The Stigma of Just Surviving
"In America, to be poor is a stigma. In a country which celebrates individuality and the goal of giving everyone an equal opportunity to make it big, those in poverty are often blamed for their own situation. Experience on the ground does little to bear that out. When people are working two jobs at a time and still failing to earn enough to feed their families, it seems impossible to call them lazy or selfish. There seems to be a failure in the system, not the poor themselves…The economy does not seem to be allowing people to make a decent living. It condemns the poor to stay put, fighting against seemingly impossible odds…"
--"37 Million Poor Hidden in the Land of Plenty," by Paul Harris reporting from the U.S., in the British newspaper, the UK Observer-Guardian, February 19, 2006.
Here are some dry statistics for you:
*Wage and salary income of Americans in the top 10% of income distribution rose 34% in recent years.
*Income in the top 1% (average income $402,306/year) rose 87%.
*Income in the top .1% (average income $1,672,726/year) rose 181%.
*Income in the top .01% (average income over $6 million/year) rose 497%.
Source: Ian Dew-Becker & Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, in their paper, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?"
*"Average incomes for American families, after adjusting for inflation, actually fell from 2001 to 2004, and the growth in net worth was the weakest in a decade…since net worth declined by 9.9% in the 1989-92 period…the Federal Reserve reported…"
*"This is the continuing story of the rich getting richer," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York, "Clearly, the gains in wealth are going to the top end."
Source: "Average American Family Income Declines," reported by AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger February 23, 2006
*The real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5% between 2000 and 2004.
Source: 2006 Economics Report of the President
*37 million Americans live below the poverty line; 12.7% of the population.
*Under President George W. Bush, an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line.
*The minimum wage of $5.15 an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956.
*45.8 million Americans lack any health insurance.
*The top 20% of wage earners take over half the national income.
*The bottom 20% took home just 3.4%.
*The United States has 269 billionaires, the highest number in the world.
Source:"37 Million Poor Hidden in the Land of Plenty," the UK Observer-Guardian, February 19, 2006
*"There's an asset gap. It particularly has a racial component: Black families' net worth is $6,000 on average; Latino families $8,000; white families $80,000…I think New Orleans is just a microcosm for what exists all across the country."
Source: Interview with John Edwards, former Democratic presidential candidate who now heads an anti-poverty program affiliated with the University of North Carolina and travels the country working on the problem.
Although this president likes to boast about how strong our economy is, time and again, when the American people are polled, they report feeling a great deal of anxiety, even dread, about the economy, and lackluster retail sales over the recent Christmas holiday season reflect that general insecurity.
The reason for this discomfort and worry is that for the vast majority of Americans who earn what would even be considered a median or average income of around $43,000/year, things are NOT getting stronger for them financially. And if you fall below that line or, heaven help you, into that level of our society who is trying to support a family on minimum wage (without health insurance, to boot), your situation can be downright grim. You are one medical crises or death in the family away from catastrophe, even homelessness.
Republicans are supposed to be fiscal conservatives, but the outright squandering of a $100 billion surplus left by the outgoing Clinton administration and the massive borrowing to fund extravagant tax cuts in time of war (which they started), has left us, five years later, almost half a trillion dollars in debt.
And the only people who are laughing all the way to the bank are those whose earnings put them in the top ten percent of wage earners or higher.
For the other 90% of us, things have gotten quite a bit tougher. Even many of those who have managed to build up some home equity in their mortgages have borrowed against that equity just so they can break even with their own debts.
The conventional wisdom USED TO be that Democrats were all about tax-and-spend, tax-and-spend, but it was a Democratic president who balanced the budget and left a surplus. Under a Republican president, a Republican congress has spent money at a level so obscene that party conservatives are beginning to speak out rather loudly--not that it makes any difference.
In fact, here's how the Treasury Secretary, John Snow, proposed our government deal with the fact that it has borrowed so much money to cover it's expenses: that we simply raise the debt ceiling, and, in order to cover our borrowing until then, that we tap government retirement funds such as Civil Service Retirement and Disability to cover the spending, since we're only allowed to borrow, oh, $8.2 trillion AND WE'VE ALREADY REACHED THAT LIMIT.
We owe our soul to countries such as China, while many of our jobs are outsourced to India and our cars are made in Japan.
The recently-proposed budget for 2007 calls, yet again, for massive tax cuts to the wealthy to be made permanent, and many of the Republicans on Capitol hill want to do just that.
Claims that the tax cuts can be offset by budget cuts on programs that effect those who need it the most: Medicaid, student loans, and others, such as veterans' benefits, simply do not bear up under any KIND of close scrutiny.
