Monthly Archives: August 2022

Full Year 2022 Adairs Ltd Earnings Call Victoria Aug 22, 2022 (Thomson StreetEvents) -- Edited Transcript of Adairs Ltd earnings conference call or presentation Monday, August 22, 2022 at 1:30:00am GMT TEXT version of Transcript ================================================================================ Corporate Participants ================================================================================ * Ashley John Gardner Adairs Limited - CFO * Mark Ronan Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director ================================================================================ Conference Call Participants ================================================================================ * Alexander Mees Morgans Financial Limited, Research Division - Senior Analyst * Apoorv Sehgal UBS Investment Bank, Research Division - Associate Analyst * Aryan Norozi Barrenjoey Markets Pty Limited, Research Division - Analyst * John Hynd Wilsons Advisory and Stockbroking Limited, Research Division - Senior Equities Analyst * Mark Wade CLSA Limited, Research Division - Research Analyst * Wilson Wong Jarden Limited, Research Division - Analyst ================================================================================ Presentation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Adairs Limited FY '22 Results Call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Mark Ronan, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Adairs 2022 Financial Year Results Call. Joining me this morning on the call is Ash Gardner, our CFO; and Jamie Adamson, our Head of Investor Relations. 2022 financial year has been a year of contrasting halves with significant lockdowns impacting results across the first half of the year, whilst the second half saw customers come back to stores in a more normal trading environment. Over the year, the group delivered a record $565 million of sales and EBIT of $76.4 million. Importantly, for the group, each brand has made progress on their strategic priorities that will drive the ongoing growth for the group in the years to come. Adairs has continued to build upon the strength of the loyalty program with more than 1 million paid-up Linen Lovers at the end of the financial year. We know that loyalty will be a key part of the future for retail brands, and we will continue to invest in this to deliver more personalized experiences for the Adairs Linen Lovers. Adairs also profitably grew the store portfolio with the opening of 4 new stores and the upsizing of a further 11 stores. These larger stores support the growth in Adairs product categories, deliver a better shopping experience and are generally more profitable. And finally, ideas completed the transition of its multiple warehouses into the national distribution center. We expect that this will see significant operating efficiencies improving both the customer experience and the distribution costs over FY '23 and beyond. At Mocka, we have spent the year building out the management team to support our growth aspirations for the brand. Whilst the year did not deliver the results we wanted, we have a clear strategy and a team with the bandwidth and capability to deliver the full potential of Mocka over the years to come. The acquisition of Focus on Furniture has added another strong brand to our portfolio, increasing the exposure of the group to the bulky furniture category. With a significant opportunity to grow the store portfolio across Australia and strong sales momentum within the brand, we look forward to seeing Focus become a national furniture retailer over the next 3 to 5 years. As part of the annual report, we have delivered our inaugural sustainability report, outlining the progress made on our commitments to sustainability. When we think about sustainability, we see it as the impact we have on people, product and the planet. Our efforts to date have seen us focus heavily on our supply chain, in particular, auditing it for modern slavery and the reduction of plastic packaging use within the businesses, whilst investing in the development of our people. Across the year, we have also increased our measurement of waste and emissions to set benchmarks upon which we can continue to improve; committed to the 40-40 Vision initiative, which will see the Board and executive leadership team having not less than 40% of each gender by 2027; continue to support the great work of Orange Sky; and have made a commitment to removing plastic bags from our stores in the first half of FY '23. Importantly, the group sees sustainability as a strategic imperative, and we continue to build new ways of working that ensure our people, product and planet initiatives are continually considered as part of our day-to-day actions. If I move to Slide 3 of our investor presentation, you will see that with the addition of Focus during the year, we have built a portfolio of brands specializing in homewares that we are confident can continue to deliver annual sales growth as we have seen over the years prior. Our brands are product-led with each business focusing on delivering great product to customers' homes at a good value price point. Through the strength of our in-house exclusive designed product delivered through our vertically integrated supply chain, continuing to build the awareness of our brands and a commitment to an omnichannel model that allows us to support customers however they choose to shop, we are well placed to double the size of the business to over $1 billion in revenue over the next 5 years. I will now hand over to Ash to walk through the FY '22 financial results in more detail. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ashley John Gardner, Adairs Limited - CFO [3] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks, Mark, and good morning, everyone. The group reported an underlying EBIT of $76.4 million, approximately 30% below FY '21. Adairs achieved an EBIT of $55.5 million, down on FY '21, but remaining well ahead of the pre-COVID levels, whilst Mocka's results of $3.7 million was disappointing. Focus on Furniture contributed $17.2 million for the 7 months of ownership by Adairs, which was well out of plan. Total sales for the year of $564.5 million were up 12.9% and included $82 million of sales from Focus on Furniture for the 7 months, whilst 16% or over 10,000 store trading days were lost in the first half due to government-mandated store closures. Like-for-like sales for the group, excluding Focus were down 2% and cycling the record 16.5% like-for-like growth achieved in FY '21. Online sales contributed almost 35% of total sales, reflecting the omnichannel strength of the group. Adairs sales were only 4.8% down on last year despite the lost store trading days with customers continuing to shop across both channels. Mocka delivered total sales of $64 million, up 6.5% on the prior year, albeit sales in the second half were down 7.6% as a result of the local supply chain disruptions and some product issues that led to adverse customer feedback. Focus sales of $82 million were pleasing and well ahead of plan. And the business closed the year in a strong position with an open order book of $18.5 million. Group gross profit group gross margin of 59.6% and was affected by the higher contribution from Mocka and focus, with both businesses operating at lower gross margins than Adairs, whilst all businesses were affected by the higher cost of sea freight. Adairs delivered a gross trading gross margin of 63.2%, 350 basis points down on last year but 170 basis points ahead of FY '20. The result was in line with our objectives of retaining a large portion of the gross margin gains achieved in FY '21, with underlying trading margin well ahead of FY '20, but partially offset by the elevated sea freight costs. Mocka's gross margin of 45.3% was impacted by refunds following the local supply chain disruptions and increased cost of sea freight, which Mocka is more sensitive to given its lower price point and initial margins. In addition, following a view of the Mocka merchandise strategy, high clearance activity was undertaken in the second half and a one-off provision of $1.2 million was recognized against inventory that is not considered a part of the range moving forward. Cost of doing business across the business were affected by risk management decisions taken during the first half to manage COVID uncertainty and our ongoing investment in our teams throughout the year. At Adairs, we continue to support the Adairs store teams during the store closure periods in the first half to ensure they'll be available when the stores reopen for the peak trading period. In addition, the transition to the new national distribution center was slowed down as an existing DC was retained by the Adairs business to reduce the concentration of risk and ensure stock will continue to fly to stores and online customers during this period of uncertainty. This, combined with a slower-than-planned ramp-up of operations at the new DC added considerable cost of the business, which we don't see recurring moving forward. Mocka experienced a substantial increase in cost to address the local supply chain issues and continue to invest in the team to build the capability to realize the potential for the business over time. Our balance sheet at the end of the year is in good shape. Inventory levels remain high across all 3 businesses, reflecting early deliveries of stock to manage supply chain instability. Other than the clearance stock action within Mocka, inventory quality is good and in line with what we need for the start of the year. Previously advised, we don't see a need for inventory to continue to rise. However, the pull forward strategy is likely to remain in place until there are sustained signs of global supply chain stability returning. The group closed the year with net debt of $93.2 million after funding the acquisition of Focus and the final earn-out payments for Mocka in the first half. We continue to operate with manageable levels of leverage and retain significant covenant headroom. A final dividend of $0.10 per share was declared by the Board, which brings the total dividend for FY '22 to $0.18 per share. The dividend reinvestment plan remains active for the final dividend. Back to you, Mark. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [4] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks, Ash. And building on my comments from earlier, we have provided guidance for the FY '23 year. We are confident with where the brands and therefore, the group is positioned to navigate the emerging macro headwinds. By focusing on the middle market with strong value propositions, we are well placed to capture those customers who are looking to make updates or changes to their homes without needing to make a significant investment, as highlighted by a relatively lower average item prices. This is supported by our commitment to omnichannel retailing that enables us to service all customers regardless of how they choose to shop, providing them with a complete customer experience and importantly, providing the group access to the total addressable market. And just as importantly, our large and loyal customer base gives us the ability to directly communicate with our customers as we showcase new ranges and offers, providing them a compelling reason to shop. With the full year contribution from Focus, an improved result from Mocka and the opening and upsizing of Adairs and Focus stores, we expect to continue to grow sales to between $625 million and $665 million, delivering EBIT of between $75 million and $85 million. Over the first 7 weeks of FY '23, we've seen sales growth of 3.9%, excluding Focus, in line with our guidance and plans. Over this period, we have also seen Focus continue to trade well. Across the group, we continue to see strong total sales growth in retail stores and a reduction in online sales against the significant lockdowns of last year. We expect this to be the case for most of the first half with our plans and guidance reflecting this more normal trading environment. Before I finish, I'd like to thank a few people. Firstly, I'd like to thank our large and loyal customer base. Across our group, we get the privilege of being a small part in helping them create a home they love. And our aim every day is to continue to inspire and delight them, and we thank them for their ongoing support. And to our teams across Adairs, Mocka and Focus, I'd like to thank all of the team members across Australia and New Zealand for their hard work and dedication. The last couple of years has seen a number of challenges well managed by the team, and this puts us in a good position to not only manage the current trading conditions, but more importantly, enables us to capitalize on a new and ever evolving retail environment. I will now hand over for questions. ================================================================================ Questions and Answers -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Alexander Mees from Morgans. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alexander Mees, Morgans Financial Limited, Research Division - Senior Analyst [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just a couple of questions from me. Starting with the NDC. Just wonder if you could remind us what the quantification of the transitional costs were that you incurred in FY '22 that won't recur into FY '23, please? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ashley John Gardner, Adairs Limited - CFO [3] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So there's 2 parts to that, Alex. One is the actual transition costs, which we excluded from underlying earnings. And then the amounts that were included in our underlying earnings that relate to the retention of the old DC and the ramp-up was around -- those were around $6 million. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alexander Mees, Morgans Financial Limited, Research Division - Senior Analyst [4] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Excellent. And is it fair to assume that the NDC is now fully ramped up and at its operating efficiency level? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ashley John Gardner, Adairs Limited - CFO [5] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So we've got everything in there. It's not fully ramped up yet. So we'll continue to work through that over the next 12 months. I think realistically, we won't see the full efficiency benefits from a cost perspective flow through until FY '24. But from a service perspective, which is our primary focus, we're seeing significant improvements there. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alexander Mees, Morgans Financial Limited, Research Division - Senior Analyst [6] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Great. Then just on pricing. Just wondering what you're experiencing out there in terms of are your competitors being aggressive with their promotions and they're discounting I suppose, especially around that end of the financial year sales period, which is so important to Focus in particular. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [7] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. I think we are seeing plenty out there. Funny enough, I think in the case of Focus, we ran a pretty traditional offer over that period and delivered the results that we expected. So we're really happy with the, I guess, the Focus performance over that period. We're probably seeing people go harder in categories that are there to trading in if I'm honest. Most of the competitors out there ran a longer sale period than perhaps in prior years. We, of course, continued with our approach of trying to reduce the number of days on sale, which we lined them up with last year as opposed to continue to run them for a longer period. So I think in the case of Focus, we're seeing the product offering and the -- I guess, the pricing and promotions resonate with customers, perhaps despite the increased discounting that others might be doing out there. And in the case of Adairs, we're comfortable that we continue to play a bit more of a long game and on the margin and working that through depending on what else is going on in the market at the same time. But we're definitely seeing a much higher level of promotions in the Adairs categories versus prior years, in particular, some of the majors out there running some bigger offers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alexander Mees, Morgans Financial Limited, Research Division - Senior Analyst [8] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And then just finally on cost inflation. Just wondering what your assumptions are in coming to your guidance range around cost inflation, labor and rent, et cetera. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [9] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, we're factored in circa -- in terms of labor, you run circa 5%. If you think the retail award was up 4.7%, we're using that as that's the bulk of our wages are largely attributed to that. So we expect that to sort of sit at that, call it, circa 5% for the wage inflation for the year. In terms of rents, a lot of our rents are on fixed increases. There's not a lot with CPI on them. So we don't need to factor too much of that in, which sort of sees us more operated at 2.5% to 3% in line with those that are actually on a -- within lease, we've probably got about 50 or 60 stores to renegotiate this year. We're sitting with, I think last time I checked, 48 stores are either in holdover or come out of lease in the next 12 months. So as I said before, I think we'll see a continuing decline in rents in shopping centers with the exception of the guys that are particularly good in those real A-grade centers. For homemakers, we're probably seeing more like a 3% to 5% sort of increase in the rentals, which is largely in line with the leases as they roll out. So overall, I think you can probably talk the sort of 3% into the rental line in terms of inflation over the coming year. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [10] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your next question comes from Aryan Norozi from Barrenjoey. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aryan Norozi, Barrenjoey Markets Pty Limited, Research Division - Analyst [11] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just wondering on your debt and your gearing. Could you please let us and what your covenants are for your facilities? