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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.
No, this is a new system called Trickle Up Poverty. They found it reaches the middle class faster if it goes up.
goddamn greedy teachers with their gold-plated Celicas.
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
I thought the idea was to give Mittens the reigns, let the corporations have 100% control of our country (vs the current insulting 98%), and hope for some trickle down?
There's a third alternative: Gary Johnson.
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.
Trickle Up Poverty is the likely objective, considering that the federal government is trying to persuade people to go on food stamps even if they think they don't need to.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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?
You think the last 4 years are what did this?
You don't think the last several decades might have had more of an impact?
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?
When you pay people to not have jobs... what the fuck do you expect?
You need to try and work for a salary of $11,000/year and support 2 people in a household, together with a car payment. I have, and I can tell you, it has nothing to do with getting paid not to work.
So with your ignorant statement you are part of the problem and not the solution...
Yep. It goes back at least to Bush I, probably much earlier.
I say we blame everything on Nixon. That's when things started going downhill and the budget started spiraling upward.
Plus, he makes a good scapegoat. He's already "evil" in the public eye; why not blame him for starting America's decline as well as for Vietnam and Watergate?
You, sir, are an idiot.
Actually you're the idiot. I know several people on the gov't dole. And the ONLY reason they say do NOT get a job is that they would need to get a job pay X amount so it would be worth getting off the dole. They say why get off the gov't teat IF they(and their family) would be worse off.
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.
Another person who thinks the world began on January 20, 2009.
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.
You know trickle down had some merit in a world before a telecommunications revolution and easy shipping. In that world corporations HAD to competively hire local people to get work done. We're past that.
Right now allowing the top 1% to make money off of easy imports of overseas goods is to the GDP what a empty calories are to your diet.
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.
Obama has largely continued the economic policies of his predecessors. There's still no effective regulation of high finance. Dodd-Frank is a joke. Obama's cabinet is packed with Goldman Sachs alums. Not one executive level banker has so much as been arrested for any of the crimes they've committed.
Obama is a crony capitalist just like the rest of them. He's even more corrupt than Reagan, who was at least willing to put bankers in jail after the S&L crisis. Do you understand that? Obama is more corrupt than the guy Reaganomics is named after.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
Nixon was a *much* better president than Bush II. He actually had accomplishments.
Bush Jr will get his proper place in history... as a person that used his 8 years (and an major terror attack that occurred on US soil) to funnel money to his buddies. I don't buy any attempt to say Bush was part of 9/11, but he sure as hell took advantage of it.
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.
You, sir, are an idiot.
Actually you're the idiot. I know several people on the gov't dole. And the ONLY reason they say do NOT get a job is that they would need to get a job pay X amount so it would be worth getting off the dole. They say why get off the gov't teat IF they(and their family) would be worse off.
Would you support raising the minimum wage so that all jobs pay more than gov't assistance?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
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.
If you base poverty level on what people receive for assistance, then over half the population is poor. They can fudge these numbers anyway they want for propaganda, just like they do with unemployment numbers.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
The "poverty line" and all the "official" U.S. definitions for what constitutes "poverty" became completely political some time ago. The result is that we really don't know how many people in the U.S. truly need help. Are the real numbers going up or down? Is the "War on poverty" having a good effect or is it making things worse. I'm sure someone knows but after the figures have been "adjusted" for political purposes we, the people, just don't know. Of course, that's deliberate.
"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.
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.
I would also like to add that for people who have never been told how to manage money, putting them on assistance doesn't help that issue. They will expect the income and find it more difficult to get off of it. Even if I thought it was OK to steal money from middle class people to give it to slightly poorer (but still middle class) people, it would just make people who are capable of supporting their families LESS capable in the long run.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
His platform is to end the IRS? I can't see any potentially nasty side effects of that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It's not the Celicas we are worried about. It's the 40-year defined benefit pensions that are worth way more than the 20- to 30-year teaching career. You have teachers retiring in their mid-50s living on pensions for 35 years that are much better than those of other taxpayers and citizens that must foot the bill. In many places you have teachers getting benefits based on their salary on the last year worked rather than based on average lifetime earnings which is what everyone else in the private sector contends with. At the same time you have politicians granting these huge perks to get elected, knowing they won't be in office when the bill comes due.
That's a Republican lie. Wealth is not created in the boardroom, it's created in the programmer's cube, the recording studio, the factory floor, the fry-cook's stove, the copper mine. Wealth is created by the poor and middle class.
Wealth doesn't trickle down, it flows upwards. The wealthy don't create wealth, they aggregate and control wealth.
Free Martian Whores!
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
Not one executive level banker has so much as been arrested for any of the crimes they've committed.
What crime has an executive level banker committed that they should be arrested for?
My understanding is the bankers knew the law well, and stayed exactly inside what was legal. They are greedy, deceiving, thieves, but they aren't stupid.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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?
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.
Well considering that Nixon took the US off the Gold Standard, effectively turning into a "fiat currency" that the bankers have complete control over -- you may have made a very profound point.
