We are not attacking the rich. We're simply listing privileges they have. We are not a hate group. Tips on cheap living are also welcome.
A Guide for the Wealthy
If you haven’t already heard, Donald Trump has slashed funding for advertising the Affordable Care Act enrollment period by 90%. He has also cut the funding for local organizations that help consumers navigate the buying process by 41%. The time period to enroll has also been cut in half, giving people only 6 weeks to sign up between: November 1, 2017 - December 15, 2017.
These cuts mean that less people will be aware of the enrollment period and less people will be insured. Less people uninsured will also mean a drive up in premiums, making insurance unaffordable for many more. This is an intentional move to make good on his promise to let the Affordable Care Act “implode,” but it will hurt many people in the process. Many people will unknowingly miss the enrollment period and we cannot let this happen.
Since the president is unwilling to inform the citizens we must take action into our own hands. Spread awareness about open enrollment. I made the image above so you can save it and share it to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and whatever other forms of social media you might use. Tell your family and friends. Do whatever you can to make sure that people who need this information get this information.
This is one month away! Get prepared to sign up and please note this too:
The Trump administration plans to shut down the federal health insurance exchange for 12 hours during all but one Sunday in the upcoming Obamacare open enrollment season.
The shutdown will occur from midnight until noon every Sunday except Dec. 10.
The Department of Health and Human Services will also shut down the federal exchange — healthcare.gov — overnight on the first day of open enrollment, Nov. 1. More than three dozen states use that exchange for their marketplaces.
All the links from the White House website are gone, but the Affordable Care Act is still in effect, and you can sign up for health insurance until January 31.
Trump and his cronies may want to kill it, but that takes time (especially now that key players are waffling and the insurance industry have noticed that it will rain chaos down upon them). So sign yourself up. Get in a free checkup, a round of antibiotics, a birth control implant, while you have the chance.
If anyone needs help applying, ping me.
Todavía puede inscribirle en Obamacare. Si necesita auyuda, pídame.
Would you all mind boosting this? I don’t usually ask, but Obamacare is a big deal for me. I haven’t had to dose anyone with veterinary antibiotics in years, and I really want to keep it that way.
WORKING ON HOLIDAYS MEANS HOLIDAY PAY, AND SOME PEOPLE WANT TO WORK ON HOLIDAYS BECAUSE IT MEANS MORE MONEY FOR THEM, BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, THEY’RE POOR AND NEED IT.
NOT SHOPPING AT THE “MEANY STORES THAT ARE OPEN ON THANKSGIVING” MEANS THAT THOSE MINIMUM WAGE WORKERS COULD BE PAID LESS. YOU AREN’T HURTING CORPORATIONS, YOU ARE HURTING THE POOR.
YOU WANT PEOPLE TO BE ABLE TO SPEND TIME ON THANKSGIVING WITH THEIR FAMILIES? HOW ABOUT YOU DONATE SOME FUCKING MONEY TO THE POOR? HOW ABOUT YOU SPEND MORE TIME LOBBYING FOR WORKERS’ RIGHTS AND MINIMUM WAGE INCREASES- YOU KNOW, THINGS THAT ACTUALLY MATTER?
Local ballot measures in California to create the nation’s first taxes on sugary drinkssaw both victory and defeat Tuesday when a bill won in Berkeley and lost in neighboring San Francisco, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.
San Francisco’s Proposition Eproposed placing a 2-cents-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, defined as drinks containing added sugar and 25 calories or more per 12 ounces. Because the bill required that the money raised by the tax be set aside for specific spending -- health, nutrition, physical education and active recreation programs through the San Francisco Unified School District, Department of Public Health and Recreation and Park Department -- it required a two-thirds vote to pass.
PBS NewsHour calculated thata can of soda, typically 99 cents, would cost San Francisco residents closer to $1.24, and a two-liter soda, priced around $3.99, would cost more than $5.
