04/02/04

LC040402

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

A new place for second-hand bargains on the internet and, when you buy them, you're helping the needy in Southern California.

Peter Lent>> And what they say is one person's trash is another man's treasure and we've taken that to the next level by putting the items online.

Val>> And then, elevating fun and games to a fine art. We'll see how a former pro football player has blazed a new path on canvas.

Those stories and more coming up next on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> We're about to take you inside Goodwill Industries. No, not the store that you're used to seeing on street corners. This one exists only on the internet. But unlike other online retailers, they have a higher calling. And as Toni Guinyard discovered, thousands of needy people are waiting to see if the public will embrace a charitable thrift store inside their computers.

Corrine Allen>> The bag of clothing that you take to donate comes in and it turns into this big cage full of stuff.

Toni Guinyard>> The warehouse at Goodwill Industries of Orange County is filled with cages and cages of bags and boxes of donated items. While the majority of the donations eventually end up in one of Goodwill's traditional retail thrift stores, some donations are now being auctioned off on the internet.

Joan Dornbach>> Goodwill is over a hundred years old and, where the premise of Goodwill is still alive in terms of providing services for people with disabilities and other barriers to independence, we have to find new ways to fund those programs. Traditional thrift stores certainly are the real big part of how we fund our programs, but we've got to find new ways to keep the markets growing and to keep new streams of revenue coming in and this is one of them.

Toni Guinyard>> The auction website, shopgoodwill.com, is the idea of Goodwill Industries of Orange County. Since going online, fifty-five other Goodwill stores across the country are posting donated items as well.

Peter Lent>> Each Goodwill is what we call a separate seller on a site. They post their own items, they ship their own items, they select their own items that are posted on the site. When someone pays, the payments are sent directly to that Goodwill.

Toni Guinyard>> Does this reflect the change in what you have to do to succeed?

Joan Dornbach>> Certainly it does. I mean, we are a nonprofit. Our competition, though, is the for-profit world as well as other nonprofits. We need to be smart about what we do in order to succeed and continue to be relevant in the new world that we're in.

Toni Guinyard>> The auction site is proving to be very profitable. The big challenge is selecting which items should be auctioned.

Joan Dornbach>> People who are processing our goods in the back and those who are selecting the goods to decide whether it goes to a traditional store or to the online store watch other auctions. They watch our own auctions, they watch other auctions online to see what's popular.

Peter Lent>> There's no trend at all. You know, certain Goodwill stores will find certain items that work good for them. You know, we have Albuquerque, New Mexico, for example. They have a lot of Native-American pieces that they put on that do very well. That's really only the trend that comes to mind. Otherwise, people get pieces and they post them and they work.

Toni Guinyard>> Corrine Allen is Senior Retail Operations Manager for Goodwill Industries of Orange County.

Corrine Allen>> We have a team of four people. They have a diverse background, either pop culture, antiques, different things that they're interested in. They go out and they just scour through the merchandise and try to determine what would be something that could sell on the internet. Steins do really well on shopgoodwill just from doing it. This one has a year of 1880 on the bottom of it, so that would be something that we'd say to definitely shop Goodwill.

Every day they're out there at 6:30 in the morning just digging through piles of stuff. You know, you can uncover something that you think could be the best item in the world. It goes on the site, it doesn't get any bids, you were wrong. There's something else we can pick out that you think is not going to be anything great, but ends up going for a couple of hundred dollars. That's the fun.

Toni Guinyard>> Through trial and error, hit or miss, decisions are made about what to place on the auction website. The process also reflects the generosity or perhaps the oversight of donors. Mixed in with the piles of worn clothes and used toys are some treasures.

Corrine Allen>> We had a Salvador Dali which just closed last week in the six hundred dollar range. We've had a Picasso which was already out in our "as is" lot, which meant it was just going to be sold for pennies which ended up selling for $1,800, so it was a huge find and just something that people donate to Goodwill not realizing it has a lot of value.

Toni Guinyard>> This violin was placed on the Goodwill auction site and was sold to the highest bidder for $844.13.

Peter Lent>> The donated items are something that, you know, somebody got rid of. What they say is, one person's trash is another man's treasure and we've taken that to the next level by putting the items online.

Corrine Allen>> Sports cards do really well on shopgoodwill, so they'll pull these and do those as a lot on the auction site.

Toni Guinyard>> Many items sold online are bringing in higher prices than the items sold at one of the traditional retail thrift stores. The average sales price per item? $20.00. The highest priced item sold? A boat for $8,100. At the thrift stores, the merchandise has a three-week shelf life. On sale for two weeks at one price, then discounted fifty percent for the third week. If it's still not purchased, it goes to the "as is" section. This is the final stop for all of the clothing that hasn't sold.

