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Rising Poverty in America and Israel - by Stephen Lendman
The Working Poor Families Project (WPFP) "is a national initiative focused on state workforce development policies involving: (1) education and skills training for adults; (2) economic development; and (3) income and work supports."
Its newest publication is titled, "Great Recession Hit Hard at America's Working Poor: Nearly 1 in 3 Working Families in United States are Low-Income." It explains distressing data on the state of America's poor and low income families, their condition getting worse, not better.
Citing new US Census data, it said nearly one-third of US families struggle to meet basic needs. Between 2007 and 2009, the percent of low-income families (earning less than 200% of the official threshold) rose from 28 - 30%. Their plight "challenges a fundamental assumption that in America, work pays." Clearly, not enough.
Though mostly invisible to policymakers, they comprise the economy's backbone working cash registers, cleaning homes and businesses, preparing restaurant and hotel food, caring for children and the elderly, as well as numerous other low-paid, poor benefits service jobs, increasingly temporary or part-time.
Key study findings included:
-- over 10 million low-income families represented nearly a 4% increase over the previous year;
-- 45 million people, including 22 million children, live in low-income families, up 1.7 million from 2008;
-- 43% with at least one minority parent households were low-income, nearly double the percentage for white families at 22%;
-- income inequality kept growing with the richest 20% earning 47% of all income, 10 times that of lowest earners;
-- the number of children in low-income families rose by over 700,000 from 2008, one third of all children in the country; and
-- according to recent Pew Research Center data, 55% of America's labor force "suffered a spell of unemployment, a cut in pay, a reduction in hours or have become involuntary part-time workers" since December 2007.
As a result, many middle class families "fell into the low income trap," their numbers growing annually. In addition, unemployment and underemployment hit hard, especially with fewer better-paying full-time jobs, offshored to cheap labor markets or not available because companies cut payrolls to increase profits.
Measuring the full impact on working families is hard to gauge because broader social, economic, structural, and demographic factors are at work, many predating the current crisis, making current conditions worse.
At the same time, Wall Street and other corporate favorites got trillions of dollars in handouts. The largest ever defense appropriation bill passed (officially $725 billion, but, in fact, around double that amount, including supplementary add-ons, black budgets and more), and America's aristocracy got a holiday stocking-stuffer worth the lion share of Obama's yearend tax cut of up to $1 trillion by some estimates.
In contrast, temporary unemployment benefits were extended, and a destructive 2% payroll tax was enacted, a stealth scheme to drain hundreds of billions from the Social Security Trust Fund to wreck it and destroy the system altogether. At the same time, 2011 austerity cuts are planned, hitting entitlements hard when they should be generously increased.
