15 Shocking Poverty Statistics That Are Skyrocketing

[chervilant]

The "America" that so many of us have taken for granted for so many decades is literally disintegrating right in front of our eyes.

This is the opening salvo of a must-read article from The Economic Collapse, a website established and maintained by a man who asserts we are witnessing a global economic collapse, or perhaps a forced reordering of our economic behaviors (my preferred take on the situation).

More from the article:

The reality is that the system can only support so many people. We are now at a point where our anti-poverty programs are clearly unsustainable in the long-term, but nobody has a solution for how we are going to get all of these people off of these programs or how we are going to provide good jobs for all of them.

The cost of every U.S. government anti-poverty program is absolutely soaring. Meanwhile, the U.S. government is already running a budget deficit that is approaching 1.5 trillion dollars every year. If you cannot understand that we have a very serious problem on our hands then you are probably not awake.

Events now happen exponentially, so that much of our intellectual offerings are obsolete almost as soon as we conceptualize them. Furthermore, every thought, every idea, every opinion offered out into the universe is now subject to unbridled criticism, sarcasm, and derogation.

However, we cannot afford to miss this forest for the trees. Despite the fact that we've been fed a constant diet of red herrings via our system of public education, our media, AND our politicians, we must take the initiative to become informed activists in defense of our species. In the words of a much-admired elder statesman: “We must all hang together or most assuredly we will all hang separately.”

[Lionessa]

1. The corporate and bank owned pawns we call politicians, won't be happy

until everywhere has third world economic status.

[RKP5637]

3. Yes, they want the majority of the citizens to have slave wages living in

a dystopian nation.

[chervilant]

9. Well, now...

I am compelled to quote Sahlins:

The market-industrial system institutes scarcity, in a manner completely unparalleled and to a degree nowhere else approximated. Where production and distribution are arranged through the behavior of prices, and all livelihoods depend on getting and spending, insufficiency of material means becomes the explicit, calculable starting point of all economic activity. ... Consumption is a double tragedy: what begins in inadequacy will end in deprivation.

Capitalism is definitively about hierarchy. By definition, only a very few humans are allowed to clamber to the top of the ladder, and command the lion's share of wealth.

[truedelphi]

2. Funny how that when Eisenhower was confronted w/ task of how to take

Care of the millions of GI's returning back to the workforce after WWII, he was able to:

1) create the design and building of community hospitals - in almost every community
2) the design and building of community colleges
3) the establishment of a national highway system
4) the jobs created by the above allowed for the middle class Americans to go out and buy homes
5) so homes had to be designed and built
6) which allowed for more capital to be passed around from one Middle class American to another

One of the ways that this was possible is that no one in the Eisenhower Administration handed over Nine to Thirty Trillion bucks to the Big Six of the Banking World. (As we have seen under the Bush/Paulson, Obama/Bernanke/Geithenr admins.) And the tax code was onerous, not for the middle class and lower - but for the people who made Big Bucks.

The notion that we can only:
support so many people. We are now at a point where our anti-poverty programs are clearly unsustainable in the long-term, but nobody has a solution for how we are going to get all of these people off of these programs or how we are going to provide good jobs for all of them.

If this is indeed the "reality"
and it sure seems to be the one that all our politicians, be they Democrats or Republicans believe in, and a reality that the Talking Heads (CIA selected) proclaim on a daily basis, then we are going to see what Kissinger predicted so long ago, as his answer to the plague of "too many people" - the elimination of all but 600 million people.

[RKP5637]

5. I do think that's the agenda in some quarters, the execution of masses of

people by starvation, illness and lack of shelter.

[truedelphi]

8. Totally agree with you. And it is funny how convenient this

"Weiner" scandal is - if we had a real news reporting organization out there, everyone in the USA would be aware of how the Greek people have been fighting out in the streets for their right to survive. And we Americans are facing the same "austerity" measures here that they are facing there. We need to know what other oppressed peoples are doing about the scam that is being perpetuated by the Too Big To Fail group against the majority of people.

[RKP5637]

10. We are a populace wherein the majority live with blinders on because of

this crap we call news in this country. It's sad and disgusting, and will eventually lead IMO to the demise of many and they still won't know WTF is going on.

[dkf]

6. This is why we need to concentrate on the producers, innovators, and brains behind the economy.

If they can't create the ideas that propel our economy, we won't be able to provide for the least among us the little that we do now.

Its only going to get worse.

And it is a shame that the fruits go so heavily towards hedge managers. We need to reward those most involved in the true brainwork.

If we want to spend most of our time and energy providing healthcare for our elderly, as we will be if costs are not contained, then don't be surprised when our standard of living comes down.

[truedelphi]

7. I somewhat agree, but can I point out that in the

Late eighties, when the nation was facing tough times due to what the S & L crisis had done to us, the money for the economic revival was handed over to regional banks, all of which were state chratered, and Those banks were required to hand the money that the Federal Reserve gave them to the local businesses. Be that business the brain child of some Wozniak or Jobs type person, or be that business one run by a guy or gal who wanted to offer the neighborhood a decent carpet cleaning company.

The idea that only "brainy" people are those who deserve the economic wherewithal is one that has separated our society. While Flint Michigan was being destroyed in the late eighties, because it was economically viable for GM, Ford and other car companies to put the manufacturing facilities in Mexico - meanwhile all the computer geeks are like - "Well, who cares that those auto industry people are laid off. If they had brains they would have gone to college and gotten a computer degree."

Then came the nineties and the computer geeks found their jobs being done in India. But since there had been the sharp division of blue collar against white collar and vice versa, the movement by Big Industry to out source the jobs went along unstopped.

We need to be united about this issue - not divided about who is "smart" enough to deserve a piece of the pie.

[dkf]

11. I'm saying we need to cheer on the innovators, not resent them.

And I agree the financial industry is not where we want innovation. But we do need it in the rest of the economy.

[truedelphi]

12. Very much agree. n/t

[indepat]

4. Although the US has one of the lowest total tax rates in the industrialized world and gives most

favorable tax treatment to most of the income (dividends and capital gains) of the uber-wealthy and has an astoundingly low effective corporate tax rate, it is a spending problem, not a tax problem. Yeah, that's it in a nutshell! :patriot: