Why is everyone still so poor with the economic recovery?
The poverty rate and the number of people living in poverty haven’t budged since 2011 despite the slowly improving economy, according to a report released early Tuesday.
46.5 million people were living in poverty in 2012, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2012 Income Poverty and Health Insurance report. That translates into a national rate of 15% of Americans below the poverty line. Before the last recession began in 2007, the rate was 2.5 points lower and has been hovering around 15% since 2010.
Tuesday’s report represents the second consecutive year that neither the poverty rate nor the number of people living in poverty has shifted in statistically significant terms. In 2011, there were 46.2 million people living in poverty.
Hmm. Maybe a large news org (maybe a weekly magazine?) could put some of their reporters on the trail to look at the larger issues behind stubborn unemployment and perhaps figure out this baffling situation!
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The problem is with the very idea of a “recovery”. There has been no recovery. There has been no paradoxical “jobless recovery”. If there are no jobs, there is no recovery.
For the richer people and the upper classes to recoup their losses is not a recovery. That and low inflation is all they care about and so they are satisfied with the status quo now. As far as they are concerned, high unemployment and flat (or falling) wages and hours are just an interesting but troublesome anomaly.