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ashley John Gardner, Adairs Limited - CFO [12] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. So covenants is the usual package, fixed charge, leverage and gearing ratio, capital ratio, debt-to-capital ratio. So we've got plenty of headroom leverages, obviously, the one everyone focused on. So on a gross basis, we're sitting on a leverage ratio of around 1.29. And net of cash, it's under 1 -- around 1. And the covenants are well in excess of that. So there's plenty of room. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aryan Norozi, Barrenjoey Markets Pty Limited, Research Division - Analyst [13] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- All right. So a typical covenants are sort of 2.5, 3x. Is it around that range? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ashley John Gardner, Adairs Limited - CFO [14] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No, not that's the covenant. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aryan Norozi, Barrenjoey Markets Pty Limited, Research Division - Analyst [15] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay. Perfect. And just in terms of -- if you just take the second half fiscal '22 results, can you break down the buckets that were nonrecurring versus sort of recurring in terms of costs? So you've obviously had the DC cost which is [6 months full year]. Can you just break down the second half '22 the extra cost to income, which won't repeat and not repeating in fiscal '23, please? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ashley John Gardner, Adairs Limited - CFO [16] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So for Adairs, the main cost is that DC cost, which is around $3.5 million to $4 million in H2. That's about it in terms of material nonrecurring costs within Adairs. And obviously, there's the various events that affected the Mocka more broadly that we would like to think don't repeat, and that sort of runs across sales, margin and costs. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aryan Norozi, Barrenjoey Markets Pty Limited, Research Division - Analyst [17] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay. And like the distribution costs for both Adairs and Mocka, so that's the online slate as a percentage of sales, increased significantly half-on-half. Do we assume that's the new baseline moving forward for (inaudible)? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ashley John Gardner, Adairs Limited - CFO [18] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No. So I think there's a couple of factors that affect that. One is within Mocka particularly, there was a lot of duplicate delivery charges that were incurred to sort of deal with the supply chain disruptions that we experienced as well as the refunds and other things that I mentioned earlier, that affected margin and the stock provisions. For Adairs, I think we'll return to a level that's more sort of the midpoint between FY '21 and FY '22 with the DCs now all product running under one roof, the number of split, consignments to customers and so on will reduce part of that's offset by increased rates from our carrier partners. But we sort of think of those as a normal business cost that we need to manage on a day-to-day basis and less directly measurable unlike the carrying a whole new whole extra DC over the year. But I would expect that Mocka rates will come back. And Adairs will come back. They won't come back to the FY '21 levels. The other thing that affected FY '21 was the number of transactions and the average value transactions are very different than what was in FY '22 with fewer transactions and higher value and then more transactions at lower value in FY '22 as the world returns to normal. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aryan Norozi, Barrenjoey Markets Pty Limited, Research Division - Analyst [19] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, perfect. And so if I take Mocka in the second half of '22, obviously, loss-making versus sort of Adairs, I think, 17% to 19% EBIT margin you guys sort of talked to have talked to historically. How do we think about the progression to that in terms of first half '23, fiscal '22 and moving forward? Just in terms of how the margin will progress please to that sort of 17% and 19%, if 17% to 19% is still reasonable? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [20] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So I think we'll make a good stride in the first half, but we won't be back to 17%, 19% in the first half as we have obviously made the investment in the team. So we've got a higher CODB flowing through that business. And we have seen significant increase in the delivery costs of Mocka as we move to our partner who will actually deliver it to the customer, which is a net-net positive and I think, deliver a much better service. So we expect that first half will probably remain quite suppressed in terms of the 17% to 19%. But as we hit the second half, we'd like to think that we're pushing that back up towards the middle. We thought somewhere in the 14% to 16%. At the moment, I think the big impact we're seeing there is the sea freight impact on our gross margin percentage is as that starts to unwind a little bit, which we're hopeful of seeing in the second half of the year, we'd expect that can start to head back towards that top end of the range. But if we can get it back into the midpoint, 14% to 16% in the second half, that's our first stop in moving it back towards those levels. And I think at the moment, if we traded at 14% to 16%, and we're growing the top line, we'd be pretty comfortable with that as the business continues to invest in building the capability to reach the levels that we think it's got the opportunity to get to over the coming years. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aryan Norozi, Barrenjoey Markets Pty Limited, Research Division - Analyst [21] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay. So 14% to 16%, hopefully that by the second half of '23, that doesn't include any benefit from sort of the sea freight costs improving. But if that does improve, then you get to more normalized 17% to 19%, is that right? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [22] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. I think if the sea freight improves with the top end of the 14% to 16%. And otherwise, we're more towards the bottom end of that. And then as we move into -- because we have made a significant investment in team in that business and continue to work through building a process and function that allows us to operate at a greater scale. So there's a number of investments we've made, and we've probably still got a few to make that are just holding back that EBIT margin over the next 12 months to 2 years. And then we should be able to see it where the business can go from there, Ari. So we're just -- we're probably more like thinking the bottom end of that range to begin with. And if sea freight gets better, we'll be more towards the top end. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [23] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your next question comes from Apoorv Sehgal from UBS. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Apoorv Sehgal, UBS Investment Bank, Research Division - Associate Analyst [24] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark, Jamie and Ash, first question, just on your FY '23 guidance, specifically on the sales guidance. Is it fair to say that you're assuming that like-for-like or per square meter sales for the core Adairs business to be lower than pre-COVID FY '19 levels? Like are you assuming that the macro environment sort of does get a bit tougher in your assessment of guidance? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [25] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, we're assuming that the macro environment gets tougher. I don't think we're assuming that the sales falls to lower in relation to the GLA number. I think we're more thinking that we might -- it's probably more reflected in the EBIT guidance versus the sales guidance and a pullback in online. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Apoorv Sehgal, UBS Investment Bank, Research Division - Associate Analyst [26] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Got it. Yes. Okay, okay. So online sort of slowing, okay. Maybe then on the gross margin side of things. If I look at the second half results for the core Adairs business, your gross margins are for delivery cost of 58.7%. Is that sort of a fair guide of how we should think of gross margins going forward? Like is that sort of where the natural GMs of this business see it or perhaps does it maybe step back a bit further going forward? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [27] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't think it steps back further. I think if you think about that number that -- as Ash mentioned before, there's some delivery costs in there that we'd expect to come out. If I thought about, who knows what the trading environment looks like in the second half of the year. But we're factoring in that we probably need to be mindful that we might need to drive the business a bit harder. And if that's the case, that sort of number allows for that. So I wouldn't think you'd step it down further off the back of FY '23. I think we -- I like to think about it, I operate far more at a gross margin level before delivery costs. And at the moment, I think we've retained a bunch of those, and I expect that going into next year, we should see us probably have to be prepared to think about how we give some of that up if given the cost price inflation we're seeing come through from suppliers, sea freight not stepping back and potentially a slightly more challenging environment. But I think if you thought of 58.7% as the margin that you guys are putting in there, I wouldn't be uncomfortable with us about the mark. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Apoorv Sehgal, UBS Investment Bank, Research Division - Associate Analyst [28] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay. That's clear. And just another one. Normally, you split out the trading update by brand and sort of on a 2-year stack or in this case, a 3-year stack sort of basis. But just curious as to why on this occasion, that sort of wasn't disclosed. And if possible, are you able to give some sort of color on how those first half '23 first 7-week numbers so far compare versus first half '20 pre-COVID? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [29] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not off the top of my head, I don't sort of pay that much attention. But if you think about it, the reason we haven't done it is we were more thinking about it versus last year versus first half '20. And we would -- the concept behind that is the first 7 weeks last year is such a different trading environment than the one we're operating in now. As we've said in the commentary there, our online businesses are trading down against first half '22 or the first 7 weeks of '22, which was in line with our plan and our expectations given stores have reopened and come back relatively strongly. So we're seeing, as we mentioned, they're good sales growth out of store and solid results out of our stores, both in Focus and Adairs and the digital sales step back now that customers have the choice and are regularly choosing to go into store. So we'll take it on -- I'll take the question on notice in relation to against first half '20 and think about that one a bit more. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [30] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your next question comes from Mark Wade from CLSA. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Wade, CLSA Limited, Research Division - Research Analyst [31] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just on the long on the long-term expectations for the Focus brand. I mean, when you acquired that business, last year, I think you thought maybe sales would get to about $125 million. The pro forma results this year were $135 million, so that's getting a bit closer. But your EBIT is -- you've more than doubled those longer-term targets. So the question is are those longer-term targets still the right numbers? Or do you think you can actually hold up a bit stronger than initially expected? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [32] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Look, I think I wouldn't move away from the longer-term targets at this point in time. We own the business 7 months, I think a 20% EBIT margin on that business is too high, and we'll hurt us in scaling as we start to roll that out. It's very efficient in the way that it operates today. But as we need -- we will need to put some additional cost in to roll it out more broadly. But -- and we had a terrific gross margin result. The guys have done an amazing job at driving great top line sales and a really good gross margin. So we think there's probably a couple of things in our favor in the first 7 months. But if we thought about a longer-term, more normal trading environment, there's no doubt, I think Focus is winning by having stock available as opposed to long lead times with some other furniture retailers out there. So we're making the most of that environment at the moment. So I think as that starts to perhaps normalize a bit, we probably see that EBIT margin step back a little bit. But we do -- we said we wanted to get it to a $35 million EBIT, $250 million, $300 million of sales. And we think that's still well within our wheelhouse. I think the question for us is how quickly we can open stores given the homemaker space is harder to get those opportunities, and we want to make sure we're doing the right deals in the right centers rather than just rushing to open stores. One of the things we always think about as being really disciplined on our store opening portfolio. So we'll keep working through that. So I wouldn't want to write them up after 7 months. And realistically, we haven't opened a store in that time and opening stores is a big driver of that growth. So start to roll them out, Mark. I'd like to think that perhaps that might be the case, but let's get a bit more time under our belt and start to open some stores and see where that goes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Wade, CLSA Limited, Research Division - Research Analyst [33] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Understood. And on the Mocka, it's come back a long way on the profitability. The sales are up a bit, though, I suppose some of the clearance activity. Are you still confident in that, that damage to the brand is you can't recover from it, it's not irreparable? I guess it'll come to how many return customers and how the new customers put off by it? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [34] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. I think -- it's a good question to own, Mark. We're definitely -- what we wanted to do is solve the underlying operational issues within the business and make sure that we are in a good place before we really step into a brand recovery piece of work. So I expect that we'll be able to roll that out over the first half of '23. So what we're seeing in trade is that customers are prepared to give us another go. And now that we're starting to get the delivery piece right and we've solved a couple of the product issues that we've had, we're starting to see that tick back into actually, this is a pretty good product that's at a pretty good price. And we can actually nail the delivery experience. We start to build the confidence and momentum back into the brand. So that's why we sort of see first half us continue to invest in that process and the second half really should be a place where we start to get that -- get some more runway and some more traction on that. So I remain confident that I think the product we've got is good. I think it serves a real purpose in the Australian market. And I think the team we've got now are really focused, as I said, with a really clear strategy on what matters to our customers, and let's deliver on that. So I'm confident time will tell. Customers always give you the ultimate answer, but I'm happy that we've got a plan in place. And from my perspective, we'll know a lot more in 6 months and in 12 months as to how well we've gone at rebuilding the trust that we've -- with the brand damage that we did over the FY '22 with those -- the supply chain issues that impacted the results. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Wade, CLSA Limited, Research Division - Research Analyst [35] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay. And lastly, just across edition NZD, has the view on that market moderated? I mean it sounds like some of the retailers are doing a little bit tough over there. We heard from news this morning, others are doing a little bit better. What's your view on that market and how prospective it is for expansion across the various brands under this table? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [36] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. New Zealand stuff, there's no doubt that New Zealand is trading tougher than Australia across Adairs and Mocka. So we've certainly seen the consumer over there step back a bit faster than the Australian consumer has. So I think at the moment, we're actually just in a matter of let's just pick the right deals, we'll still be looking to open stores and do all those sorts of things in terms of Adairs. Mocka will continue to do what it does. And actually trading half okay, in New Zealand, it's not gone up against major lockdowns, so we're getting a better read on how that's trading week to week, but it's definitely a more challenging market, NZ than AU at the current time, which just perhaps slows you down in terms of whether you rush to open that store. There's no big drive to open a bunch of stores in a trading environment that's a bit more challenging in the first half. But equally, we haven't seen a lot of opportunities at the moment. And we're finally able to go back and actually start to walk centers and see the stores and do all those sorts of things. So we'll be a bit more active in that market over the first half '23, but I wouldn't expect to see too many new stores or changes to our portfolio in that half, whilst we look at the trading environment and we look for the opportunities that are out there. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Wade, CLSA Limited, Research Division - Research Analyst [37] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I guess you guys are probably be excited they can travel overseas as well and see some product and pick up some trends from overseas. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [38] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. It is a real positive that we've had a number of the team off in May and June, to your point, getting around the world. Eventually, we'd love to be back into China when working with our suppliers hand-in-hand. There was a lot of samples moving backwards and forwards from Australia to China at the moment. But yes, no, there's no doubt that, that definitely has created a bit of a spark and I expect that we start to see some of that real enthusiasm and look and trend start to hit the business Q2 of this half, so that we start to see some of those changes occur. Because I think our trend has been largely pretty similar for the last 12 to 18 months, and we're certainly starting to see some of that movement now, which is exciting for Adairs in particular with our fashion focus. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [39] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your next question comes from John Hynd from Wilsons. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Hynd, Wilsons Advisory and Stockbroking Limited, Research Division - Senior Equities Analyst [40] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Staying with Mocka, how badly did delivery failure hit third quarter? Can you give us some color now on with sales count? So did you have to offer material discounts? And then on your comments, Mark, about the customer making the final choice about recovery. Did you start to see a recovery in the fourth quarter and then for the first 7 weeks of '23? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [41] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Let me work my way through the 3 questions, John. I think Q3 was definitely impacted by ongoing challenges. I would have said at the February call that we felt like we locked it down, and we were moving in the right direction with a new delivery partner, and we were managing that very tightly and closely. And in the end, we made a subsequent change which we -- which impacted ongoing refunds and discounts provided to customers. So Q3 was definitely impacted by that. Q4, we had some product issues that impacted our ability to be out there really pushing it. So we didn't push it too hard in Q4 generally. But what we did see was we solidified the delivery experience, and we started to get the customer feedback that, that was now getting back on track, which was important. And obviously, in Q1 of FY '23, as I've mentioned before, we're going up against lockdowns in Victoria and New South Wales. So we're trading well off the numbers of the prior year, but that was all part of -- reflected in the planning guidance that we've provided as part of this presentation. So what I'm -- I'm looking forward to Q2 where we get a little more normality back into the market and year-on-year. And equally for Mocka, that will be going up against a period where we could see what the delivery was impacting us in Q2 last year that obviously then flowed through into Q3. So we'll get a much better view as we hit Q2 to the trading performance of the Mocka business over -- and the impact perhaps that the delivery issues of last year have resulted in, in terms of conversion and those sorts of things. But what I do find in that digital space is as you get further along, commentary and all of those things get further down pages, right? So we can get enough positive. What we're really focused on in that business is how do we how do we continue to deliver great customer experiences day in day out now. And as we start to get that is the message coming back through from the customers, that's what people will see in the short term versus where we were, obviously, this time last year. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Hynd, Wilsons Advisory and Stockbroking Limited, Research Division - Senior Equities Analyst [42] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. And I guess, it's important to note that customer base refreshes every 1 to 3 years as the younger family cycles and new families cycle in. That said and given the shorter term cycle of the customer, have you given us a, like some guidance on where revenue and EBIT might sit for Mocka like you have with Focus on? And -- or did you want to perhaps give us some updated mid-cycle guidance on how you think this business could perform? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [43] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. I mean, at the moment, what we're seeing is obviously in the past, we've provided the thought that we should double the size of the Australian business. Given the population of Australia versus New Zealand, we see the business heading towards $150 million of revenue. We don't see that as being unachievable. We don't see that needing to significantly change at the moment. What we need to do is -- and if you think about it, we held the top line relatively well, but we blew costs, which really came back to, as we said, refunding delivery costs, refunding full sales for customers despite them having the inventory. So we went with a customer resolution that was expensive and that impacted the EBIT significantly. So I still don't think that $150 million is not a number that we shouldn't be chasing down in this business over the next 3 to 5 years. And FY '22 was disappointing, FY '23, will start to rebuild that the consumer confidence in the brand. And as we move into FY '24, I expect that we should be able to accelerate that. We talk to -- we've always talked about us being an omnichannel retailer. So at some point along the journey, it won't be in the next 12 months. But we start to think about how does that also play out into our broader strategy, not just pure play online, which obviously helps drive that top line and build customers' ability to interact with the product and the experience and all of those sorts of things. So I think as we look forward, I still see comfortably, we should be hitting $150 million to $200 million in this business as we look forward 3 to 5 years. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Hynd, Wilsons Advisory and Stockbroking Limited, Research Division - Senior Equities Analyst [44] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Okay. And you both -- I think, you, Ash, actually talked about adding costs, particularly the staff for Mocka. Do you want to give us some color on, I mean, how much of the management team maybe was replaced or what you're comfortable talking if you know what I'm getting at there, like what's being done there, what you're comfortable talking about? And what's top of the list with their KPIs? Are there -- what's on the agendas when you're catching up within every week or month or whatever? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ashley John Gardner, Adairs Limited - CFO [45] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, there's been a large change to the team, which probably reflects the movement of the center of gravity of that business from New Zealand to Australia more so than anything else. And obviously, there are a number of people within the business that have worked closely with the founders that elected to step away once we made the change. So with -- as I mentioned in my presentation, we're really comfortable with the team that we're putting together there. Lots of people with good experience, digital marketing, and building out the capability of that business. As we know, brand awareness is a big part of it. So how do we keep building that out. We've brought in some people that we think have really good prior experience in that space. And obviously, the leadership is now based out of Brisbane. So we've seen a lot of changes. And realistically, when you start to think about KPIs as the KPIs in every business, how we're going on sales and margin. And in this Mocka more so than even Adairs, given it is a pure play online business, we're looking very heavily at delivered margin and how that plays through. So a range review at Mocka is very different to a range of review in Adairs where I'm talking to the guys in here about gross margin. And at Adairs, I'm thinking about gross margin and I factor in the delivery costs, and I can work that out. Whereas at Mocka, because we are a pure play, we're very much right what is the size of the boxes, how does that knock down, is that the best way we can run it as KD, where does that end up, are we getting the delivered margin we need and can we -- how do we make sure we maximize that. So the real focus for that business at the moment is really on 2 core things. How do we get -- how do we make sure we're delivering great product and continuing to build our product range and being really focused on what that looks like, manage inventory probably a little more tightly than we have in the past, such that we don't end up with things like the range that we've had to take the write-off of -- or the write-down on -- at the end of the financial year. And then how do we make sure we maximize that delivered margin in that space. And with that, the delivery experience for the customer. Like there's no point getting a better delivered margin if we find we lose stock all around Australia and don't get it to the customer. So getting the balance right between a good delivery experience and the price we're prepared to pay for that is crucial. So when I think about the conversations that we have at Mocka, we're not much more on that. And then obviously, the third element of that is traffic. How do we get traffic and conversion. So I mean it's no different to any business really, but we're trying to keep Mocka in particular. It's a pretty simple business. As retailers, we all get good at complicating things, but how do we get good product to get the right margin and then make sure we're putting in front of the right people. All of our KPIs are based on sort of those 3 big rocks. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Hynd, Wilsons Advisory and Stockbroking Limited, Research Division - Senior Equities Analyst [46] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. That all makes sense. Last one for me. The order bank with Focus. Does -- how does that work? I thought it was you're going to be holding inventory not taking orders, so to speak? And I mean how many -- can you give me an understanding of how many weeks, volume or sales, this would represent, please? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [47] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. So we -- that probably represents circa 4 to 5 weeks of sales in terms of the order book that we've got. A lot of that is working with customers to be fair, John. So a customer says, I'm ready for it in 3 weeks. So you get to the end of the year, we've got stock coming in. We've got to move it around, pick the right day, all of those sorts of things. So we're more running a business where you are selecting a day in the next 3 to 4 weeks. On the large majority of orders, we'll also obviously have containers on the water and look to sell out of those containers. But yes, you should think of that as 4 to 5 weeks sort of trade and that will be about where it probably remains. That's ultimately, as you ride our role at Focus is not a -- we don't take customer orders. We're not trying to change. We take a few of them, which will be reflected in there. But largely, it's looking at when the customer can receive the delivery. And obviously, you want a pretty full order book. So you don't want to be sitting here with no deliveries this week on Monday. So you sort of run that 3- to 4-week sort of window. And if someone needs it urgently, we can probably make those things happen. But compared to a lot of our competitors out there, that sort of 3- to 4-week window for deliveries is pretty good. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [48] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your next question comes from Wilson Wong from Jarden. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wilson Wong, Jarden Limited, Research Division - Analyst [49] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Just a question on the trading update. Can you just provide us a sort of indication of what sales growth was on a like-for-like basis (inaudible) store closures? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ashley John Gardner, Adairs Limited - CFO [50] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sorry, can you please repeat that, you're pretty quiet? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wilson Wong, Jarden Limited, Research Division - Analyst [51] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes, sure. So just in terms of the trading update for the first 7 weeks, just an indication of what sales growth like-for-like excluding Focus and store closures was? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ashley John Gardner, Adairs Limited - CFO [52] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We don't (inaudible) largely irrelevant. It's just not something we're looking at, at the moment, Wilson, given the trading environment last year when you've got for 50% to 60% of stores closed. Online -- as we said, online has come back against that period given the store closures. And therefore, you're left with such a small part of your network that you come back with a number that's largely irrelevant, which is why we think about how we grow it totally and didn't put it in there because we thought it really reflected the way the business is trading. And given our guidance, that's where we wanted to make sure we're operating in line with that guidance. So yes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wilson Wong, Jarden Limited, Research Division - Analyst [53] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sure, sure. That's a fair response. I guess just on Focus, I just want to get a sense of that store model refinement that you previously mentioned. How do you sort of expect this to sort of, I guess, impact EBIT margins on a store basis and sort of any update in that? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [54] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. We'd like to think that we would be improving our EBIT -- our contribution performance as we consider it at a store basis as we start to think about that refinement. We've tried a few things in terms of product and played around with some stuff in the first 6 months. We'd like to think that we get a refurb store done in this next period. We would have liked to have done it faster. However, in the couple of stores that we would have loved to have done it with, we're just working through some lease negotiations to make sure that we've got strong enough lease period that we're comfortable investing a little bit of money to see how that works. And we've had a couple of -- actually over this last half, we had a couple of stores in Melbourne that we would have liked to have done, impacted by some of the storms and rain that came through. So while we're waiting on insurance quotes and the like, that slowed us down as well. So we've got a few stores that we've got earmarked for it, almost ready to go. Just need to lock in these last couple of piece of the puzzle. But we think the investment is -- we probably had an investment of circa $100,000 we thought in the past. I probably think that's more like a couple of hundred because we probably need to operate a bit more in lighting than we once thought. And so we've added that in. But equally, we think we can drive the contribution margin of the stores. And that's what we've seen. Obviously, Adairs, we've been upgrading and upsizing and refurbing stores that we -- it does drive a good sales lift and lets us showcase the product a bit better. So I think we've got an opportunity there, remains an opportunity. I really would have liked to have had it done. So I can point you all in the store that we -- you go have a look at it, but we just want to make sure we get the commercials right before we step ahead with that. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wilson Wong, Jarden Limited, Research Division - Analyst [55] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sure. And just on that order book, that 17 (inaudible) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [56] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sorry, what was that? I didn't catch that. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wilson Wong, Jarden Limited, Research Division - Analyst [57] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yes. So the order book for Focus, $17.5 million, that's above or below your expectations at this stage? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [58] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- So to be honest, it's about where I expect it to be. Coming back to that conversation question from John, we don't see -- we're not aiming to build a big order book. Our aim is to keep stock flowing and make sure we maintain the inventory and not grow inventory. So we only -- we will see growth in inventory in Focus as we put new stores on the ground because we have to have display stock on that element. But our view is how do we keep this business running really efficiently with inventory stocking, stock out but don't look to build a big order book unless the 5 weeks before we come out and talk about it are bigger in sales than in other periods. So it's probably great for you guys (inaudible) 4 to 5-week sales. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [59] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That wraps up our question-and-answer session. I will now hand back to Mr. Ronan for closing remarks. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Ronan, Adairs Limited - MD, CEO & Executive Director [60] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I just want to say thanks, everyone, for taking the time to join the call this morning. And obviously, here at Adairs and across all the brands, we look forward to the year ahead. Thank you. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Operator [61] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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Edited Transcript of ADH.AX earnings conference call or presentation 22-Aug-22 1:30am GMT - Yahoo Finance

