Get News & Views Updates
Most Popular This Week
- Scientists Confirm: Arctic Sea Ice 'Collapse' at Our Door
- Worse Than Obama's Kill List? American Support for It
- Genetically Engineered Meat, Coming Soon to a Supermarket Near You
- 'Let Us Not Be Deceived': Cornel West Names Obama as 'War Criminal'
- Nearly 50 Climate Activists Arrested Outside Obama's White House
- Quinoa: To Buy or Not to Buy... Is This the Right Question?
- Watch a City-Sized Glacier Collapse
- DOJ Kill List Memo Forces Many Dems Out of the Closet as Overtly Unprincipled Hacks
- Nearly 50 Climate Activists Arrested Outside Obama's White House
- 'Let Us Not Be Deceived': Cornel West Names Obama as 'War Criminal'
Popular content
Today's Top News
More Americans are Poor than Ever Before, Census Finds
WASHINGTON - The withering recession pushed the number of Americans who are living in poverty to a 51-year high in 2009 and left a record 50.7 million people without health insurance last year, the Census Bureau announced Thursday.
The 43.6 million Americans who were poor in 2009 - up from 39.8 million the year before - was the most since poverty estimates were first published in 1959. The national poverty rate of 14.3 percent, up from 13.2 percent in 2008, was the highest since 1994.
Were it not for federal intervention in the form of extended unemployment insurance benefits, 3.3 million more people would have fallen into poverty last year, said David Johnson, the chief of the Census Bureau's division on housing and household economics.
Food stamp benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program helped keep 2.3 million more people out of poverty.
Massive job losses and work reductions for hourly employees led the number of uninsured Americans to rise from 46.3 million people in 2008 to 50.7 million in 2009. The number of Americans who have health coverage decreased - from 255 million in 2008 to 253.6 million in 2009 - for the first time since the data began to be measured in 1987.
Most of that decline stemmed from a loss in the percentage of people who have private and job-based coverage. The number of people with either fell from 201 million in 2008 to 194.5 million last year. The percentage with job-based coverage fell from 58.5 percent in 2008 to 55.8 percent last year, the lowest coverage rate since 1987.
As more people lost jobs and were unable to afford private coverage, enrollment spiked in government insurance programs such as Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. In all, the number of people with government-sponsored coverage went from 87.4 million in 2008 to 93.2 million last year.
ON THE WEB
Census report on income, poverty and health coverage in 2009
- Posted in
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
99 Comments so far
Show AllI have an old boss who I keep in touch with frequently through email, he is to put it mildly very conservative. I always laugh/cringe a little when he goes into one of his rants about liberal wealth redistribution. Wealth is definitely being redistributed but not how he implies.
The economy has become so surreal in many aspects, with the vast amount of financial instruments out there for one. I remember reading about when that stock trader accidentally clicked the wrong button or whatever and sold too many shares which in turn activated automatic sell orders from other people and something like a billion dollars instantly disappeared. It is a hard concept to grasp sometimes that with these crazy financial instruments, that wealth is so liquid. I mean where did that billion dollars go, there were no tangible assets backing it up. I also read that the approximated values of all real estate and stock in the world was like $150 trillion, but there were 3 times that much "wealth" in derivative investments. That concept somewhat shocked me, realizing how little of what we think of as wealth today, is directly derived from real property or actual capital.
According to all the confusion generators below, only 1% of our society has a great job, owns a terrific home with a new car in the garage and enjoys deluxe healthcare.
And note what condemning gutless wonders they are, not wiling to state what percentage own a gulf club, not willing to state how many kids never finish high school.
Less than 15% of kids don't graduate high school in the US, more than 1% has a great job and I own a golf club, actually a whole set of them.
When 1 billion people are slowly starving to death, you owning a gulf club tells us where a portion of their food money went to.
For own a gulf club, and you own all the blood guilt that goes with it.
I'm gonna assume you own a computer, or use a public one, so I hope you can get the blood and guilt off you hands from touching the evil keyboard.