Here are a few dry budget stats:
The Vanishing Future
*The 2007 budget submitted by President Bush ASSUMES NO MILITARY EXPENDITURES IN IRAQ OR AFGHANISTAN beyond 2007, for which the budget requests a mere $50 billion--far less than the $120 billion requested for 2006.
*Clinton-era budgets offered 10-year projections of spending and revenues. But the Bush administration slashed the budget horizon to five years…thus hiding the costs from revenue losses due to the tax cuts.
*The administration's own estimate of extending the tax cuts would cost an average of $235 BILLION each year, or $1.4 TRILLION over the next 10 years.
So, to recap, what that means is that in his first five years in office, President Bush never used his veto--oh, I forgot. He did try to veto a bill that would prohibit torture.
But he never once vetoed a single "earmark," which is pork-barrel spending cobbled onto any other measure the Republican congress wanted to pass. The transportation bill had more than 14,000 earmarks, not one of which apparently raised a Bush eyebrow.
However, not only does this president and his congressional cronies want to make the tax cuts--oh, let's just call 'em what they really are, shall we? TAX GIVEAWAYS. So, not only do they want to make these tax giveaways permanent for the richest segment of our society, but they claim that these massive gift-breaks to the rich and powerful can be paid for by cutting the following programs:
Are You in this Group? Better check. Under the current budget, the following programs will be cut:
*Veteran's benefits: 13%
*National parks: 22%
*Housing, fuel, child care, nutrition programs for poor & elderly: 13%
*Education & job programs: 13%
Okay, let's get a little perspective. If you're still with me here, let's see who else will benefit from Republican budget policies, and who will be hurt:
*"Just the portion of tax cuts going to the top 1% of American households, whose average income is about $1 million a year, is almost equal to all federal spending on education or veterans."
Source: "House of Cards Budget," editorial, Boston Globe, February 7, 2006.
"The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history …Buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and gas from federal territory WITHOUT PAYING ROYALTIES TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT…The government said it would lose a total of nearly $35 billion in royalties to tax payers by 2011--ABOUT THE SAME AMOUNT THAT MR. BUSH IS PROPOSING TO CUT FROM MEDICARE, MEDICAID, AND CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT PROGRAMS OVER THE SAME PERIOD."
Source: "U.S. Has Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies," by Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times, February 14, 2006.
But it's far more insidious than many such buried gems as windfall giveaways to oil companies--(not counting the out-of-control spending, graft, and corruption over in Iraq, resulting from the no-bid reconstruction contract to the Vice President's former company, Halliburton, which still pads his stock portfolio; can anybody say WAR PROFITEER?)--It's not just hidden slashes in programs the worst-off of us need so much.
It's hiding what those cuts will do, in real terms, to the men, women, and children who will be thrown out of the programs due to the budget cuts that will be made in order to provide tax giveaways to the top 1% of our society.
According to the New York Times, the Census Bureau, back in 1984, started a survey called the Survey of Income and Program Participation. This survey questions thousands of the same people every four months for two to four years and gathers details about their lives, including their use of government aid.
This survey is particularly valuable for the way it uncovers the actual effects of government programs and the way people move in and out of them, rather than simply capturing data at a certain point in time.
In this way, researchers are able to isolate such factors--social, economic, and personal--that have allowed some men and women to SUCCESSFULLY leave welfare for work, as well as the factors that seemed to cause others to fall deeper into poverty.
This survey clearly measures the true, human fallout from cuts in food stamps, child care, Medicaid, and other programs. It also gives Congress the information it needs to make informed and useful policy decisions.
At least, it used to.
In the 2007 budget submitted by President Bush, the survey was eliminated.
That seems to be this administration's pattern, doesn't it? Not only do we not want to think about the suffering our grand ideas have caused, but we've found ways to hide it from the rest of the world, and, in so doing, not have to be held accountable for our own morally poor, socially inept, and fiscally irresponsible policies.
"Should we be worried about the increasingly oligarchic nature of American society? Yes, and not just because a rising economic tide has failed to lift most boats. Both history and modern experience tell us that highly unequal societies also tend to be highly corrupt. There's an arrow of causation that runs from diverging income trends to Jack Abramoff and the K Street project…Alan Greenspan…has repeatedly warned that growing inequality poses a 'threat to democratic society.'"
New York Times Op-ed, "Graduates Versus Oligarchs," by Paul Krugman, February 27, 2006.
In this country, it's not just the very poor who are struggling to survive; it's just about all of us who do not benefit from the Bush and Republican Congress tax giveaways.
We raise our children to believe that they can do anything, be anything they want in this great big gorgeous country of ours, but the truth is that it's pretty much not true. Not anymore. Not as long as the present policies in Washington continue.
They say that, in this election year, many Republicans in Congress are rebelling against Bush policies and say that they will not pass this budget as it is.
