Ricter, clearly the only solution to this complex problem is tax cuts. And if that doesn't work, then great conservative minds will come together and propose even more tax cuts. And if that doesn't work...Quote from Ricter:
By HOPE YEN 07/22/12 11:26 AM ET AP
"WASHINGTON -- The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.
"Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.
"The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest since 1965.
"Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.
"I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I'm here, applying for assistance because it's hard to make ends meet. It's very hard to adjust," said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.
"Fritz says she grew up wealthy in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, but fortunes turned after her parents lost a significant amount of money in the housing bust. Stuck in a half-million dollar house, her parents began living off food stamps and Fritz's college money evaporated. She tried joining the Army but was injured during basic training.
"Now she's living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can't find work as a landscaper. They are struggling to pay their $650 rent on his unemployment checks and don't know how they would get by without the extra help as they hope for the job market to improve.
"In an election year dominated by discussion of the middle class, Fritz's case highlights a dim reality for the growing group in poverty. Millions could fall through the cracks as government aid from unemployment insurance, Medicaid, welfare and food stamps diminishes.
"The issues aren't just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy," said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.
"He pointed to the recent recession but also longer-term changes in the economy such as globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less unionization that have pushed median household income lower. Even after strong economic growth in the 1990s, poverty never fell below a 1973 low of 11.1 percent. That low point came after President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, launched in 1964, that created Medicaid, Medicare and other social welfare programs.
"I'm reluctant to say that we've gone back to where we were in the 1960s. The programs we enacted make a big difference. The problem is that the tidal wave of low-wage jobs is dragging us down and the wage problem is not going to go away anytime soon," Edelman said.
"Stacey Mazer of the National Association of State Budget Officers said states will be watching for poverty increases when figures are released in September as they make decisions about the Medicaid expansion. Most states generally assume poverty levels will hold mostly steady and they will hesitate if the findings show otherwise. "It's a constant tension in the budget," she said.
"The predictions for 2011 are based on separate AP interviews, supplemented with research on suburban poverty from Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution and an analysis of federal spending by the Congressional Research Service and Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute.
"The analysts' estimates suggest that some 47 million people in the U.S., or 1 in 6, were poor last year. An increase of one-tenth of a percentage point to 15.2 percent would tie the 1983 rate, the highest since 1965. The highest level on record was 22.4 percent in 1959, when the government began calculating poverty figures.
"Poverty is closely tied to joblessness. While the unemployment rate improved from 9.6 percent in 2010 to 8.9 percent in 2011, the employment-population ratio remained largely unchanged, meaning many discouraged workers simply stopped looking for work. Food stamp rolls, another indicator of poverty, also grew.
"Demographers also say:
_Poverty will remain above the pre-recession level of 12.5 percent for many more years. Several predicted that peak poverty levels â 15 percent to 16 percent â will last at least until 2014, due to expiring unemployment benefits, a jobless rate persistently above 6 percent and weak wage growth.
_Suburban poverty, already at a record level of 11.8 percent, will increase again in 2011.
_Part-time or underemployed workers, who saw a record 15 percent poverty in 2010, will rise to a new high.
_Poverty among people 65 and older will remain at historically low levels, buoyed by Social Security cash payments.
_Child poverty will increase from its 22 percent level in 2010.
"Analysts also believe that the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the poverty level, will remain near its peak level of 6.7 percent.
"I've always been the guy who could find a job. Now I'm not," said Dale Szymanski, 56, a Teamsters Union forklift operator and convention hand who lives outside Las Vegas in Clark County. In a state where unemployment ranks highest in the nation, the Las Vegas suburbs have seen a particularly rapid increase in poverty from 9.7 percent in 2007 to 14.7 percent.
"Szymanski, who moved from Wisconsin in 2000, said he used to make a decent living of more than $40,000 a year but now doesn't work enough hours to qualify for union health care. He changed apartments several months ago and sold his aging 2001 Chrysler Sebring in April to pay expenses.
"You keep thinking it's going to turn around. But I'm stuck," he said.
"The 2010 poverty level was $22,314 for a family of four, and $11,139 for an individual, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income, before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as home ownership, as well as noncash aid such as food stamps and tax credits, which were expanded substantially under President Barack Obama's stimulus package.
"An additional 9 million people in 2010 would have been counted above the poverty line if food stamps and tax credits were taken into account.
"Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, believes the social safety net has worked and it is now time to cut back. He worries that advocates may use a rising poverty rate to justify additional spending on the poor, when in fact, he says, many live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.
"A new census measure accounts for noncash aid, but that supplemental poverty figure isn't expected to be released until after the November election. Since that measure is relatively new, the official rate remains the best gauge of year-to-year changes in poverty dating back to 1959.
