Every Tuesday the Huffington Post lets me post a featured piece. Mostly I write about jobs, especially the issue of 'real unemployment', and trade, where I worry over the extremely adverse effects which unfair globalization is having on American workers.
Two old friends, civil rights activist David Mixner and former U.S. Senator (and my oft co-author) Don Riegle (D-MI), believe that in the economic recovery, not enough attention is being given to 'who's really poor' now. David and Don have for years advised me -- and others -- on the issue of poverty in America, and they are worried that too many people, and especially too many people in the administration and Congress, are missing this imperative.
To help make their point, they referred me to poverty activist Marsha Timpson, who describes today's poor as "America's dirty little secret, hidden in the backyards of America's shining homes, the hollows, the reservations, the border towns and the dark ghettos of the city where they are the lie of the American dream."
I agree with my friends, and with Ms. Timpson's view, and everyone else should as well, for right now in America:
Although I myself grew up in a fairly hardscrabble environment, as the father of a daughter who was in fact able to create a successful life from the opportunities her mother and I could give her, it is hard for me to imagine what it must be like to have your child needy and hungry. Yet all of us need to 'imagine' this, because each night in America millions of children do in fact go to bed hungry and under-nourished, while also lacking proper housing, needed clothing, and the basic education required to develop and ultimately find gainful employment. And while I wholeheartedly support the First Lady's new "Let's Move" effort to improve the nutrition of America's children, we must first react to basic hunger rather than to food quality.
The overwhelming problem today for most workers isn't this recession, as horrible as it is -- it's the fact that for every earned income level except the top 10%, average household income hasn't changed a bit for 10 years, and that for the bottom 60% of wage earners it hasn't changed for more than 20 years. Through economic expansions and recessions -- and bull and bear markets -- alike, 90% of workers in America have been standing still earnings-wise.
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The best response to this scourge would be for our government to embrace in today's troubled time the same "economic bill of rights" that FDR, in his last State of the Union Speech in January 1944, demanded for his.
Roosevelt's "bill" sought to guarantee, in addition to health care and education, rights to:
And with his typical sensitivity, FDR concluded his last SOTUS, when he knew that he was dying, by saying that, "We cannot be content, no matter how high the general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people -- whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth -- is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed and insecure."
Until we in this time include the eradication of poverty as part of our economic recovery efforts, as FDR tried to do in his time, no matter how much we attempt to rebuild the nation's economy through better trade practices, enhanced workers' rights, and investments in infrastructure and the 'green economy', tens of millions of Americans, literally, will still be left impoverished.
In making this effort, and thus in trying to determine "who's really poor in America" so that we can assist them, it helps to think of America as a doughnut, with the 'hole' in the doughnut being, at any point in time, the middle class (and the elites) and with the dough-part being those Americans who aspire to get there.
When our ancestors got off their boats at Ellis Island or on the West Coast, the American doughnut was a fat one with a relatively tiny hole, because almost all of them were impoverished 'outsiders' looking to find their individual American Dream. The doughnut's hole grew relatively larger over the next 50 to 100 years as the economy grew, and then with the widespread prosperity that came with the end of the Second World War, it ballooned in size as the middle class ballooned.
In the two decades after the War, with a burgeoning middle class clearly in hand, our government, in order to help those Americans still living on the outer ring, established very powerful employment & training, education, home mortgage, and small business assistance programs, while freely allowing labor unions to advance and protect workers' rights.
The problem with how we have reacted so far to the Great Recession of 2007 is that most of the recovery programs are, as in the '50s and '60s, only for those Americans living in the outer ring: programs such as "cash for clunkers", first-time homebuyer credits, expanded Pell Grants, etc. In 2010, however, after decades of wide-spread wage stagnation, the entire middle class needs help as well, and the simple proof of this is that overall income inequality in America is now the greatest since 1928, when we first began to measure it.
Without an immediate all-of-government commitment to creating upwards of 30 million new jobs (not the 9 million that the administration has identified), without stimulus efforts that specifically target the entire struggling middle class, and without very specific initiatives aimed at breaking the back of general wage stagnation, there is not even a medium-term prospect of anything approaching real full employment and healthy economic growth that benefits all Americans.
So, the answer to the question of 'who's really poor' now is that we all are in one way or another, because, as FDR would have said if he was here, "some [way too large] fraction of our people is."
Addressing this reality -- this now virtual pandemic of poverty -- must be at the core of our current economic recovery efforts, because a vibrant middle class that grows from the bottom up will always be central to the continued health of America's democratic society.
Leo Hindery, Jr. chairs the US Economy/Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the former chief executive of AT&T Broadband and other major media and telecom companies.
Follow Leo Hindery, Jr. on Twitter: www.twitter.com/leohindery
Rev. Peter Morales: Poverty and Thanksgiving: A Call to Righteous Love
Not according to Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer of SC. To him, the weakest among us are "stray animals", undeserving to be fed. I have no doubt there are MANY like him who believe the same thing, but are silent.
These powerful, privileged citizens (who have NO realistic concept of or appreciation for the harsh economic life for the rest of us - we are just statistics), DO actively debate the necessity and obligation of providing assistance for our least fortunate members - the very poor they themselves have helped create.
Glorious "free trade", deregulation, tax incentives/breaks, corporate subsidies (WELFARE), bailouts, etc. are bastions of inequality and built-in inequity.
This is why we're seeing the wholesale destruction of the middle class...and the ever-increasing wealth of the rich. In their world, less for YOU means MORE for them. Nothing personal (you are just "human capital", after all).
