Poverty Rate Highest In 50 Years

[dales]

More Hope And Change, I suppose?

WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.

Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.

The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.

Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.

"I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I'm here, applying for assistance because it's hard to make ends meet. It's very hard to adjust," said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.

Fritz says she grew up wealthy in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, but fortunes turned after her parents lost a significant amount of money in the housing bust. Stuck in a half-million dollar house, her parents began living off food stamps and Fritz's college money evaporated. She tried joining the Army but was injured during basic training.

Now she's living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can't find work as a landscaper. They are struggling to pay their $650 rent on his unemployment checks and don't know how they would get by without the extra help as they hope for the job market to improve.

In an election year dominated by discussion of the middle class, Fritz's case highlights a dim reality for the growing group in poverty. Millions could fall through the cracks as government aid from unemployment insurance, Medicaid, welfare and food stamps diminishes.

"The issues aren't just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy," said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.

He pointed to the recent recession but also longer-term changes in the economy such as globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less unionization that have pushed median household income lower. Even after strong economic growth in the 1990s, poverty never fell below a 1973 low of 11.1 percent. That low point came after President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, launched in 1964, that created Medicaid, Medicare and other social welfare programs.

"I'm reluctant to say that we've gone back to where we were in the 1960s. The programs we enacted make a big difference. The problem is that the tidal wave of low-wage jobs is dragging us down and the wage problem is not going to go away anytime soon," Edelman said.

Stacey Mazer of the National Association of State Budget Officers said states will be watching for poverty increases when figures are released in September as they make decisions about the Medicaid expansion. Most states generally assume poverty levels will hold mostly steady and they will hesitate if the findings show otherwise. "It's a constant tension in the budget," she said.

The predictions for 2011 are based on separate AP interviews, supplemented with research on suburban poverty from Alan Berube of the Brookings Institution and an analysis of federal spending by the Congressional Research Service and Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute.

The analysts' estimates suggest that some 47 million people in the U.S., or 1 in 6, were poor last year. An increase of one-tenth of a percentage point to 15.2 percent would tie the 1983 rate, the highest since 1965. The highest level on record was 22.4 percent in 1959, when the government began calculating poverty figures.

Poverty is closely tied to joblessness. While the unemployment rate improved from 9.6 percent in 2010 to 8.9 percent in 2011, the employment-population ratio remained largely unchanged, meaning many discouraged workers simply stopped looking for work. Food stamp rolls, another indicator of poverty, also grew.

Demographers also say:

—Poverty will remain above the pre-recession level of 12.5 percent for many more years. Several predicted that peak poverty levels — 15 percent to 16 percent — will last at least until 2014, due to expiring unemployment benefits, a jobless rate persistently above 6 percent and weak wage growth.

—Suburban poverty, already at a record level of 11.8 percent, will increase again in 2011.

—Part-time or underemployed workers, who saw a record 15 percent poverty in 2010, will rise to a new high.

—Poverty among people 65 and older will remain at historically low levels, buoyed by Social Security cash payments.

—Child poverty will increase from its 22 percent level in 2010.

Analysts also believe that the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the poverty level, will remain near its peak level of 6.7 percent.

"I've always been the guy who could find a job. Now I'm not," said Dale Szymanski, 56, a Teamsters Union forklift operator and convention hand who lives outside Las Vegas in Clark County. In a state where unemployment ranks highest in the nation, the Las Vegas suburbs have seen a particularly rapid increase in poverty from 9.7 percent in 2007 to 14.7 percent.

Szymanski, who moved from Wisconsin in 2000, said he used to make a decent living of more than $40,000 a year but now doesn't work enough hours to qualify for union health care. He changed apartments several months ago and sold his aging 2001 Chrysler Sebring in April to pay expenses.

"You keep thinking it's going to turn around. But I'm stuck," he said.

The 2010 poverty level was $22,314 for a family of four, and $11,139 for an individual, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income, before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as home ownership, as well as noncash aid such as food stamps and tax credits, which were expanded substantially under President Barack Obama's stimulus package.

An additional 9 million people in 2010 would have been counted above the poverty line if food stamps and tax credits were taken into account.

Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, believes the social safety net has worked and it is now time to cut back. He worries that advocates may use a rising poverty rate to justify additional spending on the poor, when in fact, he says, many live in decent-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.