"Few people advocate cuts in anti-poverty programs. Roughly 79 percent of Americans think the gap between rich and poor has grown in the past two decades, according to a Public Religion Research Institute/RNS Religion News survey from November 2011. The same poll found that about 67 percent oppose "cutting federal funding for social programs that help the poor" to help reduce the budget deficit.
"Outside of Medicaid, federal spending on major low-income assistance programs such as food stamps, disability aid and tax credits have been mostly flat at roughly 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product from 1975 to the 1990s. Spending spiked higher to 2.3 percent of GDP after Obama's stimulus program in 2009 temporarily expanded unemployment insurance and tax credits for the poor.
"The U.S. safety net may soon offer little comfort to people such as Jose Gorrin, 52, who lives in the western Miami suburb of Hialeah Gardens. Arriving from Cuba in 1980, he was able to earn a decent living as a plumber for years, providing for his children and ex-wife. But things turned sour in 2007 and in the past two years he has barely worked, surviving on the occasional odd job.
"His unemployment has run out, and he's too young to draw Social Security.
"Holding a paper bag of still-warm bread he'd just bought for lunch, Gorrin said he hasn't decided whom he'll vote for in November, expressing little confidence the presidential candidates can solve the nation's economic problems. "They all promise to help when they're candidates," Gorrin said, adding, "I hope things turn around. I already left Cuba. I don't know where else I can go."
U.S. Poverty On Track To Rise To Highest Since 1960s
- Thread starter Ricter
- Start date
Wage stagnation comes down to globalization and reiterative bubbles orchestrated by the Federal Reserve to mask growing structural unemployment. On the flip side, the 1% own most Fortune 500, who benefited enormously from overseas labor and appreciating real estate/stock market values. Inflationary bubbles always transfer wealth from the lower and middle class to the rich, via asset inflation (stock/commodity/real estate). This wealth transfer was known, planned and coordinated. A hollowing-out of America.
Because tax hikes for the rich will save the earth and its people, finally allowing the oceans to recede.
Intellectual problem solving.
Ron Paul to Newsmax: Fed Policy Destroying Middle Class
By Todd Beamon and John Bachman
The American people are âwaking upâ to the idea that the Federal Reserve âis very biased against the middle class,â Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul tells Newsmax.TV.
âThe American people are waking up,â the Texas congressman declared in an exclusive interview with Newsmax. âThey know that the Fed is very important â and a lot more people are looking at it.
âA larger crisis is going to come, and I think the American people will be very attuned to looking at the Federal Reserve and why they always want to do things in secret.â
It goes without saying that the central bank has made the nationâs middle class âmuch poorer,â he said. âReal wealth isnât going up. Good jobs are going away.
"Itâs the policy of the fed, the destruction of money, the intervention. Itâs a system that is very biased against the middleâ class. Itâs been well known that if you destroy a currency, there is a natural transfer of wealth from the middle class to the very wealthy.â
Paulâs bill to audit the Federal Reserve comes up for a vote next week in the U.S. House of Representatives. It has 250 co-sponsors, including a number of Democrats, which reflects greater interest in the Fed since the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008.
âA lot of transactions occurred in the bailout â and this is why weâre getting more attention now,â Paul said of his legislation. âBecause so much activity occurred when the financial crisis hit, and the Fed was very, very much involved and they were dealing with more money than even the Congress deals with.
âTheyâre very much involved with whatâs going on in Europe right now.â
Noting that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has pledged assistance to Europe if necessary, Paul added: âBeing ready to help means using U.S. dollars, which means itâs a penalty to the American taxpayer and to the value of our currency, to stand ready to bail out the system, if necessary.â
This is even more reason for greater transparency at the Fed, Paul said.
âThese transactions are kept very, very secret. They donât want us to know who does what and who gets the benefit â and they always use the argument that they need independent, but what theyâre really arguing is secrecy in all their dealings.â
The American people, Paul said, are growing more astute about the Fed, too.
âWeâre making tremendous progress, because a lot of people have been involved in spreading this message, especially since the crisis hit people want to understand it â and thereâs a large group of people, especially the younger people, who are inheriting the mess, and they are very, very interested in this subject.
âSo outside of Washington, theyâre very open-minded, they understand it, they want something done.
âThe American people want to audit the Fed..." ...
By Todd Beamon and John Bachman
The American people are âwaking upâ to the idea that the Federal Reserve âis very biased against the middle class,â Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul tells Newsmax.TV.
âThe American people are waking up,â the Texas congressman declared in an exclusive interview with Newsmax. âThey know that the Fed is very important â and a lot more people are looking at it.
âA larger crisis is going to come, and I think the American people will be very attuned to looking at the Federal Reserve and why they always want to do things in secret.â
It goes without saying that the central bank has made the nationâs middle class âmuch poorer,â he said. âReal wealth isnât going up. Good jobs are going away.
