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Economists: US Poverty On Track To Hit Highest Level Since 1960s
First time accepted submitter eentory writes "According to economists and other experts surveyed by the Associated Press, the U.S. poverty rate is on track to hit its highest level since the 1960s. The consensus among those surveyed is that 'the official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent.' Just a 0.1 percent increase would put the poverty rate at its highest since 1965."
http://i.imgur.com/olQxJ.jpg
Says it all.
I thought the wealth was supposed to trickle down?
And what is he laughing about?
Its only going to climb higher. I am up in Canada, but its the same here, all I see is businesses closing, programs being cut, the only jobs available seem to be for crap wages with no benefits etc. The economy is failing from the bottom up as the small businesses die off one by one. Meanwhile of course, the high end executives get massive yearly bonuses as a matter of course - even if the company they are working at is tanking and likely to go under.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
In Washington, the Ministry of Truth says that we just need four more years of Hope and Change...
When you pay people to not have jobs... what the fuck do you expect?
Has anyone ever asked how we decide what the "poverty line" is, and how often it's adjusted for inflation? Left alone long enough, with permanent inflation due to Keynesian policies, everyone will fall below the poverty line.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
He said he wanted the US to be more like Europe. He's getting his wish. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/73138.html
while the link shows only a quote from gas I'm just to tired this Monday morning to get the other quotes that prove that he wants to make the US into what is happening in Europe.
"Attack the messenger". I expect that. Rather attack these links below instead after you watch\listen to them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vm8nDDsmd4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIH4jUIK5zs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i02j5tLEfrw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y1hhEAmBCI&feature=related
In the rest of the world, those amounts can actually buy you things like food and shelter.
Last I checked(and I check pretty much every fucking day), it's pretty goddamned difficult to buy food and shelter on that much money in the U.S..
People in the U.S. don't believe they are entitled to more. People in the U.S. pay more for things than people in the rest of the world, so people in the U.S. need more money to buy an equivalent amount of said things.
Enjoy your caviar, fucktard.
Well, you know the rest.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Depends entirely on when in the 1960s you are talking. Around 1960 itself, the rate was over 20%, and had fallen to half that by the end. But anyways, I trust economists predictions about what is going to happen in a year about as much as I do weather predictions 5 days hence: if I had to bet on them or a coin flip, I'd go with the coin every time.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
How much longer are we going to put up with the two false alternatives that continue to kick the can down the road and buy votes with money that will be paid back by future generations?
How long until we finally consider a real alternative?
working their way down to the grunt workers
No, they wealth is trickling SIDEWAYS into tax-shelters.
http://www.businessinsider.com/rich-21-trillion-31-trillion-offshore-tax-havens-2012-7?op=1
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
This article is nonsense. My extended family is working class and none of them could ever afford air conditioning. They are what you might call the "working poor". Never mind "the poor".
That link sounds like the clueless ramblings of a modern day Marie Antoinette.
If the poor are "fed" or "sheltered" there is a good chance that this is only the case because of public assistance.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
We've outsourced everything and the capital hides in offshore accounts.
Should be no surprise that poverty is up.
Marx was right.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Congressional Republicans have voted down every proposal to help the economy the President has sent to them, even proposals tailored after Republican tactics for economic handling.
Remember this in November, vote the Republicans in the Senate and Congress out.
They are making the country and most likely you, poorer, just because they are in a pissing contest with the president.
They don't deserve your support
and have been trending down ever since.
The highest income tax bracket was 91% under Eisenhower --- Kennedy got it reduced to 70% and it's been steadily declining ever since.
Someone please tell me what was wrong w/ the economy under Eisenhower?
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
""According to economists and other experts surveyed by the Associated Press"
Economists in academia and of course the wonderful AP are historically leftist, so you can bet the numbers are fudged big time to favor the left and Obama.
That means the real number is far worse for those of you that are not paying attention.
And getting worse.
You can take that to the bank.
The true cause for this, wholesale adaptation of Reagan's economic philosophies, will never be identified or addressed, and the middle class will continue to shrink, and will only gain ground (temporary ground) during bubbles. And when those bubbles pop, the middle class slides back even more.
Says it all.
No, it doesn't say it all. It doesn't say that the poverty line is much higher today than in 1960, so implying that people are worse off is nonsense. It also doesn't say that our definition of "poverty" is silly: it only counts income, and ignores assets. I live in Silicon Valley in a nice neighborhood with a paid off mortgage, and my wife drives a snazzy BMW. I run my own company and usually make a solid six figure income. But in 2010, I had several employees in R&D mode, my net income was nearly zero, I fell below the poverty line. I actually qualified for some government handouts. That is seems absurd to me.
What did you expect? That link points to the "Heritage Foundation."
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
In almost all states it takes over 80 hours of work PER WEEK for someone making minimum wage to pay for a shoddy apartment.
But it doesn't go on to describe the lifestyle of a person in that income group. I mean, suppose a person chooses to live without a car, a yearly vacation abroad, or the latest iDevice. Surely that person's poverty level would be different from a person who chooses to have a car, take yearly vacations abroad, and buy the latest iPhone?
Maybe we'll get back to the days when poor people were thin instead of fat.
Have gnu, will travel.
It seems to me today that "poverty" is on par with 1960s luxury, so what's the point?
We have air conditioning everywhere. We have freely available water. Everyone can have a phone, but not just a phone, a cellphone. We have freely available internet.
