80 percent of U.S. adults face near-poverty, unemployment, survey finds

[kpete]

Source: CBS

80 percent of U.S. adults face near-poverty, unemployment, survey finds


Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.

................

By 2030, based on the current trend of widening income inequality, close to 85 percent of all working-age adults in the U.S. will experience bouts of economic insecurity.

"Poverty is no longer an issue of 'them', it's an issue of 'us'," says Mark Rank, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who calculated the numbers. "Only when poverty is thought of as a mainstream event, rather than a fringe experience that just affects blacks and Hispanics, can we really begin to build broader support for programs that lift people in need."

Read more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/27/1287049/-Half-of-America-is-POOR-says-obvious-evidence-Must-be-the-season-of-the-rich

[malthaussen]

1. Poverty should never have been an issue of "them."

Sad that we are just now coming to realize that.

-- Mal

[jwirr]

3. Yes, I think that is kind of how we got to where we are at. If more people had understood what the

safety net was doing we would never have had ron raygun and the economic world order that started under him. The only people who did understand were already poor and no one wanted to listen.

[Lars28]

12. Some people lack moral imagination.

They sneer at homelessness when they are one paycheck away from being homeless themselves. "Not me!" they say, "I could always find a job." This is a mantra that people repeat to themselves because they have to, in order to keep their faith in themselves to survive in our market system, where the value of everything, including labor, goes up and down with the laws of supply and demand. The moral blindness to the hard luck of others is a byproduct of our national religion of self reliance.

[marions ghost]

29. "The moral blindness to the hard luck of others is a byproduct

of our national religion of self reliance."

A religion it certainly is. Well said, & welcome to DU.

Self reliance is good to a point. But it can lead to isolationism and "I got mine" mentality, especially when encouraged by exploiters using it to sew divisionism and eliminate social programs.

[Orrex]

2. It's disgusting that 80% of adults can't pull themselves up by their bootstraps

We're a nation of slack-jawed, stuporous funkers!

[The Wizard]

4. The scheme to make

a two tiered feudal system of lords and serfs has succeeded. Reagan's plot against the middle class has brought most Americans to the brink of third world status, kind of like Haiti or Somalia.

[santamargarita]

5. Republicans must be proud of these numbers.

Teabaggers and the House, with their drunken leadership, are doing their jobs, plus 8 years of Bush Hell.

[hedgehog]

6. Why are we talking about anything else either here on DU, ior in the White House and Congress?

[onehandle]

7. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock...

[Doctor_J]

30. Heh. When I saw your subject line I knew what the post would look like

[SaveOurDemocracy]

8. K&R. I see it all around me ... and I was, at one time, solidly "middle-class".

[whatthehey]

9. "at least part of their lives" is key

I'm one of them for sure, having been unemployed for about a year in the recent recession. But I am NOW what most DUers would call rich and what is by anybody's standard financially comfortable. It's important to be very careful about lifetime experience surveys. A similar survey could lead one to conclude the vast majority of adult women are pregnant for example. Poverty and unemployment may be permanent of course, but quite often are not.

[Lars28]

16. No, the key is to compare this 80% figure with the past

There is always some normal unemployment because people are changing jobs, and they may experience poverty in the interim. But 80% is a large percentage. The question is, how much higher is this than normal?

[bhikkhu]

25. The average person will hold 7-10 jobs in their life

Odds are that not every job change or transition will be planned for, and everyone should expect to have hard times at some point or other. Its hard for me to find anyone to blame that on, or to say that "the system" needs to be changed so it doesn't happen anymore. Its normal, and a great deal of prosperity could set in, a much bigger safety net set up, and it would still be normal.

I have had about eight jobs myself in my 35 years in the workforce, and almost all of the transitions were planned (often involving moving to some new corner of the country or other). Some were nevertheless accompanied by poverty, as I haven't always put money ahead of other things, and new jobs haven't always popped up exactly when I wished them to. The only real uncomfortable episode was during the last recession, when I had a family to support and I was fired during a "downsizing". I could have found work elsewhere, but the property market also tanked and I owed more on my house than it was worth....anyway, to make a long story short, I did find lesser work and spent three years scraping by. It took some time and planning and determination, and some study toward a much better position, but everything is pretty well turned around now, and I am in "working hard and putting away for retirement" mode now.

Jobs come and go, and everything changes; people do the best they can to keep up at whatever point they are in life, and about all anyone could wish to do about it is have a generally better economy to maintain generally better opportunities.

[2pooped2pop]

10. this is very close to the rich's goals

another 19% to go.

[FiveGoodMen]

34. Absolutely right.

And an awful lot of traitors among the 99% have help the 1% get us here.

If not for that, the rich couldn't force their will on us.

