our nation has become the richest nation on earth only for those who gain by BushCo/PNAC hoodlums.
Lengthy, but VERY worth the read!
This is a very interesting April 2005 article re: poverty and unemployment in the US:
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0405yates.htmA Statistical Portrait of the U.S. Working Classby Michael D. Yates
The biennial State of Working America (hereinafter SWA), written by economists at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., is the best compendium and analysis of U.S. labor market statistics there is.* In one convenient book, there are data on the distribution of income and wealth, all aspects of wages and benefits, employment and unemployment, poverty, regional labor markets, and international labor comparisons. In addition to the data, there are explanations for all of the major labor market trends.<snip>
Table 1 does not include separate unemployment rates for women. These have been very close to, and in some years below, those for men for more than a decade. Women used to have higher unemployment rates than men, but the decline of sectors of the economy dominated by male employment, especially manufacturing, has helped to make the rates converge. Also not shown in the table is “hidden unemployment” (see note at the bottom of table 1), which fell dramatically during the expansion as part-time workers were able to find full-time jobs and those who had dropped out of the labor force reentered it and found work. However, this too has increased considerably during the recession and jobless recovery.<snip>
...both income and wealth are horribly unequally distributed (58–72, 277–307). The rich are definitely getting richer, both absolutely and relatively, and the poor are getting poorer in both senses as well. The economic pie has steadily gotten bigger, but the share going to those at the bottom has actually shrunk, as most of the gains from greater productivity have gone to the owners of capital. And this is one of the tables from the article that shows the statistics re: unemployment. The author makes note of the fact that the numbers DO NOT include those who are still unemployed and no longer receiving benefits, as well as those who are "involuntarily part-time employed" because they have not found full-time employment.
If you read the article, all of the tables and charts make it very clear of the growing disparity of poor to wealthy in our nation that has been rising greatly since BushCo/PNAC stole our country.
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0405yates.htm