.
Mark Rank, in the NYTimes:
… Contrary to popular belief, the percentage of the population that directly encounters poverty is exceedingly high. My research indicates that nearly 40 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 60 will experience at least one year below the official poverty line during that period ($23,492 for a family of four), and 54 percent will spend a year in poverty or near poverty (below 150 percent of the poverty line).
Even more astounding, if we add in related conditions like welfare use, near-poverty and unemployment, four out of five Americans will encounter one or more of these events.
In addition, half of all American children will at some point during their childhood reside in a household that uses food stamps for a period of time.
Put simply, poverty is a mainstream event experienced by a majority of Americans. For most of us, the question is not whether we will experience poverty, but when…
The typical pattern is for an individual to experience poverty for a year or two, get above the poverty line for an extended period of time, and then perhaps encounter another spell at some later point. Events like losing a job, having work hours cut back, experiencing a family split or developing a serious medical problem all have the potential to throw households into poverty.
Just as poverty is widely dispersed with respect to time, it is also widely dispersed with respect to place. Only approximately 10 percent of those in poverty live in extremely poor urban neighborhoods. Households in poverty can be found throughout a variety of urban and suburban landscapes, as well as in small towns and communities across rural America. This dispersion of poverty has been increasing over the past 20 years, particularly within suburban areas…
We currently expend among the fewest resources within the industrialized countries in terms of pulling families out of poverty and protecting them from falling into it. And the United States is one of the few developed nations that does not provide universal health care, affordable child care, or reasonably priced low-income housing. As a result, our poverty rate is approximately twice the European average.
Whether we examine childhood poverty, poverty among working-age adults, poverty within single-parent families or overall rates of poverty, the story is much the same — the United States has exceedingly high levels of impoverishment. The many who find themselves in poverty are often shocked at how little assistance the government actually provides to help them through tough times…
The solutions to poverty are to be found in what is important for the health of any family — having a job that pays a decent wage, having the support of good health and child care and having access to a first-rate education. Yet these policies will become a reality only when we begin to truly understand that poverty is an issue of us, rather than an issue of them.
Stigmatizing poverty as a personal failure is hardly an American invention, but refining and reinforcing the “self-made man in the land of opportunity” trope has been a major success for the One Percenters. Accusing someone of having been poor is like accusing a pre-Kinsley American of sexual deviancy — even if they were unimpeachably a victim (a child forced into pornography, or the use of food stamps) it’s a slur against one’s character.
K488
That’s Kinsey…
The Republic of Stupidity
Ya know…
It is simply shocking and appalling that such a state of affairs is now accepted as the norm in this country… and even promoted as necessary and morally just…
Absolutely no no need… absolutely no excuse… and the people responsible are absolutely shameless about it, to boot…
Baud
Every governor who refused to expand Medicaid committed a crime against humanity, as far as I’m concerned.
Schlemizel
What amazes me more is how many assholes go through an experience like that believing they are different and they deserve welfare, food stamps, unemployment whatever. it’s all THOSE OTHER people that are chiselers, losers, lay abouts and dead beats.
Todays Republican party really is the party of sociopaths.
MomSense
What gets me is that so many people are living in poverty while working for major corporations like Walmart and fast food chains.
OzarkHillbilly
Greatest country in the world my ass.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Don’t we have the best health care, though? Some folks are so gullible.
OzarkHillbilly
Gee, ya think? My home county, Washington Co, MO, county seat Potosi (as of 2009**): Source.
Percentage of population: 35%
Percentage of children: 60%
Whites: 36%
Blacks: 18%
To it’s credit MO has a 98% participation rate of those eligible. But this is a bug, not a feature. We are in the 8th district, the home of Tea Partier Jason Smith who never saw a program for the poor he didn’t want to cut and I am quite certain he is doing everything he can to drive down the # of recipients. He will talk about jobs, then cut the safety net out from under people saying that is what holds back the job the “job creators.”
