Overview of Latest Poverty Report

The Census Bureau just released its latest report on income and poverty in America and this is the  picture that it painted:

For the first time in 3 years, poverty has moved down from 15 percent of our population to 14.5%.  While this drop in the rate is positive, it still means that the number of Americans in poverty -- 45.3 million -- is at record levels when looking back 54 years to 1959.  It also means that -- compared to 2012's 48.8 million in poverty -- 3.5 million Americans were able to climb back out and stay there.

Then, there's median incomes:

Overall, incomes still haven't returned to pre-recession levels; despite it now being 5 years past the end of the recession.  While there was a small uptick in overall incomes, the buying power of the average American is still lagging and this is probably why the recovery has been so slow. Hurt the most since the recession, were Asians, with incomes falling from the mid-$70,000's to the current $67,065.  Additionally, Asians were the only racial component to continue to drop in incomes.  All other races saw some, but small, increases.


Finally, there's a part of this report that is seldom revealed because it doesn't fit the liberal view in America that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.  In 2013, 30.9% of those who were in poverty from the period of 2007 to 2013 (just 5 years), elevated themselves out of poverty.  At the same time, 32.2% of those who were in the top 20% of incomes fell out of that top spot.  This is consistent with the fact that, in this country, most people rise out of poverty in just 10 years and, similarly, most rich lose much of their wealth in a similar amount of time.  This income mobility for the poor is a real form of positive income redistribution that rarely occurs in any other county.  At the same time, the fact that 32.2% of the richest drop in wealth in just five years definitely refutes the long-time progressive argument that the rich only get richer. 

References:

Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013: http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2014/demo/p60-249.pdf

Poverty: 2000 to 2012: http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acsbr12-01.pdf

Did You Get Your 40% Increase In Pay When Obama Pen-Legislated A $10.10 Minimum Wage?

With a stroke of the pen, Obama gave any minimum wage worker involved with new government contracts a 40% increase.  Did your wages go up 40%?  Probably not, but one thing is true, that 40% increase "will" ultimately be passed on to everyone in the form of either higher costs or higher taxes.  While the President seems to think he made a few thousand minimum wage earners less poor, he sure as hell made millions of other Americans poorer.

Especially hurt are all those on fixed incomes.  Right now more than 38% of the 57 million people receiving Social Security checks are living solely off of that income; and, they are struggling. Obama didn't give them a 40% increase.  They only saw a 1.5% increase this year.  Since the President has been in office, social security checks have only risen an average of a little more than 1.1 % per year, while inflation was 50% higher than that.  In his first two years, he actually gave no increases to social security recipients.

Lastly, there are 2 million workers in this country who don't even make minimum wage. That's a higher number than the 1.6 million who do.  Where's their 40% increase?  How does Obama propose they deal with any rising costs resulting from the minimum wage increase?

References:

New York Times: February 13, 2014: Obama Raises Minimum Wage for Contract Workers: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/us/politics/obama-raises-minimum-wage-for-contract-workers.html?_r=0

USA Today:  Rising prices hammer seniors on fixed incomes: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/perfi/retirement/2008-07-01-retiree-fixed-income_N.htm

U.S. News and World Report: Retirees Increasingly Depending on Social Security: http://money.usnews.com/money/retirement/articles/2011/08/30/retirees-increasingly-depending-on-social-security

Social Security Administration: Month Statistical Snapshot: http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/

Social Security Administration: Cost-Of-Living Adjustments: http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/cola/colaseries.html

Characteristics of Minimum Wage Workers: http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2012.htm

Social Darwinism: Are The Poor Really Getting Poorer?

Last week, Obama referred to Republican Paul Ryan's budget proposal as a form of Social Darwinism. At the same time he took aim at Romney and his wealth for supporting that Ryan proposal.

Expect to hear a lot about Social Darwinism in this year's Obama reelection campaign.  It is a continuation of his class warfare attack on the 1% who are considered "rich".   To a liberal, Social Darwinism is code for conservative (Republican) activism to stop wealth redistribution so that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  It's a political/social take-off on Darwin's theory that the strongest will survive and the weakest will be allowed to die; where the strong are the rich and the weak are the poor. In support of this, liberals often, superficially, point to statistics that have shown that, over the years, the rich have garnered a bigger piece of this nations wealth; when, at the same time, the poor have lost ground. But statistics can be, a lot of times, deceptive lies.  And, the lie in the poor-are-getting-poorer argument is the fact that most of this nation's poor don't stay poor.  Most all move up in class over time as is deftly explained in this video:



But, the Democrat's poor-are-getting-poorer argument is even sillier when you consider which political party has been primarily in control of Congress over the years.  Since FDR's time in office, the Democrats have dominated Congress.  When coupled with a Democrat President (FDR, LBJ, Carter, Clinton and Obama), they have managed to pass one major social and wealth redistribution program after another. Yet, despite all these programs and a near complete control of Congress over the years,  the Democrats continue to argue that the poor have only gotten poorer.  In a way, stupidly implying that their social programs have done nothing to improve the lives of the poor.

But, even the Republicans have gotten into the wealth distribution game.  Take, for example, the Bush tax cuts.  When implemented, 10 million additional lower income American's were relieved of the burden of having to pay any taxes. Then, too, people in the lowest tax bracket saw their taxes reduced by 33% from 15% to 10%.  While, at the same time, the nation's rich only got a 3.5 percentage point break in their tax burden.  However still today, the Democrats have successfully managed to label the Bush tax cuts as tax cuts for the rich.

The bottom line is that, contrary to word being put out by the Democrats, this nation's poor are better off than the poor of even 10 years ago.  Admittedly, some of this might actually be due to the Democrat's social engineering programs.  But, a lot has to do with the strength and power of the U.S. economy to create wealth at all ends of the economic spectrum.  And, when Democrats do everything possible to stymie economic growth, they actually do more harm to the poor than good; offsetting much of the benefits that the poor may have received from their so-called social programs.  Then, too, social safety nets have a tendency to lock some dependent poor into a lifetime of being poor.  This was certainly the case with Welfare until it was reformed by a joint collaboration between Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton.