AFRO Dollar is now a DIGITAL Dollar
A new MOBILE "Digital Currency"
MISSION: Build wealth and transform select African American communities and low-moderate income economic distressed urban, rural and rust-belt communities in the United States.
Increase home-ownership, social entrepreneurship, savings rates, small business development, and human capital development by introducing new innovative and disruptive financial products.
VISION: Create self-sustainable, economic viable communities to enrich the lives of it residents, to eliminate abject poverty, and local un-underemployment in their neighborhoods.
The Company believes that economic distressed low-moderate income communities in the United States are starved for financial, social, economic and human capital to sustain the American way of life.
AFRO Digital Cash provides "Financial Inclusion" for all community economic stakeholders (residents, business, non-profits, churches) regardless of wealth or income. The un-banked and underbanked will now have access to banking, lending, and other financial services. The AFRO Digital Cash is a US dollar and global cash platform. The Company developed a real time instant payment platform for each transaction.
The Company
AFRO DOLLAR Inc. American Freedom Resources Opportunity, a Illinois corporation (“Company”) is organized as a Local Community Currency Institution (LCCI) that will have federally insured deposits backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government. The Company will partner with FDIC insured-only financial institutions to introduce its innovative and disruptive financial products and services.
The Company’s principal business activity is developing and introducing a Community Digital Financial and Economic platform ("AFRO Platform") that will transform the low-moderate income communities by providing the following:
Financial Inclusion for all citizens; Mobile money/currency transfers, small business lending, consumer lending, payments-(C2B,B2B,C2G,P2P), merchant billing, community economic analysis, human capital development, local economic development, and business finance development.
The main purpose of the A.F.R.O. Dollar is to create a "economic partnership" in the community between its stakeholders (residents, businesses, churches, and nonprofit organizations) to shop and spend dollars locally to strengthen their community.
In return for shopping locally, the circulation of the A.F.R.O. dollars help solve social and economic ills the local distressed communities.
This spending and recycling of A.F.R.O. Digital Dollars will create a community wealth effect, and the velocity of the A.F.R.O. money will increase economic activity in the local communities. In return for shopping locally, each merchant agrees to donate a percentage of the sale (community loyalty) to the local community fund (for solving local social and economic ills), also each merchant will reward a percentage sale or discount dollars (consumer loyalty-reward dollars) to the customer. The customer will spend their reward/loyalty dollars with the issuing merchant or shop at other participating merchants on the network.
Background: African American Face Reserve Obligation Inc. (creator of the A.F.R.O Dollar)
The African American Face Reserve Obligation Inc. created a new type of money (paper printed based money) called the A.F.R.O. Dollar. The paper currency created denomination of $1, $5, $10, $20 bills, with Africa American portraits vignettes Booker T. Washington ($1), Louis Armstrong ($5), George Washington Carver ($10) and Fredrick Douglass ($20).
AFRO Dollar is the principal founder of the local community currency movement in the United States. This alternative and complimentary local currency is the only currency received approval by the United States Attorney General, US Treasury, Secret Service bureau.
Each AFRO Dollar is backed by a US Dollar; in that a participating bank/s holds a corresponding US Dollar for each circulating AFRO Dollar. The AFRO Dollar process is that the participating bank/s would distribute/exchange/sell A.F.R.O Dollars for U.S. Dollars to local residents in the community, the US Dollars will be held by the participating bank/s for redemption by merchants .
The A.F.R.O. Dollar become one of the early pioneers and founder of the local currency movement, and the only US approved circulating currency, The Company believes the AFRO unique design and security features were eventually adopted in the modern US currency design.
Two (2) economic models were developed from African American Face Reserve Obligation Inc. (A.F.R.O.); a proprietary community economic/finance/information model called (“DPVC model”) DPrice Velocity Community model, and a new type of financial organization called the Local Community Currency Institution (LCCI) with its finance economic model to track community economic leakage and the multiplier effect of A.F.R.O. Dollars in the community, these models were developed by our Chairman, Founder, Derric Price.
Extreme Poverty on the Rise in the United States
A new study from the National Poverty Center finds that 1.65 million American households are living in “extreme poverty,” and these households include 3.55 million children. Using a World Bank definition, the research defines “extreme poverty” as surviving on less than $2 per day, per person, each month. This measure is roughly 13% of the official U.S. poverty threshold. The study utilizes data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) between 1996 and 2011.