** I found some 2013 #s, but strangely enough they did not include MO. Trying really hard not to envision Republican conspiracies in that fact, but there was a 2010 wave of GOP senators and reps.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: How often does Jason Smith shop in Walmart? Inquiring minds want to know because my tax dollars are subsidizing his spending sprees.
sherparick
Last week the Economist Menzie Chinn posted the following on the blog he shares with James Hamilton (Chinn is leftie New Keynesian while Hamilton is a rightie New Keynesian), on the kind of people who support SNAP cuts:
“From reader Hans, commenting on the advisability of the reductions in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) expenditures, effective today:
You ax nothing from the recipient and everything from the tax slave…
Apparently, in this mindset (in addition to the not-so-subtle subtext), children, the elderly and the disabled should be “contributing”. I’m waiting for the Workhouse and Poorhouse [1] [2] Act of 2014 to come out of the House.” http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2013/11/an_example_of_t.html
He then lists a series of facts about SNAP, and related programs like WIC and Student Lunch programs. Like Dean Baker, he shows that a $4 billion annual cut in SNAP, which combined is what the proposed $40 billion dollars cut to SNAP over ten years amounts to a miniscule amount in the Federal budget and a $16 trillion dollar U.S. economy. The reaction of his Conservative commentators was to completely ignore the facts and to engage in rants about the moral failings and uselessness of their fellow citizens who end up as poor. As one “C. Thomson” wrote: “Alas, still no mention of whether food stamps are to be available in unlimited amounts to unlimited numbers of people forever or whether as a nation we need have some strategy to deal with our overproduction of human inadequates.” I think one difference between a liberal and a conservative is that we might both be assholes at times, but for liberal it is a point of shame, but for many of our Conservative brethren and sisterhood, it is a point of pride to be able to kick those underneath them on the social scale, especially when you yourself falling down do to the economic forces beyond your control.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL:
Why yes we do… providing you can afford it.
I had to drop my Carpenters 3 years ago when the body just couldn’t take that level of abuse any more. Back then, I paid dearly for my insurance, but I didn’t have to worry about how much things cost, I just went in and got things done, for me, my sons, my wife, and it was taken care of. Now on just my wife’s insurance, I am constantly asking myself, “Can I deal with this pain? Is it just a passing flu? Just a sore throat?” because I have no, zero, nada, idea how much things are going to cost. The surgery on my hands they said I need (4 yrs)? Not that bad. That shoulder surgery that was recommended(1 1/2 yrs)? Not yet. The mouse running around in my knee? (1+ yr) Don’t even want to think about talking to a surgeon. My neck? GET THEE BEHIND ME SATAN!!!
6 months ago I had to have an infected cyst removed. Very minor surgery. Used to be I got this sort of thing done in the office but now I am on blood thinners and that calls for the full monty. Out patient surgical center with all the nurses, bells and whistles, etc etc etc. And the costs. I am still paying for it.
I recently started seeing a rhuematologist in the hopes he can help with the pain and that will help me sleep. I cringe at the thought of the bills when they start coming in.
jurassicpork
Mrs. JP and I got our food stamps cut as of today. Thank you, Uncle Sam.
C.V. Danes
And there is a reason for this. Preserving the lifestyles of the rich is more important.
C.V. Danes
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well, we were not that long ago. Now we’re just another two-bit aristocracy.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: Probably twice a week. I’ll bet he spends half his money there replacing the cheap sh!t he bought there previously and is too stupid to realize it is just good money after bad. And yeah, he is quite OK with subsidizing his spending sprees.
Scott S.
@sherparick:
“Alas, still no mention of whether food stamps are to be available in unlimited amounts to unlimited numbers of people forever or whether as a nation we need have some strategy to deal with our overproduction of human inadequates.”
Reading stuff like that really makes me want to get the freeper and Reason mailing lists and go on a cross-country trip with my duffel bag full of crowbars.
Dave
I made the mistakes of reading the comments of the linked blog. It’s disheartening or rage fueling. The mean spirited, eliminationist, selfishness on display is just sad. As well as the prostration before monied interests beyond that I fail to see almost any acknowledgement that the work they talk about just isn’t there. It’s so incredibly ahistorical and short sighted. That and the need to see liberals as sniveling whiners while simultaneously pitching an epic two year old shitfit.
BruceFromOhio
Prepare to be more shocked at even less because freedom.
OzarkHillbilly
@C.V. Danes:
Oh, But we still are, we still are. Via TPM, this little jewel:
…..
Cry or laugh. I do both. Sometimes at the same time.
Napoleon
I didn’t click through, but did anyone notice the title of Samuelson’s column today at the WaPo?
