Thursday, May 16

Tag: hardest

Poorest Americans Are Hit Hardest By Inflation Inequality And Soaring Prices On Necessities
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IN OTHER NEWS

Poorest Americans Are Hit Hardest By Inflation Inequality And Soaring Prices On Necessities

The fastest rate of inflation in 40 years is hurting families across the U.S. who are seeing ever-higher prices for everything from meat and potatoes to housing and gasoline. But behind the headline number that’s been widely reported is something that often gets overlooked: Inflation affects different households in different ways – and sometimes hurts those with the least, the most. Inflation, as calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is designed to track the price increases in a typical U.S. household’s basket of goods. The problem is spending bundles differ across households. For example, a family in the lowest 20% of income typically spends around 15% of their budget on groceries – this is nearly 60% more than households in the top 20% of the income distribution, according to m...
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Why Some Of The Best-Known Tunes, Like ‘Happy Birthday,’ Are The Hardest To Sing
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IN OTHER NEWS

Why Some Of The Best-Known Tunes, Like ‘Happy Birthday,’ Are The Hardest To Sing

Some friends and I recently went to karaoke. You can likely picture the scene: a restaurant adjacent to a bowling alley with a cheerful crowd and enthusiastic DJ aiming lights at a small stage. We sang a popular duet, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s “Shallow,” to the room’s applause, and I remembered how good it felt to sing into a microphone. It brought me back to my time as a music teacher in the late 2000s in my home state of Kentucky. Like all of us, my students had their own preferences in terms of the styles and genres they liked to sing, but of course there were the mainstays that we all had to learn – for example, the national anthem, which we practiced as soloists and as a multi-part choir. We often sang spontaneously, too, belting out “Happy Birthday” if someone was celebrating t...
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COVID-19 is hitting black and poor communities the hardest, underscoring fault lines in access and care for those on margins
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COVID-19, VIDEO REELS

COVID-19 is hitting black and poor communities the hardest, underscoring fault lines in access and care for those on margins

As the COVID-19 epidemic continues to ravage the American public, an unsurprising story emerges: Poor communities are hot spots for COVID transmission. The death rate from COVID-19 appears to be staggeringly high among African Americans compared to whites. The Washington Post reports, for example, that while 14% of the Michigan population is black, 40% of COVID-19 deaths are among blacks. This is a familiar pattern to a social and infectious disease epidemiologist like myself. It is evidence of centuries of segregation and discrimination that have disproportionately placed people of color in communities without access to health care, with degraded and crowded living conditions and a lack of basic opportunities for health and wellness. In the context of the current pandemic, blacks are mo...
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The future of work will hit vulnerable people the hardest
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SOCIAL JUSTICE

The future of work will hit vulnerable people the hardest

People living with disabilities, youth, LGBTQ2 people, Indigenous people, certain racialized minorities, immigrants and those with low socioeconomic status, as well as those in some professions, will face complex barriers to entering the workforce in the future. A great deal of attention is being paid to the future of work and its impact on Canadians. Often missing from the discussion is the extent to which different workers will be included or excluded from the changing labour market. The future of work is characterized by a number of rapid and large-scale changes that will affect all industries. Labour market experts point to the growing integration of digital technologies in the workplace, including the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning, automation of job task...
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New Study Shows Wealth Inequality Hits Communities of Color Hardest
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IN OTHER NEWS

New Study Shows Wealth Inequality Hits Communities of Color Hardest

And it’s not just about rich and poor. The racial wealth gap is damaging to the economy as a whole. The story of the growing inequality in the United States has many dimensions. There is the overarching story of the last four decades of polarizing income, wealth, and opportunity. But the many ways these inequalities manifest depend on people’s gender, race, age, immigration status, and other experience. One piece of the story is to understand how 40 years of public policies have worsened the racial wealth divide and enriched the top 1 percent. Wealth is where the past shows up in the present, both in terms of historical advantages and barriers. Measures of wealth—what you own minus what you owe—reflect the multigenerational story of White supremacy in asset-building....
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