The New Feudalism: A million more Americans living in poverty

[Karmadillo]

Give Bush credit. He's been true to his ideals. All for the rich and crap for everybody else.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/cens-so1.shtml

US poverty increased as real wages stagnated and more Americans lost health insurance between 2003 and 2004, according to Census data released August 30. The latest estimates are based on information collected in 2005, combined with a slightly older annual supplement to the federal Current Population Survey.

For the fourth consecutive year, the poverty rate has risen. In 2000 31.6 million people, 11.3 percent of the population, lived at or below the federal poverty threshold. Last year 37 million Americans, 12.7 percent, fell into this category. This is an average increase of well over a million people a year.

Official criteria defining poverty are artificially low. The poverty threshold was developed in 1963-64 and adopted as part of the Johnson Administration’s War on Poverty campaign. Families at that time were estimated to spend a third of their income on food; therefore the government set the poverty threshold at three times the Department of Agriculture estimate of the cost of a nutritionally adequate diet. It was originally intended to assess economic risks and lack of opportunity, not serve as a guide for acceptable minimum income limits for families. Today, the poverty line still does not factor in the skyrocketing costs of transportation, child care, rent, or many other expenses in the life of a working-class family.

The 2005 federal poverty threshold for a family of four is set at $19,350, a subsistence level. This averages out to a full-time hourly wage of $9.30 an hour. For a single parent with two children, the limit is $16,090 a year, or about $7.75 an hour. A person living on his or her own is considered in poverty only if they earn less than $9,570 a year, which averages out to $4.60 an hour. These are grossly inadequate wages in all areas of the country, but particularly in cities where the cost of living requires substantially more than the federally determined minimum for even the barest necessities.

Last year, according to the Census data, 45.8 million people had no form of medical coverage, nearly 16 percent of the population. In addition to this extremely vulnerable segment of US society, another 79 million Americans, 27.2 percent, depend on government-funded programs, including Medicaid and Medicare, for health insurance.

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[peacebuzzard]

1. New Feudalism is very appropriate.

I was thinking of our new social order and progress yesterday, wondering how this era would be defined in the history and social reports.

[elehhhhna]

2. AND A NEW RECORD: Add another million just this week.