Friday, May 31, 2013
Half a million Britons using food banks. What kind of country is this becoming?
Let's not mess about: a skyrocketing number of people simply cannot afford to eat, thanks to deliberate government policy
A report warns of 'destitution, hardship and hunger on a large scale'. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
Let no one say we didn't see it coming. Half a million people are now accustomed to using food banks, and according to a report by Oxfam and Church Action on Poverty,
the UK is now facing "destitution, hardship and hunger on a large
scale". Whether this news will achieve the impact it deserves is
currently unclear: it doesn't quite feel like it, which only underlines
how inured the media seems to have become to rising poverty, and how
easily the government seems to be getting off the hook. Yet the facts
are obvious enough: "Food aid" is something firmly built into our
national life, the supposed safety net of social security is getting
more threadbare by the month – and the question demands to be asked, not
for reasons of melodrama, but hard political fact: what kind of country
is Britain becoming?
According the Trussell Trust, the UK's single biggest organiser of food banks, in 2011-12, the number of people who received at least three days' emergency food was around 130,000. Their own informational material says that in 2012-13, "food banks fed 346,992 people nationwide", and of those who received help, "126,889 were children". Now comes this latest report, and the skyrocketing numbers speak for themselves – as does the mess of factors behind them, and the responsibility of the coalition for pushing up the demand – no, need – for food banks so drastically. While we're here, it may also be worth cutting through the kind of officialspeak used to deal with such things: even the term "food bank" occasionally seems designed to obscure what's actually afoot, which is simple enough. So, let's not mess about: a skyrocketing number of people simply cannot afford to eat, and they have been put in that predicament thanks to deliberate government policy.
We are now starting to see the consequences of George Osborne's move on so-called "welfare uprating", whereby increases in benefits are to be held at 1%, irrespective of inflation (over the last five years, incidentally, the cost of basic foods has risen by 35%). Changes to disability benefits are set to cut the income of about 600,000 people. A new council tax benefit regime has snatched money from vulnerable people's pockets, and the infamous bedroom tax has done its work. In all these cases, the people affected are hit by a straightforward enough problem. If your income comes down, your fixed costs – rent, most utility bills, the cost of a phone, or running a car – stay exactly where they are, and two budgets tend to be cut back.
The first is heating. The second, always, is food. By way of highlighting that straightforward fact, I'll quote from a mother of four I met earlier this year, in Hartlepool, who was facing a cut of at least £16 – and as much as £28 – a week in her family's housing benefit: "We can't cut it from fuel, or electricity, or petrol. So when you lay that budget out over a month, with your council tax and water, and all your bills, there's nowhere else it can come from: the only place we can cut from is our food budget. And we're already having the cheapest food you can buy."
There is another factor in all this, which does not get nearly enough coverage, and which plays a huge role in the rising need for food banks. For some time, it has become increasingly clear that rising numbers of people who need social security are being "sanctioned": having their benefits suddenly cut, or taken away altogether, on the flimsiest of pretexts. Whistleblowers working in job centres have spoken of a "culture change" and the imposition of targets for the numbers of people to be sanctioned, irrespective of the details of their cases. Again, a quote from a cob centre staffer on the frontline speaks volumes: "Most staff go in to work and they're thinking about it from moment one – who am I going to stop [ie sanction] this week?" Note also that job centre staff are now referring people to food banks, as are councils and housing associations.
At the same time, one other chronically overlooked issue further drives people's need for emergency food. A couple of months ago, I spoke to a senior manager at a food bank, who talked at length about modern labour markets, and how the rising number of temporary and insecure jobs – witness the rise of the infamous "zero hours" contract – tends to put people who need emergency food in a grim loop. In, say, January, they may turn up in dire need, take their parcel and go away. Weeks later, they'll apparently find work. But by March or April they'll be back – freshly laid off, hit by a delay in their benefit payments and hungry.
