50 Years After the War on Poverty, Will the Middle Class Become the New Poor?

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/50-years-after-war-poverty-will-middle-class-become-new-poor



Fifty years ago today, LBJ threw down the gauntlet on poverty in his famous State of the Union address of 1964. Fired with passion and buoyed by bipartisan support, his anti-poverty team kicked off new health insurance programs for the old and the poor, increased Social Security, established food stamps and nutritional supplements for low-income pregnant women and infants, and started programs to give more young people a chance to succeed, like Head Start and Job Corps.

Americans have greatly benefited from big-picture economic changes like the minimum wage; investments in worker training and education; civil rights policies; social insurance; and programs like food stamps and Medicaid. As Georgetown University’s Peter Edelman pointed out in the New York Times, without these programs, research shows that poverty would be nearly double what it is today. According to economist Jared Bernstein, Social Security alone has reduced the official elderly poverty rate from 44 percent, which it would be without benefits, to 9 percent with them.

Some of our most prominent citizens have enjoyed protection from life’s vagaries through one or another of these measures. President Obama’s family once survived on food stamps. Congressman Paul Ryan was able to pay for school with Social Security survivor benefits when his dad died. A mere generation before, the workhouse or the orphanage might have been their fates.

Yet middle-class Americans are increasingly in danger of learning about poverty firsthand.

Middle-Class Tightrope

The gaps between the rich and poor are the widest they have been in a century, and the middle class is disappearing into the chasm. According to research by economist Emmanuel Saez, the share of income that goes to the top 1 percent has more than doubled since 1964. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the top 1 percent has sucked up nearly all of the income gains in the first three years of the “recovery" — a stupifying 95 percent. The fluidity of American society used to be taken for granted, but now the U.S. lags behind Europe in measurements of mobility.

[BobUp]

1. I began to sit up

and take notice of this when Lou Dobbs was with CNN, in his journalism of War On The Middle Class.

[TBF]

2. When you have one family

controlling over 40% of the income in the country you are not on the right track ...

Maybe 10% of the country has any expectation of "American Dream" right now - and a lot of that is due to family wealth or tech stocks. The rest are doing their best to get by from day to day. That doesn't sound anything like middle class paradise to me.

[baldguy]

3. I forget who said it on Chris Hayes last night - but the War on Poverty only lasted about 10 yrs.

Remember, Nixon got in & started to cut back in '68 and it was pretty much over when Reagan got in.

[dembotoz]

4. many already there

[CFLDem]

5. Yes

[Mass]

6. Will they? Where does this person live? They are.

Also, it does not help that liberals and democrats want to put 70 % of the population in the middle class, making it an useless notion. If you live in food stamps, you are not middle class (you may have been, but you are no more in this case). If you earn $200,000 a year, even in NY City, you are not middle class either.

Also, putting Social Security/Medicare and SNAP/TANF in the same category defeats us. Social Security/Medicare is something that people have for the long term. The goal of any progressive should be to see TANF/SNAP as stop gap measures and the goal of a progressive should be to get these people a job on which they can live without them as soon as they can (yes, this is the GOP's rhetoric, but it should be more than a rhetoric for progressives who should do something about it, not just propose measures that will not pass. (Asking federal contractors to pay their employees at least $11 an hour should be a good first step).

Sadly, we are far from this, and Democrats seem intent to confuse things even more.

[politicman]

7. remove all lobbying

The war on poverty will never yield results as long as thr rich have as much power in Washington as they do.

Corporations are making all-time high profits, yet wages have actually gone down.
Actually that is not completely true, wages have gone down for middle class YET keep skyrocketing for the richest.


The only way for the war on poverty to yield results is if election reform where both parties get the same amount to campaign on and no political contributions are allowed.

Make the rich focus on making money through good business practices again rather than through lobbying Congress to pass legislation that will benefit them more than anyone.

[hobbit709]

8. the middle class will become part of the old poor.

[Romulox]

9. Have I told you about my Kia Soul??? nt

[reddread]

10. there is no war on poverty, and there is no middle class

subscribing to these abandoned, falsehood notions as if they exist serves their purposes perfectly.
there IS a war on the poorest of the poor, and since not enough will stand up for them,
dont expect anyone to stand up for you. you know the old saying.
willing participants in being played, even when its game over.

[Triana]

11. Most likely. Because those in war against the middle class are hellbent on increasing poverty.

Until or unless someone stops them. Problem is, most of the gov't works exclusively for them.

[riversedge]

12. I was listening to cspan call in earlier today about this issue. It pained me to

hear some very vile comments from the callers about the program and about the less well-off in general.

[GeorgeGist]

13. The War on Progress best Ambassador.