Shailly Gupta Barnes
This fall, the Census Bureau released new poverty data showing a stunning reversal in economic security over the course of last year. The findings included a record jump in the Supplemental Poverty Measure just one year after hitting a record low. Child poverty doubled.
Some 12.4 percent of Americans were poor last year, according to that measure. But when you crunch the numbers fully, the number of poor and low-income people in this country rose to more than 135 million. That’s over 40 percent of the nation’s population.
If this sounds like a bigger number than we usually hear about, that’s because it is.
The 135 million figure includes everyone living below the poverty line and everyone living precariously right above it. We need to pay attention to this bigger number for two reasons: First, it shows that poverty is more widespread than the official numbers reflect. And second, it shows what measures can be taken to address poverty once and for all.
To be counted as “poor,” a household’s income must fall below a certain threshold. For an adult under the age of 65, that’s just over $15,000. For a two-adult, two-child household, it’s just under $30,000.
These numbers are absurdly low. They mean that someone earning $20,000 wouldn’t be considered poor, nor would a family with an income of $40,000 —- even though just one medical emergency, car accident, climate disaster, or lay-off would push those households into financial ruin.
To get a better sense of economic insecurity in the nation, researchers often look at everyone whose incomes fall both below those thresholds and right above them. This broadens the count from 40 million people who are “poor” to 135 million people who are “poor or low-income,” just one emergency away from economic despair.
That number includes Americans of every color. But the racial disparities are stark.
While nearly half (61.8 million) of those 135 million were white, other groups faced much higher rates of hardship. Under this definition, some 60 percent of Latinos (38 million), 54 percent of Black non-Latinos (22.5 million), and 58 percent of American Indian or Alaskan Natives (2.3 million) were poor or low-income.
Being poor can have life-threatening consequences. According to research from the University of California, Riverside, poverty was the fourth leading cause of death in 2019, accounting for between 500 and 800 deaths a day. This was before the pandemic wrought even greater havoc on poor communities.
Only when we appreciate the breadth and depth of this insecurity can we develop the appropriate social and policy response. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in 1967, “the prescription for the cure rests on an accurate diagnosis of the disease.”
Here too, the Census Bureau’s SPM report is illuminating.
It shows the impact of government programs like Social Security, stimulus payments, unemployment insurance, and the expanded Child Tax Credit on poverty and economic hardship. In 2021, those programs brought the poor and low-income population down from 139 million to 112 million.
As many of those programs expired in 2021, those numbers increased by 20 percent in 2022 to 135 million.
In short, after a stunning experiment in reducing poverty through pandemic relief programs, we’re seeing a return to pre-pandemic conditions — when millions of people were facing eviction, hunger, low-wages, and health crises, and when wealth inequality was at historic highs.
For poor and low-income people, this isn’t new news. It’s a reminder that the nation’s return to “normal” comes at the expense of their lives and well-being.
For policymakers, this should be a wake-up call. We know what works — now let’s do it.
(Shailly Gupta Barnes is the policy and research director for the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice. Courtesy: CounterPunch.)
Poverty Is a Natural By-Product of Capitalism
Jamala Rogers
If ever there was a clear case of capitalists’ disdain for the plight of poor and working-class people, it came with the latest statistics for the U.S. poverty rate. According to the Census Bureau, it was the greatest one-year jump on record.
This sharp increase was due to end of the government payouts that buffered the financial suffering during the pandemic. At the same time that these federal programs were expiring, the costs of living were rising.
Poverty always increases when capitalism is in crisis. We can count on the masses of people being forced to make the sacrifices so that the super profits keep coming for the ruling elite. Poverty is a natural by-product of capitalism so any relief will be minuscule and temporary for the estimated 50 million Americans who hang on under the poverty line.
