Ranks of working poor increasing

[xchrom]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/ranks-of-working-poor-increasing/2013/01/15/8d1f51e2-59b9-11e2-88d0-c4cf65c3ad15_story.html


Michael S. Williamson/WASHINGTON POST - The ranks of the so-called working poor have grown even as the nation is showing signs of shaking off the worst effects of the recession.

Nearly a third of the nation’s working families earn salaries so low that they struggle to pay for their necessities, according to a new report.

The ranks of the so-called working poor have grown even as the nation has created new jobs for 27 consecutive months and is showing other signs of shaking off the worst effects of the recession.

“Although many people are returning to work, they are often taking jobs with lower wages and less job security, compared with the middle class jobs they held before the downturn,” according to a report released Tuesday by the Working Poor Families Project, a national initiative aimed at fostering state policies to help low-income working families.

With the nation’s economy in recovery, the report said, more than 70 percent of low-income families and half of all poor families were working by 2011. The problem is they did not earn enough to cover their basic living expenses.

[xchrom]

1. kick

[woo me with science]

2. Kick

[99Forever]

3. Welcome to the new, improved...

.. United States of Austerity.

[burnsei sensei]

6. +1

nt

[TheKentuckian]

4. That was the plan, Stan.

All the "small people" were getting uppity and starting to make a stink about a generation of stagnant wages before the crash so now we get a "reset" of such magnitude that we just want to get back there and the horizon comes a bit closer aka "new normal"

[theaocp]

5. k&r n/t

[kenny blankenship]

7. This is just proof that Free Trade is working.

Free Trade as embodied in NAFTA and GATT creates a globalized labor market. In such a market the price of labor in "developed" nations must necessarily collapse towards the level prevailing in the most impoverished nations. There are two billion people living in absolute poverty in the world - an inexhaustible supply of rightless and essentially free labor! It's truly a capitalist paradise and there are more exploitable bodies entering the world all the time. So, if there is a marked increase in the numbers of working poor people in the US that just means the main Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Obama economic prescription (free trade, and lots of it) is doing its job. Steady as she goes, Captain! Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement off the port bow. Make ready the boarding and signing party.
We should feel fortunate and grateful. It's a very exciting time to be alive!

[toby jo]

8. There was 'free trade' evil in more primitive societies, too.

"The rich need an abundant supply of the poor" Voltaire - 1700s,

When our walls were closed we could focus the creation of money into a higher standard of living for those within.
Now it dissipates. We've gotta export unions and clean energy standards and healthcare, too. That will help us get a new line drawn of 'our walls' as being the humanity in our global village, and we'll get the resurgance of higher standards.

But you're right, kenny, it's a capitalist paradise and it sucks.