The argument for a barely surviving half of the US has been made before, but important new data is available to strengthen the case. (Image: photosteve101 / Flickr)
On February 8, 2015, Paul Buchheit writes on Buzzflash:
Half of our nation, by all reasonable estimates of human need, is in poverty. The jubilant headlines above speak for people whose view is distorted by growing financial wealth. The argument for a barely surviving half of America has been made before, but important new data is available to strengthen the case.
1. No Money for Unexpected Bills
A recent Bankrate poll found that almost two-thirds of Americans didn’t have savings available to cover a $500 repair bill or a $1,000 emergency room visit.
A related Pew survey concluded that over half of U.S. households have less than one month’s income in readily available savings, and that ALL their savings — including retirement funds — amounted to only about four months of income.
And young adults? A negative savings rate, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Before the recession their savings rate was a reasonably healthy 5 percent.
2. 40 Percent Collapse in Household Wealth
Over half of Americans have good reason to feel poor. Between 2007 and 2013 median wealth dropped a shocking40 percent, leaving the poorest half with negative wealth (because of debt), and a full 60% of households owning, in total, about as much as the nation’s 94 richest individuals.
People of color fare the worst, with half of black households owning less than $11,000 in total wealth, and Hispanic households less than $14,000. The median net worth for white households is about $142,000.
3. Cost of Living Surges as Income Falls
Official poverty measures are based largely on the food costs of the 1950s. But food costs have doubled since 1978, housing has more than tripled, and college tuition is eleven times higher. The cost of raising a child increased by 40 percent between 2000 and 2010. And despite the gains from Obamacare, health care expenses continue to grow.
As all these essential costs have been going up, median household income has been going down since 2000, with the greatest drop occurring since 2009, as 95 percent of the post-recession income gains have gone to the richest 1%.
4. Lots of New Jobs (Below Living Wage)
‘Amazing’ jobs report, apart from wages —Marketwatch
Amazing at the top and at the bottom. According to the Federal Reserve Bank, there have been job gains at thehighest paid level — engineering, finance, computer analysis; and there have been job gains at the lowest paidlevel — personal health care, retail, and food preparation.
But the jobs that kept the middle class out of poverty — education, construction, social services, transportation, administration — have seen a decline since the recession, especially in the northeast. At a national level jobs gainedare paying 23 percent less than jobs lost.
Worse yet, the lowest paid workers, those in housekeeping and home health care and food service, have seen theirwages drop 6 to 8 percent (although wages overall rose about 2 percent in 2014).
5. Our Greatest Shame: Half of the Children Feeling Poverty
Over half of public school students are poor enough to qualify for lunch subsidies. There’s been a stunning 70 percent increase since the recession in the number of children on food stamps. State of Working America reported that almost half of black children under the age of six are living in poverty.
The celebratory quotes about a booming economy seem so far away.
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/new-evidence-that-half-of-the-us-is-broke
What Paul Buchheit writes about is an advancing reality that is sudden in its economic impact on individuals and families. The reality is that a JOB no longer is the means to a sustainable financial future for the vast majority of Americans. Yet “get a JOB” is all that is taught at the dinner table growing up with the discussion centered around “what are you going to do to prepare yourself for the workforce?”
The reality is that tectonic shifts in the technologies of production are occurring at an exponential pace with the result that continual invention and innovation finds way to make human labor unnecessary as more and more sophisticated “tools” (aka capital assets such as structures, machines, robotics, super-automated production, computerized operations, etc.) replace workers, while at the same time “work” more efficiently and at less cost to produce the products and services needed and wanted by society. The result is that a tiny few define the wealthy ownership class, while the vast majority of Americans teeter on the verge of being broke.
While this is the reality and the future, no one in academia or politics talks about the “hows” to reform the system to ensure that EVERY citizen has the equal opportunity to acquire personal ownership of wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets without the requirement of past savings or inheritance. We need to face up to the fact that our so-called leadership is oblivious to what is going on. Nor are they offering any REAL solutions, only band-aid patches, to reforming the system to produce the result of broadened personal capital ownership by EVERY child, woman, and man simultaneously with the future growth of the economy.
We should ALL be questioning our political representatives as to why they keep on dancing around the real issue of concentrated OWNERSHIP of wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets. It’s as if they do not really understand private property ownership principles or they are afraid that the American people will not comprehend.
If there are leaders out there who really want to boost the income of the vast majority of Americans and empower them to be “customers with money” to support the products and services needed and wanted, then they need to be advocating for broadened capital ownership.
The solution is a paradigm shift with a focus on Every Citizen An Owner of wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets as such assets are formed to grow the economy, without taking from those who are already secure as a minority member of today’s wealthy capital ownership class.
The solution is also one that each one of us is responsible for advocating, as this is the surest way to ensure that the politicians will shift their thinking and begin to really lead us onto a path of inclusive prosperity, inclusive opportunity, and inclusive economic justice.
To find out how this objective can be achieved without the requirement of withholding consumption and savings, read about the proposed Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-getting-ownership-income-and-power-to-every-citizen/ and http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-summary/. See http://cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ and http://cesj.org/…/uploads/Free/capitalhomesteading-s.pdf.
Concurrent with the CHA are necessary reforms to Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice.
