Get News & Views Updates
Most Popular This Week
- No More Steubenvilles: How To Raise Boys to be Kind Men
- 37 Percent of People Completely Lost
- An Open Challenge to Michelle Rhee and the Corporate Education Zombies
- Ten Years After: How Not to Teach About the Iraq War
- Which Members of Congress Are Standing Up for Economic Decency – And Which “Progressives” Aren’t
Popular content
Today's Top News
Nearly Half of Americans Struggling to Stay Afloat
WASHINGTON — Nearly half of all Americans lack economic security, meaning they live above the federal poverty threshold but still do not have enough money to cover housing, food, healthcare and other basic expenses, according to a survey of government and industry data.
A homeless man asks for donations during a rainy day in Washington, DC, March 2011. (AFP Photo/Jewel Samad) The survey, released on Tuesday by the advocacy group Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW), found that 45 percent of U.S. residents live in households that struggle to make ends meet.
That breaks down to 39 percent of all adults and 55 percent of all children, the group found.
"This is a wake-up call for Congress, for our state policy-makers, really for all of us," said Donna Addkison, President and CEO of WOW.
"Nearly half of our nation's families cannot cover the costs of basic expenses even when they do have a job. Under these conditions, cuts to unemployment insurance ... and other programs families are relying on right now would push them from crisis to catastrophe."
The WOW survey compared 2009 pre-tax incomes to a budget of basic and essential monthly expenses for various families that it developed along with researchers at Washington University with funding from the Ford Foundation and W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
For example, in a budget for a family of one worker, it put housing expenses at $688 and food at $244. In a family of two workers with two young children, it assumed housing would cost $821 per month and food $707 a month.
It did not include nonessentials such as vacations, recreation, hobbies, college tuition, and other common expenses of the middle class.
A congressional effort to find $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years failed on Monday, raising fears that emergency benefits for the long-term unemployed would not be extended when they expire next month.
Other social programs including Medicare are also under threat as lawmakers seek to slash the nation's huge debt.
Some economists said while they agreed that the debt had to the reduced, targeting programs that helped the low income group survive the harsh economic environment was not the correct path to take.
"I am in favor of austerity, but not in this area," said Harm Bandholz, chief U.S. economist at UniCredit Research in New York. "This is the only austerity going on and this is hitting the long-term unemployed. It's not improving the long-term budget situation anyway."
Currently, the poverty threshold for the United States is an annual income of $22,314 for a family of four.
A little more than 15 percent of the country lives at or below that level, and the group wanted to look at the remainder, "many of whom live on the edge and are chronically at risk of financial crisis or falling into poverty."
More than four out of 10 adult women live in households that cannot cover those basic expenses, slightly more than the proportion of men, 37 percent.
That may be because in 2009 women's median earnings were 70 percent of men's median earnings, the group said.
More than 60 percent of single women live in economic insecurity, it added.
"While married women are more likely to have economic security than unmarried women, much of the stability is attained through a husband's earnings or other household income," the group reported, which can put those women in economic jeopardy if their husbands die or lose their job or if the couple divorces.
The group also found "that full-time work fails to provide economic security for 25 percent of adult workers," because of stagnating and falling wages over the last decade.
"A chief cause of economic insecurity is 1970s level wages that fail to cover modern expenses," it said.
While households with two full-time workers can help boost a family's economic security, 22 percent of adults with children who work full-time and have a partner who also has a full-time job cannot cover basic needs.
At the same time, 21 percent of homes headed by a college graduate lack economic security.
"In the past, threats to economic security were supposedly clear -- dropping out of high school, being a single parent or having a large family. In today's economy, we cannot assume we know who lacks security," it said.
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...
105 Comments so far
Show All"In today's economy, we cannot assume we know who lacks (economic) security".
Reuters obviously doesn't understand OWS's mission (seeking to end the 1%'s mission to transfer all wealth from the 99% to the 1%).
Although not all of the 99% are currently insolvent, at the rate the 1% are bleeding us dry, it won't be long before the 1% own everything and we are all insolvent. Most of the 99% will continue to lack economic security as long as the 1% remain unregulated, untaxed and their pillage continues to be enabled by the politicians that Reuters claims need a "wake up call" that will never come as long as 97% of Americans continue to vote for Dims and the GOP.
I think we can agree that until the '1%' (actually it's closer to 4%) have been dragged screaming in protest from their mansions and expensive cars, and forced to contribute to society, instead of merely parasitizing it, nothing is going to change.
Medical Ins. alone will do the job at the rate its metastasisizing. Its ironic that so called health care is killing a good portion of the patients its suppose to serve and the nos. are growing. The cancer at the center of all of this GREED.
Why must they be left in power at all? Furthermore, why must we let anyone gain that power again?
There is no taxing or regulating or boycotting or disengaging or pleading or begging or shaming or raising of consciousness that will stop them.
