About : tv stands furniture walmart
Title : tv stands furniture walmart
tv stands furniture walmart
they call it the garden state, but the sloganis at odds with the gritty industrial heartland of new jersey.a year after hurricane sandy washed away the boardwalk here at seaside heights, it's onceagain been devastated by fire. "and 48 hours after the fire, hundreds ofpeople still came down here to the boardwalk, just to take pictures and relive those boardwalkmemories". new jersey will rebuild from the natural disasters,but the man-made economic disasters still rocking america, is proving harder to overcome. "the recession is not over for most americans. most americans have basically seen their incomesstagnate or fall since 2008. in fact, if you
look in the middle, the average typical americanmedian income of a full time male worker today, is lower than it was 40 years ago". "close to 50% of americans are workingand are economically insecure. and that means they can't afford their housing, their healthcare,their childcare, their transportation. they can do no saving for an emergency or theirown retirement. half of the country lives in economic insecurity". you mightn't pick it, but new jersey is thethird richest state in the richest country in the world, yet it's possible to work fulltime here and live in poverty. the dominant story's been obamacare and the debt ceiling,the enduring story is the struggle to make
ends meet. the middle class in the us is shrinkingas wages go backwards and secure jobs with good pay and benefits disappear."i did not expect i'd be in this situation. i'd just turn 30, and when i turned 30 i startedgetting very nervous about the fact that i need to really get out of this now".meet the new face of service work in america. smart, tertiary educated and working for tipsin a bar -- it's not the career natasha vukelic had in mind when she graduated with top gradesfrom a prestigious university and landed her dream job in broadcasting -- shame about themoney. "when i was a reporter and anchor in orlandoand an associate producer in orlando, i was makingten or eleven dollars an hour, and then i
accepted a job as a news director and beforetaxes i was getting paid $28,000 a year". "gross, before tax?""before tax and i remember every two weeks i would get my pay cheque and it was justover $800". the pay was so poor natasha quit and movednorth to jersey in search of a job offering more money. incredibly that was bar work.in a fast paced bar she can earn good money on tips,but the base wages are appalling. "so this is what you are earning?""yeah, you can see right here my rate is $2.13, the hours are 28 hours. without tax says it's$59.64 but after taxes it's $27.00". "just 27 bucks is the base wage"."and this isn't a weekly pay cheque, this
is a pay cheque i get every two weeks. so that'smy wage. so what is that... not even 15 dollars each week. this one right here, my hours are37 hours so it's almost a 40 hour work week. after taxes my pay cheque is $32.00". the federal minimum wage in the us is $7.25an hour, but for restaurant and bar staff it's muchlower - $2.13. yep you heard right. just two dollars and thirteen cents an hour. it's tipsor starve". at a seaside bar in long branch new jerseywe meet some of natasha's friends and colleagues and shout them a drink.
"i want to know who set the bar at $2.13?like is there a restaurant god that comes down and says in new jerseywe're going to pay you $2.13. i mean couldn't they make it $2.57 so at least so we're closerto three, you know?" but even among this crowd working hard forthe money, not everyone's convinced about a bump in the minimum wage. "if you raise the minimum wage to make a significantdent you have to really raise it and unfortunately that would probably kill a lot of proprietorsand i don't want to jump into their defence, but again, you're still going to rely on thevolume of people coming and going". like natasha, mike doyle is a former careerprofessional grappling with a new reality.
"on slow days if you're getting zero in theway of tips, that's going to hurt". it's sunrise and after serving drinks in abar until the wee hours, mike doyle is off to work at his second job. most days he still heads into manhattan, 45minutes across the water. not so long ago he was a one percenter, at the very top ofthe income pile. now he's working two jobs to raise a family and just getting by. "how often are you heading into the city totrade?" "i'll go in about four or five days a week.you know i can work from home. sometimes if i'm working too late at night in the bar i'llwork from home just because i get home at
two in the morning and if i have to get upat five i need a few more hours than three hour's a night of sleep"."but bar tending's your main job now?" "yeah well it is my main source of incomefor the moment, yeah. i mean what i do in the city now is on such a smaller scale thanwhat i used to do, that i, you know, a guy's got to do what a guy has to do to pay forthe bills. five years ago, seven years ago, i had thelife of riley. my hours were much shorter. i mean i would be leaving new york at threeo'clock and i was done, and my income was ten times what it is now".mike used to be a high flying wall street trader until the disgraced broking firm mfglobal collapsed and his hedge fund was hit
by the fallout. as we approach manhattan hetells me his experience has changed his views a little."five, ten years ago i would have been the pull yourself up byyour own bootstraps kind of guy but i think i'm... i don't know... i think i'm a littlebit... more... i guess my views have maybe shifted definitelymore towards the centre. i wouldn't call myself a liberal but i thinki'm more concerned with how other people are able to provide for themselves. i think it'sa real big issue now, especially with the fact that i think every family i know has...all these people have two jobs". "well america's become a rich country withpoor people. that's the irony".
