America's Descent into Poverty

[crested-duck]

This is the reason most people around the world should be rightfully PISSED-OFF at the govt. And this is the monkey on our backs were all stuck carrying around while trying to enjoy life. I'm thinking problem reaction solution here! What do others here think?---Rob*******Friday, August 24, 2012America’s Descent into Poverty

Anthony Freda Art
Paul Craig Roberts, Contributor
Activist Post

The United States has collapsed economically, socially, politically, legally, constitutionally, and environmentally. The country that exists today is not even a shell of the country into which I was born. In this article I will deal with America’s economic collapse. In subsequent articles, i will deal with other aspects of American collapse.

Economically, America has descended into poverty. As Peter Edelman says, “Low-wage work is pandemic.” Today in “freedom and democracy” America, “the world’s only superpower,” one fourth of the work force is employed in jobs that pay less than $22,000, the poverty line for a family of four. Some of these lowly-paid persons are young college graduates, burdened by education loans, who share housing with three or four others in the same desperate situation. Other of these persons are single parents only one medical problem or lost job away from homelessness.

Others might be Ph.D.s teaching at universities as adjunct professors for $10,000 per year or less. Education is still touted as the way out of poverty, but increasingly is a path into poverty or into enlistments into the military services.

Edelman, who studies these issues, reports that 20.5 million Americans have incomes less than $9,500 per year, which is half of the poverty definition for a family of three.

There are six million Americans whose only income is food stamps. That means that there are six million Americans who live on the streets or under bridges or in the homes of relatives or friends. Hard-hearted Republicans continue to rail at welfare, but Edelman says, “basically welfare is gone.”

In my opinion as an economist, the official poverty line is long out of date. The prospect of three people living on $19,000 per year is farfetched. Considering the prices of rent, electricity, water, bread and fast food, one person cannot live in the US on $6,333.33 per year. In Thailand, perhaps, until the dollar collapses, it might be done, but not in the US.



As Dan Ariely (Duke University) and Mike Norton (Harvard University) have shown empirically, 40% of the US population, the 40% less well off, own 0.3%, that is, three-tenths of one percent, of America’s personal wealth. Who owns the other 99.7%? The top 20% have 84% of the country’s wealth. Those Americans in the third and fourth quintiles – essentially America’s middle class – have only 15.7% of the nation’s wealth. Such an unequal distribution of income is unprecedented in the economically developed world.

In my day, confronted with such disparity in the distribution of income and wealth, a disparity that obviously poses a dramatic problem for economic policy, political stability, and the macro management of the economy, Democrats would have demanded corrections, and Republicans would have reluctantly agreed.

But not today. Both political parties whore for money.

The Republicans believe that the suffering of poor Americans is not helping the rich enough. Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are committed to abolishing every program that addresses needs of what Republicans deride as “useless eaters.”

The “useless eaters” are the working poor and the former middle class whose jobs were offshored so that corporate executives could receive multi-millions of dollars in performance pay compensation and their shareholders could make millions of dollars on capital gains. While a handful of executives enjoy yachts and Playboy playmates, tens of millions of Americans barely get by.

In political propaganda, the “useless eaters” are not merely a burden on society and the rich. They are leeches who force honest taxpayers to pay for their many hours of comfortable leisure enjoying life, watching sports events, and fishing in trout streams, while they push around their belongings in grocery baskets or sell their bodies for the next MacDonald's burger.

The concentration of wealth and power in the US today is far beyond anything my graduate economic professors could image in the 1960s. At four of the world’s best universities that I attended, the opinion was that competition in the free market would prevent great disparities in the distribution of income and wealth. As I was to learn, this belief was based on an ideology, not on reality.

Congress, acting on this erroneous belief in free market perfection, deregulated the US economy in order to create a free market. The immediate consequence was resort to every previous illegal action to monopolize, to commit financial and other fraud, to destroy the productive basis of American consumer incomes, and to redirect income and wealth to the one percent.

The “democratic” Clinton administration, like the Bush and Obama administrations, was suborned by free market ideology. The Clinton sell-outs to Big Money essentially abolished Aid to Families with Dependent Children. But this sell-out of struggling Americans was not enough to satisfy the Republican Party. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want to cut or abolish every program that cushions poverty-stricken Americans from starvation and homelessness.

