Record Number Of Americans Below Poverty Line
Grim statistics reported by the New York Times:
Another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.
And in new signs of distress among the middle class, median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1997.
Economists pointed to a telling statistic: It was the first time since the Great Depression that median household income, adjusted for inflation, had not risen over such a long period, said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard.
“This is truly a lost decade,” Mr. Katz said. “We think of America as a place where every generation is doing better, but we’re looking at a period when the median family is in worse shape than it…
African American Unemployment At 27 Year High
Annalyn Censky reports on this depressing statistic for CNN Money:
The August jobs report was dismal for plenty of reasons, but perhaps most striking was the picture it painted of racial inequality in the job market.
Black unemployment surged to 16.7% in August, its highest level since 1984, while the unemployment rate for whites fell slightly to 8%, the Labor Department reported.
“This month’s numbers continue to bear out that longstanding pattern that minorities have a much more challenging time getting jobs,” said Bill Rodgers, chief economist with the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.
Black unemployment has been roughly double that of whites since the government started tracking the figures in 1972.
Economists blame a variety of factors. The black workforce is younger than the white workforce, lower numbers of blacks get a college degree and many live in areas of the country that were harder hit by the recession — all…
Austerity And The UK Riots
Are the riots that have engulfed North London and elsewhere linked to the recent slashing of funds for education, social services, and youth centers? The London Review of Books blog says, duh, yes:
Anyone who says the riots don’t have anything to do with the cuts should have a read of ‘Austerity and Anarchy: Budget Cuts and Social Unrest in Europe 1919-2009’, a discussion paper issued under the auspices of the Centre for Economic Policy Research’s international macroeconomics programme and currently doing the rounds on Twitter, which looks at the relationship between budget cuts and civil unrest across Europe since the end of the First World War:
The results show a clear positive correlation between fiscal retrenchment and instability. We test if the relationship simply reflects economic downturns, and conclude that this is not the key factor.
So much for ‘criminality pure and simple’.
Second Recession In This ‘Double Dip’ Will Be Worse Than First
There’s no doubt about it, the United States never really recovered from 2008’s crash and burn and the gas frantically poured on the fire by the Obama administration to “stimulate” the economy created nothing more than a spike in corporate profits that were never distributed to the people. What should we do now – start growing vegetables and stockpiling canned goods? Catherine Rampell reports on America’s dubious prospects for the New York Times:
If the economy falls back into recession, as many economists are now warning, the bloodletting could be a lot more painful than the last time around.
Given the tumult of the Great Recession, this may be hard to believe. But the economy is much weaker than it was at the outset of the last recession in December 2007, with most major measures of economic health — including jobs, incomes, output and industrial production — worse today than they were…
Entire South Dakota Town For Sale For $800,000
For under a million dollars, you can purchase Scenic, South Dakota, a small town with weather-worn charm that includes a jail, post office, dance hall, and several saloons that have stood since the days of the Wild West. Most of the remaining residents are relatives of a woman named Twila Merril. What you’ll do with your very own U.S. town is your business. Via CNN:
Scenic, South Dakota, might not have much — a dance hall, a jail and a handful of out-buildings. But it’s a town. And most of it could be yours for $799,000. “They’ve decided to sell and move on,” said Dave Olsen, a realtor who is hoping to sell the property. It’s 46 acres in total — 12 acres in town and 34 acres around it — located about 50 miles east of Rapid City, South Dakota.
The sale includes the “kit and kaboodle,” said Olsen — a…
Youth In Revolt In Puerto Rico
Wondering why American citizens aren’t up in arms in the streets, à la Spain, Egypt, Greece, and elsewhere? Well, they are, just not on the mainland.
Al Jazeera’s always-intriguing Fault Lines visits the island to look at the massive protests as the government imposes big cuts in education and social services, rending Puerto Rico a guinea pig in a harsh conservative “fiscal experiment”:
Britain’s Assault On Squatters
There are hundreds of thousands of empty properties in the UK – 650,000 in England alone. We should be seizing empty properties and giving them to people who need them, not locking up people for wanting a place to live.
People are broke and evicted. Meanwhile, countless homes sit unused and empty, or abandoned…some people take matters into their own hands and live as squatters. But now the outraged authorities are fighting back against the squatter scourge, the UK’s New Left Project writes:
The traditional view that the Tories are the party of the landed classes was built on solid bedrock. The last time they were in power they orchestrated the largest land-grab in living memory – the ‘right to buy’ – through which council housing passed to property magnates and buy-to-let landlords. This time around, spurred on by misleading articles in the right-wing media, they’ve announced plans to make squatting illegal and…
Welcome to Nowhere: U.S. Recession Wipes Empire, Nevada Off The Map
Photo: aturkus (CC)
Jessica Bruder writes in the Christian Science Monitor:
This mining town of 300 people clings like a burr to the back of the Black Rock Desert. For years, it was marked on state Highway 447 by a two-story sign reading, “Welcome to Nowhere.”
