer covers practical tips to get out of debt, to buying local produce, the importance of mentoring, and a lot more. If you’re part of a couple, she’s also got a lot of interesting content on dealing with joint financial lives.
A recent post notes a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit against a company founded by Michael Bloomberg. Check it out.
I can't wait to see this movie. Health care is a major feminist issue and one of the main issues, for me, with regard to who I will be voting for. I know so many people that are uninsured, so many people that get hurt and can't do anything about, people that have gone bankrupt from getting into accidents, women that are raising babies and are uninsured. The lack of access to medical care in this country is truly deplorable.
I attended a hearing this morning held by the House's Education and Labor Committee that examined the Paycheck Fairness Act on this, Equal Pay Day. Though the PFA has been introduced by Rep. Rosa DeLauro 10 times, this is the first time the committee held a hearing.
A report released yesterday by the American Association of University Women found that women one year out of a 4-year college earn 80 percent of what their male counterparts earn. When the report looks at women 10 years after graduation, women are earning 69 cents to every dollar that men earn. The most significant finding of the study, though, is that controlling for all factors, including "educational and occupational choices, as well as demographic and personal characteristics," an "unexplained" 5 percent gap exists one year out of college which widens to a 12 percent gap 10 years after college. Furthermore, as Catherine Hill, research director at AAUW testified, attending a highly-selective institution does little to boost a woman's pay, and educated women experience a greater pay gap than women overall.
Some more conservative committee members denied the credibility of the study, but as Rep. Carol Shea-Porter put it, the pay gap is "easily noticed by those who live it."
I've long been annoyed with books marketed toward women that tell you that you aren't getting ahead financially because you can't stop spending money on your appearance. A perfect example is this piece in Sirens Magazine, which tut-tuts women for blowing their retirement savings on a beauty binge at Sephora: "It's a tough financial landscape we're facing, ladies, but apparently we’re more worried about our future wrinkles than our financial security."
But this week's TIME magazine lays waste to that myth. Fewer than 5% of Americans -- equal numbers of men and women -- are compulsive shoppers. There's only a $100 difference between single men's and women's median annual credit-card debt. And what about the argument that our spending on bikini waxes, footwear, and facial moisturizer is what's setting us back?
Women do spend $1,069--$246 more than men do--on clothing every year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics 2004-2005 Consumer Expenditure Survey. But that's chump change compared with what single men spend on car ownership ($846 more than single women), eating out ($752 more), alcoholic drinks ($280 more) and audiovisual gear ($143 more).
Authors like Suze Orman, who sell guilt-based financial self-help books, are aptly dubbed "financial frenemies." Because the real problem is not that women buy mascara and our male counterparts don't. It's that we make 77 cents for every dollar earned by men.
Statistically, women make less money. Outside of "official" statistics, I can honestly say, almost all of my girlfriends are BROKE. They are amazing, brilliant and successful and they don't have any money. Whether it be for doing jobs that don't pay much but are meaningful or for being in school. The truth is women are often painted as overspenders, but we are rarely given credit as being EXTREMELY resourceful as most of us live off of very small amounts of money. Statistically smaller incomes coupled with more external pressures on how we should look (and as we all know looking good costs MONEY) it is quite the unfair dilemma, innit.
One of the many ways women implicitly or explicitly dodge the nefarious influence of global capitalism. These women have started a system of informal banking from lack of access to credit. The best part is it is community based.
Oumar Diene works at a Senegelese non-governmental organization and has studied informal banking in Yoff village, near Senegal's capital city of Dakar.
He explains that, instead of bank accounts, Senegalese have developed a variety of local strategies to save money and raise capital. Examples include what are known in local languages as maases, tontines, and tekks.
A maas is a support group based on local traditions. Where once that meant helping a sick neighbor plow his field, today this has evolved into various forms of economic support.
Tekks are a simpler form of informal saving, in which a group of children turn over their collected change to a trusted adult for safekeeping.
But it is the second method, tontines, that have become particularly popular among women on Carabane, Ndiaye explains.
She says groups of women formed to help each other, and her group of seventeen women contributed 1000 local francs per month. That is the equivalent of about two dollars.
The idea is a sort of group savings plan. Originally developed in Europe in the 1600s, members would contribute a sum to be invested jointly, and dividends were shared equally until the last surviving member took all.
Two dollars? Global capitol flow and the way it fails to reach *certain* people makes me sick. But still people do what they must to survive.
A new study shows that almost just as many men are complusive shoppers as women.
While “shopaholics,” or compulsive shoppers, have generally been perceived as women, research shows that while 6% of women are compulsive buyers, and 5.5% of men are compulsive buyers.
Additionally, women are more willing to to admit their addiction to shopping than men.