Republicans claim that the only reason Americans are in need is because the government uses taxpayers’ money to subsidize Americans who are unwilling to work. As Republicans see it, while we hard-workers sacrifice our leisure and time with our families, the welfare rabble enjoy the leisure that our tax dollars provide them.



This cock-eyed belief, on top of corporate CEOs maximizing their incomes by offshoring the middle class jobs of millions of Americans, has left Americans in poverty and cities, counties, states, and the federal government without a tax base, resulting in bankruptcies at the state and local level and massive budget deficits at the federal level that threaten the value of the dollar and its role as reserve currency.

The economic destruction of America benefitted the mega-rich with multi-billions of dollars with which to enjoy life and its high-priced accompaniments wherever the mega-rich wish. Meanwhile, away from the French Rivera, Homeland Security is collecting sufficient ammunition to keep dispossessed Americans under control.

source:http://www.activistpost.com/2012/08/americas-descent-into-poverty.html

[sdv]

This kind of poverty is, and always has been, widespread in the rest of the world, BUT the disturbing thing is that poverty (when you literally cannot earn enough to house, clothe and feed yourself) is increasing across the world, and the wealth of the super rich is skyrocketing to obscene levels. In the history of humanity, this kind of inequality and widespread suffering has always led to rebellion, revolution and war (and then the cycle repeats itself).

Personally, in terms of the Mayan calendar, I think we are still in the time of ethics, which will culminate in a war against greed, corruption, incompetence in leadership and the tolerance of violence. Or maybe I am wrong and we have already lost that war, and wealth and power will simply be transferred instead of an ethical transformation that will prevent humanity from repeating the cycle?!

The economic theories that have driven this situation have been proved to be so very wrong, and destructive, yet I meet people every day who cling to them and repeat them like some kind of religious doctrine.

[Cidersomerset]

This is the most ridiculous face of capilatism, in a land of plenty many go hungry.....

fLPC--tlr_A

Published on 24 Aug 2012 by RTAmerica


Description: According to a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council, 40 percent of the food in the US is thrown away.
At the same time a recent Gallup survey shows that one in five Americans can't afford food. So why aren't the people that need
the food getting it? Sasha Lyutse, a policy analyst for the NRDC, joins us to shed some light on the situation.

[Flash]

i am really astonished, this is not possibly a civilised society nor a rich one. Who wants to live in US: on one hand 25% of the* population is starving, on the other hand 40% of the food is lost to waste or garbage.

25% of the population starving: this is enormous, I bet it is more than in Communist China!.

And American still say this is the best place in the world. No wonder many people from developed countries do not think so.

[ThePythonicCow]

25% of the population starving
I doubt that 25% are starving.

Perhaps that many on food stamps; that program is widely available to anyone with limited income and resources.

Perhaps 90% are eating junk and starved for good nutrition ... but that's another story altogether.

But a quick glance at the local Wal*Mart checkout line will convince you we're not starving here in America (if eating too much junk food counts as not starving.)

¤=[Post Update]=¤


At the same time a recent Gallup survey shows that one in five Americans can't afford food.

Gallup surveys can be constructed to conclude most anything, and then misrepresented in brief summary to conclude most anything else.

Yes, the price of food is likely straining the budgets of many lower income Americans ... though they're finding ways to eat, so far.

[Mulder]

1hJvC8d8Gnw

Look at the poor living on nothing below Las Vegas casinos.

[ghostrider]

I barely afford gas to get back and forth to the job.

[Flash]

25% of the population starving
I doubt that 25% are starving.

Perhaps that many on food stamps; that program is widely available to anyone with limited income and resources.

Perhaps 90% are eating junk and starved for good nutrition ... but that's another story altogether.

But a quick glance at the local Wal*Mart checkout line will convince you we're not starving here in America (if eating too much junk food counts as not starving.)

¤=[Post Update]=¤


At the same time a recent Gallup survey shows that one in five Americans can't afford food.

Gallup surveys can be constructed to conclude most anything, and then misrepresented in brief summary to conclude most anything else.