Consider this: less than one percent of all the items donated to Goodwill Industries of Orange County makes it to the auction website, but that website is proving to be very popular with some folks who perhaps hesitate to cross the threshold of a thrift store.

Corrine Allen>> I mean, the people that donate to us are not necessarily our customers. You know, those customers don't feel comfortable walking into a Goodwill store, so the online shop at least is just another avenue to have customers come in and visit a Goodwill.

Joan Dornbach>> But we also realize that there is an additional market that may not be attracted to a traditional Goodwill thrift store, who like to shop online. There's also the attraction of the auction environment where you're bidding up and there's an opportunity to get something at a low price and yet, when there is competition involved, people will bid up to whatever the market value is. It's kind of an exciting opportunity. It's a lot of fun.

Toni Guinyard>> Despite the auction site's success, some bargain hunters still prefer to rummage through the items and see everything for themselves.

Mark Facer>> I was looking for some old skis that I was interested in for powder skiing and I thought they might have old skis here. I started coming and they did.

Toni Guinyard>> What about those folks who feel that there's a stigma attached to coming to a thrift store, coming to Goodwill?

Mark Facer>> If you're worried about that, then you've got other issues. I don't (laughter).

Toni Guinyard>> Nor do any of these people. When items don't sell online, in the thrift stores, or the "as is" section, they're auctioned off on site by the cage full or sold at $2.19 a pound, just one more step in the cycle that donated goods go through at Goodwill.

Joan Dornbach>> Our flow of merchandise is huge. People who are donating merchandise are buying new things. They're buying new clothes, they're buying new housewares, they're remodeling their homes, so we benefit from that. And when we have more high-quality items going through our stores, then our traffic in our stores increase and our sales increase because we have better a product to sell. So we certainly are a reflection of a good economy right now.

Corrine Allen>> All the money that we raise here, ninety percent of every dollar goes to helping people with disabilities here in our organization and that's really the purpose of shopgoodwill, to maximize the revenue that we were getting for items.

Toni Guinyard>> Maximize the revenue by putting donated items up for bid on shopgoodwill.com.

Val>> And to all those who think Goodwill Industries should stick to their traditional stores, consider this: since the launch of the new website, Goodwill has sold more than twelve million dollars worth of merchandise online.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times".

Val>> We're living in a world where the typical family has two incomes, both parents working and usually working hard, so why are so many of these families on the brink of financial disaster? Well, a new book called "The Two-Income Trap" provides some answers. I spoke with one of the authors, Amelia Warren Tyagi. She's a veteran business consultant who explodes some popular myths about why so many couples are in financial hot water. Amelia Warren Tyagi, nice to meet you.

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> Nice to meet you.

Val>> You've written a book, "The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke". It's a pretty scary book. What's the basic premise here?

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> You know, most families think that two incomes will be doubly secure. Some of the things have worked out. The fact is, this year more children will live through their parents' bankruptcies than their parents' divorce.

Val>> Now when I heard that, I couldn't believe it. Say that again. More children will live in a home that is going through bankruptcy than is going through divorce this year?

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> This year. That's a fact.

Val>> That's incredible. Why?

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> The number of middle-class families in financial trouble has just skyrocketed way beyond what most people realize. Part of the reason people don't realize this is that most families keep it secret. The fact is, in your neighborhood, in your block, at your synagogue or your church, one in seven families is in trouble, but they don't tell anyone.

Val>> And it's the double income? People say, well, you've got two incomes. You've got plenty of money. How could you get in financial trouble?

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> I know. Two incomes are doubly secure. What people don't realize is that when they commit both of those incomes to the bills and they need every last penny of two paychecks to make the mortgage payment, the car payment, they're in big trouble if either income goes away. The fact is, with two incomes, there is now double the chance that someone will get laid off.

Val>> I see. So it used to be that that second income was pure extra, it was gravy, it was a safety net. Now it's committed.

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> It's committed to the basic expenses. It also used to be that the families who didn't have a second income, the stay-at-home parent, was a safety net. She could go into the workforce if she needed to. She could care for someone who got sick without a big hit to the family's financial well-being.

Val>> Another big factor in whether or not you end up going through bankruptcy is having a child. I was shocked.

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> We were too. That was actually the finding that kicked off the book. We didn't set out to write the --

Val>> -- that was the single biggest predictor?

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> That's exactly right. Having a child is the single best predictor that a parent will --

Val>> -- elaborate on that. Because people are going to say, oh, my Lord, I can't not have children.

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> Well, we're not saying that people shouldn't have children, but it is the best predictor, the biggest risk factor. Middle-class families are struggling to pay for the basics for their kids. It just costs more than it used to and incomes aren't keeping up. Healthcare, education, a home, and particularly a home in a good school district. A generation ago, a family sent their kid to the school down the block and nobody thought too hard about it, but confidence in the public school system has plummeted. As a result, parents are scrambling for those homes in the limited number of school districts that have held on to good reputations and are bidding up the prices.