I'm not a social scientist, so I am legitimately asking "what is the point to eradicating poverty?" Is it just an attempt to integrate a disenfranchised segment of the population - a persistent segment that ever since we moved out of tribes and into larger societies we've had. At what point are these people choosing poverty, and if that is the case why should we care? The current mother of the POTUS managed not to live in poverty, and have a son that went on to lead the free world.
I've been told by y social work friends that the city I live in has sufficient finds and resourced for the homeless. However the vast majority of these are people with mental problems who are high-enough functioning to not be compelled into assistance, who then go out and choose this lifestyle. If that is the case, then I don't think we can ever solve poverty.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
"According to a 2011 paper by poverty expert Robert Rector, of the 43.6 million Americans deemed to be below the poverty level by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2009, the majority had adequate shelter, food, clothing and medical care. In addition, the paper stated that those assessed to be below the poverty line in 2011 have a much higher quality of living than those who were identified by the census 40 years ago as being in poverty."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States
These days we count poverty as economic disparity, which is not the historical definition of poverty. Today, if you have access to medical care, housing and food, we state that you are living in poverty. That is not to say there aren't those living in legitimate poverty.
Malnourishment is down, and yet we insist poverty is near all-time highs.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Maybe it's really the new plan to stop illegal immigration and boost exports. Depress the economy far enough and those jobs currently held by illegal immigrants will start to look good, even at those wages. Those same "new US wages" will be competitive with the sweatshop wages every other nation in the world is trying to leave behind.
"There will be jobs for Americans... ...when American sweatshops are legal again... ...and when Americans are eager to work in them."
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
We "hope" the "changes" won't make things worse. But they always do.
The economy isn't a zero-sum game. If someone is doing well, they usually invest the money (hopefully being put to productive use) or they exchange their money for goods and services.
The problem is frankly monetary policy. I know, I know. I'm a crazy Ron Paul-type.
Here's what I think is going on. Since we left the gold standard, the amount of money has increased by a lot. Where newly printed money hits the system first (like Wall Street for example) those people get to use the money first and get a big benefit. By the time that money trickles down to the rest of society, all those newly printed dollars mean a loss of purchasing power and the overall value of each dollar.
Almost any chart I've seen about how workers are doing worse from a variety of different sources, the point in the chart where everything goes crazy is the early 70s. 10 years prior to Reagan, but the same time Nixon took America off the gold standard.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
the Internet, and Globalization was introduced. Now the wealth is getting spread over 7 Billion people, and a few at the top are hording as much as they can.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
This is a feature, not a bug, of the "Reagan Revolution."
Minimum wage sucks, but that isn't entirely true. First off, working 80 hours nets you 100 hours of pay via overtime. In some states (such as California) you'd be getting double-time.
But $7.25 an hour at 100 hours is $725 a week. 4.3 weeks in a month = $3,117.50.
You're insisting that $3,117.50 a month will barely pay for a shoddy apartment in most states? I think you're exaggerating a bit.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
That's because minimum wage is what you pay people who have no marketable skills or credentials, just minimum-level nonthinking labor.
In other words, it's not supposed to be enough to pay for shelter, just spending money for high school students.
We all know that this is the result of your party's politics, because the politics of my party would never lead to this.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
they are rent seeking parasites
a capitalist wants a marketplace of equals competing (which is only maintained by health regulations)
a rent seeking parasite will talk about capitalism a lot, but what they really want is their monopoly or oligopoly preserved. so any government regulation or taxation is evil and anti-capitalist... when of course, the monopoly or oligopoly whining about capitalism is the genuine anti-capitalist force
the greatest enemy of capitalism is not "socialism" (the random bogeyman curse word that has no relevant meaning in the USA), it is anti-competitive practices by entrenched large players, including corrupting our government
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Arguing about which party is "responsible" for our current economic woes is like arguing over which driver of the car is pushing down the gas pedal harder as it careens towards the cliff. In the end, it's the direction that matters, not how fast or slow we're headed there.
What we're seeing is nothing more than the death rattle of economies built on paper currency debt. It has happened before, and it will happen again.
First off, working 80 hours nets you 100 hours of pay via overtime.
Only if the 80 hours are on the same job.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
That kind of "poverty" is relative poverty; it's just another way of saying that the income distribution is skewed in the US and is really just a bad version of the Gini index. It has nothing to do with actual, absolute poverty. You can be absolutely rich and relatively poor, or absolutely poor but relatively rich.
Look at it in international comparisons. In 2007, US poverty level for a family of three was $17000/year, and median household income was about $31000. In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), in the same year, median family income in Germany was about $21000, Japan was about $19000, in Italy $17000, in Israel about $14000. EU median is about $15000.
So if you apply US poverty measures, more than half of EU citizens, and a large part of even rich countries like Germany and Japan, live "in poverty", and it gets worse if you consider all of continental Europe and if you consider that PPP doesn't account for a lot of taxes and expenses.
But if you really think that Europeans are doing so much better economically, it's easy to get a work permit for Europe and move there.
WTF is this "overtime" you speak of? There's no such thing where I live. An hour is an hour is an hour. Unless of course you are salaried. In that case, after that 40th hour you work for no pay at all!
a rent seeking parasite will talk about capitalism a lot, but what they really want's is their monopoly or oligopoly preserved. so any government regulation or taxation is evil and anti-capitalist
That's nonsense. Rent-seekers ADORE government regulation. It puts smaller competitors at a disadvantage, erects barriers to entry, and if the rent-seeker is politically well-connected, lets the rent-seeker employ regulators as its personal enforcement arm against interlopers in its markets.
Salary jobs are well above minimum wage. Minimum wage is exactly how it sounds, the minimum an employer is allowed to pay you. Overtime laws vary with each state, but the federal minimum is to pay 1.5 the hourly rate for hours above 40.
http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/overtimepay.htm
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
suckers....