Yes, the price of food is likely straining the budgets of many lower income Americans ... though they're finding ways to eat, so far.

malnutriion is starving Paul. When you do not have the money to feed your children decent food, they cannot succeed at school, they end up with bad health for which you cannot pay medication, they have stressed out parents that cannot supply emotional support, etc.

The statistics of 9,000$ or 20,000$ for a family of 4 is starvation Paul.
worst again if you become poor cevausw of medical needs while not covered.

Malnutrition is just slower starvation Paul (the US poor class lives something like 10 to 15 years less than the shrinking middle class). And while you are slowly starving, you cannot be creative, produce efficiently, be happy or just energetic. So you may have to pop prozacs, this is less expensive than nutritious food for good mental health.

[ThePythonicCow]

Malnutrition is just slower starvation Paul (the US poor class lives something like 10 to 15 years less than the shrinking middle class).

I was using the word "starving" in the more aggressive sense of depriving of "to be in the process of perishing or suffering severely from hunger".

I quite agree with you, that it is increasingly difficult, getting on impossible, for the poor in America to eat healthy food, and I quite agree that malnutrition from eating cheap junk food shortens and sickens ones life.

The use of the 20% or 25% figures was part of what led me to using "starving" in the more aggressive sense. If we're talking malnutrition, I'd say that many more than that are malnourished, even including many who could afford healthier food, if they knew what that was and made that choice.

But, yes, I agree with your points. My previous post was poorly written, as it suggested I thought otherwise.

[modwiz]

Malnutrition is just slower starvation Paul (the US poor class lives something like 10 to 15 years less than the shrinking middle class).

I was using the word "starving" in the more aggressive sense of depriving of "to be in the process of perishing or suffering severely from hunger".

I quite agree with you, that it is increasingly difficult, getting on impossible, for the poor in America to eat healthy food, and I quite agree that malnutrition from eating cheap junk food shortens and sickens ones life.

The use of the 20% or 25% figures was part of what led me to using "starving" in the more aggressive sense. If we're talking malnutrition, I'd say that many more than that are malnourished, even including many who could afford healthier food, if they knew what that was and made that choice.

But, yes, I agree with your points. My previous post was poorly written, as it suggested I thought otherwise.

I annoy people in my private life as well as here, Paul. Shocking, ain't it? :rolleyes: It seems one of my more irksome habits is correcting people who use the term, "I'm starving" when they are merely hungry. In the instance of overweight people this phrase takes on truly ridiculous meaning, IMO.

The number fluctuates, but IIRC the number of humans, on this planet, who do not make it through a 24 hour period averages out to about 14,000 a day/night. People reply to me that it is, "just a phrase, a figure of speech". They are correct in a very simple world. I choose to live in a more conscious one and the word starving implies life threatening implications. Any other usage dishonors and marginalizes those thousands who die every night that passes.

I applaud your appreciation for the gravity of this word.

[Cidersomerset]

Gallup surveys can be constructed to conclude most anything, and then misrepresented in brief summary to conclude most anything else.

Yes, the price of food is likely straining the budgets of many lower income Americans ... though they're finding ways to eat, so far.



I agree statatistics can be massaged as the old saying goes ...."Theres Lies . Damn Lies and Statistics "

But the 40% waste of food is ridiculous when theres hunger all over the world, we have a similar problem...
I know logistics means food thrown away in a supermaket in Chicago cannot feed a hungry family in Africa
But more thought should be given to wastage and hunger should have been wiped out a century ago with
the formation of the UN......Not a forum for squabbling ! but we are where we are !!.....


malnutriion is starving Paul. When you do not have the money to feed your children decent food, they cannot succeed at school, they end up with bad health for which you cannot pay medication, they have stressed out parents that cannot supply emotional support, etc.

The statistics of 9,000$ or 20,000$ for a family of 4 is starvation Paul.
worst again if you become poor cevausw of medical needs while not covered.

Malnutrition is just slower starvation Paul (the US poor class lives something like 10 to 15 years less than the shrinking middle class). And while you are slowly starving, you cannot be creative, produce efficiently, be happy or just energetic. So you may have to pop prozacs, this is less expensive than nutritious food for good mental health.

Very good points....


