your own back yard.
i watched this anti-walmart documentary last night. you might have heard about it, it's called "the high cost of low cost." it was decent, basically what you'd expect (effect on locally owned business, mistreatment of employees, production standards). if you get a chance, you should take a look.
anyway, the most interesting point came in the leadup to the film, when an education professor spoke for a few minutes about "the working poor." chew on this factoid: of all the municipalities in the US with 100k+ populations, athens-clarke county has the 7th highest poverty rate. yup. athens is the 7th poorest city in the US. 28% of athens-clarke residence live below the poverty level (despite the fact that athens has fairly low unemployment). the top ten was deteriorating rust-belt cities like newark NJ and flint MI. and athens. don't know what anyone should/could be done, just wanted to share.
anyway, the most interesting point came in the leadup to the film, when an education professor spoke for a few minutes about "the working poor." chew on this factoid: of all the municipalities in the US with 100k+ populations, athens-clarke county has the 7th highest poverty rate. yup. athens is the 7th poorest city in the US. 28% of athens-clarke residence live below the poverty level (despite the fact that athens has fairly low unemployment). the top ten was deteriorating rust-belt cities like newark NJ and flint MI. and athens. don't know what anyone should/could be done, just wanted to share.
posted by Huevos McGringo at
11:38 AM
6 Comments:
i think a-cc is the 7th poorest county in *georgia* -- at least, that's what is says in the a-cc 5 year strategic plan:
"The population of Athens-Clarke County is 103,881 ... According to census data 28.3% of all citizens live below the poverty income level. Despite having an unemployment rate hovering between 2% and 3% Athens-Clarke County is the 7th poorest county in the State of Georgia out of 159 counties."
Yeah, the jobs suck here, dude.
that could be as well, but that's not the stat i saw. this was a list of cities all over the country, most of them post-industrial wasteland type places. athens-clarke county was listed there as a city, and was the 7th poorest (the other poorest counties in GA presumeably lack a city of 100K+ population). i'll try to find that list.
I think that data was from the new census and may not be readily available yet. Anyway, this was comparison of metropolitan areas so we could still be the 7th poorest county in GA but it may be that none of the others has a metro area.
IS Athens' population really 100,000? Are students, who may or may not be year-round residents, and possibly still receiving living funds from parents,counted in this number? If not, then the percentage may even be higher. I've never actually had a job in Clarke County that paid more than like 6 bucks per hour. I learned a bit about Walmart when I read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. It's a really good examination of how difficult it is to make it in this country on a lower-scale working class wage and helps explain the desperation many low-wage workers must feel. I recommend it if you haven't read it already.
nickel and dimed is very important book, and was discussed at the screening.
i think the 100K+ population figure does include some students, but the chart i saw had an astericks indicated that the 28% figure pertained to the 90K or so who were part of the full-time work-force. so i think those bases were covered. but regardless, 28% poverty is pretty mind-numbing.
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