Shameful

US poverty on track to rise to highest since 1960s

Some of us have been saying this for years, pointing out that it is the POLICY of Our Government (and governments around the world) to force into poverty increasing numbers of people in order to satisfy the unending financial demands of the international banksters.

There are no circumstances by which banksters are held to account for their own gambling losses. In all cases, banksters are to be made whole on the backs of the long-suffering People.

This has been the POLICY of the United States and almost all other governments on the face of the Earth since the financial meltdown of 2007 (or 08, depending).

This POLICY has led to massive unemployment throughout the developed economies, higher and ever higher prices for subsistence commodities in the underdeveloped world, leading to more and more desperate conditions for more and more millions of people each and every year.

Our Policy Makers insist that nothing can be done about it. As if this POLICY were somehow a Force of Nature, like an earthquake or tsunami or something, that has to be ridden out, and -- oh well, some people just won't make it. Too bad for them.

Nonsense on stilts.

Even worse are the numerous "studies" by various think tanks which seek to prove that no matter how many people are forced into poverty year by year, it's not all that bad because the poor in America still have refrigerators, glass windows, and many even have automobiles and heated apartments.

Obviously, Poverty isn't what it used to be.

And so long as the poor in America have any modern conveniences and/or a roof over their heads, they aren't really poor even if they go hungry from time to time and their electricity is cut off and there's no heat in their home.

That they have a home of some sort, and there is glass in most of the windows and they have a television -- even if it doesn't work -- should be enough for most people in poverty.

According to the shocking statistics, however, the poverty rate in the United States -- which keeps climbing every year -- is the highest it's been since the advent of the War On Poverty in 1965. More than one in 6 children are now living in poverty, and the number is climbing. Many millions of Americans have been forced out of the labor market, and many of them have never qualified for unemployment insurance benefits. Millions will never work for wages again. Hunger stalks the land as more and more people cannot scratch up enough money for basic food supplies and eligibility for food assistance is tightened. In fact, subsidies that benefit the People are being successively terminated or more and more strictly limited. All of this has had the effect of increasing the poverty rates in America.

All of it is a matter of POLICY. It is not an accident. It is happening by design.

Simultaneously, public education is being destroyed and civil infrastructure is falling to pieces. Again, it is happening as a matter of POLICY, it's not an accident or natural occurrence.

As we have seen over and over again, the government's POLICIES are attuned to the needs and the interests of the rich and their corporations, they have little or nothing to do with the public interest and the needs of the People. Voting does not change this simple fact.

Our government is so divorced from the People and so determined is it to govern contrary to the interests of the People it will seemingly bend over backwards to ensure that POLICIES which directly benefit the People are not enacted, and that POLICIES which benefited the People in the past are reversed.

This post at Filip Spagnoli's blog gives a better statistical picture of what's been going on than I can deliver in narrative form.

On the other hand:

 

The trouble is, Mr. Obama's POLICIES have had the effect of increasing poverty, hunger and homelessness (among other things) in America every year of his term.

And as a reminder:

Capitalism is the Crisis.