I annoy people in my private life as well as here, Paul. Shocking, ain't it? It seems one of my more irksome habits is correcting people who use the term, "I'm starving" when they are merely hungry. In the instance of overweight people this phrase takes on truly ridiculous meaning, IMO.

You do it so well Modwiz and there is a contradiction with obesity, and that is just as unhealthy
and a strain on health and food resources....More imaginative thought needed..'ME Thinks'..

[bogeyman]

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xooxko_poor-america-panorama_shortfilms

Documentary produced by the BBC program Panorama called "Poor America":

"With one and a half million American children now homeless, reporter Hilary Andersson meets the school pupils who go hungry in the richest country on Earth. From those living in the storm drains under Las Vegas to the tent cities now springing up around the United States, Panorama finds out how the poor are surviving in America and asks whatever happened to Barack Obama's vision for the country."

[ThePythonicCow]

the word starving implies life threatening implications. Any other usage dishonors and marginalizes those thousands who die every night that passes.
I think it is fair to say that by now, the word "starving" has multiple meanings, some of which do not imply a threat to life or anything that severe.

I don't conclude that using other meanings of the word necessarily dishonors or marginalizes those who die for lack of food.

The English language (perhaps other languages too, I don't know) is a slippery and changing beast. One cannot know what is in someone else's heart by simply imposing some particular meaning on a few of their words and interpreting what they say in that light.

[crested-duck]

I want to thank for responses, and highlight the point: NOTHING HAPPENS BY ACCIDENT !......Rob

[Arrowwind]

this is starvation:

displaced people who were trying to escape al-Shabab territory. (Tyler Hicks/The New York Times) # (http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2011/08/03/captured-somalia-famine/4538/#photo2)
http://denverpost.slideshowpro.com/albums/001/496/album-252254/cache/famine03.sJPG_950_2000_0_75_0_50_50.sJPG?1345991849
3 (http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2011/08/03/captured-somalia-famine/4538/#photo3)

A woman sits next to a child at Banadir hospital in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, July 28, 2011.

The following is malnutriton, not starvation. Starvation is painful in the earliest days and totally incapacitating in the later.




http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2011/09/15/es_weight_091511_244x183.jpg



(Credit: CBS/istockphoto)



http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2011/08/24/overweightwalkers_iStock_00_244x183.jpg (Credit: istockphoto)


(CBS News) By 2030, roughly 42 percent of Americans will be obese, researchers announced today to kick off the "Weight of the Nation" obesity conference in Washington, D.C. That staggering rise will contribute to a rise in major health care costs, so much so that the researchers behind the study say keeping obesity rates level over the next 20 years could save nearly $550 billion.

Malnutrion can largely cause obesity, especially in the USA, starvation does not, and obesity is due to combined factors including poor food choices, addiction, health problems or lack of education and learned behaviors. Starvatation causes emaciation.

When you use words like starvation inappropriatedly you slant your report and make people think things that are not true... this is called slanted reporting. In all my years of nursing I dont think I saw one person who was starving short of reasons highly medical and unusual.
Hunger is an issue in the USA, yet starvation is as of yet, rare. Food stamps, school lunch and breakfast programs, food banks, soup kitchens, and charities prevent starvation.... there are even some discounted food stores dedicated to providing food at prices slashed to less than half.

[Arrowwind]

but I would add, that we may be only a short distance from starvation if systems collapse and support systems fail. I do not see that collapse as of yet to any great degree at least in my neck of the woods.

[Mutchie]

you say the americans who are unemployed get food stamps but what about gas and money for electric or clothes ???

[kcbc2010]

Mutchie: I know I shouldn't laugh at your serious question, but it's just impossible to describe the absurdness of the welfare system in the US w/o sounding like a kook. It's just a mess. Benefits are largely determined by what state you live in and how many family members you have.

Like, food stamps are just that - food stamps. You can't pay for anything else w/them. And that's a big deal these days because a lot of states offer debit cards these days and people take out the cash and use it for other things, not food, so you get people who are ticked that the money isn't being used as intended.

