Severe Poverty Rate In US Higest Since ’75
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on February 24th, 2007 3:40 pm by HL
U.S. economy leaving record numbers in severe poverty
Bradenton (Fl.) Herald
Excerpt
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.
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.
These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation’s 37 million poor people into deep poverty – the highest rate since at least 1975.
HL’s Take
If the poor are spending all their time working just to make ends meet, they will never have a chance to fight to make a better life for themselves. Stagnant wages, more expensive health care, higher gas prices to get to work. I recently read in a column by a writer who has a fellowship at the Brookings Institute that the minimim wage in 1960, was the equivalent of $12 an hour today. They poor will just keep working and having the government use thier tax money to fight thier wars of corruption. It’s class warfare. They don’t want you to think that but that’s what it is.
