06/21/04

LC040621

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.

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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.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Life and Times
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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]

Patt Morrison>> 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, paying a premium to drive
prime time. That's exactly what might happen to California
truckers.

>> Ultimately, we really have no choice. To do nothing is not
a choice. We cannot continue to put trucks on freeways at peak
hours and let them do ten miles per hour. It makes no sense.

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