Linda Featheringill
The attack on SNAP is such a sad reality. Sometimes I feel like we are back in 19th Century London, and that all our struggle has been in vain.
But such a situation doesn’t have to be permanent. There’s an election next year and it will be possible to take back the House and get rid of some of those rat bastards. Until then? Ay yi yi.
Mike E
The Halperin/Heileman Hegemony was just on Mourning Whoa deploying a nuclear concern troll device on the president, that he’s not up to playing squash with the Village
stenoreporters’ pool. I hate reading between the lines but it’s because he’s gay, or something. I think.bemused
@MomSense:
According to the everything is wonderful working at Wallyworld ad I’ve seen a few times recently, their “associates” can get healthcare at $40 a month! Is this ad nationwide? They are really trying to polish their image.
Ugh, Morning Joe panel is piling on the Obama, you can keep your insurance meme. I didn’t see the beginning but Joe told one panel guest who said insurance companies change plans “this is so beneath you”, Chuck Todd laughed with derision, Mika looked like she wanted to explode. Then Halperin and his twin came on. Waking up to Morning Joe is no way to start the day and I should know better to even listen to a minute.
The Red Pen
I was driving into work this morning. By 6am, there is already a small line at the base entry gate. The car in front of me — also arriving at work at sunrise — had a vanity plate that said, “GO GALT.”
Do do you explain the difficulties of other people to people who are that unaware of their own situation?
negative 1
@MomSense: You would think that a platform reaffirming the social contract of “40 hours of work gets you into the middle class” would appeal across most lines, wouldn’t you? It wasn’t too long ago that thought used to be a no-brainer.
aimai
@sherparick:
Wow:
Does he just want to cut to the head of the line and offer a final solution…maybe death panels?
OzarkHillbilly
@The Red Pen:
Got into an argument with a guy I know, somewhere on the right of the Tea Party. “Government is too big… Gov’t is the problem… Stop taking my money… etc etc” This is a man who has spent his ENTIRE working life in gov’t jobs: 20 years Army, 20 yrs fire fighter, now retired.
Wonder how he is going to feel when all those cuts in spending he keeps demanding start coming out of his pensions?
SFAW
@aimai:
Well, in all fairness, he does believe that work makes one free.
ETA: Not to be confused with having browns and Gov’t employees working for free, of course, which I bet he also wants.
Cervantes
@MomSense: But that is exactly how those “major” corporations became and stay “major.”
(Although, frankly, a better word for them would be “monstrous.”)
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
In the last ten years, we have built a new municipal court, a new police station, a new fire station and we’re renovating a strip mall and turning it into the county sheriff’s complex.
Yet we’re going door to door begging for a new school to replace a school that was built in 1916. You could arrive from another planet and see this town’s priorities, w/out any explanation or narration.
The Philadelphia school situation is complicated. I think they’re starving the public schools to encourage flight to charter schools, but these well-intentioned charter school folks are kidding themselves. The moment the public schools are gone they’ll simply starve charter schools, because they’re propping up charters with donations from billionaires, which is unsustainable and a ridiculous way to fund a (quasi) public system. They don’t want to fund schools. Period. If they think begging Corbett for funding is bad, wait until they’re begging the billionaires for funding. They can fire Corbett. They can’t fire an unelected billionaire.
C.V. Danes
@OzarkHillbilly: For $400 million, they could just wall in the city, ala Escape From New York ;-)
raven
Fucking MIka needs to be _________/
Patrick
@bemused:
Haven’t watched his idiotic show in years. He is a Republican, so why be surprised when he spouts Republican talking points? I don’t watch FoxNews and MJoe is no different than FoxNews. It is just propaganda.
MomSense
@bemused:
I saw that this morning too and the person Joe was chastising is the architect of the ACA and Massachusetts health reform. He was trying to correct them by saying that it is the insurance companies who cancelled those plans because they want out of those markets, etc but that conflicted with the Obama is the lyingest lying liar who ever lied about keeping your plans. Notice not a peep about the poor people who can’t afford insurance and who are not able to access Medicaid? Those millions of working poor can just suck it according to the villagers.
raven
@MomSense: That’s Rham’s brother.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Up in St Louis, there are several “failing” school districts (Riverview, Normandy). The state’s solution is to allow students at the failing schools to transfer out of district to school districts that have no place to put them and have the failing school district pay for it, while the remaining students are… left behind with fewer and fewer resources. So now we have failing school districts being bankrupted and putting other school districts under additional strain they can not afford, all while cutting funding from the state in general.
