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Is American Poverty Getting Worse

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Tom Sawyer

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Just read an interesting article about poverty in America

The Evidence Pours In: Poverty Getting Much Worse in America

One of the main pro-Trump arguments is that despite all of his other shit, at least the economy is doing well. If the data in this article is accurate, that's not actually the case. Particularly, what it says about what's behind the historically low unemployment rate. If that's what they mean when they say "unemployment is low", that doesn't really count as a positive.

Is there anyone more versed on economics than myself who can parse out the actual state of the US economy?
 
At least we're beating you at something:

It took a UN envoy to hear how austerity is destroying lives

Over 12 days, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights is touring not Bangladesh nor Sudan but the UK. And what Philip Alston has discovered in the fifth-richest country on Earth should shame us all. From Newcastle to Jaywick, he has uncovered stories of families facing homelessness, of people too scared to eat, of those on benefits contemplating suicide

[...]

Over the weekend, I asked Alston whether he heard any echoes between British experiences and the testimonies he heard last December while investigating Donald Trump’s US. “In many ways, you in the UK are far ahead of the US,” he said. He thinks “the Republicans would be ecstatic” to have pushed through the kind of austerity that the Tories have inflicted on the British.
Click to expand...
 
The question is: What to do?

The thing that created a large middle class in the US were unions.

Healthcare needs to be unionized. My sister is an RN that is part of a union. She will get a pension and better drug coverage than Medicare D.

Many sectors down to fast-food workers need to be unionized.

That is the only hope to try to drive some of this incredible wealth that has been generated over the last decades to trickle downward.
 
untermensche said:
That [unions] is the only hope to try to drive some of this incredible wealth that has been generated over the last decades to trickle downward.
Click to expand...

Gee, I have an idea; how about starting by taking back the 1.25 trillion dollars that Cheato gave to his donor class and spending half of it on "the bottom"? Provide more low cost housing, education, food & nutrition, medical services etc, and spend the other half on urban and rural infrastructure projects? Infrastructure projects could employ a lot of people who don't have a PhD in hedge fund management, and improve everyone's lives... including those of the donor class. I don't know why they never thought of that.

ETA: The infrastructure laborers can unionize as soon as enough is accomplished that they can visibly justify it.
 
As Edmond Blackadder said, "Disease and poverty stalk out land like two giant stalking things."

That was true in 1813, but today, the two giant stalking things are inflation and interest rates. Most people feel comfortable and optimistic about the future, just as long as the present conditions seem stable. If there is a sharp rise in interest rates, which means housing sales will drop, and adjustable interest rate mortgage payments rise, along with a general increase in prices, that's when people will get worried about poverty.

Until then, it's someone else's problem.
 
Grandfather was a Republican. Worked 44 years in the yard. Came up through the apprentice school and started a family in the middle of the depression. Great pension and great health care plan in retirement. He knew the United Steelworkers played a big role in his compensation. Of course the war hit and things really took off at the yard when it switched from private builds to government contracts culminating in the purchase of the yard by Northrop Grumman. The taxes on the top end that paid for all that government spending in the 1950s when the interstates were built, the Army Corps of Engineers was fucking up all our waterways for navigation, and the war machine really got cranking.... Maybe the multinationals should be paying for some infrastructure investment in addition to better compensation of the plebes.
 
Elixir said:
untermensche said:
That [unions] is the only hope to try to drive some of this incredible wealth that has been generated over the last decades to trickle downward.
Click to expand...

Gee, I have an idea; how about starting by taking back the 1.25 trillion dollars that Cheato gave to his donor class and spending half of it on "the bottom"? Provide more low cost housing, education, food & nutrition, medical services etc, and spend the other half on urban and rural infrastructure projects? Infrastructure projects could employ a lot of people who don't have a PhD in hedge fund management, and improve everyone's lives... including those of the donor class. I don't know why they never thought of that.

ETA: The infrastructure laborers can unionize as soon as enough is accomplished that they can visibly justify it.
Click to expand...

Kamala Harris, possible presidential candidate for 2020 has been promoting this idea. I suspect this would be part of her platform if she ran. It might even become a Democratic party plank if it catches fir in people's imaginations.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
Just read an interesting article about poverty in America

The Evidence Pours In: Poverty Getting Much Worse in America

One of the main pro-Trump arguments is that despite all of his other shit, at least the economy is doing well. If the data in this article is accurate, that's not actually the case. Particularly, what it says about what's behind the historically low unemployment rate. If that's what they mean when they say "unemployment is low", that doesn't really count as a positive.

Is there anyone more versed on economics than myself who can parse out the actual state of the US economy?
Click to expand...

This is blasphemy to the Trump religion. You should be burned at the stake!
 
Loren Pechtel said:
This is blasphemy to the Trump religion. You should be burned at the stake!
Click to expand...

Not a risk. I live in an over-regulated socialist dictatorship and people here aren't allowed to light fires in an urban environment without a proper permit, which wouldn't be issued if the applicant lists religious reasons for it.

Trump can't do nothing to me.
 
So? If those middle class serfs are becoming poor, then that must be because they choose to be poor. If they didn't want to be poor, they wouldn't be poor.

Now shut up while we pass another round of tax cuts for the elites. If we make the aristocrats even more fabulously wealthy, they will trickle good jobs all over us. My future depends on giving more tax cuts to the elites, so you guys better stop your Class Warfare.
 
The US economy as a whole is doing moderately well. However, as the OP points out, the gains are not evenly or equitably shared. Nor is this any sign that any future gains will be more progressively spread out since the GOP, conservatives, libertarians, and the dupes of all 3 are adamantly opposed to any sign of "redistribution".
 
Tom Sawyer said:
One of the main pro-Trump arguments is that despite all of his other shit, at least the economy is doing well. If the data in this article is accurate, that's not actually the case. Particularly, what it says about what's behind the historically low unemployment rate. If that's what they mean when they say "unemployment is low", that doesn't really count as a positive.
Click to expand...
But the low unemployment rate is being used by the Left to argue that me should take in the uneducated caravaners even if they are not legitimately seeking asylum. Can't have it both ways.
 
Derec said:
Tom Sawyer said:
One of the main pro-Trump arguments is that despite all of his other shit, at least the economy is doing well. If the data in this article is accurate, that's not actually the case. Particularly, what it says about what's behind the historically low unemployment rate. If that's what they mean when they say "unemployment is low", that doesn't really count as a positive.
Click to expand...
But the low unemployment rate is being used by the Left to argue that me should take in the uneducated caravaners even if they are not legitimately seeking asylum. Can't have it both ways.
Click to expand...

The unemployment rate should be used accurately - full stop. If it's not a good indication of the labour market, then it shouldn't be used as such.
 
laughing dog said:
The US economy as a whole is doing moderately well. However, as the OP points out, the gains are not evenly or equitably shared. Nor is this any sign that any future gains will be more progressively spread out since the GOP, conservatives, libertarians, and the dupes of all 3 are adamantly opposed to any sign of "redistribution".
Click to expand...

That's the key takeaway, I believe. It's possible to acknowledge that the economy is good by certain metrics that matter to a minority of financially-minded people, while continuing to be a failure from the perspective of virtually everybody else, even though most are employed and the destitute only number in the tens of millions.
 
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