For it was Jefferson that predicted that the Bankers and Corporations would enrich themselves and cast the people into poverty. In 2000, a family of four making $90k a year was considered poverty level in Silicon Valley. Now days it would not surprise me to see that bar raised to $125,000 since US buying power has fallen sharply and greatly increased gas prices have led to greater costs for food (up 30% over the last ten years) and other basic living necessities.
At the rate we're going, with raising gas and food prices and climate change slated to increase and make farming harder -- most every middle-class American will hit poverty level in the next decade. Or so that's what MIT, the Pentagon and a couple other research Institutions predict.
The destruction of US freedom started with Theodore Roosevelt, the total destruction of US dollar happened with Nixon, as he defaulted on the dollar and started the real exodus of the investment capital elsewhere, where the savings could be still used productively, rather than to grow more government.
You can't handle the truth.
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.
That is what is known as the benefits trap. Benefits have to be of a level to allow someone to survive - food, water, clothes, shelter. You know, the basics and maybe a couple of cheap nice things every so often. You could cut them of course, but don't be surprised if suddenly desperate people resort to increasingly violent crimes in order to survive, and slums are a really nice advert for a country's real level of advancement and civilisation.
The real issue is that wages in many jobs are simply not high enough. Would you work 80 hours a week cleaning/waiting/etc just to live in just as much poverty as being on benefits gets you? From your position of privilege you would probably say "Yes", so I will dampen your enthusiasm by saying that in the real world, there is no "career progression" in these jobs, its that level of work for the rest of your life, to live in an apartment with damp/cockroaches/etc. That's if you can get a job, unemployment isn't exactly low. Yeah, yeah, should have tried harder in school, etc - but many people don't even get the opportunity to get a good education.
Btw, you should note that people on benefits usually spend all their benefits just to survive. I.e., all money being spent on benefits actually ends up back in the economy.
The news report quantifies the US poverty level as a pair of statistics:
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?
Let's start with the individual:
Average rent:$650 x 12= $7800/yr
$11,139 - $7,800 housing cost = $3,339 left
Average monthly grocery bill for a single male age 19-50 (without malnourished oneself): $250 x 12 = $3,000 grocery cost
$3,339 - $3,000 = $339 left
Average utility bill for > 700 sq. ft. apartment: $150/mo x 12 = $1,800
$339 - $1,800 = -$1,461
Go ahead and double the rent/utils, quadruple the grocery cost for the family of 4.
Lifestyle has nothing to do with it.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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.
"Who in the country actually works for minimum wage? A small number indeed, 1 to 2%."
"In 2011, 73.9 million American workers age 16 and over were paid at hourly rates, representing 59.1 percent of all wage and salary workers.1 Among those paid by the hour, 1.7 million earned exactly the prevailing Federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. About 2.2 million had wages below the minimum.2 Together, these 3.8 million workers with wages at or below the Federal minimum made up 5.2 percent of all hourly-paid workers."
http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2011.htm
Have a look at the chart . You can see the impact of technology (productivity) on wages during the mid 20th century. There's a very steady slope upwards. Then, with the big monetary change in 1971, the slope statistically flatlines.
The trick is, productivity and technology have continued their slope. Project out the trend prior to 1971 to present, and take the area between the steady-state wages and the expected wages, and that's the money that's being systematically stolen from the American people. But, since prices are staying largely the same due to the march of technology, most people don't see what's going on.
They also don't teach this kind of stuff in school, though it's easy enough to explain. At least our 'citizens' can quote 500-year-old playwrites, though, that's the important stuff.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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
Actually, I can make a salad for under a buck. By purchasing the raw ingredients (lettuce, oil, vinegar, a few condiments) at the supermarket. I can buy apples and other fruit pretty cheap as well. But preparing food like this takes time.
Fast food is full of starch, but not necessarily cheaper. Fast food is what I'd fall back on if I was busy watching Jerry Springer and all the other court TV shows instead of cooking something.
Have gnu, will travel.
"Apparently you have been asleep for a few decades. This is Hope and Change!"
No, I think you and the author of the parent post have both been asleep for a few decades and were dreaming that you were awake.
In the last few decades, BOTH Republicans and Democrats have had their opportunity to govern by simultaneously holding the Presidency and majorities in both houses of Congress.
Furthermore, no other party has controlled either the legislative or executive branch in that time.
They swap power back and forth, but the real legislative agenda never changes. Bigger government, military interventionism, reckless fiscal and monetary policy, stagnant real wages, special favors for the privileged elites, fewer civil liberties, more rules and regulations, etc. etc.
Your partisan bickering is nonsense. U.S. politics is like pro wrestling. Yelling, fighting and bitter enmity in front of the cameras, then kicking back and having drinks together while they laugh at the fools who think it's "real".
Actually, it was under Johnson that budgets got out of control. Johnson ramped up the Vietnam war and started many of the Great Society programs...I'm...errr...old enough to remember. When Nixon got in, we had still had both of those but then interest rates and inflation spiked. So Dick attempted wage and price controls. That failed....then he failed to continue to be President.
Ford was in for too short a period. Then came Carter.