My sister is a public school teacher up in MSP and the things they deal with defy simple and easy solutions. I am certainly not smart enough to know what the answers are, but I am smart enough to know that driving your poorest districts into bankruptcy is NOT one of them.
MomSense
@raven:
Why yes it is, brother Ezekiel.
Elizabelle
LATimes website just now, main headline: Obama unable to govern like he campaigns
Click through and you get:
Why can’t Obama run the government as smoothly as his campaign?
Tea Party targeting and Benghazi, straight out of FoxWorld.
Um, wouldn’t you think that running a government might be a little different than running a campaign? I won’t quibble that the healthcare website rollout has demonstrated some management failures — at the least, it appears the president was not warned it wasn’t testing well, and to softpedal immediate expectations as it came online.
GW Bush, worst president ever, had two successful presidential campaigns (*although Gore actually won in 2000, except for the Palm Beach FL ballot and that pesky Supreme Court).
They’re piling on.
They see blood in the water.
They don’t see that it’s the blood of the middle class and the working class.
ericblair
@OzarkHillbilly:
Simple, it will be the libruls’ fault. You can’t reason with these people. At most, you could co-opt their tribal instincts, but that has other problems. It’s not hard to sign them up for a progressive economic agenda, like it has been done before, unless you mind them blaming all earthly problems on Da Jooz and Da Knee-Grows.
Luthe
And the scary thing is the official US poverty line is about 2-4 times below what it should be in reality.
Cervantes
Kay, I left you an update from Kathleen in that voter ID thread last night.
cmorenc
@Annie Laurie:
Such as: college students without a trust fund. I recall the year I practically lived off home-made mac and cheese, and considered myself fortunate to not have to live on the next student-poverty rung down (the Ramen noodle ring). I also recall living in some rather depressing dumps of a cheap apartment shared with two or three other animals…er, students.
GRANDPA john
@Patrick: Yes this, I never cease to be amazed at people who watch republican liars and shills and then bitch about them saying what ylou kn ow they are going to say before they say it. its their job, that what they are paid to do, spread propoganda and lies.
Maybe if all these people quit watching these shows the ratings would drop enough to get them off the air.it takes actions to lead to results.
currants
@Linda Featheringill: Yes, but until we can change the mentality (whether it’s denial as self-defense or not) that sees being poor as “other folks” and “stupid” and “not me” not to mention “moral failing,” changing the Congresscritters won’t necessarily help.
bemused
@Patrick:
True plus the Village privileged mindset on display.
@MomSense:
If Medicaid is ever mentioned on that show, I shudder to think how they would discuss the issue.
Joe has already nominated himself the smartest economist in the world trying to take down Krugman. Now I expect equally “brilliant” opeds from him on Obama and Romney Care.
currants
@currants: (by which I mean, MORE OF THIS sort of article, in more places–glad to finally see it in the NYTimes, but does it show up in the dead tree edition, and any other media? These numbers are not new and not news generally, but certainly should be.)
Kay
@Cervantes:
Thanks. I was asked this a lot in 2012 and looked for an org but never found one.
cmorenc
@Kay:
Across the entire country, there’s another key, often subterranean meme underlying the effort to starve traditional public school systems in favor of at least partially privatized (and funded) charter schools: there are quite a few conservatives who feel that the cost burden of paying for a child’s education should properly fall on the parents of that child, and not on taxpayers who are not using that service, i.e. have no children in the schools. A fair portion of folks with this strain of skinflint conservatism sent their own kids to private academies (if and when they had school age children) and resent that they had to pay double for someone else’s children in public schools whose curriculum and environment they disapproved of. They want whatever government services can’t be privatized to be converted insofar as feasible to a pay-by-use model (although paradoxically they never seem to directly include public police protection in this model, even though the vast majority of them cannot afford to hire their own private security forces, even on a neighborhood basis).
These assholes reject the notion of community, beyond perhaps their church or clubs they belong to or nominal homage to the soldiers serving in the armed forces. They see themselves as among the hard-working “makers”, even the ones richly supplemented by inhereted family wealth. They are resistantly oblivious to seeing themselves as also being a type of social parasite themselves, even as they bitterly angrily blame parasitism of the “others” improperly biting into the fruits of their production.