The decline in poverty for the previous couple of years was based upon the bundle of benefits from the American Rescue Plan Act. This included extra food stamps, emergency rental assistance, direct payments to families and most important, the child tax credits. Many families were in crisis and the totality of these benefits helped to significantly ease the financial burdens presented by COVID-19. This made good common sense not just for the tumultuous period of the pandemic, but for life beyond it.
If the nation was able to put a dent in the poverty rate because of this concentration of funds, why can’t those benefits be extended – and expanded – to make a long-term difference in the lives of these families?
At the same time legislators were cutting off these essential benefits, they were making deep cuts in corporate taxes. Capitalism will always favor capital over people. Even children.
The poverty rate among children more than doubled last year which means the rates for Black and Brown children were off the charts. The expanded child tax credit played a big part in improving the outcomes of children because it briefly provided a guaranteed income to families with children.
Most of the family-centered legislation that Congress passes is not based upon its grace and empathy. It is usually pressured to do so by citizens organized to advocate for families and communities. Most Congressional representatives are far removed from the living conditions faced by poor and working-class families. These corporate-loving lawmakers are millionaires with the lifestyles that go along with it.
The economic system must be completely restructured if the human needs of the majority are to be fully met. Living wages with automatic built-in inflation adjustments, subsidized childcare and other subsidies could definitely stabilize a working family’s uncertain financial situation.
It has been encouraging to see workers in organized struggles for higher wages and better working conditions, such as Amazon and Starbucks. The historic strike of autoworkers is also unfolding across the country.
As we support these workers’ demands, it is an ideal time to talk about the vision beyond the economic struggles. It’s time for us to get off the capitalist treadmill and make some real headway for working people in this country.
(Jamala Rogers is a long-time organizer and feminist thinker in the Black Liberation Movement. She is the author of two books, including ‘Ferguson is America: Roots of Rebellion’, and is a featured columnist in several publications. Courtesy: LA Progressive. LA Progressive was founded by Dick and Sharon whose mission is to provide a platform for progressive thought, opinion and perspectives on current events.)
The U.S. is a Nation of Savage Inequality
Eve Ottenberg
Roughly 38,000 U.S. veterans eat from garbage cans every day. So Fox News reported back in January, advocating a helping hand for homeless veterans. It was nice to see the news outlet that’s usually so hostile to those who lack shelter take up their cause, even if it was only because these luckless destitute had performed military service. Any compassion for any segment of the millions of vagabonds among us is welcome, especially from an organization, one of whose hosts, Jesse Watters, hates homeless people. He even called them “bags of flesh mutating on the sidewalk,” on June 16. Very likely some of those people regarded by Watters as garbage are veterans. But maybe Watters missed the Fox memo about showing care for that subset of the unhoused, whom he also described as “urine-soaked junkies.”
But then Watters – who is ascending to Tucker Carlson’s punditry spot – has demonized the homeless for years. Back on September 22, 2022, Watters averred that “It was more civilized when we banished them to asylums and put them in strait jackets.” More civilized because then “nice people” wouldn’t have to see them. Not, nota bene, because penniless people in mental agony were at least receiving psychiatric and medical care. Watters does not seem particularly concerned about treating psychotics, he just wants them out of sight, preferably incarcerated. A lot like Donald “Camps for the Homeless” Trump, who promises that if re-elected president, he will remove this so-called human blight from city centers to peripheral “camps.” As in concentration camps.
This is capitalism. No, zero, nada, zilch psychiatric or medical help for poor people in mental agony. Kinder, gentler versions of capitalism, so-called mixed economies may provide for people in such circumstances. The helpless may be institutionalized and receive care – medicines and therapy. They are not left to perish on the streets. There exist in some such economies the necessary structures, physical and bureaucratic, to tend to the demons of paranoid schizophrenics.
But in the wild west capitalism of 21st century USA, the billionaires don’t give a damn. And they call the shots. They own the congress, the supreme court, the white house, statehouses, governors’ mansions, Hollywood, the military and every other political or social institution – they may not own any given outfit outright, the way they’ve bribed their way into control of the supreme court, but their wishes are heard and tended to. Our oligarchs do not care about vagabonds tortured by psychosis, even if there are lots of them.
