[slowlexrese]

September 13, 2011

U.S. Poverty Rate, 1 in 6, at Highest Level in Years

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

The portion of Americans living in poverty last year rose to the highest level since 1993, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, fresh evidence that the sluggish economic recovery has done nothing for the country’s poorest citizens.

An additional 2.6 million people slipped below the poverty line in 2010, census officials said, making 46.2 million people in poverty in the United States, the highest number in the 52 years the Census Bureau has been tracking it, said Trudi Renwick, chief of the Poverty Statistic Branch at the Census Bureau.

That figure represented 15.1 percent of the country.

The poverty line in 2010 was at $22,113 for a family of four.

“It was a surprising large increase in the overall poverty rate,” said Arloc Sherman, senior researcher at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “We see record numbers and percentages of Americans in deep poverty.”

And in new evidence of economic distress among the middle class, real median household incomes declined by 2.3 percent in 2010 from the previous year, to $49,400. That was 7 percent less than the peak in 1999 of $53,252.

“A full year into recovery, there were no signs of it affecting the well being of a typical American family,” said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard. “We are well below where incomes were in the late 1990s.”

According to the census figures, the median annual income for a male full-time, year-round worker in 2010 — $47,715 — was virtually unchanged from its level in 1973, when the level was $49,065, in 2010 dollars, said Sheldon H. Danziger, professor of public policy at the University of Michigan.

“That’s not about the poor and unemployed, that’s full time, year round,” Professor Danziger said. Particularly hard hit, he said, have been those who do not have college degrees. “The median, full-time male worker has made no progress on average.”

The youngest members of households — those ages 15 to 24 — lost out the most, with their median income dropping by 9 percent. The recession continued to push Americans to double up in households with friends and relatives, especially those ages 25 to 34, a group that experienced a 25 percent increase in the period between 2007, when the recession began, and 2011. Of that group, 45.3 percent were living below the poverty line, when their parents’ incomes were not taken into account.

“We’re risking a new underclass,” said Timothy Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research and Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Young, less educated adults, mainly men, can’t support their children and form stable families because they are jobless.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us...gewanted=print

[Hbkj89D2]

Reminds me of this post.

[WenPyclenoWex]

Just read through those posts; it is astonishing that people really believe that crap. That is how people like Rick Perry get elected.

[Vegeinvalge]

Now when you compare it to total combined worth and see that the number of $$ has not paced the increase in poverty, you are heading up to a modern day French Revolution.

It is strange how easy it is to convince the "average Joe" that it is somehow American to give "absolute freedom" to individuals and companies when they seem to forget about the textile warehouses, coal mines and railroad industry. They look at other countries and say "well, that is not how WE do it" but yet balk at any allusion to "socialism". (While at the same time scream bloody murder if anyone touches Social Security, well, touches it in a way that will take it away from them, not in a way that will eliminate its trust fund for vapid savings and reduction in corporate taxes for a few years).

There is a big problem, however. How are we going to be able to keep a large, undereducated workforce working in modern day America? It is one thing to say that they will have to give up on some luxuries that we take as commonplace now (HDTV, hell, I remember when CABLE TV was a luxury!), but that is not everything. We want 99¢ lettuce, but scream about migrant (illegal) labor.

We scream about joblessness, but refuse to take the crappy jobs that are out there that are being forced to be crappy because of our own unwillingness to pay... vicious cycle. Hell, I just had a bit of leftover roast chicken with rice and broccoli from Costco. The chicken was $5. The whole thing! And the other stuff, cheap as well. We have gotten so used to that we are unwilling to give up on wireless internet access in order to allow our farm workers to be able to afford to feed themselves.

There are just too many things in this loop to simply point a finger and say "There he is!" But we need to stop sitting on our asses and find a way to turn this around or we will not be able to sustain this growing imbalance and shift in the job markets.

[favwebbb]

Activist's harsh words make waves

Are the poor desperate? A media myth, he says.

September 04, 2011

by Alfred Lubrano

The poor are not so bad off.

Many have DVD players, air conditioners, cellphones, refrigerators, and cable television. Hunger and homelessness afflict relatively few.

So says Robert Rector, a well-known conservative writer/activist and tea-party darling.

He contends that media outlets mislead Americans into thinking the poor are desperate when, in fact, most people below the federal poverty level - $22,050 a year for a family of four - live relatively comfortable lives.


Countering Rector's claims, experts who study poverty call his work "pseudo-social science" and accuse him of twisting facts to promulgate a right-wing agenda.
Regardless of how he's perceived, Rector is known for having the ear of U.S. policymakers.

For 20 years, Rector, 60, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, has huddled with Republicans in Congress to devise plans to limit benefits for the poor.

Many credit his analysis of American poverty for helping to alter the welfare system in 1996, when it morphed from an entitlement program to one that requires recipients to get jobs or training.

"What Grover Norquist is to income taxes, Rector is to poverty programs," said Sheldon Danziger, director of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan. Norquist is the antitax advocate who claims 236 U.S. House members and 41 senators as signatories to his famous no-tax-increase pledge.

"Rector is very, very influential with House Republicans and has been for years," Danziger said.

Rector's latest report for the Heritage Foundation - centered on air conditioners and other "amenities" among the poor - was released in July and has been widely disseminated in newspapers around America.

Conservative radio and television personalities, including Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, often cite Rector's work.

"It is really extraordinary to think about these conveniences that are enjoyed by these people," O'Reilly recently said in reference to Rector's statement that 78 percent of poor families have air-conditioning and 64 percent have cable or satellite TV.

That's echoed by conservative activists and bloggers such as Jennifer Stefano, cochair of the Loyal Opposition of PA, a tea-party group in the Philadelphia suburbs.