Here in Missouri, you only get overtime if you're working at the same job. If you have three part-time jobs (say 30, 30 and 20 hours) you don't get overtime pay and you don't get health benefits either.
$7.25 at 80 hours is $580 a week. 4.3 weeks in a month is $2,494. Assume that with other expenses (food, transit, child care) you can spend 1/3 of your income on housing = $748.
Try to find an apartment for $748 in most states. I think you're oversimplifying a bit.
I am not trying to say that this is not a problem that is getting worst and worst but there is also a huge underground cash economy where a lot of the people are getting benefits from the government while racking up quite a nice cash income on the side. I don't know if their number is big enough to skew the statistics but they are there and sucking away resources from people who actually need it.
Corporations and greedy bank profits hit highest levels since the 1960s.
(OK. So I totally pulled that out of my ass, but is it really all that unbelievable?)
Check this out: Government spending by president. This shows that while Obama may have been spending a lot during a recession, something that many economists encourage to balance out the "good years", the real culprits of out of control government spending are Reagan, Bush and Bush.
Reagan can also be somewhat forgiven due to the economic problems in the 80s and encouraging government spending to make up for the loss in business generated GDP, however he was there for 8 years... and that recession did not last 8 years.
Just looking at the fiscal realities, Clinton was by far the best president if it weren't for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act which set the stage for "too big to fail" banks. Still from a spending standpoint he's by far the best.
Obama is overspending driven by rampant bankster cronyism stemming originally from the Bush era and into the Obama years. This started with TARP (Bush) and continued into QEII, III, and further. There's a good argument to be made that much of the current spending is momentum spending from the second Bush term.
Ultimately we have to look beyond the last 3.5 years and really examine longer term track records before we conclude that the Dems overspend or the Repubs drive up debt.
Read what I mean, not what I wrote.
I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest there are more people who work one job full-time than work 3 part-time jobs.
Google just returned the average apartment cost in St. Louis is $638. According to this link, you can get apartments in many Kansas City neighborhoods for $375.
http://www.kcpremierapts.com/how-we-work/nitty-gritty/kansas-city-apartment-pricing.html
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2998281&cid=40737109
haha proof that all this copyright will just mean a revolution at some point soon
and jobs all the laws they got everywhere and its not making the usa a dime go figure...cept the obama and romney's of the world
I lived in a very nice 1-bedroom apartment in one of the wealthiest cities in northern AL that cost $420/month. I lived in a furnished 1-bedroom apartment in a desirable area of Tucson AZ that was about the same.
You can also get, y'know, roommates (if you're single).
Anyone see the theory that much of this is caused by fewer two parent homes? Less people earning two incomes (or one income while the other deals with everything else), and a lot more single parent homes where one adult is getting the income and dealing with family stuff, and has no time to improve their income. In the aggregate I can't imagine how that isn't making a huge negative impact on poverty rates. It's not P.C., but that doesn't mean it's not true.
And plenty of places will happily schedule you to juuuuust under the limit of hours where they'd have to start paying benefits, too. So you get no overtime and no benefits, yet you end up working more than a full-time job.
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
But jobs are continually being dumbed down to that level. In my town, driving a bus is a student-level job. I don't want some student who only got his license two years ago and is thinking about his chem exam driving a BUS. I want a freaking career driver.
Can I mod something +1 Scary if it's true but I wish it weren't?
Have a look at the chart . You can see the impact of technology (productivity) on wages during the mid 20th century. There's a very steady slope upwards. Then, with the big monetary change in 1971, the slope statistically flatlines.
The trick is, productivity and technology have continued their slope. Project out the trend prior to 1971 to present, and take the area between the steady-state wages and the expected wages, and that's the money that's being systematically stolen from the American people. But, since prices are staying largely the same due to the march of technology, most people don't see what's going on.
They also don't teach this kind of stuff in school, though it's easy enough to explain. At least our 'citizens' can quote 500-year-old playwrites, though, that's the important stuff.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
A few things have happened since 1960:
1. The number of citizens with college degrees has gone up something like 300%.
2. The average B.S./B.A. today is watered down considerably compared to 1960.
3. There are a few tens of millions more women in the workplace now than compared to then (or at least pre-2008 crash there were)
4. There are conservatively 12 million illegal immigrants doing low-skilled and unskilled jobs and their illegal status makes it impossible for them to demand a decent wage.
What the left doesn't want to face up to is the fact that they got their egalitarian college experiment and increased presence of women in the workplace. Then, the law of supply and demand kicked in and started crushing the wages of college degree holders and workers generally due to the comparative glut of new workers in the economy.
Meanwhile, all we hear about is just outsourcing as though outsourcing all by itself killed everything. It's a big factor, but it's not big enough to do all of that damage by itself.
President Obama is a crony, just like George Bush. He is idolized by the left for his charisma and as a result of his ability to move people with populist rhetoric. But he is a crony too. His cabinet is full of ex-JP Morgan and ex-Goldman Sachs employees and his regulatory efforts have padded big businesses. His bailouts of the banks fattened the bonuses of Wall Street. To say he is not a crony is to ignore facts, which is a tendency of the American public as a whole.
Note that I have not endorsed his contender, because he is terrible as well. But people- open your eyes. Government is corrupt too. Men are not angels!