Our American masters of the universe simply can’t be bothered to establish a psychiatric public health network capable of relieving these dispossessed people’s misery. Or to promote affordable housing, for those who sleep under the stars but don’t hear demonic voices. For heaven’s sake, we can’t even get a president to follow through on his campaign promise to establish a medical public option, since it might drain profits away from the health insurance racket. Both Obama and Biden explicitly reneged on such a promise, because the health insurance mega-donors weren’t having it. You think that same wildly greedy health care industry might consider a functioning mental health system? One that employs psychiatrists to treat the mentally ill? Ho, ho! Think again.
Meanwhile, our supreme court justices, each paired with a billionaire by an inequality fanatic from the Federalist Society named Leonard Leo, gallivant across the globe in private jets to exotic locales, where they enjoy, luxury, all-expenses-paid (they’d have to be, since those expenses amount to hundred of thousands of dollars) getaways, before returning to Washington to oversee cases involving those very same billionaires. They rule in favor of those tycoons. Then they have the nerve to deny this is bribery. They pretend that life on their not so modest salaries somehow has nothing to do with their unseemly eagerness for handouts from mega-rich financial magnates. But now everyone knows better. We’ve got the best supreme court money can buy – and no way to remove these corrupt judges.
And those judges provide pathetic excuses for their corruption. When confronted with not having recused himself from a case involving his benefactor and not having reported his swanky vacation, judge Samuel Alito essentially proclaimed, according to The New Republic June 21, “I didn’t know I had to.” Alito had ruled in favor of his patron and justified it thus: “I had no obligation to recuse in any of the cases that ProPublica cites. First, even if I had been aware of Mr. Singer’s connection to the entities involved in those cases, recusal would not have been required or appropriate.” He argued that he and the fabulously wealthy financier Paul Singer were not personally close, so clearly, he was unbiased.
Before Alito’s trip, Singer’s hedge fund petitioned the high court in a matter involving Argentina. “After the trip, the fund came before the court at least 10 times for the same case. Singer’s involvement was heavily documented in the press…Alito did not recuse himself, instead joining the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor, earning the hedge fund a $2.4 billion payout.”
Judge Clarence Thomas behaved just as badly, perhaps worse. According to ProPublica April 6, “For over 20 years, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been treated to luxury vacations by billionaire Republican donor Harlan Crow.” Thomas accepted these all-expenses-paid jaunts and cruises to sumptuous resorts in places like Indonesia almost every year. And he kept them secret. “The extent and frequency of Crow’s apparent gifts to Thomas have no known precedent in the modern history of the Supreme Court.”
These billionaires, Crow and Singer, are each richer than Croesus. They can make or break whole countries – vide Singer’s escapades in Argentina, some of which the supreme court facilitated. And these financial moguls have bought the supreme court of the United States. They own it, and it does their bidding. Does anyone care? Do ordinary people have any redress? No and no. We are invited instead to spend our time despising destitute people for supposedly destroying our cities’ “quality of life.”
But those unsightly unhoused are merely a symptom of that destruction. Who crushed our quality of life? Corporate oligarchs, who dismantled our manufacturing base, shipped all the jobs to Mexico then China for the cheap labor and who thus hollowed out a productive, well-functioning U.S. economy. But we’re not invited to detest them. Oh no. They are glamorized, their wealth is everyone’s aspiration.
And the rubes fall for it. They may even elect a billionaire president, so he can ship those broke, desperate people off to concentration camps. Don’t look to the high court for help. Those justices are busy taking opulent, paid vacations from fantastically affluent petitioners. This is where our savagely unequal capitalism has led. Straight back to medieval feudalism. And all those serfs unfit for gig labor to pay their debts? They get to die on the street.
(Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest book is ‘Lizard People’. Courtesy: CounterPunch.)
