On March 27, 2013 Walter Hamilton writes in the Los Angeles Times:
Despite making enormous strides professionally and financially, almost half of American women fear becoming bag ladies, even many of those earning six-figure salaries, according to a new survey.
Six in 10 women describe themselves as the primary breadwinners in their households, and 54 percent manage the family finances, according to the poll by Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America.
Even so, 49 percent fear becoming a bag lady — a homeless woman who wanders the streets of a city lugging her meager belongings in a shopping bag.
Most surprising, 27 percent of women earning more than $200,000 a year said they fear falling into such destitution.
Such concerns were most pronounced among single women (56%), divorcees (54 percent) and widows (47 percent). But even 43 percent of married women harbor such fears, according to the study.
Allianz polled more than 2,200 women aged 25 to 75 with minimum household income of $30,000 a year.
The study points up the conflicting emotions of American women toward money, and the disconnect among some between their generally promising financial reality and their deep-seated financial fears.
This is one of the symptoms of dysfunction in our society due to capital ownership concentration and widening inequality resulting in inadequate consumer demand, the effects of which translate into poverty and economic insecurity for the 99 percent majority of people who depend entirely on wages from their labor or welfare and cannot survive more than a week or two without a paycheck. The production side of the economy is under-nourished and hobbled as a result.
President Obama stated: “What’s at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, and secure their retirement.” As long as working people are limited by earning income solely through their labor worker wages, they will be left behind by the continued gravitation of economic bounty toward the top 1 percent of the people that the system is rigged to benefit. Working people and the middle class will continue to stagnate, resulting in a stagnated consumer economy. More troubling is that this continued stagnation will further dim the economic hopes of America’s youth, no matter what their education level. The result will have profound long-term consequences for the nation’s economic health and further limit equal earning opportunity and spread income inequality. As the need for labor decreases and the power and leverage of productive capital increases, the gap between labor workers and capital owners will increase, which will result in upheaval.
Providing a way of legitimately getting productive capital ownership into the hands of the people who now don’t have it is the solution to America’s economic decline in wealth and income inequality, which will result in double-digit economic growth and cause EVERY American’s income to significantly grow, providing the means to support themselves and their families with an affluent lifestyle, and provide the necessary tax base to gradually pay off American debts. The Just Third Way Master Plan for America’s future is published at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797.
Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/homestead/index.htm and http://www.cesj.org/homestead/summary-cha.htm
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-bag-lady-20130326,0,2169579.story