In my state, we've been going through a big reform process for qualifying for food stamps because a lot of college kids would plead poverty to get food stamps. (Not all people in college are able to mooch off of mom and dad and have valid reasons for needing food stamps, but a lot of them do get support from mom/dad and really aren't in a situation where they are in real, dire poverty.) Also, there were a couple of lottery winners claiming poverty even though they had won millions in prize money, so they reformed the law to say that people who won millions in the lottery couldn't ask the state for food money. (You'd think that would be obvious that people would be ticked having to pay for the food of someone who's been quoted as saying 'but I've got two houses to pay for!", but apparently, it's not!)

If you've lost your job and get unemployment, that's where you get your cash to pay for things like gas/utilities, etc.

If you've lost your job and physically disabled/unable to work, you can apply for social security disability, where you'd get cash to pay for things like gas/utilities.

There are some programs in my state for a cash allowance for clothes, etc. However, qualifying is the challenge. There are a few social service agencies, like the Salvation Army, which will help people pay their electric/gas bill. However, that's more for emergency relief, not a permanent solution. Needless to say, your question is valid, but I have no idea how to even begin to answer it w/o feeling like I'm not really answering the question.

[Deborah (ahamkara)]

Thank you for posting the link to the documentary. I enjoyed hearing the opinion of a non-citizen, looking in.

I think the conversation on starvation vs. malnutrition is a valid one, but the most disturbing aspect of the entire documentary to me was the very real and increasing human suffering (whatever the reason) - caused by a very unbalanced system funneling every greater resources to the wealthy.

It was shameful to see the face of that small girl talking about eating a rat. Her anger, hurt, and bewilderment were so painful, it made me cry. We, as a country, are so much better than this! The "government" finds the money to wage seemingly endless wars, yet we have people living in tents with rotting teeth, painful, potentially fatal medical conditions going untreated due to lack of funds, and feeding their kids rats. We must all work to accelerate change to the good. Peace.

[Arrowwind]

, but the most disturbing aspect of the entire documentary to me was the very real and increasing human suffering (whatever the reason) - caused by a very unbalanced system funneling every greater resources to the wealthy.

.

This is exactly it in a nutshell, without slant or distortion, and I would add to this, funneling of resources to military and war.
People suffer when they are deprived of the sufficient sustenence to be creative, when they are divorced from sources of income, when they have thier individual liberty taken by others, when they are drugged and lied to by their physicians, by either state or church or other tyrants.

"The Republicans believe that the suffering of poor Americans is not helping the rich enough. Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are committed to abolishing every program that addresses needs of what Republicans deride as “useless eaters.”

and while the republicans are doing this right now, the democrates are supporting war industry, GMO products, WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA, increasing international laws, supporting and maintianing the Patriot Act, utilization of US troops in NATO and planning for war in Iran so many more innocents can be murdered, as was done in Iraq.... which sounds eerily just like what the Republicans did in the Bush administration, eh?

Really, we need to get past the republican and democrat thing... they are both equally controlled and equally evil. .. without compassion or integrity.
We need a return to personal liberity and the true constitution of the United States. Time to take the blinders off and see that the control comes from the bankers and ruling families and their rule of fiat money... until enough people see that and work to stop it we will have more of the same.

[Sidney]

25% of the population starving
I doubt that 25% are starving.

Perhaps that many on food stamps; that program is widely available to anyone with limited income and resources.

Perhaps 90% are eating junk and starved for good nutrition ... but that's another story altogether.

But a quick glance at the local Wal*Mart checkout line will convince you we're not starving here in America (if eating too much junk food counts as not starving.)

¤=[Post Update]=¤


At the same time a recent Gallup survey shows that one in five Americans can't afford food.

Gallup surveys can be constructed to conclude most anything, and then misrepresented in brief summary to conclude most anything else.

the price of food is likely straining the budgets of many lower income Americans ... though they're finding ways to eat, so far.

You read my mind Paul. I was thinking the same thing. Not sure where they are getting the statistics, but I don't see it.

[Arrowwind]

nor are food stamp users using that debit food stamps card to get money.

[Paranormal]

Qg3EmTiQOFY

A great trailer about poverty in the USA. By the way obesity can be caused by chemicals like MSG & high fructose corn syrup - obesity doesn't mean people are being glutons and eating all day, as I saw pictures of fat people in other posts here.