. . .46.2 million people now live in poverty in the United States, the highest number in the 52 years the Census Bureau has been tracking it, said Trudi Renwick, chief of the Poverty Statistic Branch at the Census Bureau.
Depressing as that is, the explanation is even worse:
Joblessness was the driving force pushing more Americans into poverty, economists said. Last year, about 86 million people of working age did not work even one week out of the year, Ms. Renwick said, up from 83 million in 2009, a trend of increasing long-term joblessness that economists say puts families at greater economic risk.
Since 2007, the number of men working full time, year round with earnings decreased by 6.6 million and the number of women working full time, year round with earnings decreased by 2.8 million (Figure 3 and Tables A-1 and A-5).
And yet our elected officials in Congress have spent this entire year arguing about deficit reduction rather than about how to create jobs, and even now they’re vowing not to consider the parts of President Obama’s new jobs bill intended to put people back to work.
I can’t remember a time I’ve been more discouraged about the American political process than I am right now.
Sigh….
I get more depressed every day.
Me too. And there’s not a single Republican I can bear to watch or to hear. And some Democrats as well. When my husband puts on the news, I put on my headphones.
The Republican Party is determined to drive this country and most of the world economy into a real depression just so that they can push President Obama out of office and take over the country for their mega-rich owners. I fear for the future of my children and grandchildren. It’s getting so very hard to keep any optimism at all.