Carter's problem was that he had all the leadership qualities of a slug. I don't recall much about his fiscal policies but at the time he left office unemployment had skyrocketed, as had inflation and interest rates because Paul Volcker had raised them to fight inflation.
Then Reagan came in and did a deal with the Democrats to cut federal spending and cut taxes. The Democrats stabbed him in the back and he had to raise taxes instead. But Volcker's interest rates had damped down inflation by Reagan's second term whereupon tax reform finally happened and help flatten out rates and remove tax loopholes. But we still had mind-blowing deficits because it turned out you couldn't tax your way to surpluses, expenditures mattered.
George Bush I more or less kept the story-line but the budget was breaking bounds again, it seems Congress couldn't stop spending, so he raised tax rates and lost the election to Clinton.
Clinton attempted to raise government spending but 2 years in, he got a Republican Congress and they couldn't agree on spending priorities..other than to let Defense wither. Tax receipts started to go up because HillaryCare had been defeated and the Internet Bubble. Also, the housing bubble was just getting started. Clinton then bought the investment banks story that a modern banking system needed no walls between investment and commercial banking. That meant that the taxpayer would now be on the line if the investment banks screwed the pooch...which they promptly did by figuring out how to securitize home loans and sell the to the rest of the world being smart enough not to hold the hot potatoes they had created. They could screw the pooch knowing full well the taxpayer would save them.
George Bush II thought this was just potty and the federal reserve failed to notice a housing bubble until tripping over it (but the American people hold most the blame by flipping houses, taking out mortgages they couldn't afford, etc....and there were many others with their straw in that soda). Bush also ramped up defense spending to pay for the wars but then didn't fund it because he'd already cut taxes since surpluses were to be had as far as the eye could see...which turned out to be not very far. When the surpluses failed to come into Immaculate Conception surprising the Conservatives, they conveniently forgot to go back and rescind the tax cuts.
When it all came crashing down, Obama said "Me, Me, I will save America. Hope. Change." Except that he didn't, unfortunately for him he also got a Democrat Congress; both could realize their wet dream of Universal Healthcare. Except that they couldn't because the Insurance companies had too much clout, so we got a lot uncertainty about what it all meant...well, the bill was 2000 pages of complicated interactions. To make things worse, Obama bought into the Keynsian notion that he could spend the U.S. into prosperity. It wouldn't worked too but it was clear that they had no fiscal sense which spooked the rest of the economy into keeping its cash close to its vest thereby depressing economic activity. The EuroZone caught the flu from the Housing Bubble in the U.S. but also because they were an accident waiting to happen. It happened.
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.
True, but many people were also able to provide a good life for their family with jobs in manufacturing.
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)
More women with more buying power means more demand and more work to fill that demand. Adding more workers should make everyone wealthier. If it doesn't that means there is something terribly wrong with the economy.
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.
Legalize them, and raise the minimum wage to a livable level. Like above, more workers should make everyone wealthier.
Meanwhile, all we hear about is just outsourcing as though outsourcing all by itself killed everything
It's not just outsourcing. It's the death of the union as an effective advocate for the working class. Outsourcing is just one workaround. The solution, like always, is a global workers union.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Drivers behind spending under presidents and congresses
Taxation and spending clause
Dems not to blame
Read what I mean, not what I wrote.
I'm sorry but your definition of "still middle class" is a bit skewed if you think it applies to food stamp receipients. A person can't have more than $3000 worth of assets, total and can't make more than $908/month and get food stamps.
Let's do some math. Typical minimal rent $600. Minimal Utilities gas $50, electric $50, water $20, insurance for your beater $60. We are down to $120. If we go with 10 miles a day travel between driving to work and back, only required errands, etc at $0.50 a mile we are at negative $30. That person better not get sick, have incidental expenses, want to retire, etc. Now lets give that person a high food stamp benefit of $150. This brings them $120 to the good. Every try to buy groceries for a MONTH on $120? That isn't easy even on nothing but beans. Now try eating healthy food for that. Again, as long as they don't get sick (remember ER charity is a myth, they check to see if you are at risk of death and send you on your way) or have incidentals.
I don't know what method of managing finances you use but I've yet to hear of one that works when running a deficit. In fact, most of them depend on running a minimum of 20-25% surplus income and padding by as much. These kind of margins require you to be toward the higher end of the actual middle class or the mid spectrum of the middle class and living like you are the $908 earner above. Of course to be middle class in this country and under 40 requires a college degree or at least some college so you are going to have student loans. Paying $15,000/year plus to sit in a lecture hall with 200+ other people for a couple hours a day for what should essentially be a non-profit service doesn't quite seem right but I'm sure that money is going somewhere. At the end of the day it most likely ends up in the pocket of someone complaining that they have to pay taxes to cover food stamps.
You can do that...where you are, and where you can drive to the supermarket.
Try going to a neighborhood where there is a lot of subsidized housing, and try finding your raw ingredients anywhere you can walk to. Most supermarket chains have left impoverished areas, and the only place to get groceries are places like Dollar General or convenience stores. The selection of fruits and vegetables there is lacking, to put it mildly.
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.