“And you need not go further than one of our stores on midnight at the end of the month. And it’s real interesting to watch, about 11 p.m., customers start to come in and shop, fill their grocery basket with basic items, baby formula, milk, bread, eggs,and continue to shop and mill about the store until midnight, when electronic — government electronic benefits cards get activated and then the checkout starts and occurs. And our sales for those first few hours on the first of the month are substantially and significantly higher.

“And if you really think about it, the only reason somebody gets out in the middle of the night and buys baby formula is that they need it, and they’ve been waiting for it. Otherwise, we are open 24 hours — come at 5 a.m., come at 7 a.m., come at 10 a.m. But if you are there at midnight, you are there for a reason.”

via Watching Wal-Mart at Midnight – Real Time Economics – WSJ.

Now life firmly entrenched in the top income brackets for a family earning 8 times the median household income (the 99th percentile) as dissected by Brad DeLong

Now it is time for a reality check on this “most working Americans.” The median household income in the United States today is $50,000. Half of all households make more than this. Half of all households make less. The big expenses in the Xxxxxxxxx family budget–their $60,000 a year in contributions to tax-favored retirement savings vehicles, their $25,000 a year savings building home equity, their $55,000 for housing, their $60,000 in private school costs, even their $10,000 a year for new cars–are simply out of reach for the overwhelming majority of Americans. Half of all households make less than $50,000 a year–the Xxxxxxxxxs make nine times that. 90% of households make less than $100,000 a year–the Xxxxxxxxx’s make 4.5 times that. The Xxxxxxxxx’s are solidly in the top 1% of American households, in the select 1% group that receives more than $350,000 a year.

By any standard, they are really rich.

But they don’t feel rich. They have a cash flow problem. When the bills are paid at the end of the month, the money is gone–and they feel that they have to scrimp.

I know how they feel. My household income is of the same order of magnitude than theirs (although somewhat less) and we too had to juggle assets quickly when it developed that an error in Reed College’s housing system had caused them not to charge us $5,000 that we owe. We too have chosen to put our income in places (tax-favored retirement savings vehicles, building equity, housing, private college costs) where we think it is better used than $200 restaurant meals, $1000 a night resort hotel rooms, or $75,000 automobiles. But I don’t think that I am not rich.

Professor Xxxx Xxxxxxxxx’s problem is that he thinks that he ought to be able to pay off student loans, contribute to retirement savings vehicles, build equity, drive new cars, live in a big expensive house, send his children to private school, and still have plenty of cash at the end of the month for the $200 restaurant meals, the $1000 a night resort hotel rooms, and the $75,000 automobiles. And even half a million dollars a year cannot be you all of that.

But if he values the high-end consumption so much, why doesn’t he rearrange his budget? Why not stop the retirement savings contributions, why not rent rather than buy, why not send the kids to public school? Then the disposable cash at the end of the month would flow like water. His problem is that some of these decisions would strike him as imprudent. And all of them would strike him as degradations–doctor-law professor couples ought to send their kids to private schools, and live in big houses, and contribute to their 401(k)s, and also still have lots of cash for splurges. That is the way things should be.

But why does he think that that is the way things should be?

And here is the dirty secret: Professor Xxxx Xxxxxxxxx thinks that that is the way things should be because he knows people for whom that is the way it is.

via In Which Mr. Deling Responds to Someone Who Might Be Professor Xxxx Xxxxxxxxx – Grasping Reality with Both Hands.

This reminds me of this point/counterpoint from The Onion.

“Poverty is the denial of human rights.”

-Irene Khan, Former Head of Amnesty International, Author: The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights

OR

Update: Ushahidi does Haiti.

Inside the Wayne County morgue in midtown Detroit, 67 bodies are piled up, unclaimed, in the freezing temperatures. Neither the families nor the county can afford to bury the corpses. So they stack up inside the freezer.

Albert Samuels, chief investigator for the morgue, said he has never seen anything like it during his 13 years on the job. “Some people don’t come forward even though they know the people are here,” said the former Detroit cop. “They don’t have the money.”

Lifelong Detroit residents Darrell and Cheryl Vickers understand this firsthand. On a chilly September morning they had to visit the freezer to identify the body of Darrell’s aunt, Nancy Graham — and say their goodbyes.

The couple, already financially strained, don’t have the $695 needed to cremate her. Other family members, mostly in Florida, don’t have the means to contribute, either. In fact, when Darrell’s grandmother passed recently, his father paid for the cremation on a credit card — at 21% interest.

So the Vickers had to leave their aunt behind. Body number 67.
[...]

“One way we look back at a culture is how they dispose of their dead,” said the county’s chief medical examiner, Carl Schmidt, who has been in his position for 15 years. “We see people here that society was not taking care of before they died — and society is having difficulty taking care of them after they are dead.”
via Bodies pile up in Detroit morgue; poor can’t afford burial – Oct. 1, 2009 .

What is this a f*cking Dickens’ novel? Damn.

Mr Aso was asked whether poverty was making people marry later, contributing to Japan’s low birth rate.

His response was: ”Young people had better not get married with little money.”

He added it was difficult for him to see how someone without pay could be seen as an object of respect.

via BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Japan PM in gaffe on poor couples.

A home in a canyon shantytown on the edge of Mexico City. c/o UMD Merrill School Of Journalism

Mike Davis posits that slums are ground zero for pandemics. Mega-slums are where pandemics gain new life.

Mike Davis, a recipient of the MacArthur “genius” award, is author of The Planet of Slums. The following is adapted from an interview with NPQ editor Nathan Gardels.

The global pandemics we see today tend to originate and spread from impoverished slums that push humans into close proximity with animals and food sources, thus providing an incubator for viruses that would otherwise die out or go dormant. Pandemics are thus closely linked to the emergence of “hot zones” in what I call “the planet of slums.”

Using conservative definitions by the United Nations Habitat office, there are today 1 billion people living in slums globally. A slum is defined by substandard housing with insecurity of tenure and the absence of one or more urban services and infrastructure—sewage treatment, plumbing, clean water, electricity, paved roads and so on.

via NPQ.

Many of the largest slums? Latin America. The biggest such slum in the world? Just south of Mexico City. As H1N1 has to be dealt with, we must begin to realize that it keeps popping up in North America for a reason. Other people’s poverty matters.

NPR.org, July 15, 2009 · To some people, the Land of the Free doesn’t always seem so free. And America the Beautiful doesn’t look so pretty.

That’s the viewpoint of two Washington-based groups — the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, and the National Coalition for the Homeless — that have targeted the country’s mingiest municipalities.

1. Los Angeles
2. St. Petersburg, Fla.
3. Orlando, Fla.
4. Atlanta
5. Gainesville, Fla.
6. Kalamazoo, Mich.
7. San Francisco
8. Honolulu
9. Bradenton, Fla.
10. Berkeley, Calif.

They built this index by how people treated the poorest folks. Its funny this list is Cali and Florida heavy. I am probably just throwing out a nutty a hypothesis, but I wonder if this list speaks somewhat to the reasons Florida and California are sub-prime/alt-a mortgage ground zeros. Brokers peddling that garbage to consumers was pretty mean as well.

Maybe if they averaged their data with indexes for sub-prime/alt-a mortgages, pay day loans and other predatory lending, this list would change significantly.