The Awl

Barack Obama and Goldman Sachs' New Permanent Underclass

Choire Sicha — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:00:07 +0000

• Good news, America! We're finally building equal opportunity ghettos! Now that 1 in 15 Americans are considered the "poorest poor," we're making sure they live in underserved neighborhoods; "geographically concentrated poverty in the U.S. is now at the highest since 1990." But it's a rainbow of poverty! Red and yellow, black and white!

• And we're making sure they don't get to bust out. Because few of them can afford to have cars, they can't go to school, improve their lives or take their children to programs. A entrenched and segregated underclass!

• But it'll be a mobile underclass, that moves from poor area to poor area, when it can, because home ownership, which was a terrible idea bought by many people, is shrinking: "Through the 12 months ending mid-2011, the Census Bureau reported a net increase of 1.4 million households that moved into rental housing." Meanwhile, for those still entrenched: "The percentage of those who are late by 90 days or more on their monthly mortgage payments was virtually unchanged at 3.51 percent in the July-September quarter."

• And so, relatedly, today at noon, Occupy Wall Street is marching on Goldman Sachs' headquarters. Even though it dumped and wrote off its (allegedly) mortgage robo-signing holding, there's plenty of good reasons to do so. Plenty of reasons to march on the White House too.

Photo of Occupy Oakland yesterday by James Martin.

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Hungry People Don't Burn Things Down

Choire Sicha — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 16:50:00 +0000

How unexpected, that unemployment insurance prevented the U.S. from having the highest poverty rate since the 1960s! May we point out: only barely. 2009's poverty rate: 14.3%. (History: 2007: 12.5%. 2000: 11.3%. 1983: 15.2%. 1973: 11.1%. 1964: 19%.) And that's still after we moved a big chunk of older people out of poverty with OUR INTERFERING BIG GOVERNMENT PROGRAMS. Now we just keep young people poor. (And food-insecure.)

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Cars, Emergency Rooms Kill White People A Lot Less

Choire Sicha — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:30:00 +0000

Johns Hopkins announced a study this morning that found that "minority pedestrians are far more likely than white pedestrians to be struck by motor vehicles" and "uninsured minority pedestrians hit by cars are at a significantly higher risk of death than their insured white counterparts, even if the injuries sustained are similar." Oh yes: "uninsured patients had a 77 percent greater risk of death" than the insured. Here's one nice way of putting something complicated: "Previous studies have shown that insurance status and race may increase mortality risk because of treatment delay or differences in services provided." Jaywalking! A one-way ticket to death in racist America! No but, best of all, now we're going to see a spike in "minority" ER visits, since it's the fun new past-time to drive Muslims off the road in your Chevrolet Blazers.

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Breakfast In America

Alex Balk — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:10:03 +0000

More than ten percent of Americans rely on food stamps. Tina Contraeras is one of them: "Unemployed and on disability benefits, Contraeras, 45, has custody of her grandchildren, ages 2 and 3. She has resorted to circling the first of the month on her calendar so that when her grandchildren are hungry, she can count down the days until they can return to the grocery store.

'I have to make a game out of it for the kids,' she said." [Via]

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Food Stamp Nation: How's Your Recession Going?

Choire Sicha — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:50:04 +0000

1. "Nearly half of all U.S. children and 90 percent of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood."

2. "The U.S. Department of Agriculture said nearly 200,000 retailers nationwide now accept food stamps, 20 percent more than in 2005."

3. "In September, Texas processed 58.6 percent of applications within the 30 days required by the federal government. By the end of that month, nearly 42,000 families were waiting for a decision even though the deadline had passed."

4. "Some 36 million Americans are on food stamps, an increase of nearly 10 million over the past two years.... Some 66 percent of those eligible participate."

5. "A federal judge has ordered Indiana's partially privatized welfare intake system to speed up decisions on food stamp applications, but the state has a year to meet its first target."

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The Great Annual Change Bowl Guessing Game

Choire Sicha — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:41:14 +0000

Every year or so, when finances grow slightly tight, Americans turn to that big bowl of change on the dresser. The annual pilgrimage to Coinstar! America! It is like all the money ran out for another country. So let's have a little guessing game. How much change is in The Awl's Big Bowl O' Change? The winning guess will... win something. Not sure what. Undying loyalty? A portion of the profits? A small amount of Awl equity?

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Beanie Sigel, "In The Ghetto"

Dave Bry — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:40:16 +0000

If you're looking to counter the oddly antiseptic aftertaste left by Jay-Z's ostensibly warlike hit "Run This Town," there's this new video from Jay's old Philadelphia recruit, Beanie Sigel. Sit through the corny Vincent-Price-from-"Thriller" voice-over in the beginning, settle in to the swaying organ line and the tinkling piano and, um, brace yourself.

"Ain't nothin' worse on the ears than a crying mother," Beanie says, sounding like he just left her at the wake. "Seeing her baby dying, stretched in a ghetto gutter."

The guns on the screen aren't shiny. The little girl with her arm in a cast doesn't look like an actress. And the guys smoking wet cigarettes appear to have smoked ones like that before. (You get the feeling that if Chris Martin from Coldplay walked up to someone around here and asked for directions, he might be told, "Don't approach me and don't address me.")

It is, yes: kinda serious! But what comes across most clearly is that Beanie means every word of every rhyme he says.

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Do Not Pay Emergency Room Bills, Poors. This Is How.

Choire Sicha — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:55:03 +0000

I frequently meet people, most of them young and poor, who are burdened by debts to emergency rooms, and I am always shocked that these people with no money are even considering paying. Here is how it is done, in a strangely servicey explanation from Vice.

As a person with next to no money, my approach to personal finance borrows very heavily from my understanding of The Great Depression and the film The Road Warrior. Therefore, I conduct myself at all times with a shameless, don't-care-how-embarrassing pragmatism. So whenever a problem with my health presents itself, I just head to the emergency room with no intention of paying anyone for anything... As long as I don't delude myself with dreams of one day financing a house or of answering my phone without getting yelled at by a stranger, emergency rooms are basically a Supermarket Sweep of free medical treatment.

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