It appears that the trillions of dollars that Washington has spent to alleviate poverty since the 1960s have gone for naught.
The AP is reporting that the consensus among economists is that the poverty level will rise to as much as 15.7% of American households, meaning that more people are considered poor today than since the Great Society’s “War on Poverty” began in the 1960s.
The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest since 1965.
Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.
“I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I’m here, applying for assistance because it’s hard to make ends meet. It’s very hard to adjust,” said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double.
Fritz says she grew up wealthy in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, but fortunes turned after her parents lost a significant amount of money in the housing bust. Stuck in a half-million dollar house, her parents began living off food stamps and Fritz’s college money evaporated. She tried joining the Army but was injured during basic training.
Now she’s living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can’t find work as a landscaper. They are struggling to pay their $650 rent on his unemployment checks and don’t know how they would get by without the extra help as they hope for the job market to improve.
With the real unemployment rate near 15%, and a record number of Americans receiving food stamps, it is not surprising that those who have lived on the edge of poverty would slip over and be counted among those below the poverty line.
But there are a growing number of middle class Americans who find themselves descending the economic ladder due to underemployment or the inability to find work at all. It is these Americans that make this recession different from past downturns.
How all this plays out politically is anyone’s guess. No doubt many of the newly poor don’t want benefits cut back and would vote for someone who promised them more.
But there are probably a majority who realize that a change in policy is desperately needed and would vote for someone who promised to fix the mess made by Obama. For these voters, Obama’s promises of hope and change is a cruel joke and they will ultimately reject him in November.
So these nevo-poor people used to go to the Hawiian islands every summer, and are living on food stamps in a $500.000.00 house. How am I supposed to feel sorry for them. That is a poorly planed life choice ,if there ever was one. Most people make sure that they are financially solvent, befor taking expensive vacations,and buying mansions. A wise man once told me “If you want money, don,t spend money,save money,that way you will have resources, when opportunity,comes along”. I,v taken a big hit in the new Obama economy, but I,m still on my feet, and still looking for opportunity. Thanks to the wise man,s advice.
So much for the War on poverty!
All the democrats did is create a nation of beggars at the hands of hard working TAXPAYING citizens. A country full of freeloaders who feel entitled to someone elses hard work. They do this because the democrat party tells them their lousy life is other peoples fault thus they are due the labors of others!
“Now she’s living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend, Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can’t find work as a landscaper.”
Zero sympathy. Go live in your parents’ basement, please. Let them pay for you. You using my tax dollars to have a child you can’t afford with a man you’re not married to? The government that allows that does not have my consent.
Rick, behind every “newly poor” person that Obamee’s policies created is someone who made poor decisions because they knew the government would take care of them in the end.
They will be rounded up come November by Obamee “supporters” and dragged down to the precinct to vote Democrat, of course. That’s how it works. If anything, keeping them on the dole makes for a ready database of “registered Democrat voters”.
Too “disabled” to work, but not too disabled to have a baby. I’m incredulous.
– boo hoo
How’s that fundamental transformation working out for you?
Economic Collapse – Change your getting…
Oh I don’t know, I think they believe they have won a huge victory in the War on Poverty. The poor are thoroughly defeated, and, like barbarians crushed by the Romans, completely subservient to the marxist army that destroyed their lives and made them completely dependent on their new masters.
So they have now moved onto the War on Prosperity. obama’s reelection will signal that victory.
The epic confrontation is yet to come…the War on the Middle Class. That is scheduled to begin in 2014 when the obamacare ramparts are rolled up to the country’s walls. Two years should be enough.
The war on the middle class began with Johnson’s “Great Society”. We’re noticing it more recently because we’ve burned up the wealth this nation built up until then, and are now drawing on our future.
“The AP is reporting that the consensus among economists is that the poverty level will rise to as much as 15.7% of American households, meaning that more people are considered poor today than since the Great Society’s “War on Poverty” began in the 1960s.”
I bet the results would be different if they measured absolute standard of living instead of poverty. One reason we still have so many “poor” people is that the government is constantlt ratcheting the definition of poverty upwards. “Poor” people in the U.S. today have a better standard of living in every measurable way than 99% of all humans who have ever lived on this planet.