This steady conversion of Americans to neo-feudal serfs is demonstrated in the burgeoning poverty rate with 1 in 7 now below the official poverty line. This was a 10% jump over the previous year and this change was in fact not as bad as expected by economists. Extended unemployment kept the increase in the number of Americans newly falling into poverty to about half of what it would have been. The Census numbers aren’t really current however as hundreds of thousands of people each month are running out of benefits. The total number of Americans in poverty is the largest since they started to count the poor fifty years ago.
Another disturbing trend the Census Bureau identified is that many families were doubling up to count as a single household. Moving three generations in together or even in with friends keeps them all above the poverty level, but this is hardly the American Dream. These multi-family households have increased by 12% over the previous year alone, some of these so called “units” are living in single tents in homeless encampments.
The poverty line is artificially set at about $22,000 for a family of four but this number is really an inadequate marker. In fact a family really needs three times that in most urban areas to live anything like the American Dream. Fully 2/3 of Americans are below that American Dream level and most are falling steadily behind. Continuously increasing tuition and health care costs; impoverished parents and children with children to care for, all these things drag down middle-class families. It is becoming increasingly unlikely that anything more than a small percentage will ever rise to the American Dream level.
Americans like to think this is the land of opportunity but it really has become the most stratified in the developed world caused by the death of the unions, the end of small business and a lack of any meaningful social safety net. When combined with the economic realities that allow no opportunity for those outside the corporate elite and corporate serfdom enforced by the threat that you will become one of the millions of hopeless unemployed, the fact is that upward mobility is officially dead. Even a college education becomes nothing but a mill stone of debt consigning most graduates to wage slavery. Colleges have gone from cautioning freshman about putting weight to instructing them on how to apply for food stamps with applications up 120% just this year.
Jay Gould, I liked his cough drops though.
To end on a bit of good news: there was another little spark of hope from the Obama Administration with the President bypassing the Senate and appointing Elizabeth Warren to form the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. In name she is an assistant to the President and senior advisor to the Sec. of the Treasury Dept.
Elizabeth Warren, describing Republicans perhaps?
She might not technically have as much authority as if she were the Senate confirmed Director, but thanks to precedents set into common law by the Bush Crime Family, Ms Warren could run her own death squad if the President so authorizes. The big advantage this new agency has is that it comes with no imbedded Republicans and since Ms Warren works directly for the President, she has no other boss in the bureaucracy and can staff the agency as she sees fit. Republicans and their Wall Street masters are livid and that is good news indeed. www.prairie2.com
1 comments:
"Ms Warren could run her own death squad if the President so authorizes."
That is the question. Now that Ms. Warren has been appointed will her suggestions actually make it through to implementation or will she be drowned out by the preponderance of Goldman Sachs advisors that Obama has chosen to surround himself with? Time will tell but based on previous action I'm not expecting much.
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