Yes, but do you own a club on a gulf somewhere as Mr. Ellis reiterates multiple times? There is a good chance that Mr. Ellis's computer was built by NeoConn in China which pays its employees a whopping $.31 cents per hour, houses them in cramped dormitories, and suspends nets outside of their factories in order to thwart the constant suicide attempts. I wish I could afford a glass house like the one Mr. Ellis lives in.
Personally I think we should call ourselves the Professional Left instead of Progressives. It would be a good name for a political party or a protest group.
Why not call ourselves Socialists, for that is what we are, and that is the only thing that will save us from the corruption of democracy.
For democracy is the 51% most aggressive and wealthy establishing for us a slave labor society.
I thought it was you. Still with the 51% schtick I see.
How many IDs is it you have here?
We should call ourselves the Party of Nothing..we Do Nothing .. We have nothing...we are Going to be nothing, as long as we just sit here, and Do nothing about it. We can demand they stop the wars, and we can demand that they regulate how much companies charge us for their services and goods, we can demand that our goverment turn our country Green, and put people to work in high paying jobs. As long as we let these fruitcake Tea Baggers make more noise than us..we are going to get nothing more than what they want...war, no taxes for the rich, no healthcare, guns, and God that is true, many of these people believe people should take care of themselves no matter what their situation,handi-caped, sick,doesn't matter they believe that goverment is only for war, and no other reason. They barely understand that goverment is everything that runs our society, schools, roads, parks, they don't get it, and they want to run the country. If we are not careful they will !
Personally, I'm a "Has been/was maybe." ;-)
Government definitely affects our lives everyday. I work for a government entity that just cut all services to the depressed, the paranoid, the folks with schizophrenia. The State said, "Nobody else wants to deal with these people; we don't want to, either." It's sad to see these people wandering the streets unattended when they could have been getting the regular help they need in our facility. Our taxes need to go to the poorest and the neediest, those that cannot help themselves without a little help from us. We have always been a country of greed. Trickle Down Economics? No, not even Trickle Up Economics; it's a Rushing, Gushing River/Ocean UP !
ALL PEOPLE SHOULD BE TAXED, PROPORTIONATELY, EQUALLY. Why should the Wealthy be given any tax breaks whatsoever? Why should they not pay equally on Social Security, instead of only on the first $150,000 or so? None of this is "fair." It is still the Land of the Privileged.
MORE POVERTY -- IS IT GOOD FOR THE ECOMOMY?
The rich investors on Wall Street seem to think so, for the market keeps going up since this news was announced.
Law of supply and demand, when unemployment goes up then wages must go down, which is great for exports . And for investors who are betting that our consumer based economy is a thing of the past, which must be what Obama was talking about today when he announced that government was going all out to double exports in three years.
In the past our educated middle-class and laboring class needed full employment and good wage so we could afford the massive amount of goods we produced. But now with our jobs and manufacturing given away to Mexico, Honduras and China, and finished goods shipped directly to Europe from there, about the only thing were good for is to keep law enforcement busy transporting us to a prison system, privatized and most profitable.
Well said !
There's really nothing left to say. It's by design, and it's working.
Until we get off our asses and take to the streets in solidarity, things will only get worse.
Of course that would require them to miss "American Idol", "Dancing With The Stars", WWE/WWF/ECW, "Jersey Shore", or E!'s coverage of the latest celebrity scandal. Yeah, like Paris Hilton getting a boob enlargement is so much more important than taking to the streets to demand that our system start actually working for us instead of the super-rich, big business, Wall Street, and the banksters.
MSNBC this morning declared that the 3rd most important news story of the week is that Oprah Winfrey is taking the entire studio audience that attended one of her shows to Australia. THIRD MOST IMPORTANT STORY OF THE WEEK.
Meanwhile, as this is written, Cat 3 Hurricane Karl, with 120 mph winds, is making a direct hit on Vera Cruz, Mexico, home of the Laguna Verde Nuclear Plant, where, in 1995, a hurricane ripped the roof off the nuclear waste storage shed. It is reported that "officials" are worried about flooding and mudslides.
