Fiscal cliff: America goes to the brink, but millions already fell into poverty

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/31/fiscal-cliff-america-brink-millions-poverty


America's long-term jobless have seen their unemployment insurance entitlement cut this year from 99 weeks to 73. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The one comfort of government incompetence is that it is never a surprise: it is, if anything, a starting point for the public's expectations of Washington.

Still, even that certainty doesn't pay the bills, and that is a problem for 2.1 million Americans who have been out of work for more than 27 weeks and will be cut off from unemployment insurance tonight. No matter what happens, the fiscal cliff talks have been a failure: Congress will not achieve a "grand bargain" to save Americans from the brunt of ill-considered, sweeping tax hikes and government spending cuts.

That's why we'd be better off talking about the "fiscal conscience", the era of which seems to be coming to a sharp end tonight. Unemployment is the American crisis you hear about; poverty is the one you don't. And what the fiscal cliff covers up is what will be the slow transition of the US unemployment problem into a serious poverty problem.

The biggest failure of the fiscal conscience is the disregard for those unemployed Americans. Some of those 2.1 million Americans who stand to lose their benefits tonight only started collecting unemployment in July. Those who have been out of work for more than six months make up 40% of all the unemployed people in America.

[ProfessionalLeftist]

1. Unemployment & poverty are the core issues....

....Neither are solved & until they are US will not be stable. You cannot have a solid economy built on a soft or mushy core ie: the middle-class & those trying to enter it. Avoiding long-term solutions to those two issues, is avoiding any solution at all and that's what they've (GOP) been doing. And the longer they dawdle in only protecting the very wealthy, the more this cancer metastasizes. Fiscal conscience, borne of fiscal common sense is required, but no one in Congress is having any of it for fear they'll have to pay a dime more in taxes themselves (since most of them are very wealthy off of our public money).

Getting rid of these hostage-takers in Congress must be the 1st step. But with all the gerrymandering, is even that possible? What we've got up there are a bunch of parasites. They get into public office, secure their positions there by questionable or criminal means, live very well off our public money, but then they REFUSE to represent the public in government. Sorry but Exxon-Mobil, Goldman-Sachs, The NRA, Monsanto, The Koch Bros, et al are NOT "the public". They are only big corporate donors with a lot of well-paid CxOs and lobbyists. Wealthy Congress protecting its own wealthy incomes are not "the public" either.

Who represents US? Nobody. And that is now common knowledge and codified. Democracy? Where? I don't see any. Do you?

Oh yea. Happy "New Year". Worse than the old. La de da.

[Dalai_1]

2. Kick n/t

[Cal Carpenter]

3. Thanks for this. What matters is

the measurable results of policy and the actual conditions of citizens, not this sports-match-mentality of nominal winning.

A partisan 'win' means very little if there are millions with no jobs, little or no incomes, and no end in sight.

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. Indeed!