On September 13, 2012, Don Lee writes in the Los Angeles Times that the U.S. poverty rate leveled off in 2011, but in California it hit a 16-year high, census data show. Also, middle- and lower-income groups took financial hits.
There was no relief for the average American: The median household income, after adjusting for inflation, dropped 1.5 percent in 2011 from the previous year to $50,054. That is now 8.1 percent lower than in 2007, when the recession began late that year.
The biggest hit fell on the middle- and lower-income groups, while upper-end households saw their incomes essentially unchanged. That raised one common index of inequality in America to an all-time high.Even as payroll employment has been growing since early 2010, many of the new jobs are low-paying. And while those added jobs are helping lift some people out of poverty, for those who once had higher incomes, those jobs are all that they can find in a weak labor market.Timothy Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsinin Madison, said that households between the 20th and 60th percentile of incomes — roughly those that make $25,000 to $70,000 — are feeling the biggest strains.The share of people falling below the poverty line — $11,702 for a single person under age 65 and $23,201 for a family of four — had increased steadily since 2006, when the rate was 12.3 percent.The number of Californians living in poverty, however, climbed for the fifth straight year. Nearly 6.4 million Californians — 1 in every 6 state residents — had incomes that put them below the federal poverty threshold last year. That represented 16.9 percent of the population, up slightly from 2010 and the highest rate since 1996.
As with countless other articles on the subject of JOB DETERIORATION and DESTRUCTION, deterioration, the authors fail to offer ANY solutions and never addresses the obvious solution to the tectonic shifts in the technologies of production that are destroying the opportunities for labor workers to be employed in future economic growth––that is, broadened OWNERSHIP CREATION to empower EVERY American to no longer be dependent on their labor but to accumulate a viable income-producing capital estate to become financially independent.
Other as stated the trend will worsen: “Even as payroll employment has been growing since early 2010, many of the new jobs are low-paying. And while those added jobs are helping lift some people out of poverty, for those who once had higher incomes, those jobs are all that they can find in a weak labor market.”
America is blinded by limiting policies to CREATE JOBS rather than the inclusive policy objective of broadened OWNERSHIP CREATION, which will result in real job growth. We need to focus on OWNERSHIP CREATION paid for out of the earnings of productive capital investment, the primary source of income for the wealthy. Instead we continue to focus on JOB CREATION, which is the opposite objective of technological innovation and invention as tectonic shifts in the technologies of production destroy jobs and degrade jobs. Thus, the earnings necessary to become self-sufficient and pay for one’s advanced education and to support a family in relative affluence are just not there for the American majority. Those seeking higher education and to purchase higher ticket consumer items within that majority have had to pursue such with borrowed moneys. And the reality is that with the human-intelligent “machine age” exponentially destroying good jobs, even for those with engineering and science degrees, the pay back will be decades if at all, and we will simply end up with a society of millions of educated unemployed, if not bankrupted, dependent on government welfare, open and concealed.
The solution is to consciously and purposely broaden private, individual ownership in future income-producing productive capital assets simultaneously with the growth of the economy. The labor union movement should transform to a producers’ ownership union movement and embrace and fight for this new democratic capitalism. They should play the part that they have always aspired to––that is, a better and easier life through participation in the nation’s economic growth and progress. As a result, labor unions will be able to broaden their functions, revitalize their constituency, and reverse their decline. This is their ONLY salvation.
Binary economist Louis Kelso stated: “The myth of the ‘rising productivity’ of labor is used to conceal the increasing productiveness of capital and the decreasing productiveness of labor, and to disguise income redistribution by making it seem morally acceptable.”Kelso argued that unions “must adopt a sound strategy that conforms to the economic facts of life. If under free-market conditions, 90 percent of the goods and services are produced by capital input, then 90 percent of the earnings of working people must flow to them as wages of their capital and the remainder as wages of their labor work…If there are in reality two ways for people to participate in production and earn income, then tomorrow’s producers’ union must take cognizance of both…The question is only whether the labor union will help lead this movement or, refusing to learn, to change, and to innovate, become irrelevant.”
If we continue with the past’s unworkable trickle-down economic policies, governments will have to continue to use the coercive power of taxation to redistribute income that is made by people who earn it and give it to those who need it, as well as commit the nation to unsustainable debt. This results in ever deepening massive debt on local, state, and national government levels, which leads to the citizenry becoming parasites instead of enabling people to become productive in the way that products and services are actually produced.
Thus, those who command the spotlight in the national media need to put forth a call for a national debate on how to achieve BROADENED CAPITAL OWNERSHIP and free economic growth from the slavery of “past” savings. This will put us on the path to sustainable prosperity, opportunity, and economic justice.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-census-poverty-rate-20120913,0,4738274.story