Well said!
Look it up: Reuters is owned by the Rothschild family. What do you expect from their media?
America has become a corporation. We are no longer being run as a country. Like any corporation we now have a bottom line. Profit above all else. Obama is the CEO. Congress is the Board of Directors. Wall Street is Research and Development. The media is its Public Relations Department. The military is its Legal Department. The universities are the Human Resources Department. Hollywood is its Marketing Department. Lobbyists are the Sales Department. Big Pharma is the Medical Department. The Judicial System judges are the shareholders. And the Supreme Court is the father of the first corporate citizen, Wall Street Jr. We the people are now the employees. Corporations don’t have citizens. To increase those profits all of our infrastructure is for sale as the corporation privatizes America.
Pretty nice assessment, 1492.
Your comment dovetails nicely with my little ode to the corporatization of America:
“ We the Corporations of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect marketplace, establish Profits, insure workforce instability, provide for the common defense of corporate handouts, promote the general Welfare of the Wealthy, and secure the Blessings of Greed to ourselves and our subsidiaries, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of Corporations.
In Greed We Trust"
Pretty much true, although I don't think the politicians have any real power anymore.
VERY nice post, 1492. Very nice, indeed. I have every intent of stealing it, and posting it elsewhere. I hope you do not mind.
"America has become a corporation. We are no longer being run as a country. Like any corporation we now have a bottom line. Profit above all else"
I get your point but you are totally wrong. If the US would be run like a corporation, it would not be able to afford decades of deficits and losses. We would actually be better off if the gov was run like a business. Unfortunately that's not the case
That is the funniest thing I have read in a long time.
Deleted for duplication though inadvertent.
Two words for progressives to remember, Slick Wily. How much damage did he do which surely hadn't been done before to the social safety net, to give away all to the big banking and big brokerage house crowd, to hand over the country to the one per cent? Was it maybe more than anyone up until W got into the White House? Also do ask this question. What party leader for the Democrats led them pell mell into carrying a far right agenda, abandoning the party base and with the terrible results now afflicting the entire country? Now we have another nominal Democrat destroying the country for the benefit of the one per cent.
Party line this and that just doesn't work when the parties have become nothing but hollow shells.
You're being too selective in your outrage, Reagan changed the mission statement of the constitution, "to provide for the general welfare" and Clinton et. al. simply followed along. I'm not defending any of them but lets not focus on one side.
The Democrats claim to be our friends. The Democrats insist that they represent the one and only method for fighting the right wing. The Democrats attack the Left with more ferocity than they ever seriously attack the right wing.
That is why we "focus on one side." The Democrats are the greater threat.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Yes. And while the corporations are now "persons", people are no longer considered "persons". We are what? Consumption units? Objects to be manipulated? We are also viewed as lazy, uneducated (because we were too lazy to learn), and unimportant.
Salient points all Ruth, but to answer your question we are all now just "Dollar-Signs with Legs".
We are what?
"Content"?
Don't forget the loathsome Alan Simpson, he of the so-called Deficit Reduction Committee, who called retirees like me "pesky parasites". What a sweetie. Unfortunately, I haven't had the good luck to draw a federal pension and augment my income by whoring myself out on several corporate boards.
Also employees are considered Cost that must be minimized. Soon 99 per cent will be reduced to near nothing and Corporate America will still want more out of us.
Pretty good 1492------
Finally we have achieved Republican nirvana. Success!
Hmm... interesting. Which begs the question: What would democrats do if they were ever in power?
We saw that movie already: between 2008 and 2010, when Dems controlled Congress and the White House. What'd they do? Passed the Big Pharma- approved, Big HMO-approved "wealthcare" bill, to address the urgent problem of 50 million without medical care....so urgent the law would be implemented in ... 2014.
Hmmm, "Republican nirvana". Let me take a shot at that. RN is where there is a tiny, tiny minority who live in McMansions and on megayachts, drive silver high-end cars (or have them driven by some lucky minority type making minimum wage), vacation in Majorca, look for themselves in the Social Register, think Reagan was a great president and should be a saint, and wish that Berlusconi could be an American citizen so he could run and be our first billionaire President. They abhor social "entitlements" of any kind and think that Roosevelt was a traitor to his class. They love the military as long as anyone they know doesn't have to serve in it and they have fun memorizing as many of the Fortune 500 as possible. They can recognize each other immediately by hearing that "The Fountainhead" is their favorite movie.
Congratulations to all of the Dems and Rethugs who have helped make this possible. We will obviously need a new flag for the Corporate States of America. That one with the corporate icons all over it that floated around the net years ago will do nicely.
From the article,,, ("This is a wake-up call for Congress").
Wake-up call?? __ For Congress?? ___ Let's be serious.
Compassion, to politicians and the right-wing, is a dirty word.