We do have a poverty problem. But neither Republican nor Democrat policies will fix it. Democrats think that giving poor people free money will fix poverty. Republicans think that giving rich people free money will fix poverty. How about giving nobody free money? Redistribution of wealth upwards does not work, and redistribution of wealth downwards does not work. If anything, the government should give entrepreneurs free money. So long as we live in a country where the government siphons enormous sums of money from productive people, we will have poverty. And so long as the people think that bigger government can fix systemic, structural issues in an economy, our future will look bleaker and bleaker.
I recommend reading and listening to Thomas Sowell, who debunks these issues with impressive clarity. One of my favorite points of his regards foodstamps and starvation in general. He talks about his youth and how he had to work to feed himself, or he would literally starve. It's not exactly the same today.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/273368/political-poverty-thomas-sowell
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/279037/hunger-hoax-thomas-sowell
"We have now reached the point where the great majority of the people living below the official poverty level have such things as air conditioning, microwave ovens, either videocassette recorders or DVD players, and either cars or trucks.
Why are such people called “poor”? Because they meet the arbitrary criteria established by Washington bureaucrats. Depending on what criteria are used, you can have as much official poverty as you want, regardless of whether it bears any relationship to reality." -Thomas Sowell
Glad to see the support for more income equality is working out just as planned!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
And assuming your employer hasn't lobbied to make sure they can claim your job is FLSA Exempt status, so they don't actually have to pay time-and-a-half OT.
It's all Bushes fault111!!!!!
Along with Katrina and 9111111!!!!!!
So you may have a really good point there.
Drivers behind spending under presidents and congresses
Taxation and spending clause
Dems not to blame
Read what I mean, not what I wrote.
Subtract 1/3 for federal and local taxes. You now have roughly $2,100 left. The last time I lived in an apartment, I paid nearly $900 per month. And yes it was very shoddy. People letting their dogs crap in the stairwell, and dumping their trash in the hallways kind of shoddy. You are now left with $1,100. Subtract another $250 for utilities. That includes internet access but not cable television. You now have $850. Subtract $350 for food. You are now down to $500. You have a car and drive to work. Subtract $150 for fuel. You are now left with $350. That sounds like enough to do something with, but what? After working 80 hours are you going to spend what little disposable income you have on tuition? Maybe a car payment, so you don't have to worry about your decade old vehicle crapping out leaving you with no way to get to work? I don't think he was exaggerating at all.
a) None of you are poor, or between jobs, right?[1]
b) Even with the first two years of a Dem-controlled Congress, the Republicans have filibustered, or threatened to filibuster,
many proposals (let's not forget the near-default that *created* the "fiscal cliff")
c) You don't know what's in the health care law. Try browsing ,
then come back. I expect to see you trying to spin things like the small business help, or the insurance for those who
can't afford insurance.
mark
1. Of course, when you were "between positions", you took unemployment. Just like your idol, Ron Paul, takes money from
Medicaide and Medicare, while ranting against them, and let his staffer *die* who didn't have insurance.
This link goes to a video of award winning journalist Fareed Zakaria on what he thinks the real burdeon is on the U.S. Economy:
http://beforewisdom.com/blog/tag/fareed-zakaria/
Zakaria say that despite repitition of the claims that the US has taxes and too many laws for business to navigate the facts don't bear this out. According to Zakaria taxes are the lowest on the wealthy since the 1950s and the U.S. has even been rated better than some East Asian countries for business friendly laws.
Zakaria claims that the real problem are 3 trends that have been going on for decads:
- no improvement, let along upkeep of infrastructure ( have to pay for those tax cuts somehow )
- reduced investment in education
- Americans saving less and using credit more
The real problem is how this growth in poverty may affect our democracy, which is already not so great at the moment given that corporations control so much of our government.
If you look around, you will find plenty of countries that are democratic and have a much larger degree of poverty than the US. What happens in these countries? The politicians become more and more populist because they need to attract the votes. In extreme cases, you may see situations like South Africa and Venezuela, where a tiny rich class as held at ranson by a populist government that has the control of the masses. In the US, there is much lesser risk of that happening since politics here require so much money. We can rest assured that our politicians will forever sell their souls to the corporations. But still... our politic environment is poised to get even worse going forward.
And the last I checked, prices of most stuff aren't all that different.
Bullshit, you've never checked. I was in Thailand in 1974 serving in the USAF, and a bungalow was $30 per month including a woman. A meal for 4 was a dollar in a nice restaraunt. It cost a nickle to ride a bus to any part of the entire country. A tailored shirt was $4.
When I got home, McDonald's was five times as high priced as a nice thai restaraunt, a run down shotgun house was $150 per month, a bus was fifty cents, local only -- Chicago to St Louis (equivalent to Bong Chong to Bankok) was $40.
You, Mr AC troll, are wrong. Please take your incredible ignorance elsewhere.
Free Martian Whores!
At the lowest level of jobs, no, you can't assume that. If you are able to work one full time job and afford to live, you're lucky. Really lucky. I'm still amazed that now (at the age of 29) I'm in that enviable position.
When I was 17, I ran away from home (for good reasons). This was in 2001. I had a job at Jewel bagging groceries, and later as a cashier. I think I made $6.25 an hour. It was really damn hard to get them to give you full time hours so you could get benefits and enough hours to have a sizable paycheck. I think the policy was to have many part-time workers so they wouldn't have to give benefits, and those who DID get full time had to have considerable seniority. So many of the front end people were part-timers, and I think that's the way most of those types of retailers work (Wal-Mart, Target, etc.) They hire a lot of part-timers, pay them minimum wage or close to it, and get their 24-hour coverage that way without having to have full time workers to do it. The end result is the company doesn't have to give benefits on all those workers, and the workers aren't ALLOWED to work 40 hours or more a week even if they really really want to because they need the money. The managers tell you they don't "have any more hours to give" if you ask for them, or they have to offer those hours to someone higher on the food chain.
