New London Day.
More Poverty, More Trouble
Income failed to increase for fifth straight year.
Published on 9/2/2005
The government reported bad news Tuesday: For the first time ever,
incomes fell for a fifth consecutive year. This decline is more
evidence of the shrinking of the middle class and the growing divide
between rich and poor in America. There cannot be a more important
problem for the federal government to address than this one.
Since 2000, the number of Americans below the poverty level increased
by 5.4 million or 12.7 percent. The Census Bureau numbers do not
reflect the recent improvement in the economy nor the tax cuts passed
in President George W. Bush's first term, the Bush administration said.
The administration also said foreign competition was dragging down
wages and benefits even though more people were being added to the work
force.
Those factors are real, but this administration has been more concerned
about giving the wealthiest Americans big tax cuts and has, outside of
an overall tax-cut plan for all Americans, shown little regard for
those at the lower end of the economic scale. The administration
continues to run record deficits, a result of earlier profligate
spending and the huge tax cuts it sought from a Congress that should
not have been so suppliant in its response. On top of those factors,
the administration has taken the nation to war in Iraq at an annual
cost of at least $85 billion.
Record deficits do not inspire confidence among Wall Street investors
and business corporations. The deficits also make the United States
more dependent upon foreign investors who buy Treasury issues to
finance the debt. And, if unchecked, the deficits contribute to
inflation.
The Bush administration also has cut heavily into aid programs in
social services that would have benefited poorer Americans. It is no
accident that the reversal in fortune stands in sharp contrast to the
gains of the Clinton administration.
The poverty rates released by the Census Bureau show that nearly 25
percent of blacks and about 22 percent of Hispanics lived under dire
economic conditions compared with just 8.6 percent for non-Hispanic
whites. The poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics remained about the
same, whereas there was an increase of six-tenths of one percent for
non-Hispanic whites. But the mere fact that there is such an imbalance
in the United States between races is a formula for increasing
problems, especially since the Hispanic population is growing at about
four times the rate of growth of non-Hispanic whites.
The poverty rate and number of people in poverty increased for people
18 to 64 - from 10.8 percent and 19.4 million in 2003 to 11.3 percent
and 20.5 million in 2004.
A significant factor not counted in the poverty calculation is the cost
of living, which is extremely high in some of the nation's largest
cities that are also home to thousands of an area's poorest people.
Turning more potential middle-class Americans into the classes of the
impoverished is a formula for disaster as it weakens the country by
harming the backbone of the nation. And allowing people to live in
abject poverty without real and effective assistance from the
government is a national disgrace.
===================================================================
Whether they get help from the gov, or whether they get an opportunity
to help themselves, who cares...the wealth will all be redictributed
during the Second Civil War.
.
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