Our country has lost its way.
Lost its way?
This is what the richest & TPTB wanted all along. They've succeeded: Control the world militarily. Control the world's money supply with its central banks and Stop & Go & Bust Bubbles. Control the political landscape using the Press, Police and Business. Bring in people of all colors, genders, etc. to round-out the facade of inclusion and "equality" e.g "Melting Pot". Civil rights, gay rights, the Civil War was all about keeping The Thing together and building-out the Empire. It was certainly right and good that people gained the same 'freedoms and rights' anglos had. Unfortunately, it happened for all the wrong reasons. It was not about freedom and rights, it wasn't about building a great society/nation that lifted the human spirit, snuffing-out poverty and advancing everyone, it wasn't about any of that stuff, and it wasn't a good thing gone bad, it was just all about the money and sucking everyone and their economic off-the-books circles into The Big Game financially. They've (Washington & the 1%) never honestly, actually, cared about people. Our deadly healthcare system is proof-poisitive of that, and its why we can never expect a single payer or other nationally inclusive healthcare system. They are in the business of using (bad) human health to enrich themselves (and now forcing us to pay for it. LOL!)... our never ending wars with mass casualties and the dead, our food system which fattens & poisons the citizenry. All at the end of the day it moves the money into the 1%'s hands by hurting us. Its a stunningly Beautiful Situation for Them. The American Empire: The Perfect Cycle/Money Making Machine if there ever was one.
Finally, they can never have enough slaves either, they love it when we breed.
Of course I could have it all wrong. :)
Yes, you could have it all wrong, but I suspect that you got it mostly right.
"Our deadly healthcare system is proof-poisitive of that, and its why we can never expect a single payer or other nationally inclusive healthcare system. They are in the business of using (bad) human health to enrich themselves..."
I talked to a nurse, who got a Masters Degree in it from USF (private Catholic.) He is adamant that the healthcare system in the US, although for-profit, is the best in the world, only trying to valiantly save people at the best most efficient cost possible. He's an Independent voter, with rapid right-wing parents, but voted for Obama. I explain the overwhelming statistics of its failures, uninsured, 45K deaths/yr for lack of healthcare, etc, and he says any statistics can be manipulated to tell the story you want to hear. He doesn't believe those statistics are valid analyses of our healthcare system. And he'll vote for Obama again BTW.
Edit: One more thing: when the healthcare debate was going on, his biggest concern was where was all the spending from gov't going to come from. He said we can't afford it. We're broke, and his taxes would be raised to cover it.
You would think that is enough to prod us all to get out on the streets and protest, but there weren't many protests during the Great Depression; only bread lines. The 1% could care less. They will have private armies to fight the roving armed gangs of the poor and starving.
Making the rich pay their fair share will not do the trick. We also need additional taxes to make them pay back the money they have taken from us in the last ten years. Money doesn't disappear or vanish. It only moves from place to place. The rich have taken it all. We want it back.
John: We also need to make sure that they are never able to grab hold of the reigns of government again. To do that we need to get money out of politics by passing a constitutional amendment declaring money is not speech, and corporations are not "persons," and then summarily getting Congress to pass a public-funding-of-elections bill. It also seems to me that you can either have democracy for the few, such as we have in the US, or democracy for the many, as we see in places like Denmark which have a well developed social safety net. I don't know exactly how to get us into that situation. The US public has been bamboozled for so long into believing in the myths of "freedom" put forth by the corporate media that it almost seems as if we have to just abolish the freakin' corporate media entirely, and after a decade of real people's media we might get somewhere...
Are majority of the Americans waiting for a Messiah to come and rescue them? If so, they will be waiting till kingdom come and there will be no Messiah coming any time soon. However, collection agencies will be coming and taking away the little that you still presently own. So WAKE UP AMERICA and stop voting for the Rep or Dem. They all serve they same master!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And stop living in a delusional world thinking everything is honky dory for it isn't! Be brave enough to face the truth now or it will be a lot more difficult later. I know they never wanted you to have a good education system but for heavens sake, use the little intellect you have to see through all this facade. Never vote for a Dem or Rep again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We need to tax the Wealth of the Top 1%.
To take few words from james mcmurtry:
I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams
All lily white and squeaky clean
They've never known want, they'll never know need
Their shit don't stink and their kids won't bleed
Their kids won't bleed in the damn little war
And we can't make it here anymore
Will work for food
Will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
The working poor get to fall through the cracks
Let 'em eat jellybeans let 'em eat cake
Let 'em eat shit, whatever it takes
They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
If they can't make it here anymore
not just tax the rich
BUT
charge a fair market price for the use of public lands
if a company wants to extract oil,gas.coal or any kind of ore from public land then they should pay the same market price for what ever as they would pay if it was coming from private land
close the loop holes that allow companies like GE and M$ to pay NO TAXES AT ALL !