"The explosion in food poverty and the use of food banks is a national disgrace," says this latest report. It is. So too is the spectacle of silver-spooned politicians taking refuge in the language of "scroungers" and "welfare crackdowns"; and, for that matter, ministers demanding further cuts to social security so as to shore up defence spending. Enough, too, of those caricatured claims that hacking away at the benefits system will involve the sacrifice of nothing more than fags and flat-screen TVs, and the idea that hunger is something that happens only to the poor and unfortunate overseas. It's now here: outside everyone's door, gnawing away, ruining lives. Oh, and one other thing: research from the US suggests that the very "food uncertainty" the food bank phenomenon embodies may be a particularly insidious part of the obesity crisis – something you won't hear from any minister, but worth pointing out.
We are at a fork in the road here. One way lies a collective recognition that British society has tumbled somewhere hitherto unimaginable, and it is time to renew our social contract; in the other direction there lie outcomes that, at this rate, may sooner or later explode into social disorder. By all means let's start a conversation about the billions of pounds in housing benefit payments thrown at private landlords, the abject waste of money that is the work programme, and more. But enough of the relentless hacking-back of money used for people's most basic needs. As even the most knuckle-headed members of this wretched government now know, that way lies a world many of us thought we had left behind many, many decades ago.
According the Trussell Trust, the UK's single biggest organiser of food banks, in 2011-12, the number of people who received at least three days' emergency food was around 130,000. Their own informational material says that in 2012-13, "food banks fed 346,992 people nationwide", and of those who received help, "126,889 were children". Now comes this latest report, and the skyrocketing numbers speak for themselves – as does the mess of factors behind them, and the responsibility of the coalition for pushing up the demand – no, need – for food banks so drastically. While we're here, it may also be worth cutting through the kind of officialspeak used to deal with such things: even the term "food bank" occasionally seems designed to obscure what's actually afoot, which is simple enough. So, let's not mess about: a skyrocketing number of people simply cannot afford to eat, and they have been put in that predicament thanks to deliberate government policy.
We are now starting to see the consequences of George Osborne's move on so-called "welfare uprating", whereby increases in benefits are to be held at 1%, irrespective of inflation (over the last five years, incidentally, the cost of basic foods has risen by 35%). Changes to disability benefits are set to cut the income of about 600,000 people. A new council tax benefit regime has snatched money from vulnerable people's pockets, and the infamous bedroom tax has done its work. In all these cases, the people affected are hit by a straightforward enough problem. If your income comes down, your fixed costs – rent, most utility bills, the cost of a phone, or running a car – stay exactly where they are, and two budgets tend to be cut back.
The first is heating. The second, always, is food. By way of highlighting that straightforward fact, I'll quote from a mother of four I met earlier this year, in Hartlepool, who was facing a cut of at least £16 – and as much as £28 – a week in her family's housing benefit: "We can't cut it from fuel, or electricity, or petrol. So when you lay that budget out over a month, with your council tax and water, and all your bills, there's nowhere else it can come from: the only place we can cut from is our food budget. And we're already having the cheapest food you can buy."
There is another factor in all this, which does not get nearly enough coverage, and which plays a huge role in the rising need for food banks. For some time, it has become increasingly clear that rising numbers of people who need social security are being "sanctioned": having their benefits suddenly cut, or taken away altogether, on the flimsiest of pretexts. Whistleblowers working in job centres have spoken of a "culture change" and the imposition of targets for the numbers of people to be sanctioned, irrespective of the details of their cases. Again, a quote from a cob centre staffer on the frontline speaks volumes: "Most staff go in to work and they're thinking about it from moment one – who am I going to stop [ie sanction] this week?" Note also that job centre staff are now referring people to food banks, as are councils and housing associations.
At the same time, one other chronically overlooked issue further drives people's need for emergency food. A couple of months ago, I spoke to a senior manager at a food bank, who talked at length about modern labour markets, and how the rising number of temporary and insecure jobs – witness the rise of the infamous "zero hours" contract – tends to put people who need emergency food in a grim loop. In, say, January, they may turn up in dire need, take their parcel and go away. Weeks later, they'll apparently find work. But by March or April they'll be back – freshly laid off, hit by a delay in their benefit payments and hungry.
