Economists: US Poverty On Track To Hit Highest Level Since 1960s 696
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."
Relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
http://i.imgur.com/olQxJ.jpg [imgur.com]
Says it all.
Poverty isn't what it used to be (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Poverty isn't what it used to be (Score:5, Insightful)
We must save the American capitalism from these capitalists. I think a U Chicago economist wrote a book with a similar title. "save capitalism from capitalists".
they aren't capitalists (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Rent seekers love government regulation (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Rent seekers love government regulation (Score:5, Insightful)
i agree, i just need to check to see you understand the options to this horrible status quo:
1. no regulation. which means they dominate by fiat: they cheat in the market and squeeze the consumer and the smaller competitors
2. proper regulation. which means a government uncorrupted by large corporations
#2 is not easy. but #1 is clearly worse
what drives me a little nuts is people who see large corporations corrupting the government, and they think the solution is to remove regulations and government, rather than removing the corruption. removing the government and regulations just makes the large corporation's abuse of the consumer and smaller competitors even easier!
Re:Rent seekers love government regulation (Score:5, Interesting)
It's only "worse" if I accept your premises about what it means. We had a lot less regulation in the past than we do now, and entrepreneurial opportunities were much greater. It has recently been estimated by the Small Business Administration that small businesses pay over $10,000 per employee in regulatory costs alone. It costs a huge amount of money today to start even a modest business.
You're also downplaying the "not easy" part of whatever regulation you're supporting as "proper" - and if it's anything close to the current regime, then "not easy" is downright impossible. And the reason for that is the costs for not playing the Lobby game become much higher than playing the Lobby game. These days, if you don't play, you automatically lose. That invites corruption, and it's almost impossible to rout out.
Just look what Obama has done: to appear unbeholden to "lobbyists", he pledged not to accept donations from them. So the people that register as lobbyists don't get access. Instead, there are unregistered "bundlers" that do all the massive fundraising, and since they are not required to register, their activities are much less transparent.
Re:Rent seekers love government regulation (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually "Rent-seekers" ADORE government regulations that they themselves lobbied for which gives them an unfair advantage. "Rent-seekers" ABHOR government regulations that threaten to impede their self-interest. When they proclaim themselves to be libertarians and speak of abolishing government regulations, they are naturally only speaking about those pesky regulations that hurt their bottom line despite of the benefits that they bring to the community.
I place "Rent-seekers" in quotations, since slashdot loves throwing stereotypes around like they are axioms.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't know how that term could be confusing. They're not seeking to pay rent, they're seeking to collect rent. That should be obvious. It's like a troll under a bridge (which he didn't even build himself), wanting to collect a toll from everyone that passes.
Re:they aren't capitalists (Score:5, Insightful)
Never trust someone who says he "believes in capitalism" unless he's been bankrupt at least once.
Rich people too easily to confuse capitalism with "everything that's making me rich at this moment." Everybody basically sees themselves as a good person, and as long as rich people are rich, they're going to generally believe that they "deserve" it on some kind of moral level, even though a political economy cannot be simultaneously free by a libertarian's definition and reward social virtue [wikipedia.org], the two are orthogonal. Most philosophers have recognized this for hundreds of years, which is why thoughtful free-marketers at least as far back as Adam Smith generally advocated progressive taxation and transfers, Friedrich Hayek believed in government health insurance, etc.
The fact is, nobody really believes in capitalism in extremis, what they really fight for is the right to make money the way they remember their parents did, and to a lesser extent how they know previous generations did, based on prevailing historical narrative.
This phenomenon is very similar to the fight over gay marriage: gay marriage opponents claim they're fighting for a sanctified, thousand-year-old tradition, when in fact they're really fighting for the institution as it existed, religiously and socially, circa 1975, [blogspot.com] around the time their parents were married.
Re:they aren't capitalists (Score:5, Interesting)
This stuff's been floating around for years:
Yer Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations:
There is an argument that this quote is taken out of context, in that it appears in a long passage where Smith denigrates various methods of tax collection, but most people agree that even if he is opposed to a tax on income, he is supportive of a tax regime which is progressive in effect, regardless of how it's collected.
Hayek [theatlantic.com] in Road to Serfdom:
The counterargument to this is that the text systematically rejects any mechanism by which a state could operate such a system, only that it should "help to organize" such a system. So I guess it depends on your sense of the term "help."
