• Nearly 1 in 2 Americans (48%) is living in poverty or considered low-income.
• The portion of working-age Americans who are living at or below the poverty level is 56.7%–the highest it’s been since the 1960s.
• 1 in 5 U.S. children are living in poverty, defined as $22,350/year for a family of four.
• The average unemployed worker will spend over 40 weeks looking for another job.
• Nearly 1 in 5 working Americans consider themselves underemployed.
• 1 in 3 Americans does not have enough savings to cover one month of housing costs if they lose their jobs.

When it comes to poverty, race and gender matter–by a lot.

• In 2010, the poverty rates among blacks and Hispanics was nearly twice the rate among whites (15% vs. 27%–remember, this is defined as $22,350/year for a family of four and does not households considered to be “low-income.” The rate for Asians was 12%.)
• Single mothers are the most likely of all groups to be poor. In 2010, 31.6% of female-headed households were in poverty

See our page on growing income gaps for a comparison on how the 1% have faired.

• About 40% of Americans under 30 have outstanding student loan debt. That number is about 15% for all American adults.
• The average amount owed is about $23,000 and more than half of those with student loan debt–about 57%–owe more than $10,000. Current students will graduate with an average of $26,000.
• While previous reports had loan default rates at a rather conservative 9%, FRNB notes that these estimates do not account for the fact that roughly 47% of student loan borrowers are in deferral or forbearance–meaning their loans have not yet come due, either because they are still in school, still within the post-graduation grace period, or for some other reason.
• When the researchers looked only at those borrowers currently in the “repayment cycle”, they found that 27%–over a quarter of student loan borrowers–are late on their payments. (A loan is technically in default when no payment is made for 270-360 days.)

Additionally, while this report does not do a demographic breakdown, it’s important to note that we know from previous studies that these dynamics hit underprivileged communities the hardest, as students of color and first-generation college students on average take on more debt, earn less upon graduation, and  thus default at higher rates.

As debts and defaults balloon, this system looks more and more like debt peonage. It’s time to rethink student debt.

The posters are 11×17, black and white, and perfect for posting at bus stops, near bathroom lines, or anywhere students gather or have time to kill. Check them out. More coming soon!

Dick Blum

Will De la Pena

Russ Gould

Monica Lozano

Paul Wachter

Coming Soon:

Sherry Lansing

Leslie Tang-Schilling

• A half-sheet with economic and budget facts
• A full-sheet flyer for March 1&5

UC-Santa Cruz-specific flyers:

• March 1&5 Flyer
• Hearts Still Beating Flyer
• Informational Full-Sheet
• Informational Half-Sheet
• March 1&5 Quarter Sheet
• March 1 STRIKE Flyer

COMING SOON: New flyers targeting the Regents!

From other spaces in the movement:

• “Somos el 99″ (from dignidadrebelde.com)

Watch the video here.

Use it to teach your students, your friends–or yourself–about the budget crisis at the UC, and how it connects to state and national political and economic issues. Then come back to our site for more info on what’s going on across UC campuses and how to get involved. If you’re planning something on your campus, contact us and we’ll post a link and help spread the word.

Here are the documents you’ll need to teach the budget, in order of importance:

• Teach the Budget Curriculum February 2012 – Now more user-friendly and with updates on actions.
• Generic Bus Sign-up for March 5 Buses — Fill in your campus and bus details.
• UCSC Strike Pledge and Bus Sign-up! — Print this out before and pass it around when you’re wrapping up your TtB presentation.
• A half-sheet informational handout to distribute to students in presentations.

• A PowerPoint presentation to go with the curriculum.
• Our short video on the UC budget crisis. (Also posted below.)
• An abridged version of the curriculum. (Note: If you decide to use this shorter version, we recommend you read the longer curriculum first so you’ll be more comfortable answering questions, etc.

For information on this campaign, click here.