Val>> So when you have a child, you're not just buying shoes and diapers and all that kind of stuff. You might have to buy a much more expensive house in order to get in the good public school district or you have to think of private school and then the tuition.

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> And you're paying either way. You know, you touched there, though, on what really is the biggest myth about why families are in trouble. It's got nothing to do with Nikes. You know, people think, oh, families with kids are in trouble --

Val>> -- dinners out or vacations.

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> Exactly, dinners out or vacations. But for the kids, they think it's the Game Boys, right? It's the Nikes, it's the blue jeans. Actually, today's families with kids, ordinary middle-class families, are spending less than they used to on clothing. They're spending less than they used to, than they did thirty years ago, adjusted for inflation, on food, including all those restaurant meals. They're spending less on appliances, including the microwave oven.

Val>> And they're spending more on --

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> -- healthcare, health insurance, housing, preschool.

Val>> Another big risk factor in going through bankruptcy is being a single mom.

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> Yes, and none of this is meant to say that because two income families are in trouble, getting along with one income in a two-income world is doubly difficult.

Val>> So if you're a single mother, even a middle-class single mother with a child, your chances of bankruptcy are like seven hundred times, some phenomenal percentage?

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> The number of single moms in bankruptcy has increased more than seven hundred percent in the last twenty years. At the rate we're headed, one in six single mothers will be broke by the end of this decade. It's important to remember that these aren't just middle-class women. We're talking about women who went to college, who had a career, who bought a home, who did everything right, and they're still not making ends meet.

Val>> So what are some of the solutions that you outline? Because you're not just saying, you know, don't go to Starbucks anymore or no movies. You're saying there's got to be a more fundamental change.

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> We talk in our book about doing a financial fire drill. Think about protecting your family's physical well-being, but you've got to sit down and have a plan to protect their financial well-being. Don't wait until someone loses a job or someone gets sick or something goes really wrong to make a plan for what you'll do.

Val>> But how can you make a plan? You know, they'd say, well, we'd love to make a plan. Sure, people say just put more in savings or get an emergency fund, but there's no money to do it with, so how do you go about that fire drill?

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> Money in the bank is the best security for any family. If you don't have enough in your current income, think about getting a second job just for a few months and put every penny of that away into an emergency fund for your family. But there are other kinds of backup plans. If you needed to, could you rent out a room in your house? Could you sell the house or rent the house out for a while and live in an apartment? These aren't things you have to do today, but the point is to think through a backup plan while you still have options. Hopefully, you'll never need to put that backup plan in place, but it's better to have a plan just in case.

Val>> You also put a lot of blame on the lending industry. Tell us how that's evolving?

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> Absolutely. You know, everybody knows that credit card debt is higher than Mt. Everest. It goes up every year. But most of us just give the impression that it just happened. Well, it didn't just happen. The fact is, the credit card industry sends out a quarter million dollars per family in pre-approved offers every year.

Val>> A quarter million dollars per family?

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> Per family. They're pre-approved offers.

Val>> They're introductory and you take them.

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> Of course, families take them. A lot of families have the view that, if I'm approved, it must be that I can afford it, which of course has nothing to do with being able to afford it. If you're approved, it's because they're trying to sell you something that's fundamentally a dangerous product.

Val>> Do they tend to target families that are vulnerable?

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> They target families who are in trouble. We all get so many credit card offers. We can't believe there's anybody out there who actually gets more. But the fact is, when you get behind in your bills, you lose your job, you get sick, for some reason you get in trouble, the credit card offers coming in the door increase. Families in the most trouble get the most offers for credit when they're most vulnerable to it. Credit card debt has increased six thousand percent in the last forty years. That's not good for families.

Val>> So, to sum up, advice to, say, a married couple, college educated, they're just starting out, what kind of life should they plan for themselves if they want to avoid bankruptcy?

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> Have a backup plan. That's really what it is. You know, the conventional wisdom is to stretch yourself as far as possible, buy the biggest house you can. Be a little more cautious. Don't buy the biggest house. Keep some money in the bank. Make sure you have enough insurance. Absolutely have kids.

Val>> But make sure you can afford them.

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> Make sure you've got a plan to see them through. Look, having kids is not a financial decision. It's not a rational decision. I'm a mother. It's the greatest joy in my life. I want those who want to have kids to, of course, have children, but go in with your eyes open. The fact is, the game has changed and there are people out there trying to take your money and it is a lot riskier world than it used to be and you have got to play smarter to keep your kids safe.

Val>> Amelia Warren Tyagi, thank you so much. Great advice and a scary, but very helpful, book.

Amelia Warren Tyagi>> Thank you so much.

