Quotation And Tables Of The Day: What Does It Take To Get By? Edition

From this Gallup poll:

The federal poverty threshold for a family of four is just under $24,000; however, Americans believe such a family unit living in their community needs more than double that -- $58,000, on average -- just to "get by." That estimate reflects 29% of Americans saying these families need up to $50,000 in annual income, 47% saying they need between $50,000 and $99,999, and 10% saying they need $100,000 or more.

There are some regional differences of opinion, but in every region and communities of all sizes most Americans believe that a family of four needs more than twice the official poverty level to "get by."

Quotation Of The Day: Poets Edition

From this Charles Simic post in the New York Review of Books:

In a country that now regards money as the highest good, doing something for the love of it is not just odd, but downright perverse. Imagine the horror and anger felt by parents of a son or daughter who was destined for the Harvard Business School and a career in finance but discovered an interest in poetry instead. Imagine their enticing descriptions of the future riches and power awaiting their child while trying to make him or her reconsider the decision. “Who has recognized you as a poet? Who has enrolled you in the ranks of poets?,” the trial judge shouted at the Russian poet Josef Brodsky, before sentencing him to five years of hard labor. “No one,” Brodsky replied. He could have been speaking for all the sons and daughters who had to face their parents’ wrath.[emphasis mine]

The bolded sentence rings true, and if I may so bold to paraphrase Lincoln, one wonders how a nation so conceived and so constituted can long endure.

Tweet Of The Week: Dollars And Time Edition

I believe you are your work. Don't trade the stuff of your life, time, for nothing more than dollars. That's a rotten bargain...

— Michael Schmid (@adaddyblog) August 3, 2012

When Pop Culture And World Finance Meet

I don't know enough about world economics to even think about commenting seriously.  Blogging, of course, means one frequently comments with insufficient information. The world seems fixated on Greece, Italy, and Spain.  This BBC article illustrates that the Barclay's situation may cause Britain major economic woes:

The chairman resigns to save the CEO. The CEO makes a public threat to drag the central bank into the mire. And the previous government. And the Treasury.

Next morning, the CEO resigns and the chairman re-installs himself to "oversee transition". The police, who said they could not prosecute, now say they might.

You have just seen the British establishment operating at a level of panic and indecision on a par with the Norway disaster in 1940. And it is not over.

These are people whose job is to speak to each other on a daily basis. But trust is shattered at the very top of the financial system.

Consider this: Barclays is the biggest lender to small and medium-sized businesses in Britain.

Right now its regional offices will be making decisions that can kill or cure the companies that form the backbone of the UK economy.

I suppose the first thing that should have come to my mind is Lehman Brothers or one of the big American banks that helped begin the Great Recession.  Something about that last paragraph, however, reminded me about this exchange from Star Wars: A New Hope, the original Star Wars movie.

Governor Tarkin: The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I have just received word from Coruscant that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away forever.

General Tagge: But that's impossible! How will the Emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy? 

Governor Tarkin: The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.

Fear? Got that all over the world.
Regional leaders in charge of the empire? Got that.
What's left?

Spending Money On The Basics

The US spends more on a greater percentage of our income on health care and housing than Canada or the UK.

The Bureau of Labor Statistic numbers are here.

If we all move to Canada, we also get to get rid of the penny.

Quotation Of The Day: Money Edition

From this Salon article,

And as we serve money, we find that money wants the same thing from us: to push everyone it beguiles in the same direction. Money never seems to be interested in strengthening regulatory agencies, for example, but always in subverting them, in making them miss the danger signs in coal mines and in derivatives trading and in deep-sea oil wells. You can have a shot at being part of the 1 percent, money tells us, only if you are first committed to making the 1 percent stronger, to defending their piles in some new and imaginative way, to rationalizing and burnishing their glory, to exempting them from regulation or taxation, to bowing down as they pass, and to believing in your heart that their touch will heal scrofula.

Quotation Of The Day: Debit Card Edition

I haven't written a check in the past 10 years.  I use my debit card and pay bills on line.  I appreciate this David Frum blast at Bank of America's decision to start charging people to own debit cards.

Bank of America attributes the new monthly charge to genuine cost issues. Maybe. But it’s always worth remembering that banks detest debit cards on principle, and for exactly the reason that consumers like them. Debit cards prevent consumers from accumulating excess debt. They compete with credit cards, which encourage debt. And despite today’s ultra-low-interest rate environment, credit card interest rates have reached an all-time peak of an average almost 15% APR.

So yes it’s theoretically possible that banks are on-forwarding genuine cost increases. But it’s also possible that banks do their accounting in such a way as to make the strongest possible case against the debit cards they hate, so as to drive consumers back toward the dangerous device that makes them so much money: credit.

Happily, there are other banks in the world than Bank of America. (I’m a customer, but I’ll be rethinking.)

Whatever your personal financial decisions, one lesson should be taken by all from the financial crisis of 2008-2009: more skepticism is due about everything the big US banks say about what they do and why they do it.

I suppose my full throated support of the last paragraph means I'm some sort of anti-capitalist conspiracy theorist.  If my bank starts charging for the debit card, I too will begin looking for a bank that doesn't.

Penny Wise But Pound Foolish?

USA Today reports that the United States Treasury Department will stop U.S. Savings Bonds at banks and credit unions at the end of the year.  Savings bonds will still be sold on line as they have been since 2002.  The department claims they will save $70 million by making the change.

I'll be the first to admit that $70 million is a big jar of pennies, but the Treasury Department has been selling bonds on line for nearly 10 years.  Last year, they sold $1.2 billion of Savings Bonds but only 11% were sold online.

I'm not a luddite; I haven't written a physical check since 2003 or so.  I pay bills on-line; my employer deposits my check electronically; I view Amazon as a godsend, in part because I've never lived in a community with a thriving privately owned bookstore.  I'm certain beyond a reasonable doubt my debit card doesn't contain the mark of the beast.

That being said, it seems that people have been slow to adopt the idea of purchasing Savings Bonds online.  The article gave no statistics, but I suspect that grandparents and great-grandparents purchase the lions share of those bonds for grandchildren or great-grandchildren.  USA Today reports "44% of Americans age 65-73 have broadband at home, a 2010 survey by the Pew Research Center says. For Americans 74 and older, the percentage is 20%."  It seems as if the Treasury Department is cutting its customer base by by 50%-70%.

Part of the United States's financial problems stems from a dearth of private sector saving.  Savings Bonds used to be one of the ways that parents attempted to instill the habit in children.  Taking crumpled bills to the bank and handing them to the teller was part of the experience.  I wonder is sitting in front of the computer screen and having a parent type in a debit card number will have the same effect.