Between 1996 and 2011, the period directly after welfare reform ended cash entitlement for poor families for children, the number of families living on $2 or less in cash income (per person, per day) rose from 636,000 to 1.65 million. This represents a growth rate of 159%. In 1996, households in extreme poverty made up just 1.7% of all households. This figure increased to 3% by 2010 and reached 4.3% by mid-2011.
The researchers also assessed the impact of federal transfer benefits on extreme poverty. When including Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in income calculations, the number of extremely poor households increases at a slower place, by 80%, from 475,000 households in 1996 to 857,000 households in 2011. When refundable tax credits and housing subsidies are counted as income, the rate of extreme poverty growth slows even further, with the number of households living in extreme poverty grows from 409,000 in 1996 to 613,000 in 2011. Overall, the existence of major means tested aid programs prevented an estimated 2.38 million children from experiencing extreme poverty.
In mid-2011, about 47.5% of households living in extreme poverty were white non-Hispanic, and 46% were African-American or Hispanic. However, when adjusting for means-tested subsidy programs, the proportion of households living in extreme poverty and headed by white non-Hispanics rises to 61.2%. A higher percentage of households living in extreme poverty in 2011 were headed by a single female (50.8%), compared to married couples (36.5%). However, when adjusting for means tested programs, the proportion of extremely poor households headed by a single female drops to below one-third of all households in extreme poverty.
According to study authors, the loss of a cash safety net is a contributing factor to the increase of extreme poverty across the country, combined with slow economic growth and major job losses throughout the Great Recession. Further research is needed to identify the extent to which these factors have contributed to the rising incidence of extreme poverty at the household level.
The working paper, Rising Extreme Poverty in the United States and the Response of Federal Means-Tested Transfer Programs, is available on the National Poverty Center’s webpage: http://bit.ly/10eBzgg
Founder's Note:
I founded the African American Community Trust, 27 years ago with the purpose of providing community support and research that will solve some community problems such as unemployment, lack of local business development. and identifying the economic and political forces tamping the growth and progress of low-income communities, and their human capital
However, with boots on the ground, talking to community residents, small businessman, you quickly discover, that the academics and their training did not solve or identify these special black community problems. The current academic tools and models are inadequate to provide solutions to current problems and past violations in the low income communities, especially African American communities.
The Black American community is the only community in America where investment in their own community was prohibited, unlawful by local custom, punishable by death or jail by federal and state government laws and policies. These control mechanism are social, economic, and legal, that provided the framework and conditions from the founding of American slave system and the post-slavery American economic apartheid (Jim-crow)era.
The effects of the past detrimental legal economic systems are still in place in the 21st century. Because academia inadequate models and tools cannot solve these problems, the brightest students are not trying to start small businesses, or serve neighborhood interests, but set their goals aimed at the academic focused training of the corporate world and government.
The Black America strong Cultural Characteristics provide solutions to most of the economic and social ills, in the community. However, the larger and majority society, (corporations, local and federal governments), continue to sway an economic stranglehold on the Black community. The American Capitalist economic systems, does not provide meaningful access to Capital, (financial, education, land, human) or capital formation alternatives to 40 Million of its citizens, African Americans.
Currently, in America there is still an attempt to undermine 40 Million of its citizens. It is statistically impossible that the Black community that has suffered so long, in a growing economy, not mirror some of the country's economic uplift.
The Black America economy can be measured in terms of it's own economic activity, the micro economic effects, economic leakage, personal consumption, the Gini effect, (inequality), local production and employment trends.
Though African-Americans have no language barriers that distinguish them from the total market, specific cultural nuances that make up the “black experience” are important to note for this ever-growing community.
AFRO Dollar mission to provide solutions, new models and disruptive products to solve these community problems and the structural issues.
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African-American Incomes Are Rising
With a current buying power of $1 trillion that is forecasted to reach $1.3 trillion by the year 2017, the importance of connecting with African-American consumers is more important than ever. As detailed in a new report published by Nielsen in collaboration with the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), black consumers have notable distinctions from other consumer groups, and understanding this group critical to making lasting connections.