I live in the Chicago area, and I was in Wheaton at the time (I grew up there, mind you, I didn't move there), and apartments start between 600 and 700. That's not factoring in the fact that the transit system is weaker in the suburbs than in Chicago itself, so you need a car to widen your employment opportunities if you ever want to make something more than minimum wage, and that those prices don't include utilities of any type, food, clothing, etc. I was also going to high school still, so unless I dropped out I wouldn't be able to work 40 hours. And not many places would rent an apartment to a 17 or 18 year old with no co-signer anyway, and not if you're making $6.25 an hour. Too big a risk.
I was damn, damn lucky there was a charitable foundation that let me live in a girl's group home for severely reduced rent. I wouldn't have been able to live otherwise, not on what retail places were paying me, and not with staying in school.
Anyway, THAT's what it's like for a person with no skills or experience or degrees trying to live as an adult in the early 2000s. I was super, super lucky the charitable foundation was there to give me a place to get my feet under me. $600 or $700 in rent would have eaten up every cent I made and more, just for housing. And if you share rent with roomies, it only goes down to $500 or $400 or maybe $300 and that's still most of your paycheck for part-time minimum wage.
The graphs [jaredbernsteinblog.com] tell the tale, when the stimulus kicked in jobs recovered, when it began to phase out, job growth stalled -- all the while Obama has proposed additional stimulus and gotten thwacked in the knockers for it every time.
Snippet from the article:
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.
There are fewer workers in the nation today than there were at Obama's inauguration. By the most generous of perspectives Obama's stimulus and policies have stopped additional increases in the jobless, but there has never been a recovery in jobless numbers. What's reported to you as unemployment is only those recieving unemployment benefits, which end after 99 weeks, roughly when the graphs you cite as evidence of the successs of the Stimulus kick in.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Sounds like it's time to redefine poverty again.
You respond as if my comments and this article describe all poor as non existent. This is simply not the case, but rather that the poverty line could be lowered dramatically.
Look at the differences between the two charts, Chart 1B and Chart 2B and compare the differences in what it is like to be average or poor.
That is gross. Net is going to be about 30% less. $2182. At least $100 a week for food (if single and no kids, multiply that by the number of people you need to feed) $1782. Electricity is about $50+$25 per person, Gas the same. $60 month insurance. The totals come out to about the same if you are all electric just add these two bills together. $20+$10 per person for water. $1552 so far for a single guy. Average price for a one bedroom shoddy apartment is running about $1200. That leaves you $340 to the good for the month minutes another $70 to pad the other bills for a solid budget. So $270. Assuming you need $50 worth of toiletries a month.
Couch $900, chair $300, tv stand $150, dining table $100, bed $600, dresser $100, and night stand $50. If you have NO entertainment whatsoever you could manage to furnish your shoddy apartment with a shoddy minimal set of furniture. Of course in most places you are going to need a car, car upkeep, and gas.
You can sort of afford the shoddy apartment but yes I'd say barely is right.
Trickle down worked; During that period people were well off.
Instead what you have now is Absorption. The government absorbs all it can, from every angle.
It's no surprise poverty is nearly at the highest level it has been for decades; that is the plan. Beggars are easier to please, and a man dependent on the government for everything is far more controllable than one who is free to make his own choices.
That is but one reason why everyone voting should seriously look into support of Tea Party candidates - they are looking to reduce government spending, and helping people as a whole become more self-sufficient again.
Remember Slashdot readers that a populace more easily controlled is also far more likely to fall in line when the next SOPA comes along. Think long and hard about who you vote for this time, are they in favor for the government exerting more control over you, or less? That should be the fundamental question you put to ANY candidate, of ANY party.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you're making minimum wage, you're not paying 30% in taxes. With earned income credit and/or kids, you may be tax exempt.
Those making minimum wage frequently qualify for general assistance, food stamps, etc. Though all that varies by state.
And where do you get that the average one bedroom shoddy apartment is $1200? It may be in certain parts of the country, but that isn't the norm of the average.
Being poor sucks, but that doesn't mean that you need to lie about it.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Yes, exactly, I think the real problem comes when we look at the number of Americans that are living a marginalized existence...meaning that they can't afford healthcare (even if they have insurance)...can't afford to save for retirement...and can't absorb unexpected expenses (i.e. apartment fire, job loss). I bet that number is more like 35% of Americans...and that's a scary number.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
And we need someone to fix it!
We have spent more time trying to determine who the bad guys are, and less time trying to fix it.
The problem is simple. Americans are buying less stuff, because Americans don't have the consistent money to buy stuff.
Now the solution. You can have your elected official tinker with taxes and stuff, with some minor improvements or discouragements. But what is going to happen is the following. People have gotten use to a lower level of living, will live like this for a while and gradually spend more again, as the spend more things will slowly improve.
Now right now the improvements are stopped because of the political elections because what they are offering is a change to their business model. And people don't know if it is worth continuing on the same course until after the elections.
After the elections people will continue on course and the economy will improve with either Obama, or Romney. Because we are so political lately, we think these people can do more then they actually can do. But all the fighting right now is doing is making people scared to follow a direction.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I expect a term to remain unchanged. Did I grow up in poverty? No cell phone, no AC, only basic cable. Must have! It's crazy to compare what we now call poverty to what was just 30 years ago. Or 40 years or more. The idea of basic necessities has been so bastardized that people feel you can't raise a child without disposable diapers. So strange that my Mom raised 9 kids with cloth diapers. So strange.