at the hallowed halls of columbia universityin new york, nobel laureate economist joseph stiglitz has been charting the rising tideof inequality. "they don't know day to day how much theyhave to live on, so you make them bear the risk of this capriciousness of the peoplewho walk through the door, on how much tips and how much they're going to order, whetherthey're generous or whether they're tight". "so if we've got college graduates takingjobs as waiters, servers, bartenders, what does that mean for the people who usedto do those jobs?" "well they move down the rung". it's a little over half an hour from manhattanto newark new jersey - but it's a world away.
in the shadow of a newark public housing estatelives a young woman, with a young child, struggling to get by."my name is tayzia. i'm 20 years old. i have a one year old daughter. her name iszenar. my mum growing up was a single parent. shehad my brother and i. she was great. like we didn't want for anything. in school i wasgreat. actually my grades were always good, a's and b's.i graduated in 2011. i graduated from big picture academy and a month or maybe threeweeks afterwards i found out that i was pregnant with my daughter. she's the cutest thing in the world. she sayseverything from her first and last name, to
her abcs. she knows my name is tayzia.she's like the best thing that ever happened to me".tayzia treadwell was working on minimum wage in a fast food restaurant when her littlegirl came along. her take home pay after taxes was about $170 a week. "i'm living in poverty, like it's a struggle.i will go without just so my daughter could have".a bone in zenar's back didn't form properly during pregnancy. she'll need an operationwhen she's four or five. "i'm sure i'll have to pay something additional,so it's like do i start saving now cause i'm not sure of the exact cost yet but surgeriesare normally expensive so...".
tayzia is now working as a security guardon public housing tenements, earning a little more than minimum wage, $10 an hour, althoughthe cost of commuting can eat into the money. newark's a dangerous city. in the three weeksbefore we first met tayzia, 16 people had been shot."it's hard, that's really the most i could say about it, is like it's hard.i try not to dwell on things that i can't change. i mean i pray nights for better days.i pray for a better job that pays more, but it's just hard". when you're struggling a visit to a cheapand cheerful diner can light up the day. "what would you recommend? what's good?""i usually have the fish and home fries with
fried onions. it's great"."okay, well let's make it two". "okay".here we go, baby. "oh that's me. wow!""thank you". "you want some ketchup?""no just syrup". syrup?"i don't know how you can put syrup on it... but it looks good. it looks really good andi am very hungry". the cafã©'s owner, rashid, overhears us talkingabout the minimum wage and weighs in with his view."my guys get above minimum wage. they all get different salaries, but they definitelyget above minimum wage because... i'll tell
you why.if i pay my guys the minimum wage and they're barely getting by, they're not going to showthe same passion, they're not going to have the same drive,and they're not going to come to work on a consistent basis because they're barely gettingby anyway. but you pay good, you get good". "you can't live on the minimum wage"."no you can't live on minimum wage. the average rental for a one bedroom apartment in, youknow, new jersey has to be anywhere from eight to a thousand dollars. that's their wholecheque for the month. you have to eat and you have to have a phone, you have to havelights, you have to have a car, you have to have -- i can name everything -- and no...you haven't even added food yet so, you know,
you definitely have to raise the wage in newjersey". but not by much according to new jersey governorchris christie. christie's being touted as a republican presidential candidate in 2016.earlier this year, the democrats put up a bill to raise the minimum wage in new jerseyby a $1.25 then link it to inflation so it maintains its value - but christie vetoedit. he wants the rise capped at $1, phased in over three years but the fight goes on."actually most americans support the raising of the minimum wage.the minimum wage in the united states is at the level, adjusted for inflation, that itwas in the '50s. that's 60 years ago!" "it is morally outrageous that we are in acountry as rich as the us where we have such
low, incredibly low, minimum wages". the christie campaign hits plainsboro, hometo a large migrant community of marathi indians. they're holding a festival in honour of ganesh-- the god of wisdom, good fortune and prosperity. the audience is rapt as governor christieevokes the american dream of social mobility. "there are universal truthsthat we want a safe and secure world, a world filled with opportunity that rewards hardwork, a world where our children and grandchildren can look forward to a brighter futurefor themselves than we had for our families. that's what gives me such great hope for ourfuture. bright, happy, enthusiastic children -- their lives completely ahead of them -- believingthat tomorrow will truly be better than today".
that promise has been dashed in camden. camdennew jersey holds the grand slam of terrible titles. it is the poorest city in the unitedstates. it has the highest per capita crime rate, the highest violent crime rate and thehighest homicide rate in the country. on state street, the board up crew is sealingup abandoned homes to stop them being used as crack dens. "there's gunfire, just random gunfire, notso much shooting at you but you never know what's coming".our guide in camden is mike brennan who lives just outside the city."right before halloween they would have hell night,and parts of the city would go up in flames".