On June 20, that tongue-in-cheek greeting will become a fact. Empire, Nev., will transform into a ghost town. An eight-foot chain-link fence crowned with barbed wire will seal off the 136-acre plot. Even the local ZIP Code, 89405, will be discontinued.
Many towns have been scarred by the recession, but Empire will be the first to completely disappear. For only a few days more it will remain the last intact example of an American icon: the company town.
Since 1948, the United States Gypsum Corporation (USG), which is the nation’s largest drywall manufacturer, has held title to all of Empire: four dusty streets lined with cottonwoods, elms, and silver…
McDonald’s Accounted For Half Of May’s Job Growth
If you’re looking for a job, McDonald’s is the place to go. No really, it’s the only place for you to go. The Atlantic Wire writes:
We were joking when we wrote that McDonalds was singlehandedly reviving the U.S. economy by hiring 62,000 employees in a single day in April. At the time, it didn’t feel like the recovery hinged on the creation of low-paying, temporary McJobs. Well, on the heels of today’s pessimistic report saying that just 54,000 jobs were added in May, the fast food chain’s effect on the economy is looking impressive to MarketWatch.
Seasonal adjustment will reduce the Hamburglar impact on payrolls. (In simpler terms — restaurants always staff up for the summer; the Labor Department makes allowance for this effect.) Morgan Stanley estimates McDonald’s hiring will boost the overall number by 25,000 to 30,000.
Those 25,000 to 30,000 McJobs that Morgan Stanley estimated were the net additions that would…
The U.S. Double-Dip Recession Is Here
Photo: Brendel (CC)
The media today are telling us what we already know: the United States is firmly in the grip of a double-dip recession, at least so far as home values are concerned. Shannon Bond has the details for the Financial Times:
US home prices slumped for an eighth straight month in March, dropping below the bottom previously recorded in the housing bust in a sign of the persistent weakness of residential real estate.
A separate report showed consumer confidence sagged in May as Americans grew more pessimistic about the job market and inflation expectations rose.
Prices of single-family houses in the 20 largest US cities fell 0.2 per cent from February to March on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index. The decline was in line with economists’ expectations and left the index at 138.16, below its low point of 139.26 in April 2009 and the lowest level…
Can Manhood Survive The Lost Decade?
Via Newsweek:
If this isn’t the Great Depression, it is the Great Humbling. Can manhood survive the lost decade?
Brian Goodell, of Mission Viejo, Calif., won two gold medals in the 1976 Olympics. An all-American, God-fearing golden boy, he segued into a comfortable career in commercial real estate. Until 2008, when he was laid off. As a 17-year-old swimmer, he set two world records. As a 52-year-old job hunter, he’s drowning.
Brock Johnson, of Philadelphia, was groomed at Harvard Business School and McKinsey & Co., and was so sure of his marketability that he resigned in 2009 as CEO of a Fortune 500 company without a new job in hand. Johnson, who asked that his real name not be used, was certain his BlackBerry would be buzzing off its holster with better offers. At 48, he’s still unemployed.
Two coasts. Two men who can’t find jobs. And one defining moment for the men in…
By The Top One Percent, For The Top One Percent
In a fantastic piece for Vanity Fair, acclaimed economist Joseph Stiglitz discusses what America’s vast income inequality means for our future — in short, how it will corrode and distort every aspect of society:
Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul. There are several reasons for this.
First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets—our people—in the most productive way possible. Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such…
2010 Was The Year Of ‘The Crumble’
The tenth year of the 21st Century has left us behind, and it can’t be too soon.
It was a year of the crumble.
The economy continued to crumble for ordinary people with little hope for a quick turnaround even as some markets surged. The hopes of the jobless for employment crumbled. The faith of the so many homeowners that they will find a way to stay in their homes facing foreclosure crumbled.
And so have the hopes of so many of us that our new Change Is Coming president would fight for us, would end the wars, would close Gitmo, would abandon torture, would make healthcare more affordable, would give us a government we could believe in; that, too, has crumbled.