Re:they aren't capitalists (Score:4, Informative)
Eh are you sure about that? Tax incidence is dependent on the price elasticity of the taxed good [wikipedia.org]. If a good has inelastic supply, or elastic demand, a seller is limited to the extent that he can pass-on taxes, because higher price points will simply cause the buyers to purchase less. If the demand for a a good in inelastic, like gasoline, all of the cost can be passed on because the consumer lacks the bargaining power to seek alternatives. That's what happens if you follow the deadweight losses, anyways.
This is why physiocrats and Georgists believed that a Single Tax on land was the only truly enlightened form of taxation, because undeveloped land has a perfectly inelastic supply and there is, thus, 100% of the tax is passed on and there is zero deadweight loss. It's a perfectly neutral tax, in that it neither encourages nor discourages any economic activity -- a landowner has to pay tax on his land, but if he were a renter his cost situation would be identical, except for premium rents charged for development on the land, which are priced in the open market. It never really took off because most of the people on Earth that own land are also relatively powerful politically :) Adam Smith wasn't a Georgist, but he inspired many of their ideas.
The idea that companies uniformly pass on all their taxes to their customers is little more than corporate propaganda, and not grounded in any economic theory. It is sometimes the case but the truth is much more complicated.
Re:they aren't capitalists (Score:4, Informative)
Just to complete the thought, you should read more about ground rents and the problem of retierism in general. Economists of the 19th century were the first to become dimly aware of the fact that people were able to extract wealth by buddying-up with the government, and they realized that the most important way they did this was by taking control of land freehold. They saw the institution of land title as the original form of rent seeking, because it allowed the owner to charge money for nothing -- they lived in an era where a landowner would charge a renter for land that was completely undeveloped, many of these economists attacked tax-free landholding the way people on slashdot attack eternal copyright. It's basically the same mechanism. Nowadays land is developed and rent value is based on the level of development, so ground rents aren't as visible to most people anymore -- though they still come up, and they absolutely exist under other circumstances, like copyright. Basically, whenever the government declares something is ownable, it creates the potential for rents, and policy comes down to how well the government balances these rights against the unavoidable waste and inefficiencies.
PS. Marx, directly following Adam Smith's program, went on to apply the principle to labor with the Labor Theory of Value, but it's not clear labor really works that way or that an employer "owns" employment openings in the same way that a landowner owns land, or that surplus labor-power is really a form of rent.
Re:Poverty isn't what it used to be (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, as far as what the OP was talking about...most any US citizen can take advantage of these type things...it just takes knowledge and a bit of initiative.
Anyone can incorporate themselves for a very small price...and use that to take advantage of tax write offs....you can use this vehicle alone to do some interesting things with your tax liability....and it is something open to any US citizen, you don't have to be wealthy....just have to have a bit of grey matter sitting on your shoulders, and use it with a bit of imagination.
Re: (Score:3)
As an example, you mention IRAs which are not even an option to the wealthy because once your income is high enough you are no longer allowed to make pre-tax contributions.
Reality disagrees with you. See here [huffingtonpost.com]. "According to Romneyâ(TM)s disclosure documents, the candidate has between $20.7 million and $101.6 million parked tax-free in his IRA".
Maybe you just have to be ultra-wealthy?
Re:Poverty isn't what it used to be (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
First of all, you were a rare edge case, so I don't think its "ridiculous" that you qualified for handouts. Your a really strange edge case if you're floating R&D people and your accountant told you not to pay yourself a salary at all for 2010. I think that if every person in America that was in your boat took advantage of the hand outs, its effect would be negligible. Secondly, lets say you continued to operate this way until you lost the house and car, wouldn't it be nice to know that you could just walk down to the benefits office and file for benefits.
Re:Poverty isn't what it used to be (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Poverty isn't what it used to be (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't say that the poverty line is much higher today than in 1960, so implying that people are worse off is nonsense.
The poverty line for a family of 4 people is approximately $22K / year. Here are some basic expenses for a city-dwelling family of 4, assuming no public assistance:
Housing: 2-bedroom apartment - $850 / month * 12 months per year = $10,200
Food: $2 per meal * 3 meals a day * 365 days a year * 4 people = $8,760
Transportation: $2.50 bus fare * 4 bus rides per work day (assuming 2 working adults) * 20 work days per month * 12 months = $2400.00
Utilities: $50 per month * 12 months = $600.00
You now have about $100 left to pay for anything else you'd like for the next year, including clothing and health care. Yes, I'd rather be impoverished in 2010 than in 1910, but it's hardly a pleasant existence.
