For the Majority of Americans Poverty is One Pink Slip Away.
Everyday the danger lurks. Could something happen to my job? What will I do? How will I pay my bills? Homeless?
Last year a third of Americans fell into poverty at least some of the time.
If that doesn’t scare you or disgust you, I don’t understand. That kind of insecurity is terrible to live with, and when it actually happens, when someone falls out of the middle class and lands on a street grate, that life is changed forever.
James Pilant
Why the Republicans’ Old Divide-and-Conquer Strategy — Setting Working Class Against the Poor — Is Backfiring | Robert Reich
Poverty is now a condition that almost anyone can fall into. In the first two years of this recovery, according to new report from Census Bureau, about one in three Americans dropped into poverty for at least two to six months.
Three decades of flattening wages and declining economic security have taken a broader toll. Nearly 55 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 60 have experienced at least a year in poverty or near poverty (below 150 percent of the poverty line). Half of all American children have at some point during their childhoods relied on food stamps.
Fifty years ago, when Lyndon Johnson declared a \”war on poverty,\” most of the nation\’s chronically poor had little or no connection to the labor force, while most working-class Americans had full-time jobs.
This distinction has broken down as well. Now a significant percentage of the poor are working but not earning enough to get themselves and their families out of poverty. And a growing portion of the middle class finds themselves in the same place — often in part-time or temporary positions, or in contract work.
Economic insecurity is endemic. Working-class whites who used to be cushioned against the vagaries of the market are now fully exposed to them. …
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