So much for the profit motive as the force that drives our behavior.
The endgame is slavery. They want us to work for food.
...meanwhile self-respecting people in OTHER countries fill the streets with a million people when its announced the retirement age is being increased from 60 to 62.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/07/france-protests-pensions-millions
What an embarrassment.
BBC headline: One is seven 'in poverty in US'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11332635
We're #1, We're #1, We're #1, USA, USA, USA! Ya right!
We owe that predicament to the military-industrial complex, its empire of military bases around the world, its endless wars, and its endlessly acquisitive buddy, the savage, unregulated accumulation of capital in ever fewer hands.
The concentration of units of capital in fewer and fewer hands is an inevitable outcome of capitalism's dynamics of accumulation. The United States' savage form of capitalism has been able to delay this fate until now through its systematic and barbaric bullying and exploitation of third world countries. But this process has now come full circle with the adoption of capitalist forms of accumulation in countries such as Russia, China, and India.
As a result, the reserve army of the unemployed is growing.
In "Constant Conflict," published in "Parameters" (Summer 1997, pp. 4-14), U.S. Major Ralph Peters wrote:
"He who warns of the "clash of civilizations" is incontestably right … […] More men and women will enjoy health and prosperity than ever before, yet more will live in poverty or tumult, if only because of the ferocity of demographics."
It looks like the clash of civilizations is blowing back in the form of a clash of classes, or class struggle, as folks used to say.
The United States is done for. Finished. Barring a MAJOR change in direction or improvement, we're headed for serious upheaval, either for a totalitarian dictatorship, very likely Christian Dominionist or Reconstructionist, armed revolution, civil war, guerilla insurgency, the breakup of the US into new independent countries, "Mad Max" style anarchy, or any combination of the above, within this coming decade.
Mark my words, things are gonna get very ugly in this country. I've been seeing online calls from right wingnuts for years calling for "ideological cleansing", that is forced removal or outright extermination of everyone who isn't uber-conservative, Christian, straight, monogamous, etc.
I would strongly advise everyone here who hasn't already done so to buy a couple of guns and learn how to use them. Stock up on ammunition(preferably the standard NATO calibre of 7.62mm for rifles and 9mm for handguns), food, water, medical supplies, batteries, etc. Find out who you can trust and join together with them for self-protection. Have safe places lined up that you and your families can escape to at a moment's notice. It may well mean the difference between life and death.
Your prediction is as accurate as it is dire.
In Roosevelt's time we didn't have outsourcing, we weren't a debtor nation, we didn't have an imperial military to support, and we didn't have a defused Left. Now we do. These are the reasons why I think a breakdown is a sure thing absent a game-changer.
I'm reminded of a line from an Ani Difranco song, about how we're 'waiting for another Martin Luther King'... I think our only chance for a viable future lies outside the system.
Fortunately you are dead wrong.
@Mightymite- I'm dead wrong about the direction we're headed in? I would love to think that I am, but I'm familiar enough with history to know what's happened in the past when these kinds of trends occur.
What do you think is gonna end up happening?
Yes, I pretty much feel as you do.
It seems that the last time this country was in such a divided state was just before the civil war.
Of course, the problems facing it today are compounded by a number of factors that did not exist at that time: the collapse of financial capital, the ecological crisis, and the ever increasing scarcity of mineral and fossil fuel ressources.
You mean: the Civil War is over?
I don't think so. . . .
Okay, I accept that amendment to my post.
http://www.extremeinequality.org
If you're New York gubernatorial Tea-bagger candidate Carl Paladino, you know the answer _ he proposes relocating the welfare recipients to refurbished prisons. Which will also be education camps. He doesn't go so far as to use the term 're-eductaion.'
'Instead of handing out the welfare checks, we'll teach people how to earn their check. We'll teach them personal hygiene...the personal things they don't get when they come from dysfunctional homes
'You have to teach them basic things - taking care of themselves, physical fitness. In their dysfunctional environment, they never learned these things.'
