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发帖数: 33885 | 1 中国搞资本主义，最后的结果不会跟美国的有什么两样。
今天有四千七百万美国贫困老百姓挣扎在饥寒交迫之间。也就是六分之一。
中国的人口是美国的四倍。
也就是说，将来中国达到了美国现在的生活水平，仍将有188000000个穷人。
这是接近两亿的中国穷人啊！
毛主席在天上正怒眼看着江，胡，习：共产党对人民大众的背叛。
US poverty on track to rise to highest since 1960s
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to
levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on
poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.
Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks
ahead of the November elections.
The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and
academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative
leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise
from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several
predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would
put poverty at the highest since 1965.
Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed
workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers
are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment
aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in
such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters
are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.
"I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I'm here, applying for
assistance because it's hard to make ends meet. It's very hard to adjust,"
said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich
to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large
swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly
double.
Fritz says she grew up wealthy in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch, but
fortunes turned after her parents lost a significant amount of money in the
housing bust. Stuck in a half-million dollar house, her parents began living
off food stamps and Fritz's college money evaporated. She tried joining the
Army but was injured during basic training.
Now she's living on disability, with an infant daughter and a boyfriend,
Garrett Goudeseune, 25, who can't find work as a landscaper. They are
struggling to pay their $650 rent on his unemployment checks and don't know
how they would get by without the extra help as they hope for the job market
to improve.
In an election year dominated by discussion of the middle class, Fritz's
case highlights a dim reality for the growing group in poverty. Millions
could fall through the cracks as government aid from unemployment insurance,
Medicaid, welfare and food stamps diminishes.
"The issues aren't just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in
the economy," said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on
Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.
He pointed to the recent recession but also longer-term changes in the
economy such as globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and
less unionization that have pushed median household income lower. Even after
strong economic growth in the 1990s, poverty never fell below a 1973 low of
11.1 percent. That low point came after President Lyndon Johnson's war on
poverty, launched in 1964, that created Medicaid, Medicare and other social
welfare programs.
"I'm reluctant to say that we've gone back to where we were in the 1960s.
The programs we enacted make a big difference. The problem is that the tidal
wave of low-wage jobs is dragging us down and the wage problem is not going
to go away anytime soon," Edelman said.
Stacey Mazer of the National Association of State Budget Officers said
states will be watching for poverty increases when figures are released in
September as they make decisions about the Medicaid expansion. Most states
generally assume poverty levels will hold mostly steady and they will
hesitate if the findings show otherwise. "It's a constant tension in the
budget," she said.
The predictions for 2011 are based on separate AP interviews, supplemented
with research on suburban poverty from Alan Berube of the Brookings
Institution and an analysis of federal spending by the Congressional
Research Service and Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute.
The analysts' estimates suggest that some 47 million people in the U.S., or
1 in 6, were poor last year. An increase of one-tenth of a percentage point
to 15.2 percent would tie the 1983 rate, the highest since 1965. The highest
level on record was 22.4 percent in 1959, when the government began
calculating poverty figures.
Poverty is closely tied to joblessness. While the unemployment rate improved
from 9.6 percent in 2010 to 8.9 percent in 2011, the employment-population
ratio remained largely unchanged, meaning many discouraged workers simply
stopped looking for work. Food stamp rolls, another indicator of poverty,
also grew.
Demographers also say:
-Poverty will remain above the pre-recession level of 12.5 percent for many
more years. Several predicted that peak poverty levels - 15 percent to 16
percent - will last at least until 2014, due to expiring unemployment
benefits, a jobless rate persistently above 6 percent and weak wage growth.
-Suburban poverty, already at a record level of 11.8 percent, will increase
again in 2011.
-Part-time or underemployed workers, who saw a record 15 percent poverty in
2010, will rise to a new high.
-Poverty among people 65 and older will remain at historically low levels,
buoyed by Social Security cash payments.
-Child poverty will increase from its 22 percent level in 2010.
Analysts also believe that the poorest poor, defined as those at 50 percent
or less of the poverty level, will remain near its peak level of 6.7 percent.
"I've always been the guy who could find a job. Now I'm not," said Dale
Szymanski, 56, a Teamsters Union forklift operator and convention hand who
lives outside Las Vegas in Clark County. In a state where unemployment ranks
highest in the nation, the Las Vegas suburbs have seen a particularly rapid
increase in poverty from 9.7 percent in 2007 to 14.7 percent.
Szymanski, who moved from Wisconsin in 2000, said he used to make a decent
living of more than $40,000 a year but now doesn't work enough hours to
qualify for union health care. He changed apartments several months ago and
sold his aging 2001 Chrysler Sebring in April to pay expenses.
"You keep thinking it's going to turn around. But I'm stuck," he said.
The 2010 poverty level was $22,314 for a family of four, and $11,139 for an
individual, based on an official government calculation that includes only
cash income, before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated
wealth, such as home ownership, as well as noncash aid such as food stamps
and tax credits, which were expanded substantially under President Barack
Obama's stimulus package.
An additional 9 million people in 2010 would have been counted above the
poverty line if food stamps and tax credits were taken into account.
Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage
Foundation, believes the social safety net has worked and it is now time to
cut back. He worries that advocates may use a rising poverty rate to justify
additional spending on the poor, when in fact, he says, many live in decent
-size homes, drive cars and own wide-screen TVs.
A new census measure accounts for noncash aid, but that supplemental poverty
figure isn't expected to be released until after the November election.
Since that measure is relatively new, the official rate remains the best
gauge of year-to-year changes in poverty dating back to 1959.
Few people advocate cuts in anti-poverty programs. Roughly 79 percent of
Americans think the gap between rich and poor has grown in the past two
decades, according to a Public Religion Research Institute/RNS Religion News
survey from November 2011. The same poll found that about 67 percent oppose
"cutting federal funding for social programs that help the poor" to help
reduce the budget deficit.
Outside of Medicaid, federal spending on major low-income assistance
programs such as food stamps, disability aid and tax credits have been
mostly flat at roughly 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product from 1975
to the 1990s. Spending spiked higher to 2.3 percent of GDP after Obama's
stimulus program in 2009 temporarily expanded unemployment insurance and tax
credits for the poor.
The U.S. safety net may soon offer little comfort to people such as Jose
Gorrin, 52, who lives in the western Miami suburb of Hialeah Gardens.
Arriving from Cuba in 1980, he was able to earn a decent living as a plumber
for years, providing for his children and ex-wife. But things turned sour
in 2007 and in the past two years he has barely worked, surviving on the
occasional odd job.
His unemployment has run out, and he's too young to draw Social Security.
Holding a paper bag of still-warm bread he'd just bought for lunch, Gorrin
said he hasn't decided whom he'll vote for in November, expressing little
confidence the presidential candidates can solve the nation's economic
problems. "They all promise to help when they're candidates," Gorrin said,
adding, "I hope things turn around. I already left Cuba. I don't know where
else I can go."
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Associated Press |
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