MAINE
ASSOCIATION OF
INTERDEPENDENT
NEIGHBORHOODS
PEOPLE WORKING TOGETHER FOR PEACE, BREAD AND JUSTICE
MAIN Update Winter 1999
FACTS AND FIGURESPurchase Power: A person who earns $6.00 an hour is working for 10 cents per minute. After taxes and social security are taken out, it comes closer to 7 cents per minute.
At this wage, how many minutes do you have to work to buy...
- 1 gallon of milk at $2.50 - 36 minutes
- 1 loaf of bread at $1.80 - 26 minutes
- 1 roasting chicken at $6.00 - 86 minutes
- 1 oil change at $19.95 - 285 minutes
- 1 pair of kids sneakers at $69.95 - 999 minutes or two days of work
- 1 $2,000 car (Rent a Wreck) - 28,571 minutes (476 hours/5 months)
Created by Marcel Gagne, Coastal Enterprises, Inc.
A day without the Pentagon: Currently, the United States spends nearly one half of every tax dollar for past and current military expenditures. According to the War Resisters League, the Pentagon costs $1.7 Billion a day. If we had one day without it, we could instead build 200 new elementary schools or house 136,000 homeless people or provide Pell Grants to one million college students or give shelter and counseling to 56,000 battered women.
According to the National Priorities Project, military spending accounts for only 4.01% of all jobs in Maine. Military spending creates 40% fewer jobs than spending on education and 47% fewer than on Health care.
Submitted by Ilze Peterson, Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine, 170 Park St., Bangor, ME 04401
Profits over People
- Over 3,000 Maine workers lost their jobs last year due to plant closing or downsizing.
- Over the past five years, almost 20,000 Mainers lost their jobs--a net
loss in income of $97 million.
- The shutdown of G.H. Bass Co. put about 350 Wilton area residents out ofwork when it moved its plant to Puerto Rico. The area's unemployment rate is twice the state average. The factory, built by a non-profit corporation, was sold to Bass for $1. The CEO of Bass' parent company made over $1.3 million in salary and stock options in 1997.
- Kimberly-Clark's closing of its mill in Winslow put 264 workers out of a job. Its CEO made $1.2 million in salary and stock options in 1997.
Plant closings and moves overseas continue despite the fact that most
facilities are still profitable, just not profitable enough.
Taken from Sept/Oct 1998 INVERT newsletter. Facts from Dirigo Alliance, 1 Pleasant St., Portland, ME 04101