"If you can afford a microwave and cable TV, I don't see how the government can call you poor," Stefano said. "The idea of poverty is not what most Americans think it is."

http://ht.ly/6n0wB

[satthackacibe]

To people who are working and just scraping by, the concept of people lying comfortably in the safety net, regardless of that being reality of not, is very grating. The same with the appearance of featherbedded gov't jobs. Somewhat strangely, to a lot of these people, the rich got that way because they worked for and deserve it. It's any appearance of rewarded lazyness that drives them nuts.

[IssuessBratte]

Re: the article.

True. Poverty IMHO is not so much about income.

But this Robert Rector fellow still doesn't get it.

If I did not have easy access to good fresh produce, if I did not have extensive public transportation, if I did not have good free medical care, if I did not have a good library, inexpensive cultural events, attractive architecture and good urban design that allows me to live without a car, a nice park nearby, a low crime rate... etc...if I did not have those things, I would consider myself to be poor.

[enactolaelant]

You need income if you have a family.

To people who are working and just scraping by,

Why the third person? What do you think?

[kubekniekubek]

It's silly to think of a microwave as being an American luxury. You can pick them up for $30.00 and I'm sure some people have them in lieu of an oven, similar to how some poor people used to have toaster ovens to prepare food. Also this kind of statement conveniently ignores the rural poor, which I'm sure are more hard pressed than the typical urban poor person.

[salomal-qask]

You need income if you have a family.

Why the third person?

I'm not just scraping by. But I go on other forums that cover other subjects, where people who are have been posting. This is the impression I get from them.



What do you think? I tend to agree, but you can't have everything. If you have a safety net, there are alway a certain % of people who will lay in it and do nothing to get themselves out, and develop and entitlement mentality. If you don't have it, you get patches of the third world squalor showing up here.

[alecaf]

You do have to admit that what constitutes poverty here is orders of magnetude better than what it would be in, say, Somalia. It's more poverty in the relative sense than absolute.

It's silly to think of a microwave as being an American luxury. You can pick them up for $30.00 and I'm sure some people have them in lieu of an oven, similar to how some poor people used to have toaster ovens to prepare food. Also this kind of statement conveniently ignores the rural poor, which I'm sure are more hard pressed than the typical urban poor person.

[Heacechig]

I tend to agree, but you can't have everything. If you have a safety net, there are alway a certain % of people who will lay in it and do nothing to get themselves out, and develop and entitlement mentality. If you don't have it, you get patches of the third world squalor showing up here.

Do you feel the same way about what corporations have done, and how they've been subsequently treated, over the last few years?

[Investblogger]

You do have to admit that what constitutes poverty here is orders of magnetude better than what it would be in, say, Somalia. It's more poverty in the relative sense than absolute.

You can't really define absolute poverty.

[WapSaibiar]

One serious illness, one bad accident, perhaps the birth of a child, can easily tip the lives of those living month to month to month.

[Aeaefee]

If you do not know if you will have enough money the next week to eat... THAT is poverty.

Just because there are individuals out there that "ruin it" for everyone, does not mean the majority are like them.

Also, one thing these studies fail to mention are how many of these people have AC, can pay the electric bill for it, have a microwave, have enough money for food to put in it, and have cable TV so they can watch Fox et all make light of their situation?

A refrigerator is a LUXURY? (It is an item listed in the same book) If you are working a minimum wage job, and some other off-the books cash and carry crap labor, you do not exactly have the time to go shopping every two days for your food.

This study is false in that it does not outline exactly how good these items are. Hell, by his standards, Bin Laden was living a "comfortable" life with his color TV and in-the-window AC unit.

Now what is also ironic is the detachment of the other facts siting the migration of funds to the upper class. NOT by hard work, but simply because you can earn more money when you HAVE more money to use. This rustic American fantasy of the hard worker making his way up and out of the masses to become one of the wealthy and prosperous is just that, a fantasy. Few have ever made this happen no matter how hard, or smart, they have worked and it is unfair to propagate this fallacy.



Now, all that said, there are problems in our system. What motivation is there to work if they cut your benefits OFF when you hit a certain level? Wouldn't it work better if your benefits slowly tapered off the more you earned so that you still got more money when you worked more hours? What about education and training? We just want to think that people will be able to get what they need "if they just worked hard enough"? We have no respect for education in this country at all levels. We take it as a punishment somehow and a burden to society to fund it.

There are just too many inconsistencies and gaps in our overall plan of action and too many pundits pointing fingers at the visible few to lay blame on.

Maybe one of these guys will acknowledge that a $50 used AC is small comfort when you are sitting beneath it on an empty stomach.

[OccumCymn]

If you're talking about bailouts, to some extent yes. Several big banks (Citi and BoA come immediately to mind) should have been taken over and sold off/liquidated. If you have other issues, be more specific.

Do you feel the same way about what corporations have done, and how they've been subsequently treated, over the last few years?

[kvitacencia]

Yeah, you can, deprivation to the point of iminent death by starvation is a pretty good absolute. That is pretty widespread around the world.

You can't really define absolute poverty.

[Abarricoss]

That's never been the dividing line in the USA.

But if that makes you feel better, it's one way to get over the issue.

[Metrujectiktus]

Thankfully.

But it does point out the difference in what we consider poverty, and what it is a lot of the rest of the world.

That's never been the dividing line in the USA.

But if that makes you feel better, it's one way to get over the issue.

[Farson]

If you're talking about bailouts, to some extent yes. Several big banks (Citi and BoA come immediately to mind) should have been taken over and sold off/liquidated. If you have other issues, be more specific.

There are many actions by corporations, such as holding municipalities hostage by threatening to leave unless they get concessions.

Not that they shouldn't be free to do these things, but they shouldn't have been given any special protective status.