"Staying poor is selfish."


If you've ever been in a relationship with someone who puts their higher-paying job or extensive education ahead of you is one that wants nothing more than to take care of themselves, and that's not considered "selfish", it's time to get your head out of the sand. 

"Staying poor is selfish," says comedian and producer Maz Jobrani. "Asking someone not to work hard on their career in order to stay at home should be illegal." Problematically, this mindset has prevailed for generations, forcing women and people of color into the breadwinner category while men maintain a privileged lifestyle by having wives leave the workforce. 

"The husband shouldn't be the breadwinner and the wife should stay home," says Jobrani. "I never got that. Why would you not want your woman to work?"

Jobrani's point is simple enough: The average household income in America is $47,000 a year, and the median income is $31,000 a year. In order to save money, or put it into investments, or pay off debt -- all of those smart money moves require two incomes. 

There are many ways that people who are married choose to spend their time -- one of them should not be making each other poor.

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We Need To Talk About The Future Of Food:
The demand for food is constantly growing, which means the supply cannot keep up. 
From the fields where our food is grown to the grocery store shelves where it sits, we have challenges. Big ones. 
Of the current problems facing agriculture in this country, two are of particular concern: climate change and population growth. A systematic effort has been made to combat these issues, but we're still not making enough progress. 
According to a recent study conducted by scientists at Cornell University, the major outstanding environmental problems facing agriculture in this country are "climate change and population growth. 
First and foremost, we must stop treating our food like disposable goods. We spend so much more on food now than we did 100 years ago, but we have not invested as much into the land and care of our crops. And as a result, we have less to eat. 
Admittedly, it may seem obvious that if a farmer grows a crop, he should be able to sell that crop for money and then use the money to buy more seeds or fertilizer or whatever else he wants to do -- and that's indeed how agriculture works in most countries around the world. But in the United States, we have a system of crop insurance that makes farmers dependent on a subsidy from the federal government -- and it's this subsidy system that leads to ruin.
Two of the biggest challenges facing our food production system right now are climate change and population growth. And for both of these issues, farmers are largely to blame. 
Sixty percent of our planet's freshwater is used for food production -- and much of that water is pumped out from under farmlands. Climate change is wreaking havoc on farmland around the world, but farmers have responded by drilling deeper wells, which cause more land to sink and subside. 
Agriculture is a big cause of deforestation, and this clearing of the land to create crop fields is making climate change worse. 
A study done by the University of Michigan, published in the journal Climate Change, examined just how much farmland would be affected by climate change. The results were not good: "Nearly 20 percent of winter-wheat and corn-belt regions could become unplantable if current trends continue, as could 30 percent of summer-wheat areas." 
At least 21 states are losing farmland every year -- and more than half of all U.S. counties have lost more than 10 percent of their agricultural land since 2002.

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