Since Jan. 6, 2021, many Trump supporters have been preparing to wage war against the U.S. government. The Onion asked conservatives why they are preparing for a civil war, and this is what they said.

Ryan Williams (Mechanic)

We have no choice. The Constitution clearly states that the South shall rise again.

Lee Skillman (Magazine Editor)

It would just be nice to have a civil war we could teach about and not bring up slavery.

Jeffrey Gunnell (Software Developer)

I recently killed someone, and if the war comes soon enough, Im hoping it can just get lumped in.

Vicki Dupree (Skin Care Specialist)

Um, something about George Soros and immigrants orhold on, I have it written down somewhere.

Bo Rhodes (Carpenter)

I feel like carnage on a national scale might shake things up a little.

Oscar Torres (Data Scientist)

Its either prepare for a civil war or try to get out there and date again.

Travis Kutterman (Furniture Salesman)

Ive got some vacation days saved up.

Gina Lopez (Personal Assistant)

Itd help me get my steps in.

Terry Brown (Dentist)

If Ive learned one thing from watching the modern Democratic Party operate, its that theyre an uncompromising faction working in perfect harmony, and theyll do anything to accomplish their goals.

Dennis Robels (Network Administrator)

Not really sure. Ill probably just do it until the NFL regular season starts.

Scott Windmire (Superintendent)

Oh, this isnt for a civil war. Ive always had this many guns.

Jason Iuppa (Bank Teller)

Just because you fantasize over something so much it becomes your entire personality doesnt mean you want it to happen.

Peter McGuire (Marketing Executive)

You can only bomb so many Middle Eastern countries before you eventually start bombing your own.

Guy Arnold (Bus Driver)

When I was a child, the government forced me to learn to read, and I cant unlearn that. Thats tyranny.

Greg Abbott (Governor of Texas)

If regular war is good for the economy, a civil war must be twice as good.

Gregory Hayes (Raytheon CEO)

Im rock hard just thinking about the profit wed make.

Tucker Carlson (Fox News Host)

My ratings have been way up. So thats not a great sign.

Megan Grindle (Antiques Dealer)

We need new statues.

Clyde Dugan (Contractor)

Its just easier to go to war again than take down my Confederate flag.

Lori Welch (Video Rental Cashier)

I really dont see any solution to this other than us getting killed by the government.

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Conservatives Explain Why They Are Preparing For A Civil War - The Onion

Benjamin Franklin once said that nothing is certain except death and taxes. In 2019, American taxpayers paid$1.6 trillionin individual income taxes to the Internal Revenue Service. And according to Emory University tax law professor Dorothy Brown, author of the bookThe Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans and How We Can Fix It,Black Americans pay more in taxes because the U.S. tax system has long favored white Americans.

When investigating investigate race and tax policies, Brown determined the system puts Black Americans at a disadvantage, mainly due to marital status. Few African Americans are married in comparison to whites. On top of that, when Black people are married, they most likely have a two-income house, meaning they pay higher taxes.