In almost all states it takes over 80 hours of work PER WEEK for someone making minimum wage to pay for a shoddy apartment.
What? I just moved from a place where a nice - not remotely shoddy - 2-bedroom apartment was $600. That's about 82 hours per month of minimum wage work. The cruddier apartments started around $350, or about 50 hours of minimum wage work.
Yes, many people would prefer to live someplace more interesting than a small midwest city. I guess I'd prefer to live in a condo in SoMa. Doesn't mean I can afford to or "deserve" to, though. Sometimes you have to settle for something less than your personal ideal.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Or without the hyperbole...it takes two 40 hr work wks to pay the rent each month.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
People got along fine for most of human history without air conditioning. In many parts of Europe the homes still do not have air conditioning.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
You can't get exempt status for minimum wage.
I've worked 70+ hour weeks regularly, and 80+ hour weeks occasionally on salary jobs. But I wasn't making minimum wage.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
And the last I checked, prices of most stuff aren't all that different.
Bullshit, you've never checked. I was in Thailand in 1974 serving in the USAF, and a bungalow was $30 per month including a woman...
wait...what?
"I don't see anything wrong with that." - Curunir_wolf on the Pinkertons
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Wow what a ton of whining. Whiners, you'll get even poorer.
The answer is absolutely nothing. People keep asking the wrong questions and expect the answers to pave a path through a cloudy future. The question that needs to be asked here isn't whose at fault for the current predicament, but what can be done to fix it. As we're coming up on elections, we look at what has been tried by the current President in the situation and how it fared, whether or not Bush was a catalyst for the situation means absolutely nothing (unless of course the current GOP nominee intends to follow those footsteps, which doesn't appear to be the case and frankly isn't possible given the circumstance).
I'm not a fan of Romney but I'm not enthralled by how poor Obama has handled his presidency. Looking at the past four years, he pushed his healthcare agenda at a time when the primary focus should have been elsewhere, while proceeding to fail miserably at getting it implemented properly even with full party control. Well, at least its sticking, so bonus points there. All the while, we ran a phantom economy trading debt for propped up economic health indicators whose rises were almost entirely superficial. I benefitted from most of the broken window fallacy programs like the housing tax credit and cash for clunkers, but I don't feel they adressed any of the issues. We can't inflate our way or borrow our way out of this problem. Address the lack of accountability and fiscal responsibility and you've got my vote.
Your working class family can't afford a 125 dollar window unit? Damn that's poor. When we were poor that's all we had, of course our house was only 900 sq ft, so that was more than enough to keep it cool since I put a ton of insulation in that little house.
I have a relative who makes $1600/month on unemployment; that's $9.23/hour, and if you factor in the income taxes she'd be paying if she were getting that after taxes from a job, she'd need a job that pays $12.47/hour. That's an annual income of $25937.60, which is 232% of what the article claims is poverty level.
That hourly rate is a break-even number for her, not including the marginal costs of having every day free except the mandated one-day-a-week interview day, which is mostly free considering these are not Google interviews she's going to. You would likely need to pay her significantly more than that to give up her 6 day weekends, since the marginal benefit of actually having to work 40 hours a week instead of interviewing once a week is pretty low in terms of the high opportunity costs.
Barring an unfortunate incident (like getting hired), she's going to be able to keep miking that cow based on state unemployment insurance plus the federal EUC unemployment extension until January 2013, which is coincidentally about when her COBRA insurance runs out, but hey, then there's the affordable healthcare act in place to catch her. After that, she will likely get a job for a short while, and then go back on unemployment/COBRA as soon as she's eligible, and then eventually she'll be able to do this without having to pay the COBRA (Hey! Pay raise!).
So would raising the minimum wage to $12.47/hour get her off her ass? No. It wouldn't. How high would it have to be? $12.47/hour plus however much per hour she values her free time. Consider it a discount that she would also not need to add per hour day care costs to that total minimum hourly rate, since she currently does not have children.
Now multiply her by every unemployed person who is getting government assistance of one kind or another.
PS: Based on the article, since Federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour (due to go to $9,35 this year, according to the legislation), that's $7.25 * 53 * 40 = $15,080/year, someone making minimum wage is above the individual poverty level of $11,139 by 35%, due to go to $9.35 * 52 * 40 = $19,448, or 75% above poverty level.
FWIW: If you ask me, this should be the determination of poverty level:
#define poverty_level ((minimum_wage * hours_per_week * weeks_per_year) - $1)
which would cut out a lot of the bullshit posturing.
If you're making in wage, you're not going to get OT.
An employer would sooner hire a second worker and only pay them min wage, thus a net decrease for them.
What OP is talking about is having to work two FT min wage jobs.
OR... in the ever more common case, people with degrees who are a dime a dozen, so no need to pay them their worth since you can hire them at min wage; everyone else is doing the same.
Republicans don't have to kill unions, Democrats do it for them by actively supporting millions upon millions of unskilled laborers flowing into the country, ensuring that we drive low end wages to zero.
Ahem: Your relative EARNED THAT AMOUNT based on his/her last wage rate on their previous job he/she worked for at LEAST 6.6 months approximately continuously for the last year of her employ. That's how it works, so, if you're "upset" about that, and, it seems you or other may be? Remember - that's how it works roughly (when you lose your job, they set the rate based on your last 1-3 jobs iirc until you hit the "ceiling" max allowed amount). There's no bullshit posturing here about that much above. It's just how it works, and because he/she worked at least 6.6 months of any given last year at a particular rate? That's what she is literally entitled because she was employed before being unemployed, to AND earned the right to up to the ceiling unemployment rate. They want it to stop, or you do, or others LIKE YOU? Quit the fucking offshoring of jobs U.S. Citizens SHOULD have.
