Posted on 01/18/2013 7:19:39 AM PST by whitedog57
According to the US Census Bureau, the poverty rate in the USA soared to 15% by the end of 2011.
Poverty, of course, is linked to unemployment and partial employment. Here is a chart of US poverty compared to the U6 measure of unemployment.
Perhaps when the Census Bureau updates their poverty survey for 2012, it will have improved.
Of course, the poverty numbers suffer from the infamous devil is in the details problem. The Heritage Foundation, for example, digs deeper in the causes and measurement of poverty. Poverty can include Section 8 housing, big screen televisions, food stamps and other benefits that may dissuade a return to the job market (and an escape from poverty).
But the 2011 poverty rate makes the USA equivalent to the Czech Republic and The Netherlands.
The leading poverty rates in the EU belong to former Communist countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia and the Ukraine. Greece is next on the list followed by Poland other several Mediterranean countries. One must admit, Communism left an ugly scar on the people of Europe.
These same countries also have some of the highest sovereign bond yields in the EU.
As the USA continues its great leap forward in becoming a European welfare state, we can witness the fiscal and debt drag of doing so.
As the USA has moved towards a more European socialist nation (e.g., Lyndon Johnsons The Great Society, and Clintons National Homeownership Strategy, we have seen wages and salaries as a percentage of GDP continue to fall from the sheer distortions of these policies. nhsdream2
Meanwhile, after-tax corporate profits in the USA continue to climb.
There are a variety of culprits in the decline of wages and salaries (job outsourcing, generous welfare benefits, legislation such as the (un)affordable health care act), but the one thing that households need to escape the poverty cycle is jobs.
Clintons National Homeownership Strategy was a broadening of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and did contribute to a surge in homeownership rates that was not sustained. In fact, the homeownership rate is back to levels of the Carter Administration.
Even though house prices remain elevated at 2003 levels, thanks to The Federal Reserve and the European fiscal/debt crisis pushing rate down considerably.
What do we need (both in the USA and EU)? A serious jobs recovery.
Speaking of a slow recovery, the University of Michigan fell to 71.3 and is still lower than the long-run average. Economists were expecting 75.0 (a BIG swing and a miss). So, consumer confidence plunged To December 2011 levels and recorded the biggest miss relative to expectations in 7 years.
Can you spell jobs and tax increases?
Folks in poverty in the U.S. would be middle class or upper middle class in many SE Asian countries. TV? Cel phone? Fridge? More than one room? A veee-hicle?
People on welfare live better than I do.
Says plenty about “poverty” in the USA if you ask me.
Many or most would be middle class here if you counted all the free stuff the government gives them. But by the strange accounting of the government, if they are poor they get free stuff which doesn't count when seeing if they are still poor so the Democrats say they need more stuff.
There was a recent article which stated that to match all the free stuff she gets, a single mother with some kids would have to earn $60,000 pre-tax to equal her total take on Medicare, food stamps, section 8 housing, EITC and everything else.
I've seen *real* poverty in my lifetime.I've seen it in Africa,Asia *and* South America.At least 99% of the genuinely poor of this world would sell their souls to live like the typical US welfare parasite.
I hope you're not telling us that you don't realize that that was the Rat Party's goal from the very start (the "war on poverty").
Thank you for the illumination, Dr. Obvious.
>>>Folks in poverty in the U.S. would be middle class or upper middle class in many SE Asian countries. TV? Cel phone? Fridge? More than one room? A veee-hicle?<<<
Take free stuff away and you’ll see. A lot of young ignorant folks in Canada views US the way Americans see Mexico - a a dirt-poor crime-ridden hellhole. Traveling from Windzor, Ontario to Detroit backs their stereotypes.
If you’ll ask a Canadian cop near border if he remember any homicide he’ll most likely remind an American from Michigan killing another American a couple years ago.
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