Look back at the devastation of the year gone by its ugly election, bought and paid for by US Supreme Court sanctioned special interests, oil spilled by the Gulf-ful, wars escalated, climate…
Wall Street Fat-Cats Flip Public Service Workers the Bird
If you believe the mainstream media, the economy is recovering, jobless claims are down and things are looking up in 2011. Don’t Believe The Hype! Activist filmmaker Robert Greenwald and the team and Brave New Foundation lay bare the reality of the hardships still facing the millions of victims of the plunder of Main Street by Wall Street:
United States Saves Money By Executing Fewer People
You know the U.S. is in trouble when it cuts back on one of it’s world-beating businesses — executions. Reuters reports:
The United States executed fewer people this year, in part because there is a shortage of the drug used in lethal injections and because executions are too expensive in tough economic times, a report released on Tuesday said.
The Death Penalty Information Center said in its annual report that executions decreased 12 percent this year and new death sentences stayed near the lowest level since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.
Texas led the nation with 17 of the 46 executions carried out this year in the United States. The total is down from 52 in 2009 and less than half the number put to death in 1999.
“Whether it’s concerns about the high costs of the death penalty at a time when budgets are being slashed, the risks of executing the innocent, unfairness, or…
Top New Words For 2011: Palinism, Obama-mess
‘Palinism and ‘Obama-mess’ are funny, but what has me worried is the prediction that we’ll all be talking about the Great Recession in 2011. The Global Language Monitor has released their top 10 words to be in vogue in 2011:
- Twenty-Eleven – The English-speaking world has finally agreed on a common designation for the year: Twenty-eleven far outstrips ‘two thousand eleven’ in the spoken language. This is welcome relief from the decade-long confusion over how to pronounce 2001, 2001, 2003, etc.
- Obama-mess – David Letterman’s neologism for 2010 also works for 2011. This word is neutral. If Obama regain his magic, he escaped his Obama-mess; if his rating sinks further he continues to be engulfed by it.
- Great Recession – Even the best case scenario has the economy digging out of this hole for the foreseeable future.
- Palinism – Because the media needs an heir to Bushisms and Sarah Palin is the candidate of choice here.
- TwitFlocker – Can’t say what…
Money Is Not Real
From A Tiny Revolution:
So, the world’s elites have decided to focus all their efforts on generating another Great Depression. Their cunning plan is to destroy their countries in order to save them:
As Europe’s major economies focus on belt-tightening, they are following the path of Ireland. But the once thriving nation is struggling, with no sign of a rapid turnaround in sight.
Nearly two years ago, an economic collapse forced Ireland to cut public spending and raise taxes, the type of austerity measures that financial markets are now pressing on most advanced industrial nations…
Rather than being rewarded for its actions, though, Ireland is being penalized. Its downturn has certainly been sharper than if the government had spent more to keep people working. Lacking stimulus money, the Irish economy shrank 7.1 percent last year and remains in recession…
[David Stronge] moved to reinvent himself, returning to school with thousands of other Irish, in hopes that…
How The American Dream Ended
It feels as if every media outlet has lamented 21st century America’s declining fortunes and crisis of confidence. Still, it’s interesting to read German paper of record Der Spiegel’s outsider perspective on the death of the American dream. The United States comes off as a rotted, moribund shell:
Florida was the finale of the American dream, a promise, a symbol, an American heaven on earth, because Florida held out the prospect of spending 10, perhaps 20 and hopefully 30 years living in one’s own house. For decades, anywhere from 200,000 to 400,000 people moved to the state each year. The population grew and grew — and so too did real estate prices and the assets of those who were already there and wanted bigger houses and even bigger dreams. Florida was a seemingly never-ending boom machine.
America has long been a country of limitless possibility. But the dream has now become a…
Headless Deer Turning Up in Northeastern Wisconsin
Image courtesy of Kraftomatic
Bizarre and mysterious, with no adequate explanation. Below appears the entirety of the longest article I could find on the matter, from the webpage of Wausau’s local television station, WSAW 7:
OCONTO, Wis. (AP) — Conservation wardens say an increasing number of headless bucks have been found in northeastern Wisconsin State Department of Natural Resources warden Mike Stahl says investigators don’t know why at least a half dozen bucks have been found without their heads since the last week of October. The DNR say four were found in Oconto County’s Little Suamico-Abrams area. One was found in the Town of Spruce and another in Marinette County. Stahl tells WLUK-TV that because of various stages of decay, it’s not known how all bucks were killed, however the DNR has been able to determine at least two were shot.
My current theories are:
1. An alien advance scouting team took the heads for…
Pennsylvania Debt Collection Agency Created Fake Police Officers, Courtroom, And Judges
ABC Channel 4 in Pittsburgh reports on a Pennsylvania debt collection agency that set up its own private “legal system,” with fake sheriff’s deputies, handing out fake subpoenas, and fake courts with fake judges and phony court hearings:
