Even though most people face some form of financial stress in their lifetime, and the financial crisis upended the affairs of many who had been comfortable, the poor and near poor contend with ongoing difficulties.
The Community Service Society conducts an annual survey, The Unheard Third, which catalogues some of the conditions poor and near-poor New Yorkers face. My impression is that New York has fared much better than the rest of the country in the aftermath of the crisis precisely because of the massive overt and covert subsidies given to the financial services industry, which is the foundation of the local economy. Thus I suspect if you were to conduct the same sort of survey in other US cities, the results would be even more grim.
The survey focused on low income residents, with those defined as poor (household earnings at or below federal poverty standards, or FPL) sampled most intensively.
Notice how many of the poor have trouble affording food (click to enlarge):
The near poor are better off, but not by much:
Health care is the most common trouble area for middle income New Yorkers:
Lower income workers were also more likely to suffer reductions in employment income:
And the supposed recovery seems to be leaving them behind:
I encourage you to read the results in full. It is ugly out there.
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It is ugly out there. Yves
What would one expect of a government backed counterfeiting (fractional reserve) cartel that steals purchasing power from the poor among others and uses it to outsource their jobs?
Clearly the US is a FR banker-fascist nation with a modicum of socialism for victims of the cartel.
Banks are not reserve-constrained, so clearly they (we) cannot be on a fractional reserve system. Reserves in fact do nothing except raise the cost of money.
As for that modicum of socialism, don’t look now, as they’re coming to take it away.
Banks are not reserve-constrained, so clearly they (we) cannot be on a fractional reserve system. Reserves in fact do nothing except raise the cost of money. Benedict@Large
Understood. More accurately is is “new temporary money (credit) in exchange for new indebtedness”. The reserves are just liquidity till assets can be sold if needed to meet liabilities.
As for that modicum of socialism, don’t look now, as they’re coming to take it away. Benedict@Large
But of course. Being blind to their own fascism then socialism is the only conceivable cause of our problems.
allright, allright, we get it already, fractional reserve counterfeiting blah blah, fractional reserve counterfeiting blah blah
If the New York Yankees lose a 3 run lead in the bottom of the 9th it’ll be fractional reserve counterfeiting, not the closer’s hanging curve ball with 2 on base, for sure.
there were financial crises, looting and poverty long before fractional reserve counterfeiting.
I mean really. :)
craazyman:
“there were financial crises (…) before fractional reserve counterfeiting.
I mean really. :)”
I believe they weren’t, really ones. There was hunger or lack of certain resources, of course, but a FINANCIAL crise like the one we are living in requires the kind of overindebtness that you only get where credit is money.
there were financial crises, looting and poverty long before fractional reserve counterfeiting. craazyman
My understanding is the so-called business cycle dates back to the Industrial Revolution AND the Bank of England.
I suspect that both the Industrial Revolution and the business cycle were fueled by the same thing, fractional (these days fictional) reserve lending.
29% Of Americans Say It’s Difficult To Afford Food – The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press released their year-end survey on December 15, 2010
let me repeat the information as a series of bullet points.
•Affording basic necessities remains a struggle.
•51% say it is difficult to afford health care.
•48% say the same about their home heating and electric bills.
•29% say it is difficult to afford food.
Why isn’t this information Front Page News? Can you see the headline? I can see it, splashed across the top of the front page of the New York Times—
29% of Americans Say It’s Difficult To Afford Food
Why haven’t we seen this headline? Or this one?
48% of Americans Say It’s Hard to Pay Their Heating And Electric Bills
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2011/01/29-of-americans-say-its-difficult-to-afford-food.html
Thanks very much for providing the link to this report,Yves. Rjs, I, too, wonder why this information isn’t front-page news.
This kind of information isn’t front page news because news organizations owners do not want to. It would divert the attention from the plans to strike Iran or get serious about prosecuting Wikileaks, or get down (finally!) to the most urgent task the billionaires want Congress to tackle; cut entitlements…and their taxes too, while at it.
In the meantime, in the USA, more Americans than ever since 1945 struggle with affording the basic necessities of life.
In the meantime, outside the USA, anyone noticed how a lot of South American countries have improved their lot in the last 20-30 years?
Among those who’ve done the best, women participation in public life from positions of leadership is the highest. It’s just the way it is; women tend to care more than men do about things that matters, such a food, education and fair pay. Men think these things…well, sometimes I wonder what we think; assuming we do, of course.
Would it surprise anyone if I wrote that the US ranks 72nd in the world for female legislative representation, hereby sliding backward from 1980?
Not saying it is the root of all our current problems, just that it is definitely not helpful to exclude/strongly discourage 52% of the population to meaningfully participate in governing.
More here:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20110104_In_leading_women__U_S__lags.html
We have created a world where the ‘powers that be’ value research on public opinion above all else. It is very important that most of us believe that “prosperity is just around the corner”.
Some group checked very carefully and found some growth in GDP, presto we were out of the recession by mid 2009. That news would raise ‘consumer confidence’, so our rulers were pleased, and that is all that counts.
Therefore, research which uncovers the real depth of our economic problems is actually harmful. What will the public think?
Release a raft of positive statistics, do a survey, and discover positive trends. It is all about perception.
We are so toast! :^)
Why isn’t it front page news? Because the media emperors are incapable of empathy, that’s why. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/fashion/02studied.html?_r=2&ref=health
Yes, I saw an interview with the researcher on The Real News. Explains a lot, potentially. Along with other causes of not feeling empathy, even not feeling sympathy, might explain a basic psychological makeup of many republicans–no offense to any emphatic/sympathetic examples of them here!
