Number of Americans in poverty hits record high

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Archean

Archean

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Jun 18, 2011
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The number of Americans living in poverty rose to a record 46.2 million last year, official data has shown. This is the highest figure since the US Census Bureau started collecting the data in 1959.

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In percentage terms, the poverty rate rose to 15.1%, up from 14.3% in 2009. Poverty among African Americans / Hispanics significantly higher. This latest Census Bureau report also states that the average annual US household income fell 2.3% in 2010 to $49,445. The number of Americans without health insurance is around 50 million.
 


Yay, three people living in a one bedroom apartment with a 10 year old second hand microwave, and no healthcare if it wasn't for the government, now that's luxury! Of course the Heritage "invading Iraq is necessary, wonderful and easy" Foundation conveniently doesn't mention the debt poor people often have, are one pay check away from bankrupcy or that they rely on government assistance to afford such luxuries as basic healthcare, a phone and even food (foodstamps). Nor does it mention that those appliances people have are often second hand, were purchased during better times or belong to someone else (say unemployed people temporarily living with relatives among their appliances).

How the hell can people complain about a 9% unemployment rate and at the same time deny poverty? Unemployment statistics only count people looking for a job, so maybe, just maybe this indicates people are struggling without an income, aka poor.
 
It's only going to get worse if they don't change economic policy in America and keep jobs here. BTW, there are over 30 Million unemployed in the U.S. so it's no wonder so many are now living in povery.
 


No, it only illustrates the poverty line is higher in the US than in the rest of the third world, boohoo, what a surprise that all those making $1 in America are dead already. Am I not poor if I bought a $100 LCD-TV the day before I got laid off? Am I not poor if I saved money for a year and then bought a second hand LCD-TV for $60? Am I not poor if I am unemployed and crash at grandma's house where an LCD-TV is present? Am I not poor if I'm being stupid and buy an LCD-TV on credit even though I'm broke?

The poverty line in America is around $11k for single people, 14k for couples, how many appliances you have doesn't enter into it. Now I agree that a college student with an income of 11k will be fine, but for an adult it really means poverty, not hunger, but poverty nonetheless.

As to the Heritage Foundation: when a person can consistently and accurately predict the outcome of all "research" done by a "think tank", to the point of them claiming 1+1=3 if Obama were to publicly declare that 1+1=2, then said think tank has 0 credibility.


 
Guilli if you stop posting in his threads it will just be Oldman and Vadge, mumbling amongst themselves about liberals and such.

No matter what you say you cant change their minds. So just stop participating in his threads and maybe after a week or two this forum can go back to normal(Relatively).
 


I'm not posting here to change their minds, I'm posting here to learn from it and maybe sway people who haven't made their mind up yet. Well, and sometimes just for the fun of reading certain comments and Ann Coulter pieces.
 



And speaking from my own experience working in retail, seeing day in and day out for so many years that it makes me wanna cry thinking about being stuck in this industry... Are you really poor if you are on Foodstamps? Yet somehow ALSO on WIC, because you have 3 very young children yet proceeded to have more even though you were already on assistance? Wait. You are supposedly needy, and starving. Yet after ringing up your entire grocery order of pure junk food, chips cookies frozen dinners soda (wait, I freaking drink tap water that I pour into a container to chill in fridge, I slave 9hrs a day so I can take money directly out of my wallet and into your hands SO YOU CAN BUY SODA?? YOU NEED THAT TO LIVE/SURVIVE??), you then have half a grocery cart full of the best cuts of steak, chicken, pork chops, seafood etc. And so absolutely no one will be fooled as to just how desperate their need was, they pull out wads of 20's and 100's to buy hard alcohol, 30 packs of beer, and cigs.

Do any of you people with your heads in the sand, realize just how many customers come in with Foodstamps, chatting on brand new smart phones with approx 50-100 dollar monthly fees associated with them (since most smart phones have mandatory data plans)? Females with super-expensive salon nails freshly done? Designer sunglasses and handbags, very nice clothing, and after they checkout they head DIRECTLY to the Redbox to rent movies??


I guess I could be fooled or try to ignore the issue, if I didn't have to see first-hand just how disgusting and widespread the problem is. In fact I have to think extremely hard about our regular shoppers to bring to mind the 1 or 2 I've seen come thru that genuinely seemed in need and were wise with their purchases... trust me they are the EXCEPTION, not the rule. Because if someone was so down-trodden that they required assistance, then logically they would be very frugal with purchases to avoid sliding down further, right?