I'm am so tired of people so goddamn concerned about health while not addressing the real problem behind why people buy unhealthy foods: lack of access to healthier foods and money.
These people do NOT care about health.
These people do NOT care about their fellow man.
THEY care about money.
You want people to be more healthy?
Lower health food costs. Increase minimum wage. Increase government assistance programs. Build more grocery stores. Stop letting people be remarkably poor in one of the world's richest countries.
Dear presumptuous asshole who thinks I should only spend to sustain myself,
How someone spends their money is none of your business. Spending money so your kids can have decent lives like other kids and not feel "poor" is raising your children to have a good childhood. If your dad doesn't buy you anything, at least you don't have to worry it's because of financial difficulty. When my parents first came to this country they couldn't afford much, but they were able to at least buy me and my brother a t.v, computer and a printer. You don't think people mock me for having a laptop and being poor? You don't think people criticize me for having brought three printers?
"b-but BUT you can print in the library"
"but.........why THREE333?"
"If you're poor, why do you have two laptops at home?"
and online commenters thinking they know shit,
"if you're poor, how can you afford the internet?"
Who doesn't want to give their children nice clothes, new shoes, go on vacation and have the latest gadgets? That's the reason why my parents moved to America the first place. [to have a better life *hint* *hint*] I shouldn't have nice clothes? I shouldn't have good pair of shoes? I shouldn't have my own room in a HOUSE? What's the point of my parents working so hard then? I presume you probably think it's wrong if my family decides to book a flight to visit my grandparents back in China? Or are we not allowed to do that?
Fuck you.
I'm a full time student who is currently unemployed and has taken a vast amount of student loans (thankfully I dont have to pay until after I graduate). My question is, should I be upset that the only government health coverage offered to me under the affordable health care act is 100 p/month? I don't make ANY money at all, I can barely afford rent and food, how can I pay 100 a month for health care? I get it's cheaper than paying 500 but I thought I qualified for free-$20 coverage?
Are you using the tax credit? The health insurance really isn’t that great, unless you’re willing to shell out a ton of money, but using the entire tax credit, I was able to get insurance as low as like $2/mo (though I decided to get slightly better insurance at $10/mo.)
It means that I probably won’t get a tax return, but you take what you can get, I suppose. I don’t know all the logistics of the Marketplace, either, but it could also be affected since you’re a student.
Deerhearted, I agree with you. There ARE people who've worked their asses off for their wealth. And, to the owner of this page, let me tell you, even though partly agree with you too, I'll repeat (or sort of) what Deerhearted said: THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO COME FROM 'HUMBLE' BACKGROUNDS AND EARN THEIR WEALTH THROUGH HARD JOB. For example, my father comes from a middle-lower class family. His father used to be a photographer, his mother a nurse. Today, he is a relatively wealthy lawyer that could...
well enough fit the description for someone exiting the middle-class spectrum and entering the lower strands of upper class. So, while there is some sort of wealthy privilege, SOME PEOPLE HAVE EARNED IT.
Oh brother. Once again- I do not care. Again, there are a lot of privileges that go into place, and rich people who started off poor and worked their way to the top are still benefiting from a large chunk of privilege.
And again- I care about livable minimum wages. I do not care about rich people.
Wealthy privilege is complaining that you might not get your own room when you spend two weeks in Jamaica over Christmas. And then complaining that your parents aren't taking you to Tahiti for New Year's when your co-worker just mentioned how excited she was to drive to D.C. for three days and share a room with family she hasn't seen in a year.
So. Minimum wage jobs don't need to pay a living wage because they're supposed to be only for teenagers saving for college. Not a "real" job, right?
So I guess people who say this don't go to Walmart, McDonalds grocery stores, Starbucks, wherever, during school hours? They only shop from 3pm-9pm on weeknights and weekends? They never go to McDonalds for lunch except at the exact time that the local high school has lunch hour.
I am not here to confirm or deny the existence of wealthy privilege. But this is my story.