Currently 43 million strong, African-American consumers have unique behaviors from the total market. For example, they’re more aggressive consumers of media and they shop more frequently. Blacks watch more television (37%), make more shopping trips (eight), purchase more ethnic beauty and grooming products (nine times more), read more financial magazines (28%) and spend more than twice the time at personal hosted websites than any other group.
African-Americans make an average of 156 shopping trips per year, compared with 146 for the total market. Favoring smaller retail outlets, blacks shop more frequently at drug stores, convenience stores, and dollar stores. Beauty supply stores are also popular within the black community, as they typically carry an abundance of ethnic hair and beauty aids reside that cater specifically to the unique needs of African-American hair textures. Overall, health and beauty supply stores have an average household penetration rate of 46 percent among African-Americans, and the average black household spends an average of $94 in this store channel each year, providing a significant opportunity to connect with black shoppers.
But it’s not just their purchasing behavior that’s unique. African-Americans also have distinct digital and mobile behaviors, as they spend 44 percent more time on education and career websites, and 71 percent of blacks own a smartphone, compared with 62 percent for the total U.S.
African-Americans love their smartphones. In fact, smartphone penetration is 5% higher among blacks than the total population (83% vs. 78%). In looking at popular mobile apps, Twitter was the third-most used app among African-American households earning $100,000 or more, spending nearly two hours and about 13 sessions on the mobile Twitter app per month.
As African-American incomes rise, their increase in spending on certain categories outpaces that of the total population. Categories where higher-income African-Americans outspend the total population in terms of percentage of income include future-oriented categories, such as insurance policies, pensions and retirement savings.
From movies to sports to music and everything in between, black culture resonates broadly extending deep, cultural traditions that span generations and all consumer groups. The power of black influence is something businesses and content creators should consider when developing strategic marketing campaigns and programs not only for African-American audiences, but for the general population, too.
Omissions from GDP data
There are many things which are not in GDP, including the following.
Transfer payments. For example, social security and pensions.
Gifts. For example, a $10 gift on your birthday.
Unpaid and domestic activities. If you cut your grass or paint your house the value of this productive activity is not recorded in GDP, but it is if you pay someone to do it for you.
Barter transactions. For example, the exchange of a sack of wheat for a can of petrol.
Second-hand transactions. For example, the sale of a used car (where the production was recorded in an earlier year).
Intermediate transactions. For example, a lump of metal may be sold several times, perhaps as ore, pig iron, part of a component and, finally, part of a washing machine (the metal is included in GDP once at the net total of the value added between the initial production of the ore and its final sale as a finished item).
Leisure. An improved production process which creates the same output but gives more recreational time is recorded in the national accounts at exactly the same value as the old process.
Depletion of resources. For example, oil production is recorded at sale price minus production costs and no allowance is made for the fact that an irreplaceable part of the nation's capital stock of resources has been consumed.
Environmental costs. GDP figures do not distinguish between green and polluting industries.`
Allowance for non-profit making and inefficient activities. The civil service and police force are valued according to expenditure on salaries, equipment, and so on (the appropriate price for these services might be judged to be very different if they were provided by private companies).
Allowance for changes in quality. You can buy very different electronic goods for the same inflation-adjusted outlay as a few years ago, but GDP data do not take account of such technological improvements.
One other point to note is that the more advanced government statistical agencies include in GDP an allowance for the imputed rent paid by home owner-occupiers. This avoids an apparent change in national output because of any switch between owner-occupation and renting.
Surveys and sampling
Many of the figures which go into GDP are collected by surveys. For example, governments ask selected manufacturing or retailing companies for details of their output or sales each month. This information is used to make inferences about all manufacturers or all retailers. Such estimates may not be correct, especially as the most dynamic parts of the economy are small firms constantly coming into and going out of existence, which may never be surveyed.
Unrecorded transactions
GDP may under-record economic activity, not least because of the difficulties of keeping track of new small businesses and because of tax avoidance or evasion.
Deliberately concealed transactions form the hidden or shadow economy. This is largest at times when, and in countries where, taxes are high and bureaucracy is smothering. Estimates of the size of the shadow economy vary enormously. For example, differing studies put the US's at 4 - 33%, Germany's at 3 - 28% and the UK's at 2 - 15%.