Please note that the headline above is from the print edition–KSH.
The downturn that some have dubbed the “Great Recession” has trimmed the typical household’s income significantly, new Census data show, following years of stagnant wage growth that made the past decade the worst for American families in at least half a century.
The bureau’s annual snapshot of American living standards also found that the fraction of Americans living in poverty rose sharply to 14.3% from 13.2% in 2008””the highest since 1994. Some 43.6 million Americans were living below the official poverty threshold, but the measure doesn’t fully capture the panoply of government antipoverty measures.
The inflation-adjusted income of the median household””smack in the middle of the populace””fell 4.8% between 2000 and 2009, even worse than the 1970s, when median income rose 1.9% despite high unemployment and inflation. Between 2007 and 2009, incomes fell 4.2%.
Why do you think people are angry? What shocks me is that our leaders have been ignoring this issue and some still don’t get that the middle is falling apart.
When you read a story like this, you wonder…..why aren’t folks out in the streets in angry demonstrations? Why aren’t they storming the White House gates? The answer might be that the story, being based on income, does not tell the whole story. The first thing to note is that the word “poverty” does not mean the same thing in America that it does in another country like Mexico.
How do those 14.3% in poverty live? Well according to census statistics,
-43% of “poor” households own their own homes
-80% of “poor” households have air conditioning
-only 6% of “poor” households are overcrowded
-75% of “poor” households own a car, 31% own 2 or more cars
-97% of “poor” households have a color television, over 50% own 2 or more
-62% of “poor” households have a VCR or DVD player, 62% have cable or satellite TV
-89% of “poor” households own microwave ovens
And while most of us might not want to live on the income which defines poverty for a family of four, it does have the effect of making such families “means tested” eligible for programs such as,
Department of Health and Human Services:
Community Services Block Grant
Head Start
Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP)
Community Food and Nutrition Program
PARTS of Medicaid (31 percent of eligibles in Fiscal Year 2004)
Hill-Burton Uncompensated Services Program
AIDS Drug Assistance Program
Children’s Health Insurance Program
Medicare – Prescription Drug Coverage (subsidized portion only)
Community Health Centers
Migrant Health Centers
Family Planning Services
Health Professions Student Loans — Loans for Disadvantaged Students
Health Careers Opportunity Program
Scholarships for Health Professions Students from Disadvantaged Backgrounds
Job Opportunities for Low-Income Individuals
Assets for Independence Demonstration Program
Department of Agriculture:
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (formerly Food Stamp Program)
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)
National School Lunch Program (for free and reduced-price meals only)
School Breakfast Program (for free and reduced-price meals only)
Child and Adult Care Food Program (for free and reduced-price meals only)
Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program
Department of Energy:
Weatherization Assistance for Low-Income Persons
Department of Labor:
Job Corps
National Farmworker Jobs Program
Senior Community Service Employment Program
Workforce Investment Act Youth Activities
Department of the Treasury:
Low-Income Taxpayer Clinics
Corporation for National and Community Service:
Foster Grandparent Program
Senior Companion Program
Legal Services Corporation:
Legal Services for the Poor
The source for these programs: Health and Human Services.
And while the economy has no doubt pushed more people into the ranks of poverty in America, it only adds to the systemic causes of poverty that none of the Federal programs ever address. What are those systemic problems?
In a Heritage Foundation Study (Heritage Foundation.com), the chief causes of systemic poverty are;
1. Lack of work: the typical poor family with children only produces 800 hours of work per year. If this were raised to 2,000 hours per year (40 hours per week), it is estimated that 75% of poor children would be lifted out of poverty.
2. Unwed births: as of 2007 nearly 1.5 million out of wedlock births per year were recorded. Nearly all of these will result in children living in poverty.
3. Father absence: nearly two thirds of poor children live in fatherless homes.
So, the causes of poverty and the means to reduce poverty come down to two strong Christian ethics: hard work and marriage!
Big Government along with minimum wage and benefit laws are job killers that especially target those at the lower side of the socio-economic ladder.
Capt: Governmental ‘cures’ are based upon what they have to offer, borrowed money, and not addressing root causes. You know the old saw: “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”. Throwing money at a problem gives the allusion of having a solution. Today it is fashionable to deride the “War on Drugs’ as un-winnable, counter productive, economically untenable, etc and therefore, should be abandoned. Could the same logic be applied to the “War On Poverty”?
Having spent time in Asia, Africa and Latin America, I have seen people living under very austere circumstances and yet surviving.
My memory of their greatest needs includes: a reliable supply of food of adequate quantity and nutritional value; a clean/potatble water and human waste disposal infrastructure; and medical tratment for endemic diseases. Many of their major serious disease problems are not major problems in the US of A.
So when I look at CAPT Deacon Warren’s list (#2.) it makes our “poor” look like ‘rich people on the down and out’ when they are compared to the truly poor in other parts of the world.
We do have truly poor and needy people in the USA who seem to continually ‘fall through the cracks in the floor.’ Which brings to my mind what the The Episcopal Church is not doing for Native Americans. Let’s say the Lakota/Sioux and the Navajos.
It seems to me that recently a TEC diocese wanted to shut down missions for the Lakota/Sioux and that the TEC with all of its MDG ‘talk’ never ‘really walked the walk’ in addressing long-term problems in the Native American communities.
Nah, all of that TEC money seems to be going to legal efforts bent on damaging/destroying orthodox Anglicans within and without TEC in the US of A.
Yes we do have the truly poor here and it is our Christian duty to care for the poor and marginalized. But we have the “poverty” class also. They will never disappear, but study after study shows that working a job and avoiding babies out of wedlock and having father’s around dramatically reduces the size of that class.
Things you will never ever see being spoken of in Wash or in the Lame Stream Media.
Through most of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it was an element of official U.S. government policy to keep the unemployment rate up. Full employment was seen as inflationary, so the Fed, the Treasury Department, and other agencies took quite deliberate actions to increase unemployment anytime it fell below a threshold level. The same is true of most other Western governments, which were willing to impose even higher unemployment levels because they had a broader social safety net of benefits (aka, “the dole”). Given the existence of that policy, it seems a bit harsh to blame the victims of the policy for their chronic unemployment or underemployment. Their misfortune is largely the result of a deliberate societal decision to benefit the many at the expense of a few. Of course, the decline in middle-class incomes vs. the rise in money manager incomes suggests that the actual effect has been to benefit a few at the benefit of the many.
I don’t have an alternative to offer. Cuba and the old East Germany offer instructive examples of what happens when a government makes full employment a priority–everybody has a job, but almost everybody lives in poverty. Somewhere there must be a happy medium.
Dale, I agree. One of the perverse things we have which has killed jobs for the poorly educated and those who need a first step up the ladder is the miniumum wage. The minimum wage hurts the very people Progressives proclaim to help because it increases the cost of an employee, so employers look at the least productive employee to cut when government raises their costs. But Progressives scream for the minimum wage “because no one can live on those low wages”. Well, in fact they can because of the blizzard of programs contained in my post #2. But by working a job, the lowest folks in the job pool have a stake in the economy and in mainstream life, giving hope that either they or their offspring will not be doomed to permanant poverty or permanent residency on Uncle Sam’s Plantation.