Even More Invisible Poor

As the meaningless 2012 election farce segued into the meaningless Fiscal Cliff farce, lots of news has flown under the radar. Last week the Census Bureau released their 2011 Supplemental Poverty Measure, which is designed to make up for some defects in the traditional way the government counts The Poor. The Census data revealed that some 50 million citizens, 16.1% of all Americans, live in poverty, about 600,000 more than there were in 2010. Outside of a short Bloomberg story and a short Business Insider story, reporting of this happy statistic was rare in the mainstream media. I'll quote from both, starting with Bloomberg—

The ranks of poor Americans remained at a record high number last year, even after government-aid programs such as food stamps, housing vouchers and heating subsidies were included, the U.S. Census Bureau said today.

The bureau said 49.7 million Americans, or 16.1 percent, are in poverty, up from 49.1 million, or 16 percent, in 2010, according to a new measure the government is using to supplement the official figures released in September. The new method, designed to offer a more comprehensive measure of poverty, includes government aid as income, while subtracting child-care costs, work-related expenses and medical out-of-pocket fees.

The official measure, which includes only pretax cash income and is used to determine eligibility for aid programs, put the poverty rate at 15.1 percent, the bureau said.

The government safety net prevents many Americans from falling below the official poverty line. How many? Consider this Census Bureau chart, which was duplicated by the Business Insider with an explanation.

... by removing various forms of government assistance and revenue, we can get a clearer picture of how government assistance helps — and hurts...

Here are the results, compiled by Census researcher Kathleen Short:

Breaking this down...

• Without social security, 24.4 percent of the country would be impoverished — nearly 27 million more Americans than are already below the poverty line
• Without the earned income tax credit and the refundable portion of the child tax credit, about 20 percent of the country would be impoverished — nearly 12 million more Americans under the poverty line
• Food stamps and unemployment insurance are also keeping millions out of poverty
• Out-of-pocket medical (MOOP) costs are impoverishing about 12 million Americans
• Payroll taxes are impoverishing about 5 million Americans. Federal taxes are hitting hundreds of thousands

These numbers are crystal clear. Not only does government spending prop up the economy as a whole, it also keeps millions and millions of Americans out of poverty. On the other hand, taxes and the absence of comprehensive, affordable health care impoverishes millions of Americans.

I have written that the Fiscal Cliff doesn't matter to most of us because I don't believe major policy shifts will be forthcoming. On the other hand, if legislators poke some big holes in the government safety net in the name of Austerity, millions more Americans will go over their own fiscal cliff.

Arloc Sherman, senior researcher at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said a half-dozen temporary measures enacted during the economic downturn have prevented millions of Americans from falling into poverty.

They include tax credits, which kept 3.1 million people out of poverty; extensions in unemployment-insurance benefits, which helped 3.4 million; and expansions of the food stamp program, which aided 1 million people, he said.

Without government assistance, Sherman wrote in a November 2011 report, the national poverty rate in 2010 would have hit 28.6 percent.

“If significant federal cutbacks occur, the combination of those cuts, state budget cuts, and ongoing labor-market weakness may drive poverty still higher in the next few years and cause it to remain very high long after the economy recovers,” he wrote.

Arloc Sherman has estimated that 28.6% of Americans would be poor without government assistance. But who's counting? 25%, 30%, 35%, what's the difference?  This is the 21st century, American version of Bishop Berkeley's philosophical conundrum. If a tree falls in the forest, does the falling tree make a sound if nobody is around to hear it?

If National Public Radio can't see The Poor, and therefore doesn't report on the Supplemental Poverty Measure, do these people really exist?

Regardless of these Deep Issues and NPR's ditzy, kiss-ass mediocrity, there are a lot of concealed Americans. A veritable boatload of the Inconspicuous, the Unseen, and the Insubstantial. Hell, that's a shitload of Invisible People, there's no doubt about it. The Walking Dead, ghosts among us, people who have been or could be tossed on the scrap heap of history.

I don't know about you, but as far as Homo sapiens goes, and with particular regard to the American variety, I am more and more impressed every day

Bonus Video — Invisible Older People, from the website Over 50 And Out Of Work

 

Comments

[Dave Cohen]

2:37 PM, EST. No comments.