I am a poor Hispanic woman who dated a wealthy white man for a while. I cared for him and him for me, but he had issues understanding how hard the little things were for me. I remember him getting onto me that my shower curtain was always falling. He would ask, "why not go buy a better rod?" when I told him that I had no money to allot to that, and that the current shower rod would be fine if he didn't keep bumping into it, we still argued.
Then he would get mad when he would come see me and find that I had barely eaten in days. He would take me for dinner, make sure I had a lot of leftovers, but would lecture me about the importance of eating.
And then he would be mad that I wouldn't go see the doctor. Despite being in college and still being on my parent's insurance, I would have to cover the copay, any tests run, and the meds. Mostly, unless I fully believe it's life threatening, I will not see a doctor.
I refrain from the word "privilege" because I believe that everyone will have some sort of advantage over someone else. I know I am lucky. I'm still on my parents insurance so if anything was truly wrong I could get help, also I have a job. Although it's minimum wage, I have adapted to be able to survive for the most part.
I can't deny that my ex had advantages over me, and there are still things he has issue understanding about the poor, but he's working on it.
Mod Note: Thank you for the story. I believe this doesn't necessarily work towards confirming wealthy privilege (though it certainly does exist), but merely helps to show how people who are better off truly don't understand the things poor people go through.
I'm not even talking about millionaires. I'm talking about people who are relatively wealthy, and who have worked for it. I don't understand why someone's amount of work is offset by being wealthy. Yeah, life is easier for them, but they still work for it. But in the same vein, there are millionaires and even billionaires who have sacrificed an incredible amount for what they have, and they got lucky and it paid off. That doesn't mean that their struggle to get there is void.
Yeah, right. Because these kind of things aren't skewed towards white men. Lots of people work their asses off and sacrifice a lot and they never get lucky and never will because they're not some white guy who's afforded every chance in life to better himself.
Again. I do not care about hard-working wealthy people. I care about livable minimum wages.
I'm saying that there are people who legitimately work for their wealth. Just as there are people who work extremely hard and make nothing.
I’m sorry I feel absolutely nothing towards “hard working rich people”
It’d be nice to sit down in a nice house and eat dinner while still having to take phone calls and making 27 million dollars a year instead of, I don’t know, working three jobs, heating up some processed chicken patties that taste like shit because they’re quick and it’s already 8:30pm, and answer e-mails from people at a few of your jobs because you didn’t have time to do it before the start of your other jobs, and still not making $20,000 a year.
I don’t even care. There is no excuse, no amount of “hard work” these CEOs do that means they deserve $27 million a year.
I'd like to point out that Walmart employs the most employees of any U.S company by over 50%, so while their bet worth is so vast, it's spread much much thiner. Also, "less than $9 an hour" is still much more than many people, including me, make at minimum wage ($7.25) and while the company execs are paid more, they also work DAMN hard for it. My nana is one of the market managers for Texas Walmarts, and while she is in the top tax bracket in the US, she works nonstop like a dog.
cont… The CEO of Walmart also works extremely hard. I’ve met him and had dinner at his house with his family, and while we were there he was still working and taking phone calls.
It’s okay for these people to work like a dog and not earn a livable wage because your nana works hard and makes way more money than they do. It’s okay that people who work full time at Wal-Mart often need to get second jobs just to keep up with their bills while the CEO of Wal-Mart makes $27 million per year. It’s okay for these people to not earn a livable wage because other people at other companies are even worse off than they are.
This is literally what you’re saying. You’re an asshole. Fuck off.
24/7 Wall Street: This summer, thousands of fast-food workers in the United States went on strike in cities across the country, demanding their wages be increased to $15 an hour and the ability to unionize. To no ones surprise, they didnt get it.
To anyone who's ever worked these places, you definitely understand this, which is why it makes it so much more frustrating when you get a job at one of these locations, work as much as they'll let you, and still can't afford basic necessities.