I agree that not taking assets into account is silly, but the poverty line is not too high.
Re:Poverty isn't what it used to be (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course that doesn't (for your exact example) count the earned income credit 5,236, food stamps 8016 a year, free school lunches, and sometimes breakfasts for your kids, and section 8 housing which varies by locality, and money earned on the side by doing odd jobs.
Yes I've been poor, capitalism is the only way out.
No I'm not saying things need to be changed one way or another, just that you aren't showing the whole picture. I have two rent houses, one of them the good people living in meet poverty line threshold, and they both drive nicer cars than I do.
Rent is 550 a month for a 3 bedroom 1 bath house that is 900sq ft and that includes water utilities paid, and I used to live there it's a nice little house before you accuse me of being a slumlord. I'd live there tomorrow if I didn't have 4 kids and a wife.
Re: (Score:3)
Roads are paid from state income taxes. My state takes the revenue from the highest income portion of the state (a D.C. suburb) and spends it all in the poorer rural parts of the state.
So if the top earners demanded their money's worth from their taxes, the rest of us would be
Re:Poverty isn't what it used to be (Score:5, Insightful)
You should be taxed based on the percentage of income/wealth that you have. So if the top 400 families have half of America's wealth, it makes some sense that the top 400 families might pay half of America's taxes.
Also, the "50% of the population pays zero taxes" is total BS. For one, it looks only at federal income taxes, ignoring every other tax, including other federal taxes like the payroll tax - which is an insanely regressive tax that takes orders of magnitude more in percentage terms from lower-income folks than it does upper income folks.
It also ignores that some people, like those collecting only Social Security, won't pay income tax on that money. Or that other folks are too poor to pay income taxes. Before complaining that these people are paying zero percent, you should try living on $22k/year for a family of four (yeah, that's the official poverty line).
Those $50k/plate dinners that the politicians hold? Each plate that night is worth more than two families of four in poverty for a YEAR. Two men, two women, four children....one plate.
Fuck you, you inconsiderate prick.
Money Does Trickle Down (Score:3, Interesting)
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 bene
Re:Money Does Trickle Down (Score:5, Insightful)
The obvious problem with 'trickle down' and pretty much all Randian 'economics' is that it ignores:
a) the fact that most rich people don't get their money from producing,
b) the U.S. isn't a closed system, so Mr. Rich Guy very likely keeps and spends a large amount of his $$ outside of the U.S. (and if he's just investing it or keeping it in a bank there, the money is actually trickling UP rather than down), and
c) money hoarding. The idea that the rich are building new businesses with their cash ignores reality, where more money is being sat on right now than at any time in history.
Re:Relevant (Score:4, Funny)
Only if you work with Republicans.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Obama has been President while the Republicans have been the party of "NO". They have blocked numerous attempts to revive the economy with the obvious goal being to leave the economy in the ditch which poor leadership got us into. So, while Obama has been President, saying that he was in charge for the last 3.5 years is ignoring the facts.
Re:Relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Relevant (Score:4, Insightful)
It may be that the country doesn't want health care reform, but it's something the country as a whole needs. (I am a physician and I'm okay with taking a pay cut..... so long as my malpractice insurance goes down by a similar percentage.)
That being said, I wish Obama tackled both these issue in the first two years. Perhaps he didn't expect the second two years of his presidency to be so hard?
Re:Relevant (Score:5, Informative)
Why did Obama wait until he lost control of Congress to try and revive the economy?
I am not a fan of Obama, but he never had control of Congress. I believe what you refer to as "control" was 59 Democrats + 1 Indep, with 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. So he would need absolute unanimous support and the support of Lieberman (who negotiated quite a bit for his single vote).
That's a very theoretical "control", that could be broken by luring one person away (or even someone sick/campaigning/etc/).
Re:Relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, I think Obama believed his own rhetoric. As commander-in-chief, he also could've forced the states to accept the Gitmo prisoners (don't you remember he was working with governors a few months into his presidency?) but was unwilling to hand down orders and instead tried to compromise. Like he said he would do in his campaign.
Unfortunately, I think it took him until the 2010 midterms to realize that the Republicans really meant it when they said they'd rather torpedo the country than work with him on anything, and by then it was too late.
Re:Relevant (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Relevant (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that we've been poisoned. We've been told a bald faced lie. We've been told that taxes are bad, by people who would like to pay no taxes. Who don't need a government because they can afford to build their own roads and hire personal armies to keep the starving masses off their property. You've been sold a bill of goods.