A new census measure accounts for noncash aid, but that supplemental poverty figure isn't expected to be released until after the November election. Since that measure is relatively new, the official rate remains the best gauge of year-to-year changes in poverty dating back to 1959.

Few people advocate cuts in anti-poverty programs. Roughly 79 percent of Americans think the gap between rich and poor has grown in the past two decades, according to a Public Religion Research Institute/RNS Religion News survey from November 2011. The same poll found that about 67 percent oppose "cutting federal funding for social programs that help the poor" to help reduce the budget deficit.

Outside of Medicaid, federal spending on major low-income assistance programs such as food stamps, disability aid and tax credits have been mostly flat at roughly 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product from 1975 to the 1990s. Spending spiked higher to 2.3 percent of GDP after Obama's stimulus program in 2009 temporarily expanded unemployment insurance and tax credits for the poor.

The U.S. safety net may soon offer little comfort to people such as Jose Gorrin, 52, who lives in the western Miami suburb of Hialeah Gardens. Arriving from Cuba in 1980, he was able to earn a decent living as a plumber for years, providing for his children and ex-wife. But things turned sour in 2007 and in the past two years he has barely worked, surviving on the occasional odd job.

His unemployment aid has run out, and he's too young to draw Social Security.

Holding a paper bag of still-warm bread he'd just bought for lunch, Gorrin said he hasn't decided whom he'll vote for in November, expressing little confidence the presidential candidates can solve the nation's economic problems. "They all promise to help when they're candidates," Gorrin said, adding, "I hope things turn around. I already left Cuba. I don't know where else I can go."

___

Associated Press writers Kristen Wyatt in Lakewood, Colo., Ken Ritter and Michelle Rindels in Las Vegas, Laura Wides-Munoz in Miami and AP Deputy Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

[Grim Reaper]

Meanwhile, the rich are hiding up to $21 trillion, and maybe up to $32 trillion, in offshore tax havens.

But I'm sure that trickle down job creator fairy tale will come true some day.

[rubato]

If you want more poor folks just elect Repuglicans:




They Looooves poor folks.

yrs,
rubato

[dgs49]

I've asked this question before and got no coherent response, but I'll try again.

What, exactly, do Barry & the Progressives have up their sleeves that will reduce poverty?


Hint: More and greater government handouts merely exacerbate the problem.

I can hardly wait for the answer.

[Grim Reaper]

I've asked this question before and got no coherent response, but I'll try again.

Translation: Any answer you give will be labeled "incoherent".

Hint: More and greater government handouts merely exacerbate the problem.

Says you. While you also argue that corporations should be given more handouts. Because that makes more jobs somehow and not just more profits for said corporations.

[dgs49]

Nice response Reaper. I see you have taxed your mind.

Take a nap. You must be exhausted.

[Grim Reaper]

Nice response, I see you have nothing of value to add to this discussion.

[rubato]

OK Flash quiz! Which policies would you follow to increase std of living?