Elizabelle
@MomSense:
I don’t suppose Morning Joe was discussing Todd Purdum’s Politico article last week, in which he laid out the deliberate obstruction of Obamacare, at every level Republicans could control.
The Obamacare Sabotage Campaign
Politico is one of MoJo’s approved truthtellers, apparently.
Did they discuss that?
Napoleon
@cmorenc:
Exactly
Frankensteinbeck
@The Republic of Stupidity: and @sherparick: and @Scott S.: and @bemused: and @MomSense: and @ericblair:
This is how domestic abusers think and act. They are never wrong, nothing they do can backlash on them, counterarguments are ignored rather than refuted, they make moral issues so they can feel self-righteous, and absolutely most especially they blame the victim. They don’t blame the victim because it’s a useful strategy, they do it because they enjoy it. The GOP has cultivated alcoholics, narcissists, and abusive personalities for decades. Their positions have reflected these attitudes, and they’ve used tribalism to train and reinforce this psychology. Look at any GOP position, and it will reflect an abusive mindset.
Oh, and for @Kay and @cmorenc one of the biggest reasons the non-rich rank and file support beating the public school system to death is also an abusive mindset. Specifically, ‘my children belong to me and I should be the only influence on them.’ The evangelicals have hated public schooling for decades, because their children are exposed to science and learn that those Other People are human and see that people who disobey their straightjacket Christianist rules are much happier. Those children have been abandoning the faith first in a trickle, then in a flood, since… at least the 50s.
Patrick
@bemused:
The crocodile tear whining from Republicans on this issue is almost comical. MJoe is concerned that people’s insurance is being dropped.
I don’t recall prior to the ACA, where MJoe EVER complained that people were refused insurance if they had a pre-existing condition. Forgive me if I could care less what hypocrites like MJoe and the rest of them think.
negative 1
@Kay: They’re not well-intentioned. They don’t really care about their communities, their neighbors or their neighborhoods as long as their school is the ‘top’ one. They’re not actively cheerleading for their neighbor’s demise, sadly like most right wing dialogue these days, but they’re passively encouraging it.
becca
About a decade ago FedEx Smith was on MTP. The topic was “jobless recoveries”. The panel openly wondered why the American people were not getting up in arms about rising unemployment.
Smith said the pain was dispersed across the nation, so people don’t see the vastness of the damage done.
Never saw him on the teevee again.
Elizabelle
@becca:
That’s very interesting about Fred “FedEx” Smith.
Didn’t play for the team, hmmm?
becca
@Elizabelle: Yep. I remember how uncomfortable he looked after he spoke. Like “Uh-oh…. “.
Tone in DC
@becca:
Had to save those bookings for McCain, Graham, Ayotte and the Cheney family.
I cannot take the Sunday morning shows. Just can’t. The fact free zone extends across the airwaves and into far too many peoples’ heads. According to some people, the response to Katrina, in late 2005, was Obama’s fault.
bemused
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think counterarguments aren’t simply ignored. Somehow, they feel counterarguments just prove they are right!
karen marie
I was listening to NPR this morning on the car radio when they had on a story about the fact that many immigrants are going into the hinterlands for jobs at meat packing plants, where they had “good” wages (a whole $9 an hour!) “but lack of social services and food pantries is a problem” and immense pressure was being felt in the local schools because immigrants’ kids lacked access to healthcare, enough food and, of course, a language barrier.
It’s a good thing I heard this before I stopped for coffee because I would have spilled it all over myself. I don’t think “good” means what this reporter thinks it means.
catclub
@Tone in DC: “I cannot take the Sunday morning shows.”
So, a great benefit to attending the religious function of one’s choice on Sunday Morning.
JoyfulA
@Kay: Philadelphia is complicated also because the state took charge of Philly schools in 2000 and has been running them ever since. Things have gotten much worse.
And the school districts pay charter schools for their students; no billionaires are funding here. Not to mention that charter schools are testing out worse than public schools, and there are constant scandals. Last month a charter school in Philly shut down with no notice to anyone, just a note on the door when the students showed up.
Cervantes
@Kay: The aforementioned VoteRiders is great. Check them out.