The biggest booms in the American economy in history happened precisely at the same time the the wealthy we being taxed the most. In fact during the WWII economic boom, the wealthiest tax bracket paid over 95% income tax. They didn't stop being wealthy. In fact they made out like bandits because in that exploding economy, their investments also exploded in value.
During the 60s corporate tax accounted for 40% of the total revenue at the Federal level. Today it counts for less than 5%, it was replaces by increases in payroll tax. Put this way, the wealthy have been taxing you even increasingly for the last 50 years, and over the last 30 years, the Republicans have made the rope, slipped it over out heads and pushed us off the ladder with Supply-Side Economics.
The problem isn't now and has never been taxes. The problem is a government that has been hijacked by wealthy interests to the utter destruction of the nation's people. The sooner you get clear where the butt is vs the end that goes boom, the better we'll all be.
Re:Relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
The majority of voters overwhelmingly like what the PPACA provides for (no denial on pre-existing conditions, no lifetime limits on benefits, minimum 85% of premiums goes toward benefits, etc). What they don't like is the mandate, mostly because the noise surrounding the legislation prevents them from knowing exactly what the mandate says.
Oh, and by the way, the idea of a mandate is an entirely conservative approach toward health insurance reform. So if/when PPACA fails to bring down costs (because we still aren't negotiating bulk discounts for Medicare Part D, because we still ban drug reimportation, because we still don't have a centralized standard for portable electronic medical records, because hospitals still need entire departments to sort out billing, etc), don't blame it on "liberals", because the PPACA is most definitely not how a "liberal" would want health insurance reform to be executed.
Re:Relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that Obama inherited a real mess. John McCain was so worried about a collapse of our financial system that he suspended his campaign and went back to Washington to make sure that TARP got through. Bush had turned the Clinton surpluses (I remember talk of retiring the twenty year treasuries) into record deficits.
While he did all of that the Republicans screamed about deficits and the threat of inflation. If he'd tried more stimulus, perhaps they would have been right. Trying to Do more would also have increased the chances of more of his agenda being blocked. It seems to me that you are faulting Obama for making choices that didn't magically turn what many feared would be the next Great Depression into an economic boom. Given the pickle he was put in, I say he did a fine job of balancing the need for stimulus, political compromise, the threat of inflation, and the size of the deficit.
Re: (Score:3)
I think I understand.
If the U.S. were a one-party nation everything would be just fine. Not to put too fine a point on it but has this "one party" thing worked out well in other countries?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, you have a selective memory. I guess it is easy to forget the filibusters going on during that time with every law 24/7 with no way of invoking cloture, and no way to just do an up/down vote.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bush Sr., Clinton, and Reagan all dealt with Congresses controlled by the Opposite party, yet are still *not* considered leadership failures.
They did not deal with a Congress that tried to stop every piece of legislation going through and tried to ruin the economy so that they could blame it on the President. That part is attributed to the rise in the Tea Party.
Let's really have a look at spending (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Let's really have a look at spending (Score:5, Informative)
You know what? The Constitution puts the spending power in the hands of Congress, not the president. So, take a look at where the deficits are really happening [verizon.net]
Counterpoint (Score:3)
Taxation and spending clause [wikipedia.org]
Dems not to blame [zfacts.com]
Re:Let's really have a look at spending (Score:4, Interesting)
The guy above has a chart of spending, you have a chart of deficits. The last Democratic congress had a large deficit because tax revenue fell off in the recession, and they refused to cut programs or raise taxes to bring the budget back into line, a policy the Republican congress has basically affirmed. They propose austerity budgets but they do so secure in the knowledge they won't get passed as long as the President and the Senate are controlled by Democrats, they're designed to be rejected and to "clarify" the choice for voters.
Most of the increased spending in the last four years has been non-discretional, which means a congress, regardless of who controls is, can't stop it without cutting an existing program, and it automatically gets bigger during recessions, by design. Food stamps and unemployment benefits aren't rationed, they are paid to people who qualify, regardless of how many people qualify in a year.
In the end, you have to attribute debt to the actual laws passed by whatever congress passed them. And by far, the single largest contributor to the national debt over the past 20 years would be a certain set of tax cuts that were passed in 2001 by a Republican senate, under reconciliation rules (thus no supermajority for cloture required), without matching spending cuts [crooksandliars.com].