It's not a big stretch to imagine that the prisons will come with attached factories, where the poor can learn the dignity of work _ arbeit macht frei.
I work for a small company that was "bought out" a few years ago. Our new CEO of this small "corporation" decided to do a 50/50: 50% jobs remain here, 50% overseas. And that's just what has happened.
When I started at the company, they had to rent parking in 2 adjacent lots for the employees--along with the street parking. Now, I drive in and can park my car under my choice of shady trees.
I'm a production artist and have always loved my work. My pay is just under $25 hourly. But after 50% of the company was let go, cracks began to form, and I now find myself a graphic artist /technical writer /web master. The latter 2 of which would be earning upwards of $45 hour--I have no experience as a technical writer and am going crazy trying to learn what to do within a 2 week deadline...but as my co-worker put it: find another job.
...believe me, I've been trying.
I guess my point is this: if a worker with no experience is being told to write technical documents (documents that buyers will depend on for guidance), I fear what other more crucial products are being put out there with such Helter-Skelter.
I'm sorry to hear about your company. A similar situation has occurred in a company I work with, which now has workers _ with zero training or experience in financial markets _ providing technical financial services to the traders and banks who handle America's pensions and savings.
They just had a vacancy for another sort of position, in NY, where literally hundreds of qualified applicants from around the nation were clamoring for the post. They brought in a bright, young and overqualified woman from abroad who was willing to work cheap, often stay after hours, take some work home, entranced at the excitement of living over there, and ineligible for union membership. They're moving some of their professional services overseas, where folks're willing to work longer days for fewer benefits. This is the reality of 'Free Market.' Production quality is dropping.
It's a slow decay.
Assume rapacious corporate greed, assume under reported statistics for poverty, the focus still has to be on politics and sustained leadership. Part of what has to be faced is that parts of what once was the middle class is in poverty. Other who used to be in poverty are less scathed. That's true for those on Social Security and Medicare.
What can we do? Let's focus on making the rich pay more, broadening and deepening the Earned Income Tax Credit and identifying the skills and jobs needed in health, education, environment, infra-structure and transportation.
We need innovative ideas from the universities and think tanks and start listening to people's voices on how they would tackle these problems so that they become opportunities. The outlet for that is Congress so that it is a source for new ideas that get distilled and acted on.
Finally, we need sustained vision and emphasis from the President that takes us beyond transactional pragmatism. That will mean getting out of the Afghanistan quagmire. To do so Obama has to undo the trap of long term military engagement set by the Generals.
David Cohen,
Washington DC
A rerun of the past. The Wall Street crash didn't happen over night in 1929, but slowly over the years and the same in 2009. A few of the wealthy walked away with the money, one such as Prescott Bush,in 1929- the grandfather of our previous president. When the depression hit FDR stepped in to help and that is when the wealthy, including Prescott Bush, the duPonts, and such who backed the American Liberty League,--[[-the same as the Tea Party of today-]]-- to overthrow the government and oust FDR in a coup to implement the Hitlerian policies, since they were against any help from the government to help the poor,--- again like the Tea Party. The wealthy sent their children to college, and the poor went to war.
It was Smedley Butler who busted up that coup conspiracy.
DEMOCRACY -- FULL AND PERFECT CORRUPTION
RedRaider
“Making up random statistics doesn't really contribute
much to the debate. The bottom 80% of people in the
US only control 15% of the wealth.”
LIGHT
No, its 20%.
And if you take 20% of all the wealth in a nation that has plundered by war half of all the wealth on earth, divide it up among the most aggressive and greedy 50% of society, 50% in full submission to the rich, then you have a full and perfect democracy, the most corrupt form of government the world has ever known.
DEMOCRACY
1% High Society --- 80% of wealth
10% Country Club class --- 10% of wealth
40% Educated middle-class --- 10% of wealth
49% Laboring class (the poor) --- 0% of wealth
SOCIALISM
100% of society --- 100% of wealth, no wars of plunder, prosperity for all
I mean you can continue to post your made up statistics, my state of bottom 80% controlling 15% is from http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html , yours I assume come out of thin air?
