While the lapdog media barks at the latest success story against ISIS in Iraq, it is predictably silent on the losing battle poor America is waging at home. Don't bite the hand that feeds you, lapdogs.
Here's news you can use: Eighty percent struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives. Survey data shows 19 million whites now fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the nation’s destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks.
The US governing system is experiencing an end-of-era systemic breakdown. America’s far-flung military adventures are mired in a bloody denouement. The onward-and-upward economy that sustained broad prosperity for so many years is over. The political system is dysfunctional. The governing classes are in deep denial, still claiming that the right policy strokes can somehow bring back the good times (sort of) without disturbing the status quo and why it broke down.
The problem is that systemic breakdown is still a taboo subject in American politics. Nobody in the mainstream will talk about it, not just Hillary Clinton and possible GOP nominees for 2016 but both the Democratic and Republican parties as well as the deep ranks of powerful movers and shakers and billionaires who manipulate both politicians and government. When the authority figures and influence peddlers are clinging to the lost past, who will step up and speak for the future?
Who is fighting for US? Not the lapdog media. Outsider media types like Bill Moyers actually have something to say:
"The US and the world really have entered a new, uncharted era that demands great transformations. Our situation is a little like what happened in the years after the Crash of 1929, but our circumstances are different and more ambiguous, because this time the American system did not collapse totally. The range of disorders suggests a wide field of opportunities for deep change, from worker ownership and self-management to an ecological economy that does not derive its so-called “growth” from destroying nature. Small-scale local economic life versus the suffocating monopolies that feed off government and concentrate wealth at the top. The basic virtues of public ownership, from public schools to public utilities, against the torrent of destructive privatizations engineered by the billionaires. The reinvention of social democracy — a country that learns again to defend life and individual freedom, family and community, against the lusts of rapacious capitalism.
Many Americans will turn away, of course, too wounded or too cynical to believe in this promise. It does sound impossible, given the oppressive confinements imposed on us by the power elites. But what other choice do we have? The present system promises to deliver more of the same, more stagnation, stalemate and decay. That is not going to change unless more of us decide we have to try to change it."
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” H.L. Menken
s the handful of multi-millionaires running for president threaten to pretend to make “economic disparity” a campaign meme, and then forget they ever heard of it once in power, four out of five adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives. Here’s the new American dream.
The Numbers
Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to a widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.
The survey defines “economic insecurity” as a year or more of periodic joblessness, reliance on government aid such as food stamps, or income below 150 percent of the poverty line. Measured across all races, the risk of economic insecurity rises to 79 percent.
The findings come even as Obama is claiming in recent speeches his highest priority (it has only been seven years+ so no hurry) is to “rebuild ladders of opportunity” and reverse income inequality.
No Longer a Race Thing
Poverty is often defined — by many whites — as a minority problem.
While minorities are still more likely to live in poverty, race disparities have narrowed substantially since the 1970s. Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in the government’s poverty data, engulfing more than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge being published next year by the Oxford University Press. Pessimism among whites about their families’ economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987.
More than 19 million whites now fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the nation’s destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks.
Sometimes termed “the invisible poor,” lower-income whites generally are dispersed in suburbs and small rural towns, instead of being concentrated in urban areas more common to people of color. As an example, Buchanan County, in southwest Virginia, is among the nation’s most destitute based on median income, with poverty at 24 percent. The county is 99 percent white.
America is indeed becoming a more equal place, but through a gross process of leveling down, not growing up.
Boiling Frogs
The issue of denial is the key to a tiny one percent of Americans getting away with this in what, overall, is still a very wealthy society.
People think because they and their neighbors have a TV, they are fine. Or they are divided into antagonistic groups by race, with one believing the other has all the money and power, while the other sees their urban neighbors as lazy welfare cheats. It does work well to keep people divided, fighting with one another, and thus ignoring that narrow band of upper, upper class folks who really do hold all the cards.
Inside that 80 percent of America slipping into poverty, people pay little attention to the quality of the food they can afford, the (lack of) healthcare, their poor schools and potted roads, the lack of forward opportunities for them and their kids and so forth. Short-sighted viewpoints, coupled with clever politicians who make each election about guns, gays and abortion, mask the obvious, even from the people boiling like froggies.
- See more at: http://wemeantwell.com/blog/2015/05/06/america-80-percent-of-adults-face-near-poverty/#comments
As the handful of multi-millionaires running for president threaten to pretend to make “economic disparity” a campaign meme, and then forget they ever heard of it once in power, four out of five adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives. Here’s the new American dream.
The Numbers
Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to a widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.
The survey defines “economic insecurity” as a year or more of periodic joblessness, reliance on government aid such as food stamps, or income below 150 percent of the poverty line. Measured across all races, the risk of economic insecurity rises to 79 percent.
The findings come even as Obama is claiming in recent speeches his highest priority (it has only been seven years+ so no hurry) is to “rebuild ladders of opportunity” and reverse income inequality.
No Longer a Race Thing
Poverty is often defined — by many whites — as a minority problem.
While minorities are still more likely to live in poverty, race disparities have narrowed substantially since the 1970s. Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in the government’s poverty data, engulfing more than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge being published next year by the Oxford University Press. Pessimism among whites about their families’ economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987.
More than 19 million whites now fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the nation’s destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks.
Sometimes termed “the invisible poor,” lower-income whites generally are dispersed in suburbs and small rural towns, instead of being concentrated in urban areas more common to people of color. As an example, Buchanan County, in southwest Virginia, is among the nation’s most destitute based on median income, with poverty at 24 percent. The county is 99 percent white.
America is indeed becoming a more equal place, but through a gross process of leveling down, not growing up.
Boiling Frogs
The issue of denial is the key to a tiny one percent of Americans getting away with this in what, overall, is still a very wealthy society.
People think because they and their neighbors have a TV, they are fine. Or they are divided into antagonistic groups by race, with one believing the other has all the money and power, while the other sees their urban neighbors as lazy welfare cheats. It does work well to keep people divided, fighting with one another, and thus ignoring that narrow band of upper, upper class folks who really do hold all the cards.
Inside that 80 percent of America slipping into poverty, people pay little attention to the quality of the food they can afford, the (lack of) healthcare, their poor schools and potted roads, the lack of forward opportunities for them and their kids and so forth. Short-sighted viewpoints, coupled with clever politicians who make each election about guns, gays and abortion, mask the obvious, even from the people boiling like froggies.
- See more at: http://wemeantwell.com/blog/2015/05/06/america-80-percent-of-adults-face-near-poverty/#comments