Thank you, mtdon, "We Can't Make It Here " by James McMurtry lays it all out, exactly. It begins with:
Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing, both hands free
No one's paying much mind to him
The V.A. budget's stretched so thin
And there's more comin' home from the Mideast war
We can't make it here anymore
That big ol' building was the textile mill
It fed our kids and it paid our bills
But they turned us out and they closed the doors
We can't make it here anymore
After many more brilliant verses, it concludes:
And that's how it is
That's what we got
If the president wants to admit it or not
You can read it in the paper
Read it on the wall
Hear it on the wind
If you're listening at all
Get out of that limo
Look us in the eye
Call us on the cell phone
Tell us all why
In Dayton, Ohio
Or Portland, Maine
Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains
That's done closed down along with the school
And the hospital and the swimming pool
Dust devils dance in the noonday heat
There's rats in the alley
And trash in the street
Gang graffiti on a boxcar door
We can't make it here anymore
Watch McMurty sing this song here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbWRfBZY-ng
"If it weren't so expensive, I'd wish I was dead." John Prine.
Used to, a family of 4 or 5 could live on the income of one working parent. Now it takes 2 parents, working, to pay the basic bills of rent and utilities. If a family of 4, has 2 children that are too young to go to school, they have to either have an unpaid babysitter or pay for child care. In my small town, it takes $200 per child (more for an infant) per week for child care. So it takes more than one parent makes, to pay for child care. And so that parent has to stay home. Yet the one working parent, especially if he/she is working at minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, will not be able to pay the bills. This is what the American "Middle Class" has come to. Heaven forbid that a parent should get sick, because they don't have health insurance.
Pooka I would love it if my kids daycare was only $200 per child per month! Try $2000 per month for both my kids who are too young for school. I make nearly 3X minimum wage but daycare is more than my house payment in Southern Cali! I'm in my mid thirties and have worked full time since I was 14, and have much less to show for it than I would have thought at this point. The American Dream has become an American Nightmare for many of us out here in California...
Housing for $600 a month? I don't think so. Food for $244 a month?Try it.
Maybe $600/mo for a single person to rent a room at a house, but it costs more than $244/mo just to feed my two under 5 girls!
Well just work three jobs then, and George W. Bush will give you a pat on the back and say, "Ain't that great? That's the American spirit!"
Despicable situation.
before 1492 (Nov 23 2011 - 9:46am) is totally on the money:
America is a corporation, aka Amerikkka LLC.
In and for a corporation, there are no citizens, only employees and consumers.
A corporation can fire its employees at its leisure.
In a corporation, there is no common good, only private interests.
In a corporation, profits for the owners trump all other considerations, and hustling and conquering markets (including conquest by violent means, such as military interventions and economic blackmailing) are the order of the day.
This way of modelling (in the scientific sense of model building) the present state of our country eludicates much of what is going on here: the so-called revolving door phenomenon, the massive corruption of the political machinery, the systematic assault on public institutions (even the Postal Service is now under threat), the mercenary military, the misery of our primary and secondary schools, which keep a large portion of the population in state of semi-literacy and deep ignorance, the two-tiered educational system, the idolatry of competitive and even extreme sports (which prepare the thoroughbreds for the corporate ethos of "dog eat dog," divert the aggression and anger of the majority of the consumers, and keep them believing that they, too, will some day be winners, which, of course, they won't, for there can only be a few winners in a corporation), and so on and so forth.
I called the U.S. military mercenary, for the armed forces of Amerikkka LLC keep the global markets subservient to the Corporation (the Corporation calls them 'free markets') and the desirable energy and mineral resources of foreign lands open to its plundering,
At the present time one major thing that is keeping our economy afloat is the huge number of Americans who are receiving social security checks and or miltiary, railroad and other retirement checks from governments, police, firemen, government employees who retire after 20 years of service.
When the depression reaches full swing, those checks will no longer be deposited... Look out,, it's going to make the last depression seem like a just a bad day. For one other thing, during the last depression American business hadn't outsourced most of the jobs to China, etc.
Someone here mentioned "brea lines" during the last depression.. Well, don't expect any bread or soup lines with the coming one,,, expect to see anarchy... The millions of smalll farmers with 40 to 80 acres who were here in the 1930 and 40s are long gone and we now import about 40% of our food...That import of food will cease.
The 1%ers control most of the crop and cattle lands now and there aren't near enough farmers markets for the population we now have... It is going to be un-fun, very nasty actually...Be prepared... No money= no fuel, ellectricity cut off,,, no gas or water,, no food... Martial law imposed,, no elections.. mercenary troops,, the military, elected, the very rich will have fuel and food... Figure it out, really think of all that.
And our 536 DC elected? __ La-la land, pitiful. .
Oh happy day! This hastens the fall of the EMPIRE.