Here is a research study done by the rich: “Top 1% own 35% of wealth.”
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
Another research study by the rich: “Bottom 80% own 20% of wealth.”
http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2003/03may/may03interviewswolff.html
Truth is, most research studies on all subjects, financed or controlled by the rich. You want to know the truth, you depend on common horse sense and nothing else.
For 1% of people are not High Society, surely it is not one in a hundred. More like one in ten thousand.
“The Super Rich Are Out of Sight"
By Michael Parenti
"The super rich, the less than 1 percent of the population who own the lion’s share of the nation’s wealth, go uncounted in most income distribution reports. Even those who purport to study the question regularly overlook the very wealthiest among us. For instance, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, relying on the latest U.S. Census Bureau data, released a report in December 1997 showing that in the last two decades “incomes of the richest fifth increased by 30 percent or nearly $27,000 after adjusting for inflation.” The average income of the top 20 percent was $117,500, or almost 13 times larger than the $9,250 average income of the poorest 20 percent.”
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Superrich.html
Yes common horse sense is a great way to get reliable data, lets just claim all data that we don't agree with to be invalid, and go with our gut. Then you cite statistics by the Census bureau, which don't come anywhere near to backing up your imaginary numbers.
The system of government in the United States isn't perfect,it never will be. That means constant review and amendment are required.The internet has provided a forum for anyone with an opinion, however absurd. People no longer have to listen to opposing points of view, they go to their own personal echo chamber and this only reinforces their point of view, rather than truly informing them.Perspective becomes skewed and contributes to increasing extremism.These are some of the growing pains of this new and unprecedented national and global discussion.I think it will all be sorted out.Ordinary people have a voice like never before in human history. Discussions like these are the foundation of representative Democracy. I think this country is in serious trouble but I think the political framework of our system is up to the task of repairing it.The ruling class will always use everything at their disposal to protect and perpetuate their social position,that's human nature. They own the mainstream media and they've used it to issue their assessments as to the causes of this crises. They don't own this discussion we're having right now,and in my opinion the ruling class is responsible for the situation we're in now.We, the people of the United States , have to wrest our fair share of wealth,power and influence from that tiny minority who have had way too much wealth,power and influence for way too long.That's not socialism,that's democracy. We don't need to destroy the political system,we just need to use it.The enemies are extremism, misinformation and fear.Know thine enemies,know thyself and all things in moderation!
Well said! Good points.
Hadrian, how do you get people to NOT do this: "People no longer have to listen to opposing points of view, they go to their own personal echo chamber and this only reinforces their point of view, rather than truly informing them. Perspective becomes skewed and contributes to increasing extremism"? I do hope you're right about thinking it will all be sorted out. This polarization is impotent, frightening, and thoroughly frustrating. Nobody seems to like to DEBATE the issues anymore. It's just, "I'm right and you're wrong and I'm not going to listen to you." Forgive me for picking out one particular group, but I've seen this mostly with the Born-Again Christian churches and the southern Republicans. That's why I say the Civil War is definitely NOT over!
I agree with you, it's very frustrating.The lack of meaningful debate in this country is a fundamental problem and reflects the lack of meaningful debate between the two parties.While trying to work toward political solutions to current problems I also try to maintain a broader perspective.I'm alarmed at the state of the Republican party.The media phenomena I referred to in my earlier comment has pushed the Republican party further and further right.They are discrediting and marginalizing themselves in the process.The country is best served by two viable political parties hammering out issues and delivering well rounded, multi faceted political solutions.We're not getting that right now.I've been voting for thirty years and I've seen what happens when one party becomes too much more powerful than the other.
That we have reached this level after the assault on our constitution, our economy and our society over the last 30 years or that we have this many folks at the poverty level should come as no surprise.
The surprise is that the number isn't higher after the last two years.
"Captains and Kings" by Joyce Caldwell.
Still as appropriate today as it was then ~ and just as frightening.