Jobs don’t exist though. If you have 20 million people competing for 5 million jobs it doesn’t matter how talented, educated, respected or experienced people are, 15 million will still be unemployed.
Nothing trickles down anymore. Higher productivity, GDP growth, corporate profits, supply side tax cuts, etc. The end result seems to be (over the last 10 years) no job creation and stagnant wages combined with higher expenses. The recession officially ended a year and a half ago. But for many of us things are just as bad as they were in 2008.
Does anyone have a realistic, pragmatic plan to create the 20 million or so jobs we need? Decent jobs rather than jobs at $8/hr part time w/o benefits? I don’t think anyone does.
No, I’m sorry, our lives are not hard. No civilization in history has had it as easy as today’s Americans. Comparing, say, the troubles of Americans on food stamps to the dispossessed poor in Egypt is staggeringly callow. Americans don’t riot because we don’t need to. The turn-around from Bush to Obama shows it.
How large do you think our foreign aid budget is? Just a ballpark figure. About what percentage of the federal budget do you think goes to foreign aid?
Why is it so hard to understand why people aren’t rioting? People aren’t rioting because they don’t feel desperate. They don’t feel desperate because even at a 9% unemployment rate (please don’t tell me the “real” rate is 20% or some such, because then I’ll have to ask you to compare apples to apples). They don’t feel desperate because they can get food stamps. They don’t feel desperate because they don’t pay very high taxes. They don’t feel desperate because if they felt strongly enough about it, they could elect politicians that would enact different policies.
Look, people. We live in the richest country in the world. They’re rioting in Egypt because Egypt is a third world dictatorial shithole. Compare the life of a median income Egyptian to a median income American. The United States, for all our faults, is a pretty comfortable place to live, where the biggest problem facing the poor is not starvation but rather obesity. We aren’t rioting in America because we’ve got it pretty decent here, and we know it. And while there are literally thousands of ways to improve life here in America, I can’t think of a single one that involves rioting.
Not since 1959 have there been so many poor people in the United States. In 2009, 43.6 million people - 14.3 percent of the population - fell below the poverty line. The previous year, the poverty rate was 13.2 percent.
More than one in five American children are living in poverty. In Philadelphia, it’s about one in three.
The deep recession that began in late 2007 has contributed greatly to the rise in poverty. Economists now say the recession ended in June 2009, making it the longest since World War II.
But the economic recovery under President Obama has been weak. Unemployment remains around 10 percent, and the number of people in poverty is likely to grow higher still. In previous recessions, the poverty rate typically has not fallen until a year after the unemployment rate starts to fall.
The rising number of our neighbors who are struggling to obtain food and shelter has urgent implications for anyone who is able to donate to charities, and for policymakers in government.
The spirit of charitable giving often hits people strongest around the holidays. But the government’s report on the rise in poverty is a vivid reminder that hunger and desperation are not seasonal.
Food banks, church-run charities, and other nonprofits have a pressing need for donations of money, clothing, food, and other necessities. Two of the most prominent food banks locally are Philabundance (www.philabundance.org) and the Food Bank of South Jersey (www.foodbanksj.org).
Lawmakers, too, can take away something from the report on poverty. The scope of the problem could have been even worse without government intervention.
The Census Bureau calculated that unemployment benefits alone kept 3.3 million people out of poverty in 2009. Last year’s economic recovery act pushed by Obama extended these benefits, but unemployment insurance increasingly has become a target of conservative candidates.
An emergency jobs program that has paid employers to hire 12,000 people in Pennsylvania and 1,500 in New Jersey is set to expire on Sept. 30, unless Congress votes to extend it.
The fund has provided money to 37 states to help the unemployed find permanent jobs and enable local businesses to expand. Lawmakers should renew it for one more year, at a cost of $2.5 billion.
Another program to help low-income people, the Earned Income Tax Credit, also is set to expire on Dec. 31. With the poverty rate at a 15-year high, lawmakers should try to find a way to extend this tax relief for those who need it most.
The slow pace of economic recovery means that more people need help climbing out of poverty. In the wealthiest of nations, it’s our moral obligation to act.
Did the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) really cost 700 billion? The Congressional Budget Office seems to think not. To say nothing of the fact that George W. Bush signed it and not Barry Obama.
AshenLady, what do you think that cite is saying, exactly?
So…she has 4 children and receives $743/month in food stamps (they don’t say what else she receives except her unemployment insurance ran out). $743/month is a hell of a lot more than my family spends on food in a month, especially when you consider that you can’t use food stamps for everything, just food (including junk food).
You can get more than food stamps and unemployment insurance if you are a single mother and on food stamps. There are assisted living stipends too, depending on where she lives. However, if she isn’t willing to give up her nice apartment ‘parquet floors in the living room and artwork on the walls’, then she might have some issues. Also, look at the picture of the kid there…does he LOOK like he’s starving? Have you ever seen a kid who is starving? I have…and that kid ain’t it.
Look, no one is saying that times aren’t tough for some. And this woman sounds like she has some bad times (one has to wonder why she isn’t making the ex-boyfriend, presuming he’s the father of those kids, pay child support, but that’s another matter). But your link here simply demonstrates that some people are having some issues…not that Americans are starving in the streets, or that we need to start rioting to address these problems.
Nobody cares if you are a bleeding heart liberal around here. You won’t exactly be in a hunted minority with that stance. But you are appealing to emotion. Again, no one doubts that some people are in a bad way, such as the lady in the article you linked too. It happens. However, she IS getting assistance, and while it’s probably not pleasant to go from having a two income family to having to be completely on government assistance, it’s not exactly life or death.
People are desperate for jobs. People would rather do without, some, than ask for a handout.
Republicans are spreading all kinds of stories about how people are lazy and want to stay on unemployment, that there are plenty of jobs available, but unemployment is too lucrative and would rather not work.
People on unemployment, also have no health insurance, COBRA? Don’t make me laugh; Obama made it affordable and the Republicans took the subsidy for affordable COBRA away. Anyone can get sick; cancer, heart attacks, it happens all the time.
What others have said. People don’t riot in the streets because they’re poor. They riot because they’re desperate. The United States has a functioning social services safety net so poor people get enough to get by. That keeps them from taking to the streets.
They make up stories, and get stupes who don’t pick up a newspaper to believe them. They (Repubs), curry favor by offering the lowest common denominator to all, racism and bigotry.
Children going hungry is wrong anywhere, USA or Somalia, but this woman had 4 kids without ever bothering to marry their father and is currently recieving a pile-o-money each and every month from her tax paying neighbors.
Should she get an additional $80,000 in tax-free cash (a mere $20,000 per child, no need to go overboard) each year as well to put aside for their college funds?
Is personal responsibility a thing of the past?
There are probably millions of married parents in the USA who would like to have additional children but don’t because they can’t afford to.
I feel sorry for Ms. Stuart’s 4 kids, but how can someone feel too badly for her, with her overblown sense of entitlement flying in the faces of all those around her who are forced to supplement her shitty life choices?