I disagree with those programs. If you don't want me to use them, don't force me to pay for them. Otherwise, I'll consider the benefits a partial refund of my stolen wealth.
Actually, here's a better deal: Stop taking Medicare and SS taxes out of my paycheck NOW and I will agree to give up any claims I have to future benefits under these programs.
Isn't that an awesome deal for the government? They get to keep 20+ years of contributions and have no future liabilities.
You know why the government won't take that deal? Because they are NEVER going to provide the promised benefits anyway! Thus, they'll continue to bleed us until they finally have to admit that the programs were a scam.
In what way would have moving the Gitmo prisoners to the states have helped the economy?
It doesn't. I don't understand how you were up-modded for obfuscating the truth in such a non-obfuscated fashion. He was trying to move the prisoners so he could fulfill a campaign promise to do so. He was blocked directly and indirectly in every way possible by the opposing party so they could brand him a liar for the rest of his career.
They succeeded.
Don't reelect obama if you want this problem to stop...
Capital STREAMS... Offshore!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The question that needs to be asked here isn't whose at fault for the current predicament
No, that's exactly the question that needs to be asked, and now - the time every two years when you actually exercise your democratic right to self-governance - is exactly the time to ask it.
Every engineer can tell you that if a fault occurs in a system, the first thing you should be doing is diagnosing the underlying root cause. You can manage the surface symptoms in the short term, but no responsible engineer would say "look, I know the server is down and the database is corrupt, but we shouldn't be asking what module crashed it; and we certainly shouldn't be pointing fingers at the programmers who wrote the failing code and asking them to fix it! And what we absolutely must never do is review our contract with that supplier and consider whether an alternative might be more stable. No, just restart it, manually retype everything, and hope."
So if your economy is broken ask who broke it and why. Then ask whether those same people are still doing the same thing they did that caused the economy to break. And if those people tell you not to ask and just sit down and take what they give you, ask why they don't want you asking questions, and whether they possibly might benefit from you not asking questions.
Track the root causes of the system failure. That's not too much to ask of fairly bright system analysts like you all, is it?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
The point is that the cost for her going back to work is rather large, compared to doing the minimum to continue to qualify for unemployment insurance.
Raising the minimum wage, as the GP to which I was replying suggested would not fix the problem. It's not a problem with the minimum wage, it's a problem with there being an economic disincentive to reenter the job market.
As to my particular relative, yes, she earned the right to the unemployment, assuming she had an inability to get a replacement job, but the job search being conducted is not a job search to find employment, it's a job search to maintain qualification.
As to your off-shoring shout, I have two things to say:
(1) it's a complete non sequitur; she works in a field that it's impossible to off-shore due to the need to maintain scheduled face-to-face contact with other people.
(2) People are being priced out of the labor market in the U.S. due to free trade agreements with countries which do not have to enforce our environmental or labor relations laws; make tariffs contingent on their complying with our laws in order to do business with us, and the cost of doing business off-shore will go up. Although probably not to the point that the U.A.W. will be able to put humans in jobs better done by robots, as they currently do at companies like G.M. and John Deere, it will be enough to move a lot of manufacturing, textile, and other blue-collar jobs back to the U.S..
I call BS. I had a 2 BR in North Overland Park (little Mexico) 10 years ago for $750.
I've known a few people stuck on near-minimum-wage jobs. It is pretty typical that none will give more than about 35 hours/week or hours. These workers do tend to work multiple jobs as a result, getting none of the overtime benefits.
Wrong.
People in the US pay a lot less for things than any other developed country.
Of course, people in the US also earn a lot less than people in other developed countries too, so prices have to be kept low or Americans couldn't afford them.
Your corporate overlords have tens of million of you slaving away for $10/hr in your cage, always looking over your shoulder fearful of being cast from your meagre perch by the next guy who's on $8/hr and would throw you under a bus in a heartbeat for that extra $2.
I disagree. You're comparing something that's a black and white binary to the economy, which is part of the reason we got into this mess: people trying to precisely quantify a macroeconomic system, then turning a blind eye to anything that disagrees with their models. You can't just "fix it" as the system is heavily analogue with hazy inputs and outputs that span decades, not easily testable to any sort of precision. Garbage in, garbage out does not make for accurate models. Also, we can't just plug test cases in to find out the bugs, can't always prove the effects were specific to the cause, and can't accurately predict what state the economy would be in had different steps been taken.
FYI, I'm not a system analyst, I'm a financial analyst with a basic but useful IT background. Knowing your limitations in this field and the boundaries of your knowledge and ability are keys to success, those who are not humble are simply disasters waiting to happen. "What can we do to fix it, and what can be done to prevent it from happening" are far more important than "he caused the problem, crucify and burn him!" that your tone and stance suggest. Its not about who broke it because no one person has enough control to micromanage the system. All it does is create a culture of concealment and fingerpointing, and shit doesn't get done. Too much CYA and not enough manning up. The black and white culture prevalent in programming and related fields were the reason I changed my career path, and I don't regret it.
The funny thing is, we're basically arguing the same point: An economic system requires sensible controls that provide accountability and keep risk within an acceptable tolerance level, without suffocating opportunity. The difference is you're focused on attacking the people who had a hand in poor decisions rather than focusing on the poor decisions and what we can learn from them. That fingerpointing only creates an argument of "he did it!" rather than an argument about the viable options to remedy such situations, and is entirely counterproductive.