So they say.
Well, since they are the ones who got us into this mess in the first place, I say, too little, too late.
--"37 Million Poor Hidden in the Land of Plenty," by Paul Harris reporting from the U.S., in the British newspaper, the UK Observer-Guardian, February 19, 2006.
Here are some dry statistics for you:
*Wage and salary income of Americans in the top 10% of income distribution rose 34% in recent years.
*Income in the top 1% (average income $402,306/year) rose 87%.
*Income in the top .1% (average income $1,672,726/year) rose 181%.
*Income in the top .01% (average income over $6 million/year) rose 497%.
Source: Ian Dew-Becker & Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, in their paper, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?"
*"Average incomes for American families, after adjusting for inflation, actually fell from 2001 to 2004, and the growth in net worth was the weakest in a decade…since net worth declined by 9.9% in the 1989-92 period…the Federal Reserve reported…"
*"This is the continuing story of the rich getting richer," said David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor's in New York, "Clearly, the gains in wealth are going to the top end."
Source: "Average American Family Income Declines," reported by AP Economics Writer Martin Crutsinger February 23, 2006
*The real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5% between 2000 and 2004.
Source: 2006 Economics Report of the President
*37 million Americans live below the poverty line; 12.7% of the population.
*Under President George W. Bush, an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line.
*The minimum wage of $5.15 an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956.
*45.8 million Americans lack any health insurance.
*The top 20% of wage earners take over half the national income.
*The bottom 20% took home just 3.4%.
*The United States has 269 billionaires, the highest number in the world.
Source:"37 Million Poor Hidden in the Land of Plenty," the UK Observer-Guardian, February 19, 2006
*"There's an asset gap. It particularly has a racial component: Black families' net worth is $6,000 on average; Latino families $8,000; white families $80,000…I think New Orleans is just a microcosm for what exists all across the country."
Source: Interview with John Edwards, former Democratic presidential candidate who now heads an anti-poverty program affiliated with the University of North Carolina and travels the country working on the problem.
Although this president likes to boast about how strong our economy is, time and again, when the American people are polled, they report feeling a great deal of anxiety, even dread, about the economy, and lackluster retail sales over the recent Christmas holiday season reflect that general insecurity.
The reason for this discomfort and worry is that for the vast majority of Americans who earn what would even be considered a median or average income of around $43,000/year, things are NOT getting stronger for them financially. And if you fall below that line or, heaven help you, into that level of our society who is trying to support a family on minimum wage (without health insurance, to boot), your situation can be downright grim. You are one medical crises or death in the family away from catastrophe, even homelessness.
Republicans are supposed to be fiscal conservatives, but the outright squandering of a $100 billion surplus left by the outgoing Clinton administration and the massive borrowing to fund extravagant tax cuts in time of war (which they started), has left us, five years later, almost half a trillion dollars in debt.
And the only people who are laughing all the way to the bank are those whose earnings put them in the top ten percent of wage earners or higher.
For the other 90% of us, things have gotten quite a bit tougher. Even many of those who have managed to build up some home equity in their mortgages have borrowed against that equity just so they can break even with their own debts.
The conventional wisdom USED TO be that Democrats were all about tax-and-spend, tax-and-spend, but it was a Democratic president who balanced the budget and left a surplus. Under a Republican president, a Republican congress has spent money at a level so obscene that party conservatives are beginning to speak out rather loudly--not that it makes any difference.
In fact, here's how the Treasury Secretary, John Snow, proposed our government deal with the fact that it has borrowed so much money to cover it's expenses: that we simply raise the debt ceiling, and, in order to cover our borrowing until then, that we tap government retirement funds such as Civil Service Retirement and Disability to cover the spending, since we're only allowed to borrow, oh, $8.2 trillion AND WE'VE ALREADY REACHED THAT LIMIT.
We owe our soul to countries such as China, while many of our jobs are outsourced to India and our cars are made in Japan.
The recently-proposed budget for 2007 calls, yet again, for massive tax cuts to the wealthy to be made permanent, and many of the Republicans on Capitol hill want to do just that.
Claims that the tax cuts can be offset by budget cuts on programs that effect those who need it the most: Medicaid, student loans, and others, such as veterans' benefits, simply do not bear up under any KIND of close scrutiny.
Here are a few dry budget stats:
The Vanishing Future
*The 2007 budget submitted by President Bush ASSUMES NO MILITARY EXPENDITURES IN IRAQ OR AFGHANISTAN beyond 2007, for which the budget requests a mere $50 billion--far less than the $120 billion requested for 2006.
*Clinton-era budgets offered 10-year projections of spending and revenues. But the Bush administration slashed the budget horizon to five years…thus hiding the costs from revenue losses due to the tax cuts.