Lets say someone makes $50,000. As a single person, their taxes are going to be a certain rate, she told WBUR. But as a married person with a single wage earner, that $50,000 household will end up paying fewer taxes than that single wage earner had they remained single.

There are some Black Americans who feel Black America should be exempt from paying taxes. Due to slavery and its negative financially legacy Black people have paid a Black Tax Credit, they argue. Some tried it to not pay taxes but, of course, the IRS wasnt in agreement. It was reported as atax scam.

Are you interested in getting smart on Life Insurance?No Doctor Visit Required, Get Policy for as low as $30 per MonthClick here to take the next step

Hip-hop mogulIce Cubeproposed in 2020 that he wanted the IRS to exempt Black people from paying taxes.

THE HIGH COST OF RACISM: BLACKS in America should be exempt from paying any taxes for 462 years. This would help to start repairing the damage done to us by America. OUR BILL IS PAID BY NOW. No more, Ice Cube tweeted at the time.

In another tweet, he wrote, We will ask for board seats, hefty shares of the company, and you will pay a heavy-heavy fine for what youve done. Or we will ask the believers in justice. To not support your business for 40 days & 40 nights WE DONT REALLY GIVE A FK IF WE WERE BEING FAIR OR NOT. Hos-style is my style!

Some reparations advocates argue that tax exemption for Black people could be a form of reparations.

Black people should not have to pay taxes. No income taxes. No sales taxes. No wage taxes. No business privilege taxes. No property taxes. No gas or utility taxes. No Excise taxes. No telecommunication taxes. Not a single iota of money which is collected by the United States government should come from the pockets of Black people, wrote journalist Charing Ballin Madamenoire.

She added, And the way I see it, the lack of tax burden will provide incentive and space for Black folks to acquire and, more importantly, maintain wealth in this country. It certainly would serve as an incentive for global corporations to seek out partnerships with Black-owned businesses, who too would benefit from not having to be held down by a whole bunch of business-related taxes.

In the Nation of Islams Muslim Program one of the points says, We want the government of the United States to exempt our people from ALL taxation as long as we are deprived of equal justice under the laws of the land.

Another theory is that many wealthy Black Americans who struggled due to discrimination to get to where they are can not reconcile giving the U.S. government 40 percent-50 percent of their income.

Here are 10 Black millionaires who got busted by the IRS for failure to pay taxes.

In 2021, billionaire Robert Smith avoided indictment in a multimillionaire-dollar tax case by cooperating with the Fed. This came following a four-year investigation by prosecutors and IRS agents who claimed money manager Smith attempted to hide more than $200 million in income. The government signed off on anon-prosecution agreement that required Smith toadmithe had committed crimes, pay $139 million and cooperate against a close business associate indicted in the largesttax-evasion casein U.S. historyTexas software mogul Robert T. Brockman, Bloomberg reported.

The entertainer had to dig himself out of a $25 million IRS debt. Steve Harvey discovered in 2008 that he owed the IRS the astronomical amount.

My old tax accountant, who passed, had done some, lets say, not so smart things, recalled Harvey in a recent interview withEarn Your Leisurepodcast. And since hes not alive anymore, and I dont slam people who are gone, so lets just say some bad things were done, and I looked up, and I was in a lot of trouble to the tune of almost $25 million.

Headded, They were cashing the checks, keeping the money, and not turning in the tax forms.They didnt cash it; they took the money out [of] the account that matched the exact number.

Harvey went to work to make the money to pay the IRS back. An actor, author, T.V. and radio personality, Harvey is famous for hisobservational humorinspired by situations in his own life. He later became known for his self-help advice, especially about relationships.

In 2919, the hip-hop artist had to pay a whopping $14 million in taxes owed to the IRS, XXL reported.

The IRS had accused Wayne of owing a cool $7,341,399.07 for 2011 and $6,853,545.77 for 2012, with the lien officially in 2014.

Wayne credited Jay-Z for helping him in the past with his tax issue.

Theres people like Jay-Zhe helped me out when I was really, really, really down. Really, really, really down, Wayne said. Jay dont want me to tell nobody. That man helped me with my taxes. Hes a real friend yall. Shout out my nigga Jay!

Actor Wesley Snipes wound up spending time in federal prison over his $23.5 million IRS debt. He received a three-year prison sentence on tax-fraud charges in 2008 after a lengthy trial. Snipes blamed the debt on his financial advisers. She also called the IRS was an illegitimate government agency, Time reported.

Besides his infamous criminal and civil legal issues, California state still claims the former star football player and actor owes the state $1.4 million in back taxes, Time reported. This is not the first time hes been accused of owning taxes. In 1997, the IRS said The Juice needed to cough up $700,000 in back taxes, CNN reported.

Legendary songstress Dionne Warwick, whose father ironically was an accountant, was on Californias list of the most delinquent taxpayers, Time reported. At one time she had an outstanding debt of more than $2 million. She also owed the IRS and in 2019 Warwick sought a court order discharging her $7 million tax debt from 1990 2008. The debt was discharged in her bankruptcy, Blast reported.

The comedian and TV star Sinbad also owed the state of California. He had a tax debt of $2.5 million in personal income tax, Time reported. And in 2019, it was revealed he owned the IRS over $8 million in unpaid taxes, and the feds attempted to foreclose on his home to pay off his outstanding tax liens, Accounting Today reported.

Former Jay-Z partner and co-founder of Roc-A-Fella Records and Roc-A-Wear, Damon Dash owed the New York State $4.14 million in taxes, among his many financial woes. According to datareleased by the Department of Taxation and Finance, Dash was hit with a lien over state income tax he owes from 2005, 2007, 2010 and 2011, Page Six reported.

In 2011 he admitted to owning the IRS, he way more than $2 millionin taxes.

Blockbuster movie star Chris Tucker faced lawsuit in 2021 claiming he owed IRS more than $9 million in taxes, USA Today reported.

The IRS claimed the comedian owed taxes that date back to 2002. Despite notice and demand for payment of the assessments set forth above, Mr. Tucker has neglected, refused, or failed to fully pay the assessments against him, the 16-page lawsuit stated.

Tuckers attorneys said he entered several installment agreements in 2010, 2011 and 2016 to pay the IRS back in lump sums over a 10-year period but payments were overdue by 1,112 days at the time of the lawsuit.

Fugees singer Lauryn Hill was sentenced in 2013 to three months in prison and an additional three months in home confinement for failing to pay taxes on about $1 million in earnings. Hill pleaded guilty in 2012 in the case, Billboard reported.

Grammy-winning singer continued to be plagued by debt and she reportedly settled the roughly $1 million tax debt in 2019 on her South Orange, New Jersey home, escaping foreclosure, HipHopDX reported.

Photo: Lauryn Hill walks from federal court in Newark, N.J., April 22, 2013. She was sentenced tothree months in prison in Connecticut for failing to pay about $1 million in taxes. (AP Photo/Mel Evans, file)Robert F. Smith is seen during a live recording of Reid Hoffmans hit podcast Masters of Scale at Summit LA19, Los Angeles, Nov. 11, 2019. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP)Lil Wayne performs Im The One at the BET Awards, June 25, 2017, in LA. (Photo by Matt Sayles/Invision/AP)

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10 Black Millionaires Who Got Busted By The IRS For Failure To Pay Taxes - Moguldom

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S.G. Goodmans songs make urgent, messy shapes in air. On Work Until I Die, the Kentucky-bred singer-songwriter yelps about gutted unions and wage slavery while her band pushes the downbeat like a golden retriever straining its leash. On When You Say It, she mutters "don't call me honey, it dont mean nothing when you say it" as if she were trying to bite through the song itself. Goodman may come from roots rock, but her music's live-wire unpredictability means she's at home nowhere: in her best and most vivid moments, she leaps across the yearning distance separating Waxahatchee from Lucinda Williams.Jayson Greene

Listen: Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal

S.G. Goodman: Teeth Marks

Japanese city pop was more than a decade old by 1991, when Shoko Igarashi was born, but the 31-year-old Berklee graduates music is so faithful to the recently revived genre that itd be easy to mistake it for the real thing. Her solo debut, Simple Sentences, is a cheerful tour of vintage sounds that sparkle as if they just came out of shrink wrap: glassy FM synths, rubbery slap bass, cryogenic faux woodwinds. Dreamy downbeat jams like Comfy Place find a halfway spot between Flat Earth-era Thomas Dolby and Detroit techno, and while the albums release on Tigersushi places it in dialogue with a broad swath of contemporary electronic dance music, her jazz training shines through in her dazzlingly unpredictable chord changes, which are less Berghain than Burt Bacharach. Philip Sherburne

Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Spotify | Tidal

Shoko Igarashi: Simple Sentences

On her 2020 album Mi specchio e rifletto, Italian violinist and composer Silvia Tarozzi explored motherhood and uncertainty through the poetry of Alda Merini. For Junes Canti di Guerra, di lavoro e damore, she linked with cellist Deborah Walker to reinterpret the traditional work songs of women rice planters in rural Italy. They sing in joyful, dense layers and dive into open spaces; it often sounds like theyre on an infinite feedback loop, each finding thrill and inspiration from the other. Walker and Tarozzi highlight the under-acknowledged creativity and virtuosity of women working together. Allison Hussey

Listen: Bandcamp | Amazon | Apple Music | Spotify | Tidal

Silvia Tarozzi / Deborah Walker: Canti di guerra, di lavoro e damore

Skullshitter, a New York-based trio that plays vicious, full-speed grindcore, are here to challenge your assumptions about hallucinogenic drugs. Forget blissful jamming, swirling colors,and the interconnectedness of the universe: their debut album, Goat Claw, represents the darker side of the experience. A 16-song, 35-minute blast that samples liberally from the 1987 supernatural horror film The Gate, the music bursts with broken-motor riffs, Satanic imagery, and gory, surrealist visions of death. And while song titles like Doing Drugs With the Devil seem to embody the whole story, Goat Claw is the type of bad trip you need to experience yourself, all the way through, to fully understand. Sam Sodomsky

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34 Great Records You May Have Missed: Spring/Summer 2022 - Pitchfork

Amazon has been hit by walk-outs and strike action across the globe in protest at poor pay and conditions, as inflation hits economies everywhere.

