A few months ago I wrote an diary on child poverty in America. A new study had just been released and the numbers were distressing. Twenty-five percent of very young children in America were found to be living in poverty, according to an analysis of Census data recently released. Researchers from the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire found that the number of children under six living in poverty had risen to 5.9 million in 2010 from 5.7 million in 2009.
The Census Bureau has now released more data and the numbers have changed slightly. They have changed but they are still distressing; they’re still disgraceful and they are numbers of which we should all be very ashamed.
Before we look at the new data let’s see how poverty is defined in America. According to the University of Michigan's National Poverty Center the poverty level for a single individual is $11,344 per year. That's $944.50 per month. For a family of four (two adults, two children) the poverty level is $22,113 per year or $1842.75 per month. In 2010, in California, the median housing cost (rent, utilities and garbage and trash) was $1,163 per month. Nationally, monthly housing cost varied from a high of $1,198 in the District of Columbia to a low of $583 in Kentucky. Based on info from the USDA, the monthly food cost for an adult is between $150-$300. Two things to note, this assumes all meals are made at home and a number of factors (age, gender, location, etc) can alter this. As might be expected, the annual amount spent on food increases with income varying from approximately $1,900 for low income individuals to $,3300 for high income individuals.
In 2010, 46.2 million Americans , 15.1 percent, lived in poverty. That figure was up from 14.3 percent in 2009 and was the fourth consecutive annual increase in the number of people living in poverty. The number of poor people in 2010 was is the largest number in the 52 years the statistic has been kept. Most disturbing, the poverty rate for children under 18 increased from 20 percent in 2009 to 21.6 percent in 2010. That translates to 1.1 million more children living in poverty. It should come as no surprise there were racial disparities in child poverty. The poverty rate for black children was 38.2 percent; for Hispanic children, 32.3 percent; for white children, 17 percent; and for Asian children, 13 percent. So, while 14.4 percent of children in the US are black, 25.6 percent of poor children are black. One of every five children in the United States was of Hispanic origin. However, Hispanic children made up one of every three children who lived in poverty in the United States in 2010. But, the bad news doesn’t stop here.
About 20.5 million Americans, or 6.7 percent of the U.S. population, make up the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent or less of the official poverty level. Those living in deep poverty represent nearly half of the 46.2 million people scraping by below the poverty line. In 2010, the poorest poor meant an income of $5,570 or less for an individual and $11,157 for a family of four. That 6.7 percent share is the highest in the 35 years that the Census Bureau has maintained such records, surpassing previous highs in 2009 and 1993 of just over 6 percent.
America is one of the wealthiest countries on earth and yet we allow 15 percent of our fellow Americans to live in poverty and almost 8 percent to live in abject poverty. How does something like this happen? The answer is really pretty simple. We often hear that our government is broken. The government isn’t broken; it’s corrupt. From the House of Representatives, through the Senate all the way the Supreme Court, we are ruled by men and women who make glib and artful speeches but who are actually beholding to those who put them in office and who make them rich while they are there, the equally corrupt corporations and the monied elite. It happens because we have endured thirty years of Reaganomics, a financial philosophy based on the fervent belief that the rich should get richer and everyone else should become serfs and exist on what ever “trickles down.” It happens because we’ve set idly by while income inequality soared to a level last seen in 1929 and we were too involved with the Kardashians to notice.
The 2011 Congressional Budget Office report found that real income in the U.S. grew by 62 percent for all households between 1979 and 2007. However, after-tax income of households in the top 1percent of earners grew by 275 percent while income growth for the bottom fifth of earners was 18 percent. “As a result of that uneven income growth," the report noted, "the share of total after-tax income received by the 1 percent of the population in households with the highest income more than doubled between 1979 and 2007, whereas the share received by low- and middle-income households declined. And it happened because we vote for a president we would’ve liked to have had a beer with rather than one with ideas. After he lied us into an immoral but highly profitable war we elected him again.
The cable news pundits keep asking what the Occupy Wall Street movement is all about. Many belittle the OWSers and try to de-legitimize them because they have issued no demands, no manifesto. They don't need to. This is what OWS is about. It’s about getting the attention of government and making it correct the course that is quickly making us into a nation of only haves and have-nots, a nation that has declared war on the working class, on women, on the needy and the elderly. There has been a war for the soul of this country going on for thirty years and we have been losing because we didn’t realize it. OWS changed that. They opened eyes and they made us listen. Now we know we are in a war and now a lot of people are starting to take action. The oligarchs and the money changers can unleash all the mobs of riot geared police they want and they can pepper spray all the peaceful protesters they can find but they can’t change what’s coming. Excessive force is always the first response of authority to that which they can never understand and they will continue to use force until this new wave of outrage at what they have done washes them away.
A Note For Those Of Us Who Aren't Yet Poor:
The retail cost of menu items for a classic Thanksgiving dinner including turkey, stuffing, cranberries, pumpkin pie and all the basic trimmings increased about 13 percent this year, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. AFBF’s 26th annual informal price survey of classic items found on the Thanksgiving Day dinner table indicates the average cost of this year’s feast for 10 is $49.20, a $5.73 price increase from last year’s average of $43.47.