That is the other side of things that you don't seem to see Gulli, in your sheltered life view. It has nothing to do with not wanting to assist those that are truly in need, but it's obvious from the behavior of most of the people on assistance that there is something wrong with their understanding of right and wrong. A person on Foodstamps DOES NOT have the right to have steak and pork chops every night, while I work all day and maybe get a steak once a month. They do NOT have the right to drink 3-5 12pks of soda a week while I drink tap water at home. They do NOT have the right to save hard cash to budget into Alcohol Tobacco Cable Internet Smart Phones etc, while the rest of the public has to budget out food first and then cannot afford to waste money on all the chips cookies steak lobster junk food.

I think that what Gamer might be trying to imply is that a massive portion of those "poor" are playing the game, working the gov't dole. It is exactly this lack of responsibility and entitlement-culture that is the problem in this country, and if we could fix attitudes then perhaps we could all come together.

People will rush to assist those that are truly in need. Stealing from the wallets of those that grind all day, 5+ days of week, and then making them watch as others take that money and abuse the system, is what has been fueling the growing disgust.
 


There are always people who take advantage of the system, I don't know how many of them there are, and neither do you or gamer. I did not deny there is abuse, I went against gamer's assertion that there are no poor, except for the homeless. I also pointed out that poor people having appliances is no proof they are not poor. There is this view that you can buy a Mercedes or, as you mentioned, a smartphone off welfare. Well, you cannot. You can steal those items and you can buy a smart phone second hand, alternatively you could sell drugs to raise money, but you cannot afford expensive stuff off welfare, that is a really persistent myth. If someone wants to honestly discuss welfare reform then I'm open to discussing it, when someone just shouts "them lazy bitches be takin my monies!" I won't take them seriously.

Maybe we can relate to each other here: the feeling you and gamer get when seeing a smoking and drinking single mom ask for welfare is the same feeling I get when I see a multimillionaire CEO, just done with hiding his companies profits in Switzerland, ask for tax breaks and subsidies. Why don't I get as worked up about the former as I do about the latter? Well, that single mom may cost "us" $10.000 per year but that CEO costs us $10.000.000.000 a year, the same as a million welfare cheats (I'm not kidding, there really are several companies who trick the government out of billions of tax dollars each year). I thinkl the big fish should be our priority.
 
Precisely ... and if you had your way the social security net in the US would reflect that of India.

Well it will soon enough with the way your economy is heading.

Hint: When China starts outsourcing their manufacturing to the US you will know this to be true ... and if in doubt just call the HP Helpline to see if the person on the other end of the line has a US accent.

Have you noticed any army trucks bringing in homeless people and getting them to start digging rice paddies nearby?

Has everyone started dressing like Bruce Lee?

Has your TV now only got one channel?
 



See, now that is a stat that I could believe, because it more closely meshes what I have to see daily in retail. Many people on assistance (1 in 4 now I think, according to newspaper reports?), yet just a small percentage of those shoppers make wise frugal purchases that one would assume would be required for someone so destitute and "poor".






It's easy for Gulli and those like him to say no one knows just how many are abusing the system... hell, it's also easy to just turn your head. But while maybe nobody can truly know by some strict definition of knowledge he might make up, I am confident I have a better chance of ballparking it since I work right there at the point of sale where EBT card users come in for purchases. Makes me wonder why someone wouldn't just take that testimony on face value. I guess Gulli thinks I have some hidden agenda to push, being a normal guy in a fairly lame retail grocery job, that happens to love computers so decided this would be a perfect forum to get my agenda to the masses?? Haha.

Btw before they even ask or start speculating: Registered Independent from AZ, and have never voted for a Republican Presidential Candidate in my lifetime so far. I AM biased, just like anyone else, and have admitted that obvious fact in these forums before. But I don't let my biases keep me from reading from all sides, so I can either see where I need to reflect, or know when someone's pov is just dead wrong.
 


No, 42% bought a home when they still had a job and have not been foreclosed as of yet.