Re:Let's really have a look at spending (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah yeah, the constitution and the congress. the organ that does what president tells it to do, since the president of usa can order anything he deems necessary - anything. the congress doesn't do shit to stop wars and defense expenses ballooing, so they just get to rubber stamp the expenses.
the debt incurred by congress shoots to sky right after clinton leaves office and bush gets his terror-on-terror program going, then it shoots high again with housing and banking collapses.
and ooh what do we have here? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:InflationAdjustedDefenseSpending.PNG [wikipedia.org] . curious how the defense spending shoots up right there too. what should be worrying is that you're going to be paying a lot of money just for the interest rates of money loaned to wage war.
(9/11 blahblahblah invading iraq necessary blahblahblah, doesn't matter, money is money and its' being pumped to whoever owns defense contractors, don't need to watch blackwater mockumentaries to know that)
Re: (Score:3)
There is way too much blame dodging on both sides. Obama might not be motivating, but he inherited an economy that had fallen off a cliff. Neither party is doing enough to get the US out of the hole it is in.
What is clear to all except bankers and politians is that we (the world) are not going to be the same again.
Re: (Score:3)
And for the 8 years before that, we had a republican that frequently gave in to the dems in the senate and house.
It's been a very long time since republican policies have really been given a fair test.
Re: (Score:3)
Don't blame Republicans for not stopping the rise of mortgage backed securities and the derivatives market from 1999 until its meltdown in 2008, causing our current economic depression?
Well, maybe if we find life on mars, we can blame the martians instead.
Re:Relevant (Score:4, Insightful)
I never understand how people can argue with trickle-down economics.
By observing that it plainly doesn't work.
"Rising tide lifts all boats" is a common phrase that seems to be less controversial. As an honest question... to those of you who refuse to accept trickle-down.... what do you think of "Rising tide lifts all boats"? It's nearly the same thing.
It is a model that does not correspond to reality. The reason why it doesn't is because there's no economic law that states that wealth is distributed equally among all players in the economy, similar to the law that dictates equal level of liquid in communicating vessels.
And with the current folks in power (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
and with the people 'in power' you mean who? The 'elected' puppets ?
Re:And with the current folks in power (Score:4, Insightful)
In our Sunday School class welfare and the associated topics came up - why don't these people get a job was the comment of a retired gentleman. An employer said he had roughly 50 or 60 job openings for people who could do manual labor type work or higher openings that they can't fill. The reason - the people who apply can't pass drug screens or have too many DUIs on their driving record.
Yes - everyone would like to start out as a CEO making huge wages. Yes - many have gone to college an got an Arts and Crafts degree for an inflated price instead of taking something hard that might actually have a job waiting for them and have huge loans to pay off due to that. Yes, even for those who have engineering or science/medical degrees, there are many companies that aren't hiring in the US but are outsourcing engineering work and knowledge overseas.
But there are jobs out there - at least in the mining industries and petroleum industries and those fields and towns that service them. In some of the booming oil field towns in ND, even food service is paying really well compared to the rest of the country because everyone who can is out working in the oil field. Whether this will keep up with Europe crashing is anyone's guess. The trouble is, you can't live on the coasts to do them and they are real work. You also have to live in small towns without much culture or big name stores around. Just picking up and moving entails real risk because once you're there you can't just go to a nearby town for a different job - there are no nearby towns. Rents are through the roof and housing is completely unavailable in some cases. Winters can be brutal. But there is work out there and the companies aren't going to go under any time soon.
How much longer? (Score:3)
How long until we finally consider a real alternative [garyjohnson2012.com]?
Re:How much longer? (Score:5, Insightful)
It speaks volumes that the only "real alternative" available across the country in this election is one who would remove even more of the few regulations left to protect us from corporate excess. Look at "Gary Johnson's track record". He brags about being "an outspoken advocate for...protection of civil liberties", and a couple sentences later he brags about how he "privatized half of the state prisons". WTF?
Re: (Score:3)
This is the end of the road. We are the future generations whose future was sold.
Re: (Score:3)
Raise funds by increasing taxes. - Everyone already thinks they are over taxed, so it doesn't matter where you raise taxes, you're going to piss people off, and
Cut welfare programs (food stamps, medicaid, disability). - These people still vote, and there are people who believe these programs matter. If you destroy them, you lose votes. That said, the rich have done a good job convincing the middle and lo
Re: (Score:3)
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?