_____________________________
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/d ... household/

TTable H-3. Mean Household Income Received by Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent, All Races: 1967 to 2010
(Households as of March of the following year. Income in current and 2010 CPI-U-RS adjusted dollars (29))
Year Lowest fifth Second fifth Third fifth Fourth fifth Highest fifth Top 5 percent
2010 Dollars
2010 ……………………..... 11,034 ……… 28,636 ……… 49,309 ……… 79,040 ……… 169,633 ……… 287,686
2009 ……………………..... 11,743 ……… 29,740 ……… 50,352 ……… 79,993 ……… 173,664 ……… 300,264
2008 ……………………..... 11,803 ……… 29,890 ……… 50,766 ……… 80,769 ……… 173,221 ……… 298,437
2007 ……………………..... 12,147 ……… 30,960 ……… 52,544 ……… 83,190 ……… 176,632 ……… 301,999
2006 ……………………..... 12,276 ……… 31,119 ……… 52,148 ……… 82,542 ……… 181,858 ……… 321,611
2005 ……………………..... 11,900 ……… 30,554 ……… 51,711 ……… 81,334 ……… 178,230 ……… 314,007
2004 ……………………..... 11,825 ……… 30,256 ……… 51,263 ……… 80,830 ……… 174,803 ……… 304,612
2003 ……………………..... 11,850 ……… 30,441 ……… 51,673 ……… 81,791 ……… 174,359 ……… 300,212
2002 ……………………..... 12,107 ……… 30,784 ……… 51,874 ……… 81,596 ……… 174,211 ……… 304,214
2001 ……………………..... 12,483 ……… 31,365 ……… 52,499 ……… 82,315 ……… 179,768 ……… 320,771
2000 ……………………..... 12,860 ……… 32,110 ……… 53,472 ……… 83,124 ……… 180,129 ……… 319,567
1999 ……………………..... 12,974 ……… 31,856 ……… 53,323 ……… 82,992 ……… 176,980 ……… 307,608
1998 ……………………..... 12,320 ……… 31,109 ……… 52,054 ……… 80,506 ……… 170,358 ……… 296,934
1997 ……………………..... 11,972 ……… 29,931 ……… 50,356 ……… 77,994 ……… 166,282 ……… 291,805
1996 ……………………..... 11,893 ……… 29,193 ……… 49,104 ……… 75,998 ……… 159,843 ……… 278,438
1995 ……………………..... 11,855 ……… 28,976 ……… 48,450 ……… 74,480 ……… 155,428 ……… 268,246
1994 ……………………..... 11,222 ……… 27,967 ……… 47,113 ……… 73,314 ……… 154,128 ……… 266,291
1993 ……………………..... 10,934 ……… 27,720 ……… 46,465 ……… 72,211 ……… 150,446 ……… 258,216
1992 ……………………..... 11,048 ……… 27,682 ……… 46,638 ……… 71,594 ……… 138,723 ……… 220,178
Bush years avg loss … (679) ……… (1,474) ……… (1,733) ……… (1,546) ……… (6,547) ……… (22,334)
Bush years % gain .. -5.4% ……… -4.7% ……… -3.3% ……… -1.9% ……… -3.6% ……… -7.0%
Clinton years avg gain 1,926 ……… 4,390 ……… 7,006 ……… 10,913 ……… 29,682 ……… 61,351
Clinton years % gain . 17.16% ……… 15.70% ……… 14.87% ……… 14.89% ……… 19.26% ……… 23.04%

____________________________-


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

The Dangerous Myth About The Bill Clinton Tax Increase

One of the most dangerous myths that has infected the current debate over the direction of tax policy is the oft repeated claim that the tax increases under President Bill Clinton led to the boom of the 1990s. In their Wall Street Journal Op-Ed last Friday, for example, Clinton campaign manager James Carville and Democratic pollster and Clinton advisor Stanley Greenberg write the increase in the top tax rate to 39.6% “produced the one period of shared prosperity in this past era (since 1980).”

While this myth is now a central part of liberal Democratic folklore, it is contradicted by the political disaster and poor economic results that followed the tax increase. The real lesson of the Clinton Presidency is the way back to prosperity lies not through increased taxes on “the rich,” but through tax and regulatory reform and a return to a rules based monetary policy that produces a strong and stable dollar.

The 1993 Clinton tax increase raised the top two income tax rates to 36% and 39.6%, with the top rate hitting joint returns with incomes above $250,000 ($400,000 in 2012 dollars). In addition, it removed the cap on the 2.9% Medicare payroll tax, raised the corporate tax rate to 35% from 34%, increased the taxable portion of Social Security benefits, and imposed a 4.3 cent per gallon increase in transportation fuel taxes.

If these tax increases were good for the middle class, then they should have been popular. Yet, in the 1994 elections, the Democratic Party suffered historic losses. Even though Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell had declared the unpopular HillaryCare dead in September of that year, the Republican Party gained 54 seats in the House and 8 seats in the Senate to win control of both the House and the Senate for the first time since 1952.

Second, Messrs. Carville and Greenberg are contradicted by their former boss. Speaking at a fund raiser in 1995, President Clinton said: ”Probably there are people in this room still mad at me at that budget because you think I raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much, too.”

During the first four years of his Presidency, real GDP growth average 3.2%, respectable relative to today’s economy, but disappointing coming as it did following just one year of recovery from the 1991 recession, the end of the Cold War and the reduction in consumer price inflation below 3% for the first time (with the single exception of 1986) since 1965.