mike used to work for the new jersey labordepartment in a special team sent into shutting factories to help workersfind new jobs. but he lost his own job when the program was cut back by the christie administration.camden, he explains, was once a manufacturing metropolis -- hometo the new york ship company, to rca and to the world famous campbell soup."well, manufacturing industry has not been replaced.what we see growing or thriving would be the scrap metal business..... scrap metal, scrapwood". "so they're basically recycling the abandonedfactories". "yes.close them up, tear them down and ship the
parts to smelters across the ocean".police and emergency services is another thriving industry and so is the drug trade."people that worked in these manufacturing facilities, to the extent that there was employmentfor them, they have to take a bus to the suburbs, work in a fast food restaurant, work in aretail store for a minimum wage and people can't survive on that so i guess they resortto more unsavoury activities". if you think these problems are confined tonew jersey, think again. across the vast continent, from the atlantic to the pacific, workingpeople are living in grinding poverty. la, the city of angels, city of dreams, withits lure of fame and fortune. but away from the beaches and the glamourof hollywood,
out in the san gabriel valley, this is familyaccommodation for the working poor. "this is pretty much where we sleep"."this is your room?" "yeah. me and my wife on this side,my son jeremiah on this side and my baby right here, and then we have my daughter on thisside, on top". "and so what's happened to the bed here?""it's actually broke right now, so we usually just lay it on the floor and she sleeps onthe floor". "so normally there's five of you sleepingin this room?" "yes"."wow... wow". juan becerra works for walmart, the world'slargest retailer, the world's biggest private
employer. after three years his pay rate hasjust risen from $8.40 an hour to $9.20. juan says the company wants staff to be openlyavailable for shifts -- on call 24/7 -- but he generally only gets 25-30 hours work aweek. "i'm making five hundred dollars every twoweeks". "five hundred dollars...""and that's on a good cheque - that's a high cheque. on a regular cheque it's like about$430.... $430 every two weeks". the becerra's rely on government food stampsto feed their children. they used to rent an apartment with two bedrooms, then juan'swife had to quit work. ariana was carrying heavy trays in a diner and got carpel tunnelsyndrome. they couldn't pay the rent on one
wage and had to move in with her parents."it's taken a strain on our marriage, and fortunately we've worked together, we'vesought marriage counselling and we stayed together. i mean that wasn't easy"."i think any marriage would be under strain if you had two adults and three children livingin a room this size. this is basically a single room"."yeah". "it isn't easy, it really isn't".6pm and juan's heading off for the evening shift. he'll finish after midnight and backup for another shift the next morning. he wants to go to college and get a degree - finda better job - but he can't afford it. "people come over here to this country forthe american dream, but when they can't even
give their citizens the dream, it just hurts.it's like i work for a living to provide for my family, to live the american dream. withthe poverty wages that walmart gives us, i'm just going to be stuck at the bottom". america's working underclass has no sick leave,no holiday leave, no healthcare benefits in a society where medical aid is prohibitivelyexpensive. as career jobs with decent benefits dwindle,graduates like natasha vukelic are living the perils."basically what happened was i was attacked by a pit bulland it was a really bad attack and i was in the hospital for a month.
i was so concerned they were going to removemy leg, because my leg looked like it was falling off when the attack happened. andi was also so concerned because i didn't have health insurance and so i kept on saying tothe doctors and to the men in the ambulance - i was kind of going in and out of consciousness- and i was like, you know, 'you cannot... you do not have permission to remove my leg....you do not have permission to remove my leg'. but then i would also say 'i don't have anyhealth insurance'. so i kept on going back and forth from 'don't remove my leg' and 'idon't have health insurance' and i was absolutely freaking out about both things". the hospital bill? $250,000. it would havebankrupted her, or left her with decades of
debt, had the hospital not decided to treather as a charity case. "there's an irony here - because you wereoff the books, cash in hand, you actually could apply and get charity assistance, butif you'd been on the minimum wage with tips, you wouldn't have been eligible"."right. i consider it one of the luckiest things that ever happened to me". across in newark it's a special day for tayziatreadwell. on top of work and parenting, she's been studying at business college and donewell. tayzia graduates today with a certificatequalifying her as a medical assistant. she's hoping one day she might become a nurse."i want the life, like the good life, the
good life that everyone dreams of. like whenyou're in school and you draw the little house and the picket fence and dog, like... i justwant a happy ending and i don't want to struggle. i want to wake up knowing that my daughterhas everything she needs, i have everything i have, and then come back, give to my communitylike where i grew up. i just.... i want to live the good life"."you want the american dream". "i want the american dream". i'm wishing, hoping that tayzia's dreams docome true, but the cold hard facts don't bode well. the american national myth is that anyone,of any class who works hard will prosper, but more and more, for so many people, it'sjust that -- a myth.