"The explosion in food poverty and the use of food banks is a national disgrace," says this latest report. It is. So too is the spectacle of silver-spooned politicians taking refuge in the language of "scroungers" and "welfare crackdowns"; and, for that matter, ministers demanding further cuts to social security so as to shore up defence spending. Enough, too, of those caricatured claims that hacking away at the benefits system will involve the sacrifice of nothing more than fags and flat-screen TVs, and the idea that hunger is something that happens only to the poor and unfortunate overseas. It's now here: outside everyone's door, gnawing away, ruining lives. Oh, and one other thing: research from the US suggests that the very "food uncertainty" the food bank phenomenon embodies may be a particularly insidious part of the obesity crisis – something you won't hear from any minister, but worth pointing out.
We are at a fork in the road here. One way lies a collective recognition that British society has tumbled somewhere hitherto unimaginable, and it is time to renew our social contract; in the other direction there lie outcomes that, at this rate, may sooner or later explode into social disorder. By all means let's start a conversation about the billions of pounds in housing benefit payments thrown at private landlords, the abject waste of money that is the work programme, and more. But enough of the relentless hacking-back of money used for people's most basic needs. As even the most knuckle-headed members of this wretched government now know, that way lies a world many of us thought we had left behind many, many decades ago.
U.S. Poverty: By the Numbers
We’re proud to collaborate with The Nation in sharing insightful journalism related to income inequality in America. The following is an excerpt from Nation contributor Greg Kaufmann’s “This Week in Poverty” column.
U.S. poverty (less than $17,916 for a family of three): 46.2 million people, 15.1 percent
Children in poverty: 16.1 million, 22 percent of
all children, including 39 percent of African-American children and 34
percent of Latino children. Poorest age group in country.
Deep poverty (less than $11,510 for a family of four): 20.4 million people, 1 in 15 Americans, including more than 15 million women and children
People who would have been in poverty if not for Social Security, 2011: 67.6 million
(program kept 21.4 million people out of poverty)
People in the U.S. experiencing poverty by age 65: Roughly half
Gender gap, 2011: Women 34 percent more likely to be poor than men
Gender gap, 2010: Women 29 percent more likely to be poor than men
Twice the poverty level (less than $46,042 for a family of four): 106 million people, more than 1 in 3 Americans
Jobs in the U.S. paying less than $34,000 a year: 50 percent
Jobs in the U.S. paying below the poverty line for a family of four, less than $23,000 annually: 25 percent
Poverty-level wages, 2011: 28 percent of workers
Percentage of individuals and family members in poverty who either worked or lived with a working family member, 2011: 57 percent
Families receiving cash assistance, 1996: 68 for every 100 families living in poverty
Families receiving cash assistance, 2010: 27 for every 100 families living in poverty
Impact of public policy, 2010: Without government assistance, poverty would have been twice as high — nearly 30 percent of population
Percentage of entitlement benefits going to elderly, disabled or working households: Over 90 percent.
Number of homeless children in U.S. public schools: 1,065,794
Annual cost of child poverty nationwide: $550 billion
Federal expenditures on home ownership mortgage deductions, 2012: $131 billion
Federal funding for low-income housing assistance programs, 2012: Less than $50 billion
U.S. poverty (less than $17,916 for a family of three): 46.2 million people, 15.1 percent
Click pie chart to enlarge. Read the full report at the National Center for Children in Poverty website.