Since it's like going shopping with someone else's credit card, I predict when the bank says you've hit your limit. And I predict sometime shortly after that said "future generations" will refuse to pay the bill. Greece's private creditors had to take a 74% loss (53.5% nominal and lower interest rate) but so far EU has bankrolled them, now the interest rates are simply unsustainable for Spain. Either they have to come down right now or the mad scramble for the exit starts like it did with Greece. The US is
Classic Marx (Score:5, Insightful)
We've outsourced everything and the capital hides in offshore accounts.
Should be no surprise that poverty is up.
Marx was right.
Remember This In November (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re: (Score:3)
Blindly voting one party (regardless of party) will never fix the issue. If the media was devoid of partisan spin and we could individual elected officials accountable for their actions, then perhaps we'd have solutions.
Re: (Score:3)
Sorry, both the Democrats and Republicans work in favor of the rich against the rest of us.
Well, yes and no. True, but misleading.
According to the announced tax plans, Obama at least plans to only permit tax cuts for the first $250K instead of $Everything (with average tax reduction of ~$20K vs ~$80K on the taxes per family based on the estimates I read).
Both D and R may be working in favor of the rich, but Republicans are working much harder in favor of the rich.
the true culprit (Score:4, Insightful)
Relative Poverty Value? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Relative Poverty Value? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems to me today that "poverty" is on par with 1960s luxury, so what's the point?
In 1960 a college graduate could own a home and support a family on one full time salary. In 2012, positions like that are vanishingly rare.
At what point are these people choosing poverty
Perhaps you didn't notice the recent financial crisis and the boom in unemployment. Do you think these people "chose" to be unemployed? Did you choose to be this obtuse?
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You can easily buy an home that's the size and style of the 1960's and furnish it with 1960's-level furniture and technology: a phone, a TV receiving three channels, and not much else.
If you want two cars, modern health care, iphones, cable, Internet, large screen TVs, video game consoles, two garages, 2500 sq ft, all close to the highway, coast, and a major urban cente
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You can easily buy an home that's the size and style of the 1960's and furnish it with 1960's-level furniture and technology: a phone, a TV receiving three channels, and not much else.
Bullshit. I pretty much do this, but pay one bill for the modern equivalent to phone service. I might have enough for a house in 10 years, with the help of my GF, if we don't have any kids, assuming steady employment for the next decade.
If you want two cars, modern health care, iphones, cable, Internet, large screen TVs, vid
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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 eve
Poverty rate (Score:5, Informative)
"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 [wikipedia.org]
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.
Re:Poverty rate (Score:4, Insightful)
Malnutrition is down, but obesity is up. The symptoms of poverty change depending on social/cultural context, but it's still poverty.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
First world problems...
Re:trickle down (Score:5, Funny)
No, this is a new system called Trickle Up Poverty. They found it reaches the middle class faster if it goes up.
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Re:trickle down (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:trickle down (Score:4, Interesting)
"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".
Re:Official MinTruth Statement (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Official MinTruth Statement (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Official MinTruth Statement (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Official MinTruth Statement (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Re:Official MinTruth Statement (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Official MinTruth Statement (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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
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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 c
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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.
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Another person who thinks the world began on January 20, 2009.
Re:Official MinTruth Statement (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Official MinTruth Statement (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Poverty? Gimme a break. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Poverty? Gimme a break. (Score:5, Insightful)
In almost all states it takes over 80 hours of work PER WEEK for someone making minimum wage to pay for a shoddy apartment.
Re:Poverty? Gimme a break. (Score:5, Insightful)
First off, working 80 hours nets you 100 hours of pay via overtime.
Only if the 80 hours are on the same job.
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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 [kcpremierapts.com]
Re:But this can't be right (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [businessinsider.com]
Re:Stop redefining proverty. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Stop redefining proverty. (Score:5, Insightful)
What did you expect? That link points to the "Heritage Foundation."
Re:Pay to be Poor (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Pay to be Poor (Score:5, Informative)
"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 [bls.gov]
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Real Criminals Wear Suits (Score:3)
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. [zerohedge.com]
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. Bu
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Well, the economy was fine - you're problem is that it isn't the 1950s anymore. That is to say, our biggest possible competitor, Europe, isn't recovering from a recent world war, China and India aren't undergoing massive famines, Korea isn't in the midst of a civil war, and Made in Japan is no longer a synonym for cheap junk.
You could have a 90% tax in the 50's simply because there was no place else to go. Try that today and watch your industries and your wealth move off-shore even faster than they are now.
Re:Poverty level (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Re:Poverty. Like the old days. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.