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Val>> Sports and fine arts are two separate worlds that rarely meet, but a former pro football player turned artist has bridged that gap in a big way. Ernie Barnes blazed a trail on the gridiron for teams like the San Diego Chargers. Now he's being honored in Los Angeles as America's best painter of sports and all it takes is a look at his work to see why.

[Film Clip]

Patt Morrison>> A father learning to read. A mother bursting with pride. A waitress headed for a better life. For more than thirty years, painter Ernie Barnes has populated his canvasses with people who reach high and dream big. They are often depicted with closed eyes.

Ernie Barnes>> I have chosen to close the eyes of the people I paint because I feel that we are blind to one another's humanity. We fail to see the gifts, strengths and potentials within one another.

Patt Morrison>> His paintings knit together the strands of class and race, of the elderly and the young, the scholarly and the unlettered into one common thread of dignity and purpose.

[Film Clip]

Ernie Barnes>> We have too many negative images in our society. As an artist, I feel it's my obligation to try and fortify and uplift.

Patt Morrison>> If his name is somehow familiar to you but you don't connect it to the world of art galleries, it is because his first medium was not canvas. It was a grassy field one hundred yards long. From a remarkable career as a Center on the North Carolina college football team, he turned pro for five seasons. Ernie Barnes, Number 61. Offensive lineman first for the San Diego Chargers and then the Denver Broncos.

Ernie Barnes>> I had realized so many things about me through that game, and there were many things to impart to people who knew nothing about it.

Patt Morrison>> On the field, Barnes saw things that his teammates did not. The mechanics of the human form, the engine of movement in the human body.

Ernie Barnes>> I understood movement much more than I would have had I not been one who was in the daily habit of running or hitting.

Patt Morrison>> While his teammates drew play patterns, he drew figures on the sidelines. At age twenty-eight, he left football for art, an almost unimaginable 180-degree swing from organized mayhem to a solitary and introspective pursuit.

Ernie Barnes>> There was an inner struggle going on to move beyond the image of being one who eats nails for breakfast and who is really an artist who can make a positive contribution.

Patt Morrison>> The world that Ernie Barnes and his siblings first knew was off a dirt road in North Carolina, a place where who he was and what he could do with a paint brush always came second, and what color he was came first.

Ernie Barnes>> When African-American artists started to receive attention around the later part of the nineteenth century, there was the feeling that there was no cultural capacity there, that the fine arts were really a product of leisure and security and education and how dare you, as a black, think that you can express yourself?

Patt Morrison>> The other kids who teased the shy chubby boy may have done him a kind of favor, for he looked inward to his own talents with a pencil and a piece of paper. By the first grade, he had made friends with the likes of Rembrandt and Michelangelo. If it was the works of the old masters that showed him what he wanted to do, it was his mother who stood at his elbow reminding him that he could do it.

Ernie Barnes>> She always told me to rebuke those who were prejudiced and had racial indifferences towards me. It's not my weakness, it's theirs.

Patt Morrison>> 1984. Los Angeles. The Olympic Games. Ernie Barnes's football career was over, but his second career, his true calling, was in full flower. No gold medal could be better than the title bestowed on him, Los Angeles's Official Olympic Artist.

Muna Deriane>> He brings us the best of humankind and presents it in a way that's very positive, very warm and it's very emotional. He brings in sociology, psychology, economics, politics. He really doesn't leave any aspect of our life out.

Patt Morrison>> He puts all that into paint in this example, "Sugar Shack". Marvin Gaye used it as an album cover. And then the CBS comedy "Good Times" hung it on the wall of a working-class black family's apartment. And in time, art historians came to rank it as a masterpiece of its time.

[Film Clip]

Barnes's 1972 exhibition "The Beauty of the Ghetto" set him on the path of critical acclaim. Nearly two decades later, his 1990 work "Growth Through Limits" became a billboard of hope in the Los Angeles riots.

Ernie Barnes>> "Growth Through Limits" shows three boys watching a fragile flower break through a crack in the cement. That became my metaphor for personal achievement. If that flower can do it, certainly I can.

Patt Morrison>> The pudgy self-conscious little boy, the aggressive professional athlete, the Southern-born black man, each found himself enriched and empowered by art and each became the soul of the people he paints today.

Val>> Some of Ernie Barnes's work will be on display February 12 at the Home Depot Center Stadium Club in Carson. He'll also be honored there for his efforts to raise sports to a fine arts. That's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For all of us at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times, Wal-Mart's fate is in the hands of the voters. What happens in one town could change the future of retail in Southern California.

>> It's like a vacuum cleaner. You know, everything is just sucked up by this Supercenter. The problem is, in the sucking up process, small businesses, medium size businesses, get killed in the process.

>> The average Joe out there on the street knows that, you know, Wal-Mart is going to lower grocery prices anywhere from seventeen to thirty-nine percent.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.