And because I hate slideshows, the list is as followed:
10. Starbucks
U.S. workforce: 120,000
CEO compensation: $28.9 million
Revenue: $13.3 billion
Net income: $1.4 billion
No. of U.S. stores: 5,415/7,049/13,493
Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ: SBUX) employs 120,000 workers across the United States. Howard Schultz, the company’s CEO, has become a billionaire by turning Starbucks from a small coffee retailer into one of the world’s most famous brands. Last year, Schultz took home nearly $29 million in total compensation. Schultz is often viewed as a progressive executive, due to his support of gay marriage and his request that customers not bring guns into Starbucks locations. In an interview with CNBC in March, Schultz cautiously supported a minimum wage hike. However, according to Glassdoor.com, baristas at Starbucks are paid an average of less than $9 an hour. Schultz has downplayed the relevance of these figures.
9. TJX Companies
U.S. workforce: 138,211 (est.)
CEO compensation: $21.8 million
Revenue: $25.9 billion
Net income: $1.9 billion
No. of U.S. stores: 2,355
The TJX Companies Inc. (NYSE: TJX) operates Marshalls, TJ Maxx and HomeGoods in the United States. The company’s stores are off-price retailers, meaning they buy unsold inventory from manufacturers and other retailers and resell it at a discount. TJX’s sales have grown in the past four consecutive fiscal years as the retailer also boosted its operating profit margin. Despite the company’s success, sales associates at its stores earn less than $8 an hour on average, according to Glassdoor.com.
8. Macy's
U.S. workforce: 175,700
CEO compensation: $13.8 million
Revenue: $27.7 billion
Net income: $1.3 billion
No. of U.S. stores: 844
Annual revenue at Macy’s Inc. (NYSE: M) has risen slightly over the past four years, up from roughly $25 billion in 2008 to more than $27.7 billion at the end of its latest fiscal year. Macy’s, the second-largest department store in the United States, exceeded Wall Street’s expectations this past quarter, posting large increases in sales and earnings from the year before. Earlier this year, members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union ratified a five-year agreement with Macy’s that should help protect the benefits of nearly 700 Macy’s employees in Maryland and Washington, D.C. According to Glassdoor.com, associates are paid under $9 an hour on average.
7. Darden Restaurants
U.S. workforce: 203,389 (est.)
CEO compensation: $6.4 million
Revenue: $8.6 billion
Net income: $412 million
No. of U.S. stores: 2,105
Revenues at Darden Restaurants Inc. (NYSE: DRI), the parent company of chains such as Olive Garden and Red Lobster, rose from just $7.2 billion in 2009 to $8.6 billion in fiscal 2013. According to Morningstar’s analysis, operating margins have been some of the best in the industry in the past few years. Additionally, instead of raising wages, the company’s funds have been used effectively “to fund growth concepts and enhance total shareholder returns.” Yet the results have not been enough for investors, some of whom have pushed for the company to split and continue to cut costs faster. In 2013, Fortune named Darden one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For,” citing access to low-cost health insurance for part-time employees. Still, pay for many workers at Olive Garden and Red Lobster is frequently less than $10.00 per hour, according to Glassdoor.com. However, many of these employees may receive tips in addition to their base pay.
6. Sears Holdings
U.S. workforce: 246,000
CEO compensation: $1.3 million (Louis D’Ambrosio, former CEO)
Revenue: $39.9 billion
Net income: -$930 million
No. of U.S. stores: 2,073
Sears Holdings Corp. (NASDAQ: SHLD), owner of both Sears and Kmart, is in heavy competition with other department stores. The median hourly wage for department store workers was just $9.83 in 2012. At Sears, sales associates averaged slightly more than $8 an hour, while cashiers averaged $7.70 per hour. Kmart offered similar pay to its workers as well, with 105 cashiers and 75 sales associates reporting to Glassdoor.com that their hourly wages were less than $8.00. However, Sears Holdings may not have the necessary ability to increase its employees’ pay. Sales have slipped in the past few years, plunging from $47.8 billion in fiscal 2008 to less than $40 billion in the most recent year. The company has also failed to post an operating profit in either of the past two full fiscal years.
5. Yum! Brands
U.S. workforce: 694,712 (est.)
CEO compensation: $14.2 million
Revenue: $13.6 billion
Net income: $1.6 billion
No. of U.S. stores: 18,069
Yum! Brands Inc. (NYSE: YUM) CEO David Novak received more than $14 million worth of total compensation in the past fiscal year. The company’s revenue rose from $11.3 billion to $13.6 billion. Hourly wages for workers at its KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell chains, however, are still often less than $8 an hour. Yum! Brands has continued to expand, opening more than five new restaurants a day outside the United States in 2012. However many American workers have expressed frustration that the company’s success has not led to an increase in their pay. This summer, fast-food workers at Yum! Brands and other fast-food chains staged protests across the country, demanding higher wages.
4. Kroger
U.S. workforce: 343,000
CEO compensation: $11.1 million
Revenue: $96.8 billion
Net income: $1.5 billion
No. of U.S. stores: 2,418
The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) employs 343,000 workers in 2,418 stores across the country. The company operates stores under several names, including Kroger, City Market, Dillons and others. A majority of Kroger’s employees are covered by collective bargaining agreements between the company and different unions. In the past few months, Kroger has agreed to terms with unions covering thousands of workers in Virginia and Texas. Kroger’s net profit was $1.5 billion at the end of the most recent fiscal year.
3. Target
U.S. workforce: 361,000
CEO compensation: $20.6 million
Revenue: $73.3 billion
Net income: $3.0 billion
No. of U.S. stores: 1,778
Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) had 361,000 employees working at 1,778 stores in the United States at the end of 2012. The average listed salary on Glassdoor.com for a cashier or an employee on the Target sales floor is less than $9 an hour. In response to Target opening on Thursday, in advance of Black Friday, Target workers drafted a petition last year to “save Thanksgiving.” More than 300,000 people signed the petition. This year, Target stores will open on Thanksgiving Day at 8 p.m. That is an hour earlier than last year.
2. McDonald's
U.S. workforce: 739,055 (est.)
CEO compensation: $13.8 million
Revenue: $27.6 billion
Net income: $5.5 billion
No. of U.S. stores: 14,157
In the restaurant industry, the hourly median wage was just over $9.00 as of 2012. However, many McDonald’s Corp. (NYSE: MCD) employees are paid far less, with cashiers and crew members often earning only the minimum wage. In October, several McDonald’s employees were arrested for protesting their wages at the Union League Club of Chicago, where McDonald’s President Jeff Stratton was giving a speech. Between 2008 and 2012, sales and profit margins at McDonald’s have increased. Despite the company’s growth, employees are still hurting. All but admitting the low wages, McDonald’s encourages employees to enroll in food stamps and welfare programs.
1. Walmart
U.S. workforce: 1.4 million
CEO compensation: $20.7 million
Revenue: $469 billion
Net income: $17.0 billion
No. of U.S. stores: 4,759
There are 1.4 million Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (NYSE: WMT) associates working at the company’s 4,759 U.S. stores. Walmart recently announced it would launch Black Friday sales at 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. Critics of Walmart see this as adding insult to injury — forcing retail workers who already earn low wages to cut holidays short. Criticisms like these have been part of an onslaught of claims that Walmart underpays its workers. Walmart disagrees, saying that “for tens of thousands of people every year, a job at Walmart opens the door to a better life.” According to the company, a full-time hourly wage is $12.83. Some argue that the company’s number is inflated, however, reflecting the salaries of higher-paid employees. Hourly wages for sales associates are less than $9.00, according to Glassdoor.com. Walmart’s net income rose to $17 billion last year.
