For many, big government is a four-letter word, but newly released poverty and income data signal the need to invest in large-scale programs and initiatives that have the potential to turn the country around. Quickly.
The federal government and the administration have to do more, not less. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the president's most recent job creation legislation will not be enough to penetrate this seemingly impenetrable national crisis.
In the last ten years, median household income has declined 7 percent and the number of people living in poverty has increased to 47 million, the largest in over half a century. For racial and ethnic minorities, the statistics are stark. The unemployment rate for African-Americans is a record 16.7 percent and for Latinos it is 11.3 percent. Over the last three years, the situation for many working Americans has gotten worse, not better.
Not since the Great Depression have the earnings and unemployment numbers been so dismal. In the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt boldly overhauled many social programs and invested heavily in initiatives to create jobs and ease the financial strain not only for individuals, but for states as well. The trillion-dollar question is: what should be done today?
We need a bold set of new policies and initiatives rooted in today's economic reality, not that of 40 years ago. Heavy investments in infrastructure, education and our social safety net system will be critical to creating pathways out of poverty rather than a bridge to nowhere.
We need more than snickers and hisses from Congress and fiscally conservative Republicans to get the country back on its feet. Tea Partiers, for all of their anti-government rhetoric, have failed to provide a sensible alternative to government intervention. The country can no longer afford this wait-and-see approach to recovery. I've seen. I've waited. It's not working.
Americans need a New Deal. It's up to the president and Congress to deliver us one.
U.S. Poverty Rose to 17-Year High in 2010, Income Fell
More New Yorkers Living In Poverty
Census: 12.5 percent of Mainers live in poverty
New Deal, let that be the name of the game.
You people that don't get it, get this. It's not your old socialism, communism nor any of those old labels that make it sound like you have a handle on it. If you are old of course you'll find everything biers some resemblance to something that was negative, but this is not that.
What I would like to see in A New Deal, is Government Banks, non-profit government home loans. So that we're not going to have White Collar Cooks plotting our failure. A bank run by the people; a federal Bank, federal home loans that can't bank on, and invest in our failure to pay Trick Loans.
“Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.” Edmund Burke
Hmm...you could just die, how about that for a Tea Party solution. Go broke, starve, and die quickly cause you can't afford to take care of yourself.
Are Democrats going to run a challenger to Barack so we don't get a Republican in the White House ?
The republicans are still too interested in furthering the US-as-Corporatocracy to do anything about poverty. If a person is in poverty it's their fault - despite what decades of social science tells us.