The rich create the poverty problem, then walk away, screaming and complaining it's not their problem. The hell it's not. Their patriotic, red-white-and-blue defense: I've got mine (no matter how I got it)...you go get yours (if you can...and I'll make sure you can't, because I don't want competition).
Their Golden Rule: privatize the profits, socialize the losses. And whatever you do, don't feed the stray animals. *
* Especially the ones you yourself turned out.
Possibly you believe that such prejudice is excused if you display it only towards specific, approved groups. I am not sure free passes exist in this area though.
Who am I insulting and scorning? What prejudice?
Your post is rather vague and confusing. Would you please clarify your meaning?
"Not according to Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer of SC. To him, the weakest among us are "stray animals", undeserving to be fed. I have no doubt there are MANY like him who believe the same thing, but are silent. "
She states "many", not the entirety.
It is the morality of those like Lt. Gov. Bauer that she is questioning, not their wealth.
Morality is not restricted to a group.
My husband was exposed to some of those worrisome children through a hobby thing, and they broke his heart in a way. The school's idea was to expose them to old guys who would just treat them like regular people, but the self-defeating attitudes in otherwise bright-seeming kids were painfully obvious.
I keep thinking that the answer lies in restoring dignity that's been stolen from so many, which may be what you are saying, but I don't know how to make it happen.
I was struck by your saying: ". . . .Yet all of us need to "imagine" this . . . ." I suggest that it is not a matter of imagining, it is a matter of doing, doing without dinner tonight. Go ahead, live on one meal a day for awhile and then (as you are able publish your opinions and experiences) tell Huffington Post readers what it was like. Start a trend. The food you save (or money) can be donated to your local food bank. In our (impoverished) community in rural Nevada, home gardens are erupting out the volcanic soil of our valley. Neighbors are quick to ask a gardener for any extra crop they might have as we encounter the hungry in the next block or when a young one brings home a ravenous friend from school. For the last decade I've devoted time to a fasting regime. I'm always the better for it. For me one of the dirty little secrets we need to confront is that many of us have a great deal too much to eat and if we shared this bounty at least hunger could be dealt with. The rest of the disease you describe? I don't know where to begin - but I can feed a neighbor.
As a side issue, and from the perspective of an organic gardener, I was drawn to your mention of the volcanic soil in your area. Combined with the Nevada sunshine, that must make for some very productive gardens.
I'm in the midst of a cold, overcast, snowy winter. But spring is not that far away, and then the magic of seed, soil, water, and sun will bring on the gardens of promise.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
Conservatives don't think promote the general welfare is the job of government, when it's right there for the world to see in the preamble to the Constitution. It's one of the reasons we exist as a nation. For you who only think in the bottom line, it's our mission statement. Yet it seems, through the actions of government, it isn't the general welfare we promote, it's the welfare of the Financial Aristocracy.
due to failure to act
However, companies, like AT&T, have recently been charged with illegally collecting "taxes" from its costomers on wireless data, any yet they continue to pay no taxes to the government. Insurance companies have been doing the same thing for years on their policy holders. Same said for Oil companies too, when they crank in that 9/10 cent sales tax everytime you buy a gallon of gas. They do not turn these taxes over to the government. You pay, but they keep the tax money. No wonder why our government is broke. This is outright fraud and it's predatory on individual Americans. There is something desperately wrong with your country when businesses can do this, and the IRS does little to stop this.
"And 100 million people, fully one-third of the entire U.S. population, are at or below "200% of the federal poverty line of $21,834 for a family of four", which is a needs-measure made lame by the fact that no family of four can actually comfortably live on such a low annual income."
They would qualify for Food Stamps, probably about $500 a month, thats $6000 a year.
Provided the above was "Earned Income" they would get a check back when they filed their tax return of over $7500. And if they live in expensive areas of the country, there are many other programs that will help with rent and bills.
None of that assistance being provided, at taxpayers expense, changes the fact that they EARNED $21K, and are therfore counted below the poverty level despite the thousands of dollars that have been provided for them.
I could at least have some faith in the numbers if taxpayers were receiving credit for what is already being provided to mitigate their position. But its hard for me to get fired up when I have no faith in the numbers your throwing out.
I fully expected I would have to back off this practice to allow people who are on hard times to capitalize on this practice. So far I have picked up this year the same amount of cans and metals I did three years ago.
http://www.robert-h-frank.com/PDFs/ES.11.23.06.pdf
It always has been and it always will be. The problem is that job creation remains in the minds of our national leaders, a global issue. As if we were all born on jetliners bound for foreign lands, the notion of dealing with local job creation does not quite sink in. As it does not, the regulatory controls needed to assure local job creation are lost in the baggage terminals of cities like Dubia as opposed to cities like Dubuque.
The regulatory controls I am speaking of are national building codes. These are the codes that once universally applied across America, will facilitate a boon in the American housing industry never before seen. As that boon is all about integrating hundreds of advanced technologies into the process of building healthy American homes, until Washington gets off its' jet plane, Americans will remain unskilled and low waged baggage handlers.
Why our leaders cannot figure out the remarkable potential of investing in American architecture is beyond me entirely.
I love you dearly sunshine and DON"T take this the wrong way.
There are so many exciting things taking place in our nation today it is ridiculous.
All we have to do is build cool houses and refreshing communities. The moment we do so, everything is going to be just fine.
As there is just so much angst we collectively hold over our unenlightened American architectural heads, because we do this to ourselves, nobody can just sit down and say to a total stranger "You have a beautiful mind, I would like to invest in it and in doing so find safety in our collective trust that we are Americans".
You represent that remark