Deep poverty (less than $11,510 for a family of four): 20.4 million people, 1 in 15 Americans, including more than 15 million women and children
People who would have been in poverty if not for Social Security, 2011: 67.6 million
(program kept 21.4 million people out of poverty)
People in the U.S. experiencing poverty by age 65: Roughly half
Gender gap, 2011: Women 34 percent more likely to be poor than men
Gender gap, 2010: Women 29 percent more likely to be poor than men
Twice the poverty level (less than $46,042 for a family of four): 106 million people, more than 1 in 3 Americans
Jobs in the U.S. paying less than $34,000 a year: 50 percent
Jobs in the U.S. paying below the poverty line for a family of four, less than $23,000 annually: 25 percent
Poverty-level wages, 2011: 28 percent of workers
Percentage of individuals and family members in poverty who either worked or lived with a working family member, 2011: 57 percent
Families receiving cash assistance, 1996: 68 for every 100 families living in poverty
Families receiving cash assistance, 2010: 27 for every 100 families living in poverty
Impact of public policy, 2010: Without government assistance, poverty would have been twice as high — nearly 30 percent of population
Percentage of entitlement benefits going to elderly, disabled or working households: Over 90 percent.
Number of homeless children in U.S. public schools: 1,065,794
Annual cost of child poverty nationwide: $550 billion
Federal expenditures on home ownership mortgage deductions, 2012: $131 billion
Federal funding for low-income housing assistance programs, 2012: Less than $50 billion
Obamacare Is Driving Some Doctors To Stop Taking Insurance Altogether
By Mandi Woodruff | Business Insider – Wed, May 29, 2013 6:19 PM EDT
A Portland, Maine family doctor is the latest poster child for private practitioners who are turning their backs on insurers altogether. In April, Dr. Michael Ciampi stopped accepting all forms of insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid, and started charging for his services a la carte.
"We're asking people to pay at the time of service just like you would pay at your garage or your lawyer or your plumber," Dr. Michael Ciampi told the Bangor Daily News' Jackie Farwell. "Now, I work for patients. I don't work for the government and I don't work for insurance companies."
Primary care doctors are among the lowest paid in the industry, and they've seen big cuts to their bottom line recently, as insurers cap physician fees in order to rein in health care costs. Once Obamacare goes into full effect in 2014, it's predicted that insurance premiums will skyrocket, and all the extra paperwork required will cost private practices like Ciampi's more time, money and manpower.
The Inquisitir explains:
A doctor’s income is what the office takes in payments minus expenses or overhead. Physician overhead cover many things but the most expensive cost is the staff necessary to handle insurance coverage. About 20 to 30 years ago this cost used to be around 15 to 30% of revenue. Now for many doctors this insurance overhead has grown to an outstanding 60% or more, with more staff being hired to handle the quickly enlarging piles of paperwork required by Obamacare.
To top it off, Medicare is beginning to cap payments while the overhead costs remain the same, or worsen. So doctors may stop insurance coverage from Medicare just because they’d see a huge drop in their annual income.
Since the switch, Ciampi says he has been able to slash his prices by half in some cases, just from his overhead savings alone. But he's lost patients in droves, with several hundred of Ciampi's 2,000 patients ditching him altogether.
Nashville, Tenn.-based Dr. Robert Tomsett had similar results after converting to a no-insurance model at his practice in 2011. Unfortunately, his staff paid the price.
"We did have to let some of the existing staff go as our patient count has dropped since initiating our transition to self-pay," Tomsett wrote. "This is typical from accounts by other providers around the country that have converted their practices, some as much as a 75% drop in patient count."
Six weeks into his no-insurance model, Tomsett saw only 75 patients and managed to break even.
"I am able to spend more time with each patient than any other time in my career," he wrote.
In a similar case in San Antonio, Texas, a pair of primary-care physicians made headlines when they stopped accepting third-party insurance a year ago. They told MySanAntonio.com that they moved to a direct pay model because of the " expensive and bloated bureaucracy that drives financial reimbursements."
A 2012 survey of more than 13,500 doctors from around the country found that 26% have already cut services for Medicaid patients due to costs, and within the next two years more than 50% plan to cut some patient access to their services. About 7% plan to switch to cash-only practices, like Ciampi's, or "concierge practices" in which patients pay doctors an annual retainer.