[Dustlawyer]

11. I still believe that the biggest part of the problem is that the "haves" are out of touch

with the "have nots." Romney is a prime example, the man had never had a fast food hamburger and marveled at the container it came in. He has no idea what it is like to be poor or what the poor on welfare have to live on. How can he make policy decisions when he has no idea of what he is asking of these people. Try working on a road crew in Texas in the summer at age 64 with a bad back and then tell that guy he has to work until 70 to collect his SS. Try telling my disabled brother who gets $700 a month to live on that you are taking $30 out of his whopping $85 dollars in food stamps a month. They have no clue and really couldn't give a shit to find out. Try telling black people that racism in America is over like Justice Roberts did. They haven't a clue! Fox News has their followers believing that these people live a life of ease and had the same opportunities that they did growing up. Now they are taking from the hard working (they are the only ones that work hard) Fox viewers to get a 2nd Cadillac!

[KansDem]

13. "...the 'haves' are out of touch"

Reminds me of Bush the Elder and his trip to the supermarket in 1992--

Then he grabbed a quart of milk, a light bulb and a bag of candy and ran them over an electronic scanner. The look of wonder flickered across his face again as he saw the item and price registered on the cash register screen.

"This is for checking out?" asked Mr. Bush. "I just took a tour through the exhibits here," he told the grocers later. "Amazed by some of the technology."

Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman, assured reporters that he had seen the President in a grocery store. A year or so ago. In Kennebunkport.

Some grocery stores began using electornic scanners as early as 1976, and the devices have been in general use in American supermarkets for a decade.

Then there's this--

He pounded a lectern and raised his voice. He accused "professional pessimists" in Congress of conducting class warfare by criticizing some of his programs as favoring the wealthy. He talked sarcastically about advisers who urged him to get "the right political ring" into his oratory and his policy proposals. And he told jokes.

Bush Encounters the Supermarket, Amazed

That was 22 years ago. It hasn't changed much...

[former9thward]

18. Snopes debunked that years ago.

It turned out the NYT reporter made it up. http://archive.is/REsO

[wordpix]

14. ergo, we must not tax the rich & they must expand their tax havens

[Jackpine Radical]

17. Hey, those tax havens are there for the poor to use as well as the rich.

It's their own damn fault if they don't have the foresight to open a few accounts in the Caymans.

[CFLDem]

15. Our broken student loan and healthcare system doesn't help much :(

[sendero]

19. They've been telling us for 30+ years...

... that their policies, tax cuts, deregulation, "free" trade, would lead to prosperity for everyone. Now that they have completely and utterly failed to deliver on this promise, "they", including in some instances Obama, want to do more of the same.

Americans better wake up and put a stop to this shit, and soon.

[frylock]

20. unacceptable

knr

[Crabby Appleton]

21. Not exactly Late Breaking news

July 28, 2013

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023358499

[geretogo]

22. Reaganomics has succeeded as planned . 3rd world yes . Now the poor will put Rethuglicons back in .

[Octafish]

23. Well, what did they expect, after bailing out the Banksters for $16 Trill.

Thanks?

No. They got servitude and poverty.



Not what they expected, but, hey.

[marions ghost]

31. Yep

[bhikkhu]

26. "at some point in their lives". I think that's as it should be, as poverty is a good teacher

I was poor in my teens, before I decided I'd better learn some skills valuable to other people so I could hold a decent job. I was poor another couple of times when I quit jobs and moved across country; having experienced it already, I wasn't afraid of it, and I was able to do many things I wouldn't have otherwise. Its not always a good thing (especially when young) to put financial security ahead of experience.

During the last recession I was poor again for awhile, in an unpleasant and unplanned way. But I knew what to do, and it was just a matter of getting down to business and gritting through it. I would feel sorry for anyone unlucky enough to have never struggled in their life, I'm not sure I would even know how to relate to that.

[Warpy]

27. I was poor due to health issues

especially since no one would insure me and the only way to keep my hours down was to work per diem with no bennies--but no surprise 12 hour night shifts, either.

I have to say I'm not afraid of it, either. My parents went through the Great Depression as teenagers and my mother was deathly afraid of poverty. I don't enjoy poverty, anyone who says they do is either lying or psychotic. However, I know how to hunker down and stretch a dollar until it's in tatters.

The people who seem to have lived charmed lives will do well to fear it since it is going to put them onto a steep and very unpleasant learning curve.

Me? I've already dealt with it, it would be like a freeloading relative moving in because he has nowhere else to go. I know him too well to think it will end well and I know he's hell to live with, but sometimes that's the best you can do in this life.

[TBF]

28. "poverty is a good teacher" -

If it's so good how about we take the top 500 holders of wealth in this country and redistribute said wealth via taxes - 100%.

How do you feel about that? Would that be a teachable moment?

[DeSwiss]

32. K&R

"Poverty is no longer an issue of 'them', it's an issue of 'us'," says Mark Rank, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who calculated the numbers. "Only when poverty is thought of as a mainstream event, rather than a fringe experience that just affects blacks and Hispanics, can we really begin to build broader support for programs that lift people in need."

- The above is the sorriest-ass paragraph I've read so far today. I hope it's the last.

''If the system has no place for you, and you’re forced to live on its fringes teetering between poverty and anarchy… you may be a redneck.'' - John McNamee, Kafka's Joke Book

[indepat]

33. For 80% of American adults to face near-poverty/unemployment is the workings of a virulently

rabid right-wing-controlled government on 'roids as it implements gipper's dream of greed and burgeoning income inequality.