"Itâs the policy of the fed, the destruction of money, the intervention. Itâs a system that is very biased against the middleâ class. Itâs been well known that if you destroy a currency, there is a natural transfer of wealth from the middle class to the very wealthy.â
Paulâs bill to audit the Federal Reserve comes up for a vote next week in the U.S. House of Representatives. It has 250 co-sponsors, including a number of Democrats, which reflects greater interest in the Fed since the financial crisis of 2007 and 2008.
âA lot of transactions occurred in the bailout â and this is why weâre getting more attention now,â Paul said of his legislation. âBecause so much activity occurred when the financial crisis hit, and the Fed was very, very much involved and they were dealing with more money than even the Congress deals with.
âTheyâre very much involved with whatâs going on in Europe right now.â
Noting that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has pledged assistance to Europe if necessary, Paul added: âBeing ready to help means using U.S. dollars, which means itâs a penalty to the American taxpayer and to the value of our currency, to stand ready to bail out the system, if necessary.â
This is even more reason for greater transparency at the Fed, Paul said.
âThese transactions are kept very, very secret. They donât want us to know who does what and who gets the benefit â and they always use the argument that they need independent, but what theyâre really arguing is secrecy in all their dealings.â
The American people, Paul said, are growing more astute about the Fed, too.
âWeâre making tremendous progress, because a lot of people have been involved in spreading this message, especially since the crisis hit people want to understand it â and thereâs a large group of people, especially the younger people, who are inheriting the mess, and they are very, very interested in this subject.
âSo outside of Washington, theyâre very open-minded, they understand it, they want something done.
âThe American people want to audit the Fed..." ...
Studies on obesity and the poor would suggest they do indeed eat more cake than I.
So yes let them eat cake.
I don't get why my indifference to the poverty rate bothers you so much? I'm not the cause of it.
Paul is correct.
The govt and the Fed are debasing money faster than the middle class can earn it.
The poor have govt give aways and our policies are making more poor.
Combined these policies destroy the nation.
Which why the wealthy go transnational.
to save the middle class we have stop debasing the currency and ease up on their taxes.
The govt and the Fed are debasing money faster than the middle class can earn it.
The poor have govt give aways and our policies are making more poor.
Combined these policies destroy the nation.
Which why the wealthy go transnational.
to save the middle class we have stop debasing the currency and ease up on their taxes.
Safety net programs: About 13 percent of the federal budget in 2011, or $466 billion, went to support programs that provide aid (other than health insurance or Social Security benefits) to individuals and families facing hardship. Spending on safety programs declined in both nominal and real terms between 2010 and 2011 as the economy continued to improve and initiatives funded by the 2009 Recovery Act began to expire.
These programs include: the refundable portion of the earned-income and child tax credits, which assist low- and moderate-income working families through the tax code; programs that provide cash payments to eligible individuals or households, including Supplemental Security Income for the elderly or disabled poor and unemployment insurance; various forms of in-kind assistance for low-income families and individuals, including food stamps, school meals, low-income housing assistance, child-care assistance, and assistance in meeting home energy bills; and various other programs such as those that aid abused and neglected children.
Such programs keep millions of people out of poverty each year. A Center analysis shows that government safety net programs kept some 25 million people out of poverty in 2010. Without any government income assistance, either from safety net programs or other income supports like Social Security, the poverty rate would have been nearly double in 2010 (28.6 rather than 15.5 percent).
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258
Ahh, screw em. We should take this money and give it to the wealthiest one percent because poor people are dirty, fat, ugly, many of them are black, they're all just lazy, and we don't want to think about them. Plus I'm pretty sure Jesus said "I have mine so go scratch".
These programs include: the refundable portion of the earned-income and child tax credits, which assist low- and moderate-income working families through the tax code; programs that provide cash payments to eligible individuals or households, including Supplemental Security Income for the elderly or disabled poor and unemployment insurance; various forms of in-kind assistance for low-income families and individuals, including food stamps, school meals, low-income housing assistance, child-care assistance, and assistance in meeting home energy bills; and various other programs such as those that aid abused and neglected children.
Such programs keep millions of people out of poverty each year. A Center analysis shows that government safety net programs kept some 25 million people out of poverty in 2010. Without any government income assistance, either from safety net programs or other income supports like Social Security, the poverty rate would have been nearly double in 2010 (28.6 rather than 15.5 percent).
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258
Ahh, screw em. We should take this money and give it to the wealthiest one percent because poor people are dirty, fat, ugly, many of them are black, they're all just lazy, and we don't want to think about them. Plus I'm pretty sure Jesus said "I have mine so go scratch".