General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A segment of DU is very invested in painting a dystopian picture of the US [View all]pennylane100
(3,425 posts)however, there are many places still devastated by the shipment of well paying jobs in many working class communities. Also, the lower unemployment rates do not tell the true picture. Yes, more people are now working, but many of them are minimum wage jobs that do not provide any benefits.
Companies like Walmart that employs hundreds of thousands of jobs, pay just above the minimum wage and keep many of their employees in part time positions that do not get benefits. They get huge tax breaks and subsidies to open new stores and then the government pays to subsidize the standard of living for their employees through food stamps, medical and housing assistance programs. Not to mention the billions of dollars in profit they get to store, tax free, in offshore banks.
Yes, we can use statistics to show that we have improved the overall picture but that does not take into account how that picture varies from place to place. The citizens of Downtown Detroit and Cleveland live a very different life than the citizens of San Francisco and Boston. The only bright spot in this picture is now we have the ACA, and we may lose large parts of that if either the Supreme Court or the republican run government take it away.