After wildcat strikes in the UK following a pay offer that amounted to a real-terms pay cut, workers in the US, Turkey and Germany have staged strike action and protests over the last fortnight.

Workers walked off the job at a warehouse in San Bernardino in southern California in the heart of the companys US supply chain on Monday.

Inland Empire Amazon Workers United said 160 workers walked out in a dispute over pay and sweltering working conditions. Amazon said 74 workers walked out.

The walk-out came after about 900 workers signed a petition demanding that the base rate of pay be increased from $17 an hour to $22, saying: Over 75% of our income is going into rent alone [] We can barely afford to live in todays economy.

Workers are also demanding additional protections from the heat. The temperature hit 35C in San Bernardino on 24 days in July.

Melissa Ojeda, who has worked at the facility for more than a year, said: Working in the heat feels like you are suffocating. You need to take breaks and you can overheat really easily. They dont make it easy to take breaks to allow your body to cool down.

The facility, known as KSBD, opened in 2021 amid opposition over air pollution and concerns about job quality. It is one of only three Amazon air-hubs in the USA, according to the Warehouse Workers Resource Centre. Amazons air freight division uses Prime-branded planes to fly packages around the country. While a small proportion of the 1,500 workers at the facility walked out, these walkouts can cause significant disruption.

Paul Flaningan, Amazon spokesperson, said: We are proud to provide full-time employees at our San Bernardino Air Hub and throughout the region a minimum starting wage of $17 an hour.

Full-time employees can earn up to $19.25 an hour and receive benefits including health care and paid parental leave, Flaningan said.

While were always listening and looking at ways to improve, we remain proud of the competitive pay, comprehensive benefits, and engaging, safe work experience we provide our teams in the region.

While there are many established ways of ensuring we hear the opinions of our employees inside our business, we also respect their right to make their opinions known externally, said Flaningan.

Those established ways apparently arent doing it for workers at the ALB1 warehouse in upstate New York, who filed a petition for a union election on Tuesday. The workers are organising with the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which successfully won the first union election at a US Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York in April.

ALU is currently battling against a legal onslaught from Amazon, which has appealed the election in Staten Island on the grounds of alleged illegal tactics from the union such as handing out marajuana to workers.

Amazon workers in the US are now getting solidarity from an unusual source TikTok influencers. The People Over Prime Coalition is a group of 70 content creators boasting a combined following of 51 million. The group has pledged to stop Amazon monetising TikTok until the demands of the Amazon Labor Union which include a $30 an hour minimum wage are met.

A statement from the People Over Prime Coalition says: Amazons widespread mistreatment of their workers and blatant use of union busting tactics will no longer be tolerated by the TikTok Community or TikTok Creators.

Amazon has tried to cosy up to content creators over recent years. With the Amazon Influencer Program, creators can make money by recommending products in personalised Amazon storefronts. People Over Prime will refuse sponsorship deals and will not sell products on Amazon Storefront.

Amazon, which has long been criticised for its working conditions and alleged union busting tactics, is also facing headaches elsewhere.

In Germany Amazons second biggest market after the US workers struck at a warehouse in Bad Hersfeld on Friday 12 August. Mechthild Middeke, secretary for the Verdi trade union, said the cost of living is a heavy burden for many employees.

If Amazon makes Prime membership 28% more expensive and justifies this with rising costs, then we have these rising costs too and want compensation for it, she said.

Amazon has resisted calls from Verdi to sign up to a collective bargaining agreement.

Amazon has said logistics workers in Germany receive at least 12 per hour, rising to at least 12.50 by autumn.

Workers also staged a sit-in protest at Amazons main warehouse in Turkey, where inflation recently hit a 24-year-high of 79.6%, on 8 August.

Around 600 workers at the facility in the western province of Kocaeli had signed a letter demanding higher wages, health and security measures, worker transport services and meal services.

Local media reports that Amazon transferred disgruntled workers to a distant warehouse and those who refused were dismissed.

Dismissed workers staged a sit in protest with the help of DGD-Sen, the warehouse, port, shipyard and marine workers union.

A statement from trade union Umut-Sen said: The workers didnt let the heat, dust and smoke get in the way of fighting for their friends and their rights.

Commenting on working conditions in Turkey generally, Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) MP Zuleyha Gulum said: We have always been exploited, but its now slavery that is imposed upon us. The employers are now trying to lower the price of labour more than ever. And were actually living in a country where the government calls on the foreign capitalists and says, Labour is cheap here, come and exploit these workers as much as you wish.

The news follows wildcat strikes in the UK, where protests broke out at several warehouses in August following a pay offer that would amount to a real-terms pay-cut amid sky-rocketting inflation.

The strikes come as Amazon faces pressure from consumers because of inflation. In the UK 600,000 customers left Amazon Prime in the second quarter of 2022, according to Ofcom. But at least Amazon doesnt have to worry about paying too much tax in the UK. Tax breaks brought in when Rishi Sunak was chancellor will let the company off the hook for at least another two years, according to a report from the Fair Tax Foundation.

Meanwhile in the States, Amazon is being investigated over concerns that it manipulates users into signing up for Prime accounts. The company accused the Federal Trade Commission of harassing chairman Jeff Bezos and CEO Andy Jassy by asking them to testify in the investigation.

Simon Childs is a commissioning editor and reporter for Novara Media.

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Amazon Hit by Strikes Across the Globe - Novara Media

Our relationship with work can be summed up in two words: Its complicated.

Here in the United States (and elsewhere, too), work dominates our lives. Upon meeting someone new, our standard first question is What do you do for a living? Our identities, even our names, often reflect an occupation.

And yet, for too many people, their work is a thankless task for which they are undercompensated. It provides just enough sustenance to get through the day, so they can wake up the next and start over. And the countless hours take a toll on physical and mental health, relationships, and families.

Ill sleep when Im dead is a common refrain. Earlier generations said, Idle hands are the devils tools, a phrase that may have come from a 4th-century letter written by St. Jerome, in which he captured the essence of the ancient workaholic: fac et aliquid operis, ut semper te diabolus inveniat occupatum. Or, Engage in some occupation, so that the devil may always find you busy.

Theres nothing like the threat of eternal damnation to motivate you to drag yourself out the door for another day in the trenches.

Some people may like, or even love, the work they do. But for many others, work is a compendium of indignitieslow pay, inadequate benefits, toxic and abusive environments, to say nothing of the disrespect, discrimination, and exclusion that greets many people of color and other historically excluded groups.

But what if it wasnt? What if work were a thing we chose to do with our time because we wanted to do it and not because we needed to keep destitution at bay? What if our worth as people in society was measured by something other than where we punch a clock? What if work was something that lifted up and supported our whole lives, instead of something that we endure just so that we may live?

A straight line can be drawn through the history of work in Western societies, from the slavery of the Roman Empire (scholars estimate as much as 10% of the population of the empire was enslaved), to the feudalism of medieval Europe, to the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. That line is ownershipthe wealthy could buy and sell people, land, or labor to accrue more wealth, all at the expense of the poor.

Whether one places the beginning of capitalism in the heart of industrializing England or in the merchant classes of the Renaissance, by the time Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote about the problems of capitalism in 1848, the economic system was rooted firmly in place across Europe and the Americas.

Marxs point (one of many) was that slavery, feudalism, and capitalism have something very similar in common. In all of those systems, a very small number of people are in the catbird seat, says Richard Wolff, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a visiting professor at the New School in New York City.

Capitalisms initial promise, Wolff contends, was that it would replace slavery and feudalism, which is what formed the intellectual backdrop of the American and French revolutions. Many workers and even elites saw the end of these oppressive systems to be a step toward freedom. But deposing monarchies and freeing serfs often just resulted in the replacement of one overlord with another, as wealth transferred from the landed gentry to a new moneyed elite (who in some cases were the same people), and businesses were incentivized to keep their workers poor and powerless.

Capitalism is its own obstacle to achieving the very things capitalism promised in overthrowing feudalism and slavery, Wolff says.

Today, the workplace remains dehumanizing, even with more labor protections in place than in eras past.

The 40-hour work week was itself a compromise. Enacted in U.S. law in 1940, it was intended not to prevent laborers from working 16 hours a day, six or seven days a week, but to reduce unemployment by preventing one person from holding what is now the equivalent of two or more full-time jobs. Even today, there are enough loopholes in federal law that many employees simply cant clock out at 5 p.m. if they want to remain employed.

Pair this with a widespread societal notion that we must love our jobs, or find them fulfilling, and were set up with a disconnect, given that so many jobs are grinding, exhausting, demeaning, and even dangerous. Or they serve no purpose other than to perpetuate work. But we do them because we need the money.

As the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged our communities and upended the world economy, it became clear there was a demand for something new. Unregulated capitalism was shown to be broken: Supply chains shattered, workplaces became disease vectors, and relationships with families and friends were severed by death, chronic illness, and polarization.

The unemployment rate peaked at nearly 15% in April 2020, the highest recorded level since 1948, according to the Congressional Research Service. Between January and April of that year, more than 22 million non-farm jobs were lost. Other people found themselves labeled essential workers, forced to continue working in person in order to keep the meatpacking plants producing and the deliveries of food, toilet paper, and cleaning products dashing to the doors of middle-class people now working from the relative safety of their homes.

Frontline workers, especially in health care, child care, education, and public safetymany of whom are women, people of color, or bothhad to make significant adaptations to how they performed their jobs, and many health care workers experienced significantly higher levels of risk of infection, anxiety, depression, and burnout. Lacking government mandates, only some businesses offered hazard pay for those forced to work in close quarters, and even that meager benefit quickly expired.

One notable effect of this radical societal reordering has come to be termed the Great Resignation. More than 47 million people in the U.S. voluntarily quit their jobs in 2021, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. And while many of those workers quit because theyre fed up with an unrewarding job, others are rethinking the overall role of work in their lives, or fighting to improve their working conditions by forming labor unions at companies like Amazon and Starbucks, or even staging walkouts at non-unionized workplaces.

The pandemic proved to be the tipping point. Many of the people who died during the early stages of the pandemic were the essential workers in the service, health care, and manufacturing sectors: Those who kept the world moving while others had the privilege of staying home, says Angelica Geter, the chief strategy officer of the Black Womens Health Imperative in Atlanta.

Geter, who also holds a doctorate of public health, says that this was mostly Black and Brown workers, and especially women.

