Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on ‘Lost Decade’

[groovedaddy]

WASHINGTON — Another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.

And in new signs of distress among the middle class, median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1997.

Economists pointed to a telling statistic: It was the first time since the Great Depression that median household income, adjusted for inflation, had not risen over such a long period, said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard.

“This is truly a lost decade,” Mr. Katz said. “We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it was in the late 1990s.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/14/us/14census.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

[FiveGoodMen]

1. All by design

And brought to you by BOTH parties.

[RKP5637]

2. Yep! Exactly! A=B. n/t

[ixion]

3. Yep. Spot on, that.

on both statements.

[Yavin4]

4. As So Ordered by The Banks

Pushing us into poverty is how they are repaying their bad debts.

[jwirr]

5. I would have been nice of the banksters would have refused to give

us all those loans they knew we would not be able to repay. I wonder if they have life insurance policies on us? That would certainly account for the die quickly health care plans their party is pushing.