"Richard Reeves" - Lost Decade … Lost Generation?

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/lost_decade_lost_generation_20110914/

Posted on Sep 14, 2011

By Richard Reeves

"Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on ‘Lost Decade’ ” was the lead headline on Tuesday’s New York Times.

The story, by Sabrina Tavernise, got worse, paragraph by paragraph. More than 46 million Americans were living under the government’s official poverty line. That was the highest number in the 52 years the Census Bureau has recorded such data.

"This is truly a lost decade," said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economics professor. "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 was in the late 1990s."

"Median income fell across all working-age categories," reported Tavernise, "but the sharpest drop was among young working Americans, ages 15 to 24, who experienced a decline of 9 percent."

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"Bernie Sanders"- Is Poverty a Death Sentence?

Published on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/14-6

The crisis of poverty in America is one of the great moral and economic issues facing our country. It is very rarely talked about in the mainstream media. It gets even less attention in Congress. Why should people care? Many poor people don't vote. They certainly don't make large campaign contributions, and they don't have powerful lobbyists representing their interests

Here's why we all should care. There are 46 million Americans -- about one in six -- living below the poverty line. That's the largest number on record, according to a new report released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. About 49.9 million Americans lacked health insurance, the report also said. That number has soared by 13.3 million since 2000.

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Number of Americans in Poverty Hits Record High

Published on Tuesday, September 13, 2011 by Agence France Presse

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/09/13-3

The US poverty rate rose in 2010 to 15.1 percent, the highest rate since 1993, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday in another sign of a sputtering economy following a deep recession.

The report showed a sharp increase in poverty from 14.3 percent in 2009, and a fourth consecutive rise in the number of people below the poverty threshold, to 46.2 million.

The number of people in poverty was the highest since data collection began in 1959, although the rate was 7.3 percentage points lower than in 1959.

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"Ingrid Melander and Renee Maltezou"- New Generations in Europe Tipping Into Homelessness

Published on Monday, September 12, 2011 by Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/12/us-europe-homelessness-idUSTRE78B6KE20110912

ATHENS -- After 18 years cooking moussaka and roast lamb in restaurants around Greece, Petros Papadopoulos prepares lunch for 50 in a place he never expected to end up -- as a resident of a homeless shelter in Athens.

The soft-spoken chef, who admits he is not giving his real name for fear his friends and relatives will find out about his situation, had just bought a flat and was hoping to start a family when his dream was crushed by Greece's economic crisis.

In 2010, he lost his job to Greece's worst recession in decades and joined the ranks of tens of thousands of unemployed. When he could no longer afford his mortgage, he lost his home and was forced to roam the streets.

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"Katha Pollitt"- The Poor: Still Here, Still Poor

Published on Friday, September 9, 2011 by The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/article/163212/poor-still-here-still-poor

What ever happened to poor people? Even on the left, Cornel West and Tavis Smiley’s Poverty Tour was an exception. Mostly, the talk is of the “middle class”—its stagnant wages, foreclosed houses, maxed-out credit cards and adult kids still living in their childhood bedrooms. The New York Times’s Bob Herbert, the last columnist who covered poverty consistently and with passion, is gone. Among progressive organizations, Rebuild the Dream, a new group co-founded with much fanfare by Van Jones and MoveOn, is typical. It bills its mission as “rebuilding the middle class”—i.e., the “people willing to work hard and play by the rules.” (What are those rules? I always wonder. And do middle-class people really work all that hard compared with a home health aide or a waitress, who cannot get ahead no matter how hard she works and how many rules she plays by?) The ten steps in its “Contract” contain many worthy suggestions—invest in America’s infrastructure, return to fairer tax rates, secure Social Security by lifting the cap on Social Security taxes. There’s nothing wrong with any of this as far as it goes—middle-class people have indeed suffered in the current recession. But let’s not forget that the unemployment rate for white college grads is 4 percent, and every single one of them has been written up in Salon. It’s who’s missing that troubles me: poor people..

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"Habiba Alcindor"- Six Hours With the Poverty Tour

Posted on September 4, 2011, Printed on September 5, 2011

http://www.alternet.org/story/152269/six_hours_with_the_poverty_tour

Poverty affects one and six Americans, yet remains an unpopular aspect of reality, occupying a darker corner of the collective American psyche than, say, breast cancer or drunk driving. It’s the half of the Great March on Washington that gets short shrift. Everyone remembers the dramatic battle waged by largely African American activists for the recognition of their humanity, but only the more historically inclined can readily cite the march’s alternative name -- the March for Jobs and Freedom -- or attest to the heavy involvement of labor unions in organizing the demonstration.

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