With 9% unemployment, that's 14 million people who are out of a job and looking for a new one (this excludes people who have simply given up), it's very unrealistic to think only 1,35 to 2,25 million Americans are "really" poor. Like I said, there are students who are doing fine with less than 11k a year, there are criminals who make more than 11k but are registered as poor because their criminal income is not registered. Stll, this leaves many millions who are truly poor, sometimes out of work, sometimes stuck in a dead end minimum wage job without benefits.
 


I don't take testimonies at face value because a store owner in Beverly Hills would tell me half of all Americans are millionaires while a store owner in South Central LA would tell me 10% of poor people drive big cars and wear jewelry (paid for through crime, not welfare), while a store owner in West Virginia would tell me half the poor own a truck (a $200 fourth or fifth hand 1970s truck) and a home (a crumbling shack they inherited).

Also, when people make stupid decisions in a store it doesn't mean they're not poor, it just means they make stupid decisions. As a store owner you must know how cheap unhealthy food is compared to healthy food. Let's just say farm subsidies are somewhat more lucrative for those that produce corn and sugar than for those that produce carrots or broccoli.
 
Programs using the guidelines (or percentage multiples of the guidelines — for instance, 125 percent or 185 percent of the guidelines) in determining eligibility include Head Start, the Food Stamp Program, the National School Lunch Program, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Note that in general, cash public assistance programs (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Supplemental Security Income) do NOT use the poverty guidelines in determining eligibility. The Earned Income Tax Credit program also does NOT use the poverty guidelines to determine eligibility.

2011 HHS Poverty Guidelines Persons
in Family 48 Contiguous
States and D.C. Alaska Hawaii
1 $10,890 $13,600 $12,540
2 14,710 18,380 16,930
3 18,530 23,160 21,320
4 22,350 27,940 25,710
5 26,170 32,720 30,100
6 29,990 37,500 34,490
7 33,810 42,280 38,880
8 37,630 47,060 43,270
For each additional
person, add 3,820 4,780 4,390
First column is persons in family.

From this it's not hard to see that so much of the population is in poverty.
As noted above, different gov't agencies use different thresholds to determine poverty.

So if you aren't told just exactly statstics are being used anyone can wiggle the figures to fit their agenda.

 
Thanks Delroy.

This topic is not an easy one to discuss or understand when many people simply are in a difficult finacial state moreso because of their poor spending habits and also easily fall prey to conspicuous consumption in a capitalist society to compound the issue.

Fashion, sporting attire, jewelery, fast foods ... the list is endless.

 
America has been very luckly. We are blessed with tons of natual resources and a wealth of talent people. Now we are a mature nation and all the problems that we were able to avoid before are hitting us and we are more clueless then ever on what to do...
 
to paraphrase one of my favorite comedians Bill Hicks ..
"Gulli , your Denial is beneath you, and thanks to the use of hallucinagenic drugs, I can see through you" ..lol
Gulli is so twisted his logic is this ..
since 10% of the legal prostitutes in Netheralnds have full blown AIDS, Gulli would consider the program a success, because after all 90% of the legal prostitutes do NOT have full blown AIDS ..
he scorns corporate abuses , while condoning individual abuses, and aparantly thinks a million individual abuses are acceptable because it euqals 1 corporate abuse ?
ok this is the REALLY hard harsh part, (this is the part where Gulli compares me to Hitler) ..but if you REALLY want to do something about poverty, you must also take into account 'birth Rate' ..now BEFORE you go screaming..let's take a look at China
in 1979 when I was a kid , I had to eat all my vegetables because 'children are starving in China' ..China instituted an extremely harsh policy of 1 child per family.
Now let's look at China today ..they are THE foremost economic powerhouse in the world and are expected to surpass even the USA as the number Economy on the planet. I am not condoning now supporting this policy , merely pointing out the effectiveness of it (oh and China also had an entire generation grow up on Rice Food Rations, (they had to eat Rice at least 5 times a week, because it cost them nothing) while they ..PAID OFF Their National Debt )) ..now let's comapre the the avg US Family and European family birth rate to say that of your classic 3rd world nations in poverty , I believe you will find a distinct correlation in the charts and graphs. the simple fact is children cost money. The question is again , who the money belong to ?
It's just simple numbers and math ..no moralizing needed.
 


600 million Chinese (almost half the population) still earn less than $2 per day ($730 per year), while GDP per capita is $4400 per year (one tenth of the American figure). China was always destined to become the world's biggest economy because it has the world's largest population.

