U.S. Economy Leaving Record Numbers In Severe Poverty [has reached a 32-year high]

[Purveyor]

By Tony Pugh

McClatchy Newspapers

(MCT)

WASHINGTON - The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen.

A McClatchy Newspapers analysis of 2005 census figures, the latest available, found that nearly 16 million Americans are living in deep or severe poverty. A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 - half the federal poverty line - was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.

The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That's 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period. McClatchy's review also found statistically significant increases in the percentage of the population in severe poverty in 65 of 215 large U.S. counties, and similar increases in 28 states. The review also suggested that the rise in severely poor residents isn't confined to large urban counties but extends to suburban and rural areas.

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income of working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

---END OF EXCERPT---

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/politics/16760637.htm

[BayCityProgressive]

1. time for a revolution

free market capitalism has been a grotesque failure.

[Cleita]

2. I think the problem is that there hasn't been

free market capitalism, but corporate sucking on the government tit and calling it capitalism. Just IMHO.

[City Lights]

6. Bingo.

:thumbsup:

Corporate welfare must end!

[Tigress DEM]

10. Agreed that it ain't free market capitalism...

But I think the neocon guv'ment has become the K Street Whore and it sucks a whole lot more than tit these days.

It would be cheaper if big bidness just took their chances. Having to pay for elections and tailor made bills may be safer for them in the long run (until caught) but great gobs of money that could be used to make their products better, pay their workers living wages and such are just leaking out of this administration's hands faster than they can fill them.

[Selatius]

18. Free market capitalism is an unattainable goal.

If you established any market, invariably competition breaks down at the end. The result is either an oligopoly or a monopoly in the market, and what's worse is the owners of capital routinely use the power of government to legitimize their exploitation and solidify their hold on capital and the market, but the government was originally there to defend the interests of the people, not the owners of capital.

[tbyg52]

19. Bingo

And that's where we are today. Time for another round of trust-busting. Long overdue, actually.

[Clark2008]

21. In other words, FACISM.

[rman]

27. Yes, the paradox of capitalism;

competition elliminates competition.

Not a paradox really, it's just that capitalism is a scam.

[arikara]

8. Capitalism

another word for corporatism. Fascism revived under another name.

[Tigress DEM]

11. I don't know if it HAS to be as awful as it is now.

The idea that people can get out and work and make their own life better according to their persistence has some merit.

The idea that the supply/demand of the market should drive the prices based on the quality of the product or at least the salesmanship of the company is completely terrible.

However, when a government abandons Democratic principles and lets the corporations run over the people it has sworn to protect, then capitalism is everything you say it is.

And of course, with the bozos in charge, it is what it is.

[area51]

17. "economic expansion"

The only "economic expansion" I see is in other countries where traitorous republinazis are shipping our jobs. Our economy's in the shitter.

[malaise]

22. Bingo

the flaws in the Soviet version of communism have long been exposed but the pro-corporation model of capitalism pushing the Hayek minimalist state has been an absolute disaster across the globe. This too will pass.

[Reterr]

3. k&r.eom

[brettdale]

4. someone should send this to cauvto of faux news

I wonder if these people think Bush*t is a wall street rock star.

[nam78_two]

5. Off to the GP with an R

and a :kick:....

[babylonsister]

7. What a travesty, and dare I say this has been predicted?

:cry:

[Jcrowley]

9. K&R n/t

[Bozita]

12. This rising tide lifts only the yachts

The small boats, anchored to the sea floor, are getting swamped.

[Porcupine]

13. There were no homeless 32 years ago.

The prison population was 1/3 of what it is now on a per capita basis. There really was no such thing as a homeless child in america and they were never seen at soup kitchens.

The poor are much worse off now than they were then.

[Nikki Stone1]

14. Real wages have been steadily going down

Much of the lower middle has ended up impoverished

[raccoon]

25. While I agree with your basic premise, I question that there were

NO homeless then. Certainly there were fewer.

"The poor are much worse off now than they were then. "

Yes. At least in the Depression many people could grow food for themselves.

[nam78_two]

15. ...

:kick:

[Wednesdays]

16. They should also measure by net worth as well as income...

because I'll bet the disparity is even worse.

[salin]

20. two, three, or four jobs for everyone!

Yep more and more folks need to work multiple jobs to avoid this plight, but of course to do so those jobs have to be available - AND one has to be able to work multiple jobs.

And yet the wingnuts in the media and Jr himself opine aloud pondering why Americans just don't see how "great" this economy really is - and that the answer must be the liberal media.

That must be it - the problem is that stories like this get into the papers, rather than the real problem being the story covered. :crazy:

[Thothmes]

23. Poverty

I wonder if the dollar figures take into account the value of AFDC, WIC, Food stamps, etc or just the cash income the individual reports.

[raccoon]

26. Don't know, but the gov't's official measure of povery is ridiculous.

[Blackhatjack]

24. The shift of tax burdens from corporate/investment income to workers helped create this...n/t

[spanone]

28. What???? Why our Pretzelnut says this economy is Robust, Robust, I tell you!

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[Yavin4]

29. The True Real Story Is That Jobs No Longer Lift People Out of Poverty

There was an old saying that the best anti-poverty program is a job. That's no longer true. Outsourcing and the use of illegal immigrant labor have made having a job a useless tool for lifting oneself out of poverty. Even the middle class is defined largely by their ability to stay one step ahead of their debts instead of their lifelong income.

The real conflict that we will have to face is to live with an economy where having a job is almost meaningless to economic survival, and the major political consequences of that realization.

[Herman74]

30. In the Middle of the 2001 Recession, The Decider decided to...

...return through a tax cut the budget surplus that Clinton had left him, returning it not to those most vulnerable in a recession (the poor and the middle class), but to the wealthy. All undoubtedly in the name of Jesus Christ.

Things haven't been the same since.

[blues90]

31. I don't know even a single person can live on 10,000 a year

I suppose if you live with someone or have nothing and real cheap rent then maybe . Poverty should be less than 25,000 . With 300 million in the US I suppose they feel 16 million is somehow acceptable . I wonder if they considered the people in new orleans and the miss gulf in this .

I feel their estimate is far from true .