Most workers who died from COVID in 2020, before vaccines became available, were in retail, service, or blue-collar jobs that offered no opportunities for remote work.

According to one 2022 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, most workers who died from COVID in 2020, before vaccines became available, were in retail, service, or blue-collar jobs that offered no opportunities for remote work. Nearly 45% of non-White women in low-wage jobs worked in the service industry, and about 60% of men of any race in low-wage jobs worked in blue-collar professions.

Another study documented the death rate of Black workers being higher than any other racial group and found that among essential workers, those higher rates were also because Black people are disproportionately represented among many jobs that expose them to higher risks of infection.

The decision for many of those people was simple: go to work and risk illness, or stay at home with their families and risk impoverishment. The pandemic exposed the inequalities that we already knew about but seldom saw in such stark terms.

Thats exactly what COVID did, Geter says. It painted the whole picture and brought it forth.

The Black Womens Health Imperative was founded in 1983 to target the most pressing issues facing Black women and girls in the U.S. Its long-running initiatives include programs in diabetes prevention, HIV prevention and care, a network at historically Black colleges and universities, and distributing menstrual products in Black communities.

Frustration with discrimination, racism, and workplace toxicity, along with the cumulative negative health effects, boiled over when COVID exerted maximum pressure on the workplace and brought many people outside into the streets.

It was not a coincidence that years of frustration with discrimination, racism, and workplace toxicity, along with the cumulative negative health effects, boiled over when COVID exerted maximum pressure on the workplace and brought many people outside into the streets, first protesting poor working conditions, and then racism and police brutality.

Enough was enough, Geter says.

Most people dont make the connection between being overworked and the impact on your health, Geter adds. Recovery from burnout can take years, because it often has been compounded by the experience of discrimination. Even the expectation of discrimination or microaggressions in the workplace takes a mental and emotional toll, which can lead to precursors of heart disease, breast cancer, and other health conditions that disproportionately affect Black women.

When I go into an office of other people, I represent the entire Black community, Geter says. The stress of anticipation of thatit just wears on you.

Many companies tried to meet that need for their own workers with enhanced benefits during the pandemic and new diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

During 2020 we saw Fortune 500, Fortune 1,000 companies allocate billions of dollars to promote equity in their workplaces, Geter says. They needed tools and information and resources to know what to do with them.

But DEI programs alone arent enough to make sustainable changes. There are still too many barriers that keep people of color out of promotions, hiring opportunities, pay increases, and retention. Education is needed, but so is accountability, and the funding to pay for both.

If we dont create change that empowers the people who have the least amount of privilege and experience discrimination the most, we will see the same issues over and over again, Geter says.

The Health Imperatives answer to that was to develop a multipart initiative, including an employee-centered wellness toolkit for businesses that highlights workplace culture, training, hiring, and research that centers the voices of Black womenin an effort to reduce the physical, mental, and emotional harm that so many experience in their workplace environments.

Tiffany Jana, a writer, speaker, and pleasure activist who has consulted with businesses for nearly 20 years to create more human-centered workplaces, also says its necessary that businesses recognize what their employees are going through in the present day, not just as employees, but as full human beings.

What I think is missing from the workplace is the acknowledgement and the honoring of, essentially, the sanctity of humanity, Jana says. Everyone who chooses to raise their hand and then come and work for your company, thats a deeply sacred gift, thats an incredibly special, beautiful thing that we have failed to honor appropriately.

Another consideration for businesses in creating a more people-centered workplace lies in their structure as profit-making enterprises. Jana has incorporated two of their three companies as B Corps that adhere to triple-bottom-line accounting: focusing as much on social and environmental concerns as profits.

Over the last, say, eight, nine years, the pressure has been coming up from the bottom. [People] within organizations and institutions are saying, Wait a minute, you know, we really love the work, we really love the company, but we dont feel like were being valued, Jana says. And theyve been demanding culture-based work to help create an environment that is more gracious and welcoming and human-centered.

If the current trend in workplace evolution is toward a more human-centered environment, the question then becomes whether that evolution is possible in businesses whose only goal is to maximize profits for their shareholders. Wolff, who has studied and written extensively about the history of capitalism and socialism, says it isnt. But what can support a human-centered future is more worker-owned co-ops and democratic governance structures, and not just in small shops or artisan manufacturers.

Im not sure that scaling is all that big a deal, he says. If making big units is going to cost us the ability to have a democratic system, we should at least question the size, and if thats necessary.

The world already has seen how a smaller co-op can evolve into a larger but still democratic organization. Mondragn, a diversified corporation founded in 1956 in Spains Basque region, is the worlds largest worker-owned cooperative, with 80,000 employees, and incorporates democratic decision-making at all levels of the company.

It is arguably one of Spains most successful companies, with branches in 31 countries. It incorporates 96 self-governing cooperatives in sectors as wide-ranging as industry, retail, finance, and education.

Mondragn is only the largest example. About two-thirds of the 4.5 million people in the Italian region of Emilia Romagna, one of the wealthiest areas in the European Union, are co-op members, and they produce 30% of the regions gross domestic product.

Its a society in which co-ops and top-down businesses coexist peacefully.

Its a real laboratory for the question How could a society be a mixed society? Wolff says. Theyve normalized it.

In the U.S., examples of thriving co-ops include S Se Puede Womens Cooperative, a house- and office-cleaning cooperative run largely by Hispanic immigrant women. Founded in Brooklyn, New York, in 2006, the organization is now one of several immigrant-run cleaning cooperatives in the city.

The history of co-ops in the U.S. extends back to pre-colonization Indigenous communities, and practices created in the Black community after the Civil War, rooted in African traditions.

Indigenous societies were and still are much more communitarian. Strong ties to families and tribes keep many Native Americans in close proximity to their communities. That makes for some difficult choices: If forced to choose between having a job and building a career in a distant city, or returning to a rural reservation to care for family and participate in their culture, many choose the latter.

That also contributes to the level of unemployment in Indigenous societies, which is already the highest in the nation.

In one study, in which several members of Native reservations were interviewed about their work lives, the lead researcher, Ahmed Al-Asfour, then a professor at Oglala Lakota College and now the director of the Center for Workforce Development at Southern Illinois University, found that strong community ties often took priority in decisions about work.

As one participant said, it is all about we not I and this is a core belief for individuals living in collectivistic societies, Al-Asfour wrote.

Thats led to a mismatch between those ties and the expectations of the non-Native economy.

The discrimination highlighted in the interviews stresses the cultural tensions between Natives and non-Natives as the Natives culture, values, and traditions continue to be undermined and underscored by non-Natives, Al-Asfour wrote.

A wholesale evolution of capitalism into a more democratic system is possible, but it has to start with a shift in ideology, Wolff says.

Human beings have come to adapt to capitalism by thinking there is something necessary or logical or socially efficient by having the nature of work defined by and governed by profitability, he says.

In other words, we have bought into the idea that pay is equivalent to worth.

But that ideology doesnt measure all of the consequences of a human being who works: The effort of performing labor changes the body and mind of the worker, it changes people who interact with the worker, and it changes the natural environment.

If work were to be truly fully compensated, youd have to do what hasnt ever been done: Figure out all the effects, Wolff says.

That means structural change becomes as important as an ideological shift. If a business that makes a product loses its market, the business usually cuts workforce to preserve its profits. A democratically run co-op that prioritizes worker well-being might take a different actionchange products being made, retrain workers, or cut hours of work so production meets the existing demand.

This kind of structural changewhich is anathema in capitalismthis also would have to be in place. That would make this a much easier conversation, Wolff says.

Another key development would be a society that disassociates value from the workplace. Policies like universal health care or basic income would reduce the need for people to remain in dehumanizing jobs and allow them to pursue endeavors more in line with their value system.

Thats something Tiffany Jana has tried to pursue in their own life, designing their work to be fulfilling and complementary to their life, and encouraging others to follow that example.

When I meet people, I dont ask them, What do you do? or Where do you work? Jana says. I ask them, How do you spend your time? And it confuses the crap out of them.

Each of us has a beautiful opportunity, in this season, to decide how we want to define ourselves, how we want to contribute to this new societal structure, this new way of being, and then work diligently towards creating that change, Jana says.

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The Past, Present, and Future of Work - YES! Magazine

Both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are currently promoting the benefits of the deregulated special economic zones known as freeports, despite evidence that they encourage organised crime, money-laundering, drug-trafficking and terrorist finance, though admittedly the first three of these supposed problems appear to be common leisure activities for most Tory MPs. Im here all week! Try the Colombian!!

Joined-up thinking, or paranoia depending on your point of view, suggests the next logical step from freeports is charter cities, allowing whole regions to be run as corporate fiefs by big business, stripped of tiresome regulations in the pursuit of profit. As long ago as 2010, the rightwing Tufton Street-based Taxpayers Alliance thinktank proposed that Hull became our own version of a charter city [with] minimum wage, working-hours regulations, social benefits for working-age citizens, and central government planning regulations abolished. Businesses that have made themselves useful to the Tories will doubtless be the beneficiaries here, just as they were when the PPE billions were doled out with due diligence.

Could Boris Johnsons wedding venue donors at Daylesford Organic be given a south Devon section incorporating the whole of Dartmoor and the entire South Hams region? Could Ultimo, the lingerie company formerly owned by the Tory peer Michelle Mone, be handed the entire east Midlands from Burton upon Trent to Upper Broughton? Will the Tory-adjacent businesswoman Jacqueline Golds Ann Summers organisation be left to run the Humber sector from Spurn Head to Howden, including Hull? Can Matt Handcocks local pub landlord be allowed to do whatever he wants with both Needham Market and Clacton-on-Sea? And if this is the case, can these companies be trusted to respect the rights of the citizens of whom they will have dominion, when there are no regulations to protect them?

Should the people of Chagford and Yelverton be made to eat deregulated Daylesford Organic pork pies, which could possibly fuse with their genes at a subatomic level and turn them into half-human pig creatures? Should the people of Corby and Kettering be forced to wear untested Ultimo corsets, which could explode on contact with back sweat? Should people from Hull, and their orifices, be used as guinea pigs for untried, and potentially unsafe, Ann Summers sex toys, such as a turbo-charged, post-Brexit version of the Ann Summers bestseller the Anal Training Kit? As if Brexit wasnt enough of a disaster as it is, are these some of the new Brexit benefits currently rolling down the sewage outlet of post-Brexit Tory deregulation?