China also maintains the death penalty for tax evasion and aggressively "interferes" with corporations, including through "5-year plans" that force corporations to move in certain directions, in addition it has publicly funded universal healthcare and education. But I guess you like to leave those "socialist" parts out.
 


It's true they don't care much for safety and environmental regulations (that's changing though), however they are very strict in their top down economy. If the government says x% of all electricity has to come from solar energy in 2020 than it better be x% in 2020, otherwise heads will roll. People have been executed for not following government regulations.

The whole point I'm trying to make though is that China emulates both America and Europe.
 
As a point of interest, the way "the poor" are calculated does not include the dollars they receive in non-cash benefits like food and housing subsidies and is based solely on earned income. This calculation also does not include the differences in the cost of living in different parts of the country and the cost of out of pocket services like child care. As a result, the view of who is or is not considered poor is skewed from the outset.

Another point of interest, out of the 70+ welfare programs available only one (1) requires able-bodied recipients to work or look for work.

Before anyone freaks out, I am not against the poor! I am not against helping those in need! I do not advocate cuts to welfare programs that require recipients to work or look for work!

I am against continued government funding (read as tax payer dollars) for programs that enable dependency. I am against more legislation that does not address or reform the inherent failings of existing programs. I am against the rhetoric that perpetuates the false notion that government is responsible to provide a lifestyle to recipients.

Lastly, poverty will never go away, there will always be those who earn less and have less than others; this is part and parcel to human nature. At best, the issue of poverty becomes a question of varying degrees. The concept of varying degrees of poverty has been illustrated by posts within this thread that shed light on the fact that the majority of the poor in America have a home, a car, a cell phone, computer, are not starving to death, are not destitute, and are not left to fester and die in squalor. As also pointed out, by comparing the standard of living of America's poor to the poor in other countries further demonstrates the concept of varying degrees. To think that government, social programs, or any amount of spending will eliminate poverty is naive. The best government can do is enable the infrastructure that gives the poor an avenue and opportunity to find their own way out and improve their own standard of living.
 


In theory I agree but in reality we tax payers will pay regardless. The facts show that around 97% of those incarcerated in prison do not have a college degree. Those without a college degree are also the wage earners right on the poverty line or below. So really when you look at the data the only way to break the poverty dependency on welfare is to have a more educated society. So us tax payers either pay taxes that end up going for welfare or prison of which the later is much more costly per person. We need our education standards to come up.

http://www.businessinsurance.org/prison-industry/

http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/itv/articles/?id=1919

http://www.libraryindex.com/pages/2528/Characteristics-Inmates-EDUCATION-PRISON-JAIL-INMATES.html
 
I totally agree that education is a key component to pulling people out of poverty but not sure that a college education is necessary to reach that goal. I think that a vocational education would be far more beneficial than another BA, BS, or MBA competing for jobs in the marketplace.

Personally, I am an advocate of public Vocational High Schools (I'm talking about public vocational high schools, NOT ITT Tech, Lincoln Tech, or other such for-profit technical diploma mills) and the Adult Education programs they offer. Public Vocational High Schools and Adult Education programs have the excellent potential to teach someone actual skills that can be easily injected into the job market. Regardless of the economy there will always be a certain level of demand for auto mechanics, electricians, carpenters, welders, chefs, nurses aids, HVAC technicians, electronics technicians, etc. Public Vocational High Schools are often overlooked within the educational system as an educational alternative, which is a shame because they already have the facilities, teaching staff, the tax payer funding, job placement programs, and are adept by design at providing the skills that many employers can put to work immediately. Given the existing infrastructure of Vocational High Schools, the Adult Education programs are very affordable and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a tax payer who would not support their dollars being used to subsidize a welfare recipient's vocational education. Also, a vocational education does not preclude the students ability to continue on to college and receive a "higher education".
 
Yes we need our education system improved but most of all we need everyone to take personal responsibility for their actions. That means the welfare frauds, crackheads, prositutes as well as the CEOs who import crap from China for a larger annual bonus and the scumbag bankers who defraud consumers and the oil company execs who price gouge because they have a monopoly.

There are many legal ways to fix America and rid it of the criminals who live in the ghettos or executive offices - but Congress is as much of the problem as the other dirtbag criminals because many in Congress are the worst criminals.
 
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