For example, it was a half a percentage point slower than under Reagan during the four years following the first year of the recovery from the 1982 recession.

Employment growth was a respectable 2 million a year. But real hourly wages continued to stagnate, rising only 2 cents to 7.43 an hour in 1996 from $7.41 in 1992. No real gains for the middle class there.

Federal government receipts increased an average of $90 billion a year while the annual increase in federal spending was constrained to $45 billion. That led to a $183 billion, four-year reduction in the budget deficit to $107 billion in 1996.

However, with his masterful 1995 flip-flop on taxes, President Clinton took the first step toward a successful campaign for re-election and a shift in policy that produced the economic boom that occurred during his second term.

Welfare reform, which he signed in the summer of 1996, led to a massive reduction in the effective tax rates on the poor by ameliorating the rapid phase out of benefits associated with going to work.
The phased reduction in tariff and non-tariff barriers between the U.S., Mexico and Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement continued, leading to increased trade.
In 1997, Clinton signed a reduction in the (audible liberal gasp) capital gains tax rate to 20% from 28%.
The 1997 tax cuts also included a phased in increase in the death tax exemption to $1 million from $600,000, and established Roth IRAs and increased the limits for deductible IRAs.
Annual growth in federal spending was kept to below 3%, or $57 billion.
The Clinton Administration also maintained its policy of a strong and stable dollar. Over his entire second term, consumer price inflation averaged only 2.4% a year.

The boom was on. Between the end of 1996 and the end of 2000:

Economic growth accelerated a full percentage point to 4.2% a year.
Employment growth nudged higher, to 2.1 million jobs per year as the unemployment rate fell to 4.0% from 5.4%.
As the tax rate on capital gains came down, real wages made their biggest advance since the implementation of the Reagan tax rate reductions in the mid 1980s. Real average hourly earnings were (in 1982 dollars) $7.43 in 1996, $7.55 in 1997, $7.75 in 1998, $7.86 in 1999, and $7.89 in 2000.
Millions of Americans shared in the prosperity as the value of their 401(k)s climbed along with the stock market, which saw the price of the S&P 500 index rise 78%.
Revenue growth accelerated an astounding 59%, increasing on average $143 billion a year. Combined with continued restraint on government spending, that produced a $198 billion budget surplus in 2000.

Shared prosperity indeed! But one created not by raising tax rates on high income but not yet rich middle class families, and certainly not by raising the capital gains tax rate or by imposing the equivalent of the Buffett rule, a new alternative minimum tax of 30% on incomes over $1 million, nor by massively increasing federal spending.

Rather, it was a prosperity produced by freeing America’s poor from a punitive welfare system, lowering tariffs, reducing tax rates on the creators of wealth, limiting the growth of federal government expenditures, and providing a strong and stable dollar to businesses and families in America and throughout the world.

A shared prosperity can be achieved again. But to do so, the American people will have to overcome the envy feeding myth perpetrated by President Barack Obama and the spin-masters and leadership of the Democratic Party that raising tax rates on high incomes will somehow lead to more job creation, more opportunity and increased prosperity and security for the middle-class.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/charleskadl ... -increase/

[rubato]

It's not a myth about what happened in the Bush years. Republican policies fucked all of us slowly for 8 years followed by total collapse.

The data is the data.

Clinton = good outcome

Repuglican = fucked in the ass.


Would you hire a plumber who said he only turned valves and wrenches to the right? Would you elect a moron who signed the Grover Norquist tax pledge which says the same thing?


yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

After years of high joblessness, America's unemployed legions are unmotivated and increasingly unequipped to fill the jobs that do come open, analysts say. And they may have to contend with a permanent low-employment economy.

Avril Wilson, a 59-year-old resident of Newark in the north-eastern state of New Jersey, has some good news. She's back at work.

She lost her job as a senior administrative assistant with pharmaceutical firm Hoffman LaRoche when it relocated its office to San Francisco in 2009.

The job hunt was a trial. Now she's back at work as an administrator with a non-profit.

"I felt angry," she says. "I felt humiliated.

"You sort of lose your confidence. You question, 'have I lost what I had before, where I held a job and a position and it was recognised and I worked efficiently there?'"

America has traditionally been quick to shed jobs when the economic times get tough, but just as swift to make new positions as things pick up.