*The administration's own estimate of extending the tax cuts would cost an average of $235 BILLION each year, or $1.4 TRILLION over the next 10 years.
So, to recap, what that means is that in his first five years in office, President Bush never used his veto--oh, I forgot. He did try to veto a bill that would prohibit torture.
But he never once vetoed a single "earmark," which is pork-barrel spending cobbled onto any other measure the Republican congress wanted to pass. The transportation bill had more than 14,000 earmarks, not one of which apparently raised a Bush eyebrow.
However, not only does this president and his congressional cronies want to make the tax cuts--oh, let's just call 'em what they really are, shall we? TAX GIVEAWAYS. So, not only do they want to make these tax giveaways permanent for the richest segment of our society, but they claim that these massive gift-breaks to the rich and powerful can be paid for by cutting the following programs:
Are You in this Group? Better check. Under the current budget, the following programs will be cut:
*Veteran's benefits: 13%
*National parks: 22%
*Housing, fuel, child care, nutrition programs for poor & elderly: 13%
*Education & job programs: 13%
Okay, let's get a little perspective. If you're still with me here, let's see who else will benefit from Republican budget policies, and who will be hurt:
*"Just the portion of tax cuts going to the top 1% of American households, whose average income is about $1 million a year, is almost equal to all federal spending on education or veterans."
Source: "House of Cards Budget," editorial, Boston Globe, February 7, 2006.
"The federal government is on the verge of one of the biggest giveaways of oil and gas in American history …Buried in the Interior Department's just-published budget plan, the government will let companies pump about $65 billion worth of oil and gas from federal territory WITHOUT PAYING ROYALTIES TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT…The government said it would lose a total of nearly $35 billion in royalties to tax payers by 2011--ABOUT THE SAME AMOUNT THAT MR. BUSH IS PROPOSING TO CUT FROM MEDICARE, MEDICAID, AND CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT PROGRAMS OVER THE SAME PERIOD."
Source: "U.S. Has Royalty Plan to Give Windfall to Oil Companies," by Edmund L. Andrews, New York Times, February 14, 2006.
But it's far more insidious than many such buried gems as windfall giveaways to oil companies--(not counting the out-of-control spending, graft, and corruption over in Iraq, resulting from the no-bid reconstruction contract to the Vice President's former company, Halliburton, which still pads his stock portfolio; can anybody say WAR PROFITEER?)--It's not just hidden slashes in programs the worst-off of us need so much.
It's hiding what those cuts will do, in real terms, to the men, women, and children who will be thrown out of the programs due to the budget cuts that will be made in order to provide tax giveaways to the top 1% of our society.
According to the New York Times, the Census Bureau, back in 1984, started a survey called the Survey of Income and Program Participation. This survey questions thousands of the same people every four months for two to four years and gathers details about their lives, including their use of government aid.
This survey is particularly valuable for the way it uncovers the actual effects of government programs and the way people move in and out of them, rather than simply capturing data at a certain point in time.
In this way, researchers are able to isolate such factors--social, economic, and personal--that have allowed some men and women to SUCCESSFULLY leave welfare for work, as well as the factors that seemed to cause others to fall deeper into poverty.
This survey clearly measures the true, human fallout from cuts in food stamps, child care, Medicaid, and other programs. It also gives Congress the information it needs to make informed and useful policy decisions.
At least, it used to.
In the 2007 budget submitted by President Bush, the survey was eliminated.
That seems to be this administration's pattern, doesn't it? Not only do we not want to think about the suffering our grand ideas have caused, but we've found ways to hide it from the rest of the world, and, in so doing, not have to be held accountable for our own morally poor, socially inept, and fiscally irresponsible policies.
"Should we be worried about the increasingly oligarchic nature of American society? Yes, and not just because a rising economic tide has failed to lift most boats. Both history and modern experience tell us that highly unequal societies also tend to be highly corrupt. There's an arrow of causation that runs from diverging income trends to Jack Abramoff and the K Street project…Alan Greenspan…has repeatedly warned that growing inequality poses a 'threat to democratic society.'"
New York Times Op-ed, "Graduates Versus Oligarchs," by Paul Krugman, February 27, 2006.
In this country, it's not just the very poor who are struggling to survive; it's just about all of us who do not benefit from the Bush and Republican Congress tax giveaways.
We raise our children to believe that they can do anything, be anything they want in this great big gorgeous country of ours, but the truth is that it's pretty much not true. Not anymore. Not as long as the present policies in Washington continue.
They say that, in this election year, many Republicans in Congress are rebelling against Bush policies and say that they will not pass this budget as it is.
So they say.
Well, since they are the ones who got us into this mess in the first place, I say, too little, too late.
posted by Deanie Mills at 3:33 PM
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