What happens if more doctors follow Ciampi's lead and take matters into their own hands?
You've got a couple of options –– take your business elsewhere or pay the piper. Some insurers will offer partial reimbursements to out-of-network physicians, but the onus will be on you to deal with the paperwork involved.
Dollar could be in danger as the world’s currency
This could almost be laughable if the subject wasn’t so serious. With the Federal Reserve
printing more and more worthless fiat currency with “QE to Eternity”
and the continual daily theft of our natural resources combined with an
endless influx of illegal insurgents, it is not a matter of if, but when
the dollar finally collapses. RT News
Though the US dollar continues to reign as the foreign reserve currency of choice, a new International Monetary Fund analysis shows that the currency has slumped to a 15-year low, heightening concerns that it may lose that status.
While the dollar currently constitutes 62 per cent of the $6 trillion in foreign holdings by the world’s central banks, when a historical view is taken into account, Dick Bove, vice president of equity research at Rafferty Capital Markets says the dollar’s actual percentage of total money supply worldwide has gone from 90 per cent in 1952 to about 15 per cent today.
Bove, like many other analysts, believes that the rise of the Chinese currency, the yuan, is at the expense of the US dollar’s dominance as a safe haven.
“Generally speaking, it is not believed by the vast majority that the American dollar will be overthrown,”says Dick Bove.
“But it will be, and this defrocking may occur in as short a period as five to 10 years,” he tells CNBC.
The repercussions of the dollar’s decline as the foreign currency holding of choice would be more than a symbolic hit to America’s economic standing. With a budget deficit exceeding $1 trillion per year, if the dollar were to decline against other currencies the US would find itself in the uncomfortable position of having to pay back this debt.
Bove goes further, arguing that the deadlock in Congress over the federal budget, and the now-mandatory cuts designated by the sequestration, are eroding confidence in America’s fiscal state.
“The ratings agencies are already arguing that the government’s debt may be too highly rated. Plus, the United States Congress, in both its houses, as well as the president are demonstrating a total lack of fiscal credibility,” says Bove.
Hong Kong Stock Exchange (AFP Photo / Laurent Fievet)
Political wrangling over raising the federal debt ceiling was widely viewed as the primary reason that the US debt’s rating was downgraded in 2011. At the time, the rating agency Standard & Poor’s had issued a warning that progress towards balancing the country’s budget was required for a return to a “stable” outlook. In that same year Moody’s and Fitch Ratings both downgraded as well.
According to the Wall Street Journal, New Zealand and China are currently in talks to make their respective currencies directly convertible, eliminating the need to convert either country’s currency into dollars when making or receiving payments.
Though officials told the WSJ that the talks were in the “very early stages,” such a plan is likely to sound alarm bells for anyone worried over the dominance of the US dollar.
“There is no time frame for concluding an agreement,” said a spokeswoman for New Zealand’s prime minister to the WSJ.
“We are aware it took Australia around 12 months to achieve its recent agreement with China,” she added.
If China is indeed embarking on a project to establish its currency as more market-oriented, then its swelling trade with nearby countries such as New Zealand and Australia, which agreed last month to direct convertibility with the yuan, could well continue to undermine the greenback.
Beyond simply removing the American currency from trade, direct convertibility can also make Chinese government bonds more attractive as foreign-exchange assets. Australia, for one, says it plans to invest up to 5% of its total foreign-currency reserves to Chinese government bonds, while New Zealand’s Reserve Bank has thus far not made any announcements either way.
“The No. 1 security issue we have as a nation is the preservation of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency,” said Michael Pento, president of Pento Portfolio Strategies to CNBC.
“It’s a thousand times more important than a nuclear bomb being tested by North Korea. It’s a thousand times more important that we keep the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and yet we are doing everything to abuse that status,” he added.
Japan Cancels U.S. Wheat Order on GMO Fear
SINGAPORE/TOKYO, May 30 (Reuters) – A strain of genetically modified wheat found in the United States fuelled concerns over food supplies across Asia on Thursday, with major importer Japan cancelling a tender offer to buy U.S. grain.