It's been different this time around.

The recession has been over since June 2009. Yet unemployment is still above 8%.

In New Jersey, joblessness hugged the national rate until recently; now it is a stubborn percentage point over the US figure of 8.3%.

"People may not have current skills," says George Echeverri, manager of New Brunswick's One Stop Career Centre.

"They have been working in the company say 15, 20 years, and they find that their skills are somewhat obsolete for the current job market demands."

State officials say they have grounds for guarded optimism - they are convinced things are at last turning around.

The good numbers in manufacturing and, more recently, property, are re-building confidence, they say.

Ahead of cuts to unemployment benefits, the state is putting all its long-term unemployed through a job-hunting refresher course.

The two-hour programme run by Mercer County College reminds job hunters about the need for a good CV - and tells them they may have to travel to maximise their chances.

North Dakota, where an oil boom has pushed down the unemployment rate to 3%, is mentioned, only partly in jest.

More than 40% of the US unemployed have been out of work for more than six months.

And the longer people are out of work, the harder it becomes to find a new job, says Mike Glass, who teaches the course.

Their skills degrade, Mr Glass says. They lose motivation, and as the months drag on, employers become more and more wary of taking them on.

But for the two dozen or so rather bored and understandably cynical attendees, he also some good news: the number of job fairs held in the state has risen since the beginning of the year.

"When big employers are prepared to send staff out to job fairs to collect resumes," he says, "you know they are looking to start hiring people."

Jeff Scheininger, for one, is about to hire again for his metal-hose manufacturing company.

The expansion will take him to 19 employees. But he doesn't go so far as to describe himself as optimistic.

"I am guarded," he says.

"I believe that we are stuck in a cycle of very low growth. The situation in Europe is very dire.

"We have not fixed our banking issues. The American consumer is certainly not going to spend money he doesn't have. I don't think they are going to do that anymore."

US economic figures are difficult to divine. But for some time now, many companies have been piling up big profits without hiring new staff.

"A lot of the business bounce-back has been by cutting costs," says Tom Bracken, president of the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. "The biggest cost to any company is labour."

Companies, Mr Bracken says, are running leaner and meaner.

In New Jersey and in other parts of the US, there is strong talk of a rebound in employment. But how far it will go is unclear.

A rise in the number of de-skilled and demotivated long-term unemployed may coincide with a reshaping of the American labour market.

"I think there is a new normal," Mr Bracken says.

"I don't think you are ever going to get back to very low unemployment. I think we can have a vibrant economy and a higher unemployment rate than is historical."

[dales]

Real unemployemnt in CALIFORNIA is closer to 15 %.

Not counted are the ones whose UI benefits have ended, the discouraged people, and those who have somehow fallen through the cracks.

Being older is a double whammy.

I can speak from personal experience.

I have a job, but not enough hours, been trying a long time to find work with more hours, but is extremely challenging and discouraging.

The sh-tty part is when I sit down for an interview and the interviewer is a wet-behind-the-ears 30-nothing. does not bode well.

fk-it.

[rubato]

On the other hand, we have open requisitions for new hires with experience as chemical engineers who can do scale-up, synthetic chemists, and even an MA-level chemist.

yrs,
rubato

[dales]

How about someone familiar with the synthesis of "Hoffman's Potion"?

[rubato]

I thinks that's a field for entrepreneurs, small business types.

yrs,
rubato

[dales]

[dgs49]

What, exactly, do Barry & the Progressives have up their sleeves that will reduce poverty?

Anyone care to take a stab at it? Honestly.

[rubato]

What, exactly, do Barry & the Progressives have up their sleeves that will reduce poverty?

Anyone care to take a stab at it? Honestly.

Raising the minimum wage is a good start.

yrs,
rubato

[dgs49]

Fantastic!

How much? $15? $25? $40?

What a boon this will be to minority yoots! They can all work now and earning a living wage!

Stamp out fucking POVERTY!

Why didn't I think of that?

And don't forget people who rely on tip income. Make it $20 for them, too!

Brilliant!!!!!

And it won't cost a cent!

Jesus. I'm dumbfounded!

[rubato]

Fantastic!
...

Jesus. I'm dumbfounded!

No, you're just dumb.

yrs,
rubato