Here’s a brief summary, followed by a link to the article:

UC’s Pension Fund Corruption

According to this article, a group of key UC Regents wrecked the university’s pension fund by dissolving the in-house staff of financial analysts and hiring outside firms, (who happened to be large Republican donors,) at a cost of tens of millions in brokerage and consulting fees paid by the university—and tens of billions of dollars in losses to UC worker pensions.

A Brief Summary of the Article:

In 2000, Regent Gerald Parsky, who had worked in the Nixon Administration and was a major powerbroker in California’s Republican Party, became chair of the Regents’ Investment Committee, and inaugurated a series of drastic changes to the UC pension fund’s investment strategy of the UC’s pension fund. The fund had until that point been managed in-house by UC Treasurer Patricia Small and a small staff of analysts. Under Small, who had put in 28 years at the UC, the fund outperformed comparable funds, with an average return of more than 15%. Part of this success was due to Small’s knack for mitigating risk. During the dot-com bubble, she had hedged bets by investing in long-term bonds, which proved to be a smart move. In fact UC’s pension fund was managed so well that it paid for itself. For 17 years, employees gladly accepted wages that were 10-20% below market value because they did not have to make pension contributions. But this winning strategy was put to an end in 2000.

Once ensconced as investment chair, Regent Parsky worked quickly to shut out Small and pressure her to retire. The committee then decided to out-source investing decisions to Wilshire Investments, another large Republican donor, costing the university tens of millions per year in fees. Still worse, the new outside fund managers opted move a large portion into riskier private equity and real estate investments, which are not subject to federal oversight.

The trio of regents supporting this change—Parsky, Paul Wachter, and Richard Blum, are financiers and are heavily invested in private equity and real estate markets. Under their stewardship, the fund has made investments that raise serious questions about conflicts of interests. According to a recent report, since 2002, the university has “invested $748 million in seven private equity deals in which [Richard Blum] or his firm, Blum Capital Partners, was a major investor.”

Since Small’s ouster in 2000, investment fees and brokerage commissions paid by the UC went from $5.5M–to $52M in 2006. Though the UC pension fund had been running a surplus from 1999 to 2000, in the years that followed, “[n]early every pension portfolio in the country [was] doing better than the university’s … 86 percent of large US investment trusts outperformed the UC pension fund from 2001 to 2006.”

The UC has blamed workers and faculty for pension fund shortfalls, explaining that the problem is that they have not been making contributions. The UC is currently seizing up to 8% of paychecks to cover the billions that have been lost to bad investments.

Links:

http://spot.us/pitches/337-investors-club-how-the-uc-regents-spin-public-funds-into-private-profit/story

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/gyrobase/parskys-party/Content?oid=1083283&showFullText=true

“But the deepest impact will be at community colleges, where the cuts will cost $102 million, for a total loss this year of $502 million from the system’s $5.9 billion budget.”
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/13/MNFV1MBVNN.DTL#ixzz1gX6X2RwB

http://www.ksmstv.com/noticia/2011/11/28/317583-estudiantes-ucsc-une-protestas.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-uc-regents-20111129,0,7181269.story

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/28/MNAP1M52GR.DTL http://www.scpr.org/news/2011/11/28/30080/students-plan-protest-regents-meeting-ucla/

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2016882726_occupy29.html

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-11-28/occupy-protest-arrests/51434548/1

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/emboldened-uc-davis-students-protest-tuition-hike/2011/11/28/gIQAder85N_story.html

http://www.dailybruin.com/index.php/blog/off_the_press/2011/11/uc_board_of_regents_passes_2.8_billion_budget_proposal

http://www.thenation.com/blog/164820/open-letter-and-pledge-non-violence-uc-president-mark-yudof-founder-occupy-colleges

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/28/uc-regents-meeting-students-protest_n_1117402.html

http://www.dailycal.org/2011/11/28/uc-board-of-regents-meeting-disrupted-by-protests/

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/28/4085297/hundreds-protest-uc-regents-meeting.html