A colleague in NZ passed this on to me... it may interest many members of
the cgf.
lawrence

>Of 267 billionaires and 100 toilets
>
>By Will Parry
>
>(Peoples Weekly World)
>
>Carmen Fernandez, 39, a mother of seven, cleans more than 100 toilets each
>night at the Trans-American Building in Los Angeles for $7.80 an hour.
>
>William Steele, president and CEO of American Building Maintenance, whose
>39,000 janitorial employees include Ms. Fernandez, received a 1999 salary of
>$605,107 and a bonus of $496,460.
>
>Back in 1988, the average CEO salary was 40 times that of the average
>employee. Today the average CEO makes 400 times the average employee.
>
>In 1982, Forbes magazine counted 13 billionaires; in 1999 it counted 267.
>
>According to New York University Professor Edward Wolff, the number of
>households with a net worth of more than $10 million has risen over the past
>decade from about 67,000 to almost 350,000.
>
>
>
>Million-dollar jewelry
>
>The New York Times reports that at Harry Winston, the high-end jeweler on
>New York's Fifth Avenue, "Internet millionaires barely out of college are
>splurging on diamond engagement rings at $1215,000 to $1 million each."
>
>Meanwhile in Washington state, Tony Lee of the Fremont Public Association
>reports that "the median wage for a family leaving welfare has declined from
>$7.40 an hour to $7 an hour over the period of a year."
>
>Forty-three percent of these families say they have had to cut back on food,
>Lee reports.
>
>Writing in the Source, the newspaper of the church council of Greater
>Seattle, Elizabeth Whitford reports that the U.S. Department of Agriculture
>ranks Washington fourth worst in the nation for levels of hunger and eighth
>worst for levels of "food security" * people on the brink of hunger.
>
>In Washington's King County, with a reported 76,000 millionaires, the
>Emergency Feeding Program reports a 60 percent growth in food bank requests
>since 1998. The gap keeps growing between the working poor and the obscenely
>wealthy.
>
>
>
>Bedsores and diapers
>
>More than two million nursing home workers bathe and feed elderly people,
>cleaning their bedsores, lifting them from bed to wheelchair, changing their
>diapers.
>
>Another 700,000 work as home health aides, tending the sick, elderly or
>disabled and still another 1.3 million work as hospital orderlies and
>attendants at pay rates from $7 to $10 an hour.
>
>And those paid to care for children, another 2.3 million, earn a median wage
>of $6.60 an hour, usually without benefits.
>
>As the economic boom continues to shatter records, the income disparity
>widens. In Washington state, reports the Economic Policy Institute, the
>poorest fifth of all families lost $1,380 (9 percent) of their income in
>inflation-adjusted dollars between the late 1980s and the late 1990s.
>
>Over the same period, annual incomes of the richest fifth of all families
>rose by $22,650 (19 percent).
>
>
>
>Does Bush offer compassion?
>
>George W. Bush, the self-described "compassionate conservative," would rely
>on voluntary charitable contributions to address these festering social and
>economic inequalities.
>
>But, reports the New York Times, "both individuals and companies are
>donating less to organizations that support the homeless, the young and the
>hungry than they did in leaner times."
>
>Paul Clolery, editor of a newspaper that serves nonprofit groups, reports
>that "demand for services is going through the roof."
>
>Giving to the Salvation Army is up in some cities, down in others, but
>nowhere does it meet the need, says Tom Jones, a spokesperson for the agency.
>
>"Meanwhile, better-off Americans are spending and borrowing more than ever,
>and reaching record levels of bankruptcy and debt, so they have less to save
>and give," reports the Times.
>
>Philanthropic giving was indeed up last year but much of it went to the
>opera, the ballet, the symphony, the museum or the university. Contributions
>for human services, says Giving USA, fell from 13.9 percent of all giving to
>9.2 percent last year.
>
>Philanthropic contributions from corporations have been declining more than
>contributions from individuals, many charities report. (They never did
>amount to much * typically about 1 percent of profits.)
>
>The shameful coexistence of massive poverty and obscene wealth has given
>rise to a movement that goes beyond charity and compassionate conservatism.
>
>We're talking about the living wage movement. Organized labor and the
>religious community are in the forefront of struggles on many fronts * among
>them farm workers, child care workers, janitors, health care workers and
>immigrant workers, documented or undocumented.
>
>The core demand is that both public and private employers provide wages high
>enough to rent a home and feed a family, plus pay for health care,
>pensions and
>other basic benefits.

dr. lawrence d. berg
department of geography
okanagan university college
7000 college way
vernon, b.c., V1B 2N5
canada
phone: 250/545-7291 ext. 2264
fax:      250/545-3277

email1: [log in to unmask]
email2: [log in to unmask]
www: http://www.geog.ouc.bc.ca/geog/berg/Berghome/





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