You are making the false assumption that those 80 hours are worked at a single employer. If someone is paying you minimum wage, chances are pretty damn good that you will never work more than 40 hours per week for them, or that if you do, it will only happen once and then you'll be looking for a new job (they are legally required to pay it, but they can still fire you). In order to get more than 40 hours, you will have to work multiple jobs, and they won't pay overtime, either. Even so, you're lucky if you can get two 40 hour jobs; many places will only allow you to work 30-35 so you qualify as "part time" and don't have to receive benefits. Of course, you're really lucky to get any job, nonetheless two jobs, with ~10% unemployment.
So that's $580 per week and $30,160 per year. Subtract $2300 for SS and Medicare. If you have no kids and are under 25, your standard deduction is $5800 and you do not qualify for the earned income credit. So subtract $850 for the 10% bracket and $2380 for the 15% bracket. Might as well take another 5% for state taxes, so there's another $1508 gone. You're left with $23,122 per year, $1926 per month, or $444 per week.
That's still not too shabby, but you'll probably be working 16 hour days to do it. Factor in time for commuting, eating, hygiene, etc. and you'll be living on ~4 hours of sleep each night (and if you're really lucky, your sleep time will actually be at night). I hope that doesn't take a toll on your health, because the aforementioned lack of benefits is going to make any trips to the doctor rather fiscally unpleasant. If you're really lucky, you can save a couple hundred dollars each month, and that may help you out with emergencies. Also, try not to do any back-breaking work, because your employer probably won't have long-term disability insurance or a retirement plan in case you develop a permanent, debilitating injury.
Sounds great.
Glad to see people angry yet disputing this issue, civilly! We have all been reduced to one mass class of neglect and subordination. Given, the reasons why it is so difficult to come up with any solutions amongst the upper-middle, middle-lower class sectors. I feel safe to say that most of us here, (in this discussion, anyway) have an understanding, or have problems within government, society, public policy, etc. So I pose that we all approach collaborative resolutions instead of complaints. The information is out there. Its been settling below us. We need to get more people thinking about the ways that we can all gain. +! Would you agree, that on average, people just don't make as much money as we deserve, in the jobs we protect so dearly. Even further, there's no chance that we can even compete with the trillions of dollars and ties some folks have around the world. Personally I am comfortable where I am. Pursuing a graduate degree, working full-time at a decent job, spending a considerable amount of time enjoying in the city. However I feel that there is much more I can do to bridge the wealth gap, through conversations such as this, and networking with people in a similar whirlpool. What alternatives to do we have, other than continue climbing up poverty mountain?
Man oh man there is a lot of people on here debating "regulation" VS "free market" vs this philosophy vs that model... The article wasn't about frikin ABSTRACTS.. It was about the MILLIONS of fucking people that have NO money for food.. clothes, medicine, that live in rat infested cockroach ridden slum lord ripoff tenements with crackheads next door, that will NOVER get a job no matter how hard they try because of WHERE THEY HAVE TO LIVE.. That get spit on and called "welfare bums" even despite all thiis, and have absolutely NO WAY OUT. THAT IS WHAT POOR MEANS.. guys, and there's a whole shitload more americans every day, especially black and latino, ending up there.. It is an absolute disgrace, y'all.. and one day, we all will face judgement for this mess.. That is what the article was about...
is watching the forex graph on EURUSD going down, down, deeper and down over the past weeks (weeks? months), so my guess is if it's bad in the U.S. it has to stink in europe right now, i'm bracing for the impact already
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
Making a caricature of wealthy people as selfish sociopaths will only lead to worse problems.
Please debate the issue without resorting to stereoptypes and without sowing discord and hatred.
"If you're making minimum wage, you're not paying 30% in taxes. With earned income credit and/or kids, you may be tax exempt."
Remind me again how you eat today with money at the end of the year?
If you work full time at minimum wage you don't qualify for general assistance or food stamps in any state in the union because you exceed the hard federal individual gross income cap of $1180 a month for these programs. Of course it isn't likely you can get an employer to allow 40hrs a week of overtime in a minimum wage job. In fact, it is highly improbable that you can find an employer that offers full time employment to minimum wage staff.
Generally places that pay only minimum wage have little regard for the staff, it is more important to not be impacted by a single employee schedule than to provide a stable and consistent set of hours. So instead they hire 3x as many part-time employees. These companies also usually have different sets of benefits for full-time (usually management) and part-time with part time benefits being less comprehensive and more expensive. In this way they can negotiate as if they have a large number of eligible employees but not have to actually pay anything for that staff.
"And where do you get that the average one bedroom shoddy apartment is $1200?"
Ads in any metropolitan area in the country which is where the bulk of the population lives. If you want to count the less populous but more numerous locals the average is more like $700. That difference doesn't apply to most people and neither does the hyper inflated income that is why people who really make minimum wage usually work multiple jobs and gather together with others who make minimum wage or live with family. Others without friends and/or family become working homeless and eventually aren't able to secure transportation in a consistent way and end up non-working homeless.
"Being poor sucks, but that doesn't mean that you need to lie about it."
There were no lies in my remarks and an apology is due.
...doesn't make them disappear.
What do you have to pay higher price to buy in US? Definitely not cars, computers, cellphones, clothes, oil, meat, vegetable, fruit... All physical materials are just as cheap as in the rest of world. What's expensive are the services that Americans actually provide by themselves. You charge more money for your jobs and yet you complain about the shrinking of puchase power of your own services? Are you nuts?