Its fun, isnt it, to joke about the Brexit Tories attempts to turn Britain into a horrible dystopia designed to make money for their friends at the expense of the environment, the arts, education, human rights and so forth. Ha! Ha! Ha! But, here at the Edinburgh fringe, I popped out between my own shows to see two Ukrainian standups in From Ukraine With Laughs. Pavlo Voytovych presented a slick club set with cosmopolitan, pan-European reference points that would chime in his adopted Berlin; Dima Watermelons deadpan absurdity was darkened by attempts to deal with the systematic stealing of his homeland, the militarised erasure of the culture he grew up in. It made me think about what it would be like to lose the country you loved. And I realised I was.

Its hysterical, of course, to compare the Brexit Tories stealthy but determined dismantling of the Britain we cherish with Putins physical assault on Ukraine. But if youve ever shown an interest in architecture, gardening or nature, doubtless the infiltrated algorithms of your social media feeds are steering you towards the respectable-looking Restore Trust organisation, which is reminding National Trust members to renew their memberships before 26 August, so they can vote in the charitys autumn AGM. All well and good, surely?

Nominally a forum where members and friends of the National Trust can discuss their concerns about the charitys future, the innocuous-sounding Restore Trust is in fact designed to stem the National Trusts drift towards wokeness (by addressing links between its sites and slavery, for example). Restore Trust backer Neil Record, for one, is a financier and sometime Tory donor who has funded the climate-denial lobby group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, also based on Tufton Street, and chairs Net Zero Watch, a thinktank spin-off on the same street lobbying to scrap net zero commitments. This is a worrying development given the vast tracts of land the National Trust manages and the millions of non-politically affiliated invertebrates in its keep. Butterflies dont care about unisex toilets. They just want the plants they lay their eggs on to flower when they are supposed to.

In last years National Trust board member elections, one of the six preferred candidates that Restore Trusts supporters hoped to vote into a position of influence was the self-styled reverend Stephen Green, who has supported the death penalty for gay sex in Uganda, believes all Muslims are going to hell and, when he was campaigning against a theatre piece I worked on decades ago, refused to shake the hand of a gay journalist because he knew where it had been. It is not known if Green believes garden design in National Trust properties should reflect one specific period in the houses history or attempt to illustrate many simultaneously. We do know, however, that he thinks it is impossible for a husband to rape his wife.

It seems bizarre that it is suddenly necessary for reasonable people, who probably only joined the National Trust because they like carrot cake and a firm hanging buttress, to make sure they vote in the organisations 5 November AGM to prevent fun days out in historic locations becoming weaponised as yet another front in the far rights culture war against everything nice. But we are where we are.

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National Trust members: get ready to choke on your carrot cake - The Guardian

No, because the face of a little girl in Bangladesh, or a little boy in Cambodia, and the thought of a nuclear blast going off close enough to them for them to lose their life, is enough. Again, this is a love letter. This is a love letter to all the civilians of the planet. Philipos Melaku-Bello, in response to a question from Jacob Morgan of Slate Plus about whether he had ever thought about ending his now-41-year-old antinuclear vigil outside the White House gates.

In conjunction with Stan Coxs In Real Time monthly dispatches with City Lights Books, I am working on an artwork titled Its Time, starting with a central image and adding drawings that expand the work outward, in concentric ovals, tracking the pivotal events of the next two years, month by month. As part of Its Time, I am also including images that portray people and events that have been either deliberately or lazily almost lost to the popular historical imagination but are still very much part of and connected to the existential kismet of the inhabitants of this heating Earth.

These portraits of human persistence are not actually lost, of course; rather, they serve as connecting threads to the present state of things. Both Tariq Ali and Gore Vidal wrote about this hole-in-history phenomenon and gave it their own labels: respectively, The Extreme Center and The United States of Amnesia.

These threads, frayed and forgotten as they are, must be acknowledged for their timeless place in history, and repaired. Because if we fail to do that, we cant move forward in creating a fairer, more just world. Reparations and justice are part of the same tapestry. Justice for the past goes hand in hand with justice for the present and future.

The first five portraits that Ive placed in this dark center of the Its Time series are those of John Brown, Leonard Peltier, Philipos Melaku-Bello, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Julian Assange.

If you notice, all of these five men, aside from having been thorns in the side of a state machinery that would rather they disappear from the annals of a dark, white-elitist history, happen to also have long gorgeous hair and/or beards. As if now theres physically more of these five men for the state to disappear. In this age of unrestrained, ecologically destructive growth, the one kind of growth I can wholeheartedly support is this nonviolent, defiant growth on the face and scalp!

Stan and I live in the heart of the conterminous United States. And as we all know, this heart was beating fast and hard on August 2nd when Kansans flocked to the polls and voted no on an amendment that would have stripped women of their right to an abortion. All eyes and ears of the country and the world were on Kansas that evening as the results were coming in, and we demonstrated via the ballot box that womens rights are human rights.

But this wasnt the first time that Kansas voted No on a moral issue of great consequence. On August 2, 1858, 164 years to the day before the abortion referendum, Kansans voted down a ballot initiative that would have legalized slavery in our then-territory. Which brings us to the first of these portraits, that of John Brown, who carried out his militant abolitionist action in Kansas in the three years leading up to the slavery vote, the era of Bleeding Kansas. Brown said No! to slavery and was hanged for it in December, 1859, a year before his vision was partially achieved and Kansas was finally admitted to the Union as a free state.

We all know of Leonard Peltier, Americas longest-held Indigenous political prisoner, who was wrongly convicted of the deaths of two FBI agents in June 1975 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Peltier, a member of the American Indian Movement, was there that day protecting his people against the white supremacists of the time and was handed two consecutive life sentences for it. Many witnesses whose testimony was used to convict him later admitted that FBI agents had coerced them into lying. In 2000, then-President Bill Clinton considered granting clemency to Peltier, but he was hounded by hundreds of FBI agents marching pathetically around the White House, so that put a stop to that.

It is quite possible that Philipos Melaku-Bello was present at the north side of the White House that December day as the agents marched. But how many of us have heard of him? I certainly did not know of him until this past Juneteenth weekend when Stan and I went to DC to join the Poor Peoples and Low-Wage Workers Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls. After the march, we saw Mr. Melaku-Bello and what he calls his makeshift tent outside the White House fence. He sat in a wheelchair wearing a Rasta cap and Freedom Bus Riders t-shirt, surrounded by human-rights and earth-rights photos, posters, and mementos going back decades. He had a needle and thread and was darning a black pouch adorned with pink and white hearts.

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Just beside him was a poster on which the number 40 had the 0 whited out and replaced with a 1, thereby announcing, 41 YEARS 24/7 ANTI-NUCLEAR PEACE VIGIL. Surviving thru: Rain or Shine; thru Hurricanes; Sleet; Hail; Blizzards; Tornados; H1N1; Coronavirus; 3 BLM Closures. Holders of the 24-Hour Permit for the Black Lives Memorial Fence.

Philipos told us that hes been sitting there since 1984, manning the William Thomas Memorial Peace Vigil, which was established in 1981. He has volunteers that help him maintain the vigil day and night. But the Feds are waiting, he emphasized in an interview with Slate Plus. Theyre waiting for it to be abandoned by way of snowfall, blizzard, hurricaneThats the way it can be taken away, by abandonment.

To me that 4-by-4 foot area that Philipos legally occupies holds within it everything that the moneyed elite of the post-industrial world have had a hand in perpetuating, to the point of no return. Everywhere I looked in that small square I saw messages and images seeking justice for the earth, the civilians of the planet, for Peltier, for Indigenous, and Black and Brown people, for Palestinians, for the poor, for the countless victims of war and displacement, and yes, for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Julian Assange. They were there too.

We know that Mumia will be free. We just want to delay Mumias release as long as possible. Maureen Faulkner, wife of Daniel Faulkner speaking at the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5.

Mumias fight for justice has been going on since 1981, the year Philipos anti-nuclear peace vigil was established. He has been appealing for a new trial in the shooting of Philadelphia Police officer Daniel Faulkner since then. Just a couple of days ago I got a newsletter from Mumia supporters at Prison Radio, which read that the current delays are a tactic designed to prevent justice and delay accountability Fighting to keep Mumia in prison is all about limiting exposure. It is all about preserving the fiction that decades of mass incarceration prosecuted by former Philadelphia police chief and mayor Frank Rizzo and former governor of Pennsylvania Ed Rendell are not tainted by police and prosecutorial misconduct. The goal is to prevent the white hot spotlight on Philadelphias long sordid racist history. Having had double bypass surgery in 2021, Mumia has a life-expectancy of 5 years. He will be back in court on October 19.

The United States uses the whole earth as a petri dish for its bottomless extractive and exploitative pursuits and leaves people like Brown, Peltier, Melaku-Bello, Abu-Jamal and Julian Assange, respectively, with a noose; 45 years behind bars and counting; a 4x4 not-to-be-abandoned liberated space; 41 years behind bars and counting; and a possible jail term of 175 years for exposing U.S. war crimes to the world.

What they couldnt tolerate was when Julian Assange was sent video footage which showed an Apache helicopter in Baghdad killing civilians. Ordinary people. That is the principal reason, the exposure of war crimes that caused outrage especially in the intelligence agencies of the United States. Tariq Ali, AlJazeera, August 15.

Was it any coincidence that Assange was clutching a book titled 'Gore Vidal: History of the National Security State in his hand as he was being physically dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London and into a police van in April, 2019? He was trying to send a message. Is it a coincidence that Melaku-Bello was sitting there like a cuddly Rasta Buddha repairing an old pouch? Maybe it was a subconscious message telling us that we need to repair the present and the past for a fairer, more just future.

Whether its criminalization of abolitionism or criminalization of abortion, it isnt hard for one to connect the dots of time to see a pattern emerge. A pattern extinguishing any sparks of accountability for the status quo.

Death by hanging for being an abolitionist; 45 years and counting for being Indigenous; an open air jail cell for a non-violent civil disobedience vigil; 41 years and counting for being Black; and possibly 175 years for exposing war crimes. Thats American justice for you. And how many years does the state give the earth for exposing climate crimes? Well know in less than two years wont we?

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Lost Yet Connected in Time: Brown, Peltier, Melaku-Bello, Abu-Jamal, and Assange - LA Progressive