Other top Asian wheat importers South Korea, China and the Philippines said they were closely monitoring the situation after the U.S. government found genetically engineered wheat sprouting on a farm in the state of Oregon.
The strain was never approved for sale or consumption.
Asian consumers are keenly sensitive to gene-altered food, with few countries allowing imports of such cereals for human consumption. However, most of the corn and soybean shipped from the U.S. and South America for animal feed is genetically modified.
“We will refrain from buying western white and feed wheat effective today,” Toru Hisadome, a Japanese farm ministry official in charge of wheat trading, told Reuters.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday said the wheat variety was developed years ago by biotechnology giant Monsanto Co. It was never put into use because of worldwide opposition to genetically engineered wheat.
Wheat, long known as the staff of life, is the world’s largest traded food commodity and it is used in making breads, pastries, cookies, breakfast cereal and noodles.
Asia imports more than 40 million tonnes of wheat annually, almost a third of the global trade of 140-150 million tonnes. The bulk of the region’s supplies come from the United States, the world’s biggest exporter, and Australia, the No. 2 supplier.
The USDA said there was no sign that genetically engineered wheat had entered the commercial market, but grain traders warned the discovery could hurt export prospects for U.S. wheat.
“Asian consumers are jittery about genetically modified food,” said Abah Ofon, an analyst at Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore. “This is adding to concerns that already exist on quality and availability of food wheat globally.”
In 2006, a large part of the U.S. long-grain rice crop was contaminated by an experimental strain from Bayer CropScience , prompting import bans in Europe and Japan and sharply lowering market prices. The company agreed in court in 2011 to pay $750 million to growers as compensation.
BUYERS CAUTIOUS, SEEK DETAILS
A major flour miller in China, which has been stocking U.S. wheat in recent months, said importers will tread carefully.
China has emerged as a key buyer of U.S. wheat this year, taking around 1.5 million tonnes in the past two months. Chinese purchases in the year to June 2014 are estimated to rise 21 percent to 3.5 million tonnes, according to the USDA, with most shipments coming from the United States, Australia and Canada.
Japan’s Hisadome said the government has asked U.S. authorities to provide more details of their investigation and Japan will stop buying the wheat concerned, at least until a test kit is developed to identify genetically modified produce.
There is no U.S.-approved test kit to identify genetically engineered wheat. The USDA has said it is working on a “rapid test” kit.
The Philippines, which buys about 4 million tonnes of wheat a year and relies mainly on U.S. supplies, is waiting for more details from the USDA before acting, an industry official in Manila said.
An agriculture ministry source in South Korea said the government is reviewing the discovery, adding the country thoroughly inspects products from the United States as part of safety checks.
“I won’t be surprised if other countries start cancelling or reducing their purchases of U.S. wheat, particularly Asian countries, putting pressure on wheat demand,” said Joyce Liu, an investment analyst at Phillip Futures in Singapore.
The benchmark Chicago Board of Trade wheat futures eased half a percent on Thursday after rallying in the previous session.
Genetically modified crops cannot be grown legally in the United States unless the government approves them after a review to ensure they pose no threat to the environment or to people.
Monsanto entered four strains of glyphosate-resistant wheat for U.S. approval in the 1990s but there was no final decision by regulators because the company decided there was no market.
The St. Louis-based firm downplayed the incident in a statement posted on its website. “While USDA’s results are unexpected, there is considerable reason to believe that the presence of the Roundup Ready trait in wheat, if determined to be valid, is very limited,” it said.
Still, importers are not in a position to shun wheat from the United States, which accounts for about a fifth of the global supplies, analysts and industry officials said. (Additional reporting by Karl Plume in CHICAGO, Niu Shuping in Beijing, Erik dela Cruz in MANILA, Jane Chung in SEOUL and Yayat Supriatna in JAKARTA; Editing by Amran Abocar and Richard Pullin)
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