So, what, then, was “compassionate conservatism”? Pretending empathy. Kind of like faking an…..
It is ugly out there, and yet the corporate media only speaks to us in empty slogans. Either we get the happy talk of TV news personalities or the happy illusions sold to us by politicians or we get academic and financial experts, each trying to outdo the other in groveling before the powers that be.
The gap between the happy illusion being peddled by the ruling elite and their sycophants in the media (and leading institutions) and the stark reality experienced by many Americans could not be wider. It’s as if they were all clones of Marie Antoinette telling the peasants, in her immortal words: “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” (Let them eat cake).
How much more of this can the poor, the homeless and the working class take, before they revolt? And if current trends continue and lead to revolt, is it more likely to come from the discredited left or the extreme far right?
Or will the entire USA come to resemble Sao Paulo, Brazil, with the rich barricaded into compounds, and moving around by helicopter or armoured Mercedes Benz?
>”….Or will the entire USA come to resemble Sao Paulo, Brazil, with the rich barricaded into compounds, and moving around by helicopter or armoured Mercedes Benz?”
That is the most likely outcome. Apparently, a democratic USA with a prosperous middle class is quite troublesome to the transnational wealthy elite. Better to engineer the economy to be more like Mexico’s where the non-wealthy cause less trouble.
If the powers-that-be want the US to be like Brazil, then they better get ready for this kind of stuff to happen here: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/11/rios_drug_war.html
They don’t care because they will be in New Zealand on their estates. Send the checks.
Thomas Paine railed against King in Common Sense and God in Age of Reason, both famous essays. But the lesser known essay, Agrarian Justice rails against the Enclosure Act and hereditary land owners (resource hoarders) and the hereditray landless; those deprived of natural resources. Paine points to the fact that poverty is created in “civilized” societies. Indigenous Native Americans knew no poverty or individual landownership due to their culture of “shared” resources. T. Paine stated that Personal property is the “effect of Society”–so the least they (wealthy) can do is support the cause and “I care not how affluent some may be provided that none be miserable in consequence of it….”
“Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.” Agrarian Justice Essay, T. Paine
From my vantage, the problems include
1. Outsourcing jobs
2. Competition for the remaining working-class jobs from illegal immigrants and the legal progeny of yester-years’ illegal immigrants [it’s been going on for a long time now]
3. Financial exploitation – payday loans, super-high overdraft fees, software to maximize overdraft fees based on sequencing the day’s stream of debits, etc
4. Stupid spending by the poor – you would be amazed how much the poor eat at McDonalds, Applebees, etc instead of at home or brown-bagging, and how much they still manage to spend on new TVs etc
Good thing we don’t care about THE LOSERS in Merica.
GET A JOB YOU LOSERS. I WORK FOR A ZOMBIE BANK AND I DON’T HAVE TIME TO SIT AROUND ALL DAY AND COMPLAIN ABOUT THE GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE UNIVERSE!
Testa di cazzo!
Vaffanculo!
– One in 7 Americans now receiving food stamps to meet minimum caloric needs.
– The USA ranks 37th in the world for life expectancy, behind Cuba and numerous other countries we consider beneath our notice.
– According to the World Heath Organization, our heath care system (the most expensive in the world) ranks 38th, behind Chile and Columbia in overall quality of health care.
The US populace is the most heavily armed in the industrialized world, yet we have not had one reported instance of a homeowner using their weaponry to resist the fraudulent foreclosures that are evicting tens of thousands from their homes. They must be saving their bullets for the black skinned, brown skinned, Jewish queers that populate their twisted nightmares.
The power of propaganda is so effective that people kicked out onto the street believe that it is their own fault, and go meekly to the voting booth to ratify tax cuts for the uber-wealthy. Sheep are not like musk oxen– they go quietly to the slaughter rather than forming a defensive circle to fend off the wolves—
“The US populace is the most heavily armed in the industrialized world, yet we have not had one reported instance of a homeowner using their weaponry to resist the fraudulent foreclosures that are evicting tens of thousands from their homes. They must be saving their bullets for the black skinned, brown skinned, Jewish queers that populate their twisted nightmares.”
This what James Howard Kuntsler said on Monday: “In 2011 we’ll see the introduction of new instruments in the foreclosure courts: firearms.”
How come so many poor people are fat then?
The power of propaganda, Dingus. How many Americans can distinguish between a Cheeze Whizz and real food?
WOW, simple sugars vs complex, massive carbohydrates in processed food, additives that trick the mind into believing the stomach is not full and you ask why their over weight. Try years of programing (even in schools) from births on set, by industry leaders, hooking the uninformed on cheep synthetic rubbish with little or zero (many time detrimental) nutritional value.
Skippy…for all the industry hype, were really no better if not worse than the early processed food manufactures (at least they used natural product).
PS check out the early Heinz family and his efforts to clean up the industry, its a good starting point.
Try paying attention to what’s on sale next time you are in the supermarket: soda, American cheese, white bread, bacon, and hot dogs. Then check out the cost of fresh veggies: $2.50-3.99 for a head of cauliflower and $4.99 a pound for cherries. You’d be fat too if you were poor, moron.
I believe everyone is waiting for someone else to start the revolution-all it will take to tip the scale is an act brought on by a single racist or aggressive cop in the wrong neighborhood to get things rolling along nicely.
There is a fuse waiting to be lit, and a very tense population on the edge. It will happen sooner than later.
The elite believe they have all the water (police, military) they need for the coming fire. But I predict it will be an inferno of 300,000 million degrees.