I guess the poor are invisible on DOTE, too.

-- Dave

[Bill McDonald]

I would have posted earlier but after having a meltdown after failing to embed this video on my blog, I yanked the plug on Wordpress and will strike out on my own!

Here is my story. 58 years old and employed now part time as a bus driver after being fired from a 6 year gig driving bus for another company, now bankrupt, for violating a company policy, i.e. having a rear end accident and being deemed at fault.

I am pretty up to date on the problems people my age have finding employment, so I really did an intense search and was hired after missing 5 or 6 weeks of work. The only thing I could find was a guaranteed 32 hours a week and I took it.

It is really tough out here in socal. It isn't like during the depression when folks came out here and got work. The only way the state unemployment rate ticked down this time was due to people giving up.

More homeless, more folks picking up bottles and cans, more panhandlers- the list goes on and on, after all people have to survive somehow.

Anyway thanks for spotlighting this issue.

[Mike Roberts]

I just shake my head at the way the media, generally, is trying to paint a different picture of reality. Actually, I'm surprised that you managed to find two references. It's the same here in New Zealand, in terms of generally ignoring information that is different from the message given out by our culture. Even the so-called news programmes are packed with adverts (in the news stories) and irrelevant trivia.

[Oliver]

I don't know whether the plutocracy (a.k.a. the kleptocracy) have specifically hatched and enacted a neo-Nazi cull-the-poor-and-weak program, but it certainly looks that way.

Here in the UK, government officials have already been quietly alerting welfare payment administrators to expect increasing levels of suicide among those who suddenly lose their welfare support, owing to draconian new rules that implement so-called Austerity - a strange kind of austerity that I notice has further enriched the already rich since 2007.

Why the alert? Not out of any empathy. Simply to reassure the administrators that they needn't worry about any repercussions as a result of their activities in cutting welfare support.

Those of us over 50 and out of work are on a particularly fast ride to oblivion.

[clyde]

5 years ago, at the age of 36, I was offered voluntary redundancy from Her Majesty's Land Registry just as the bottom fell out of the UK housing market. Upper management (i.e. the government) could see what was happening and wanted to get rid of as many liabilities/wage-earners as they could, so I took them up on their generous offer.
Many stayed and, after another less-than-the-previously-generous voluntary redundancy offer, work conditions have gradually worsened.
The next round of redundancies will probably not be voluntary, or generous at all.
The reasons that many chose to stay are numerous, ranging from fear to wage-dependence.
I used the free time and money to pay off debts and retrain in carpentry and joinery. I learned how to grow food, keep bees and chickens and, most importantly, to drastically reduce our household outgoings.
All of this has enabled myself and my partner to, subsequently, accept and work at low-paid, part-time positions and sustain a great work-life balance.
We can't afford the holidays and such things that we used to but we don't feel the need for them now.
Life is now much better on a very reduced income. We wish that we had done it earlier.

My point is that those trying to do the same thing in the future will find it much more difficult as there won't be the money available for redundancies or training courses. And, of course, everyone will be doing the same thing at the same time.
Doing something when you are forced to do so is totally different to doing it because you want to.
Being one step ahead has major advantages.

[Brian M]

If you judge the quality of a society by how it treats its weaker members (very young, very old, sick, poor, etc.), how is the US doing? Nuf said.

The thing is this is very likely only going to get worse. It seems to me that we are, virtually every year, living in an increasingly self-centered, I-want-it-all-and-I-want-it-now society. As the empire strains under the weight of it's terminal loss of momentum, how is such a society likely to react? If you said "poorly", you are a master of understatement. It seems to me that human nature is such that the personal survival instinct, on its own, would probably result in the easy ignoring of the neediest members of our society. Combined with the the short-sighted, self-serving, winner-take-all, losers-fail-because-they-are-weak attitude carefully cultivated within our society over the past half century, I suspect we will happily blame the weak for their weakness, detest them for their lack of "self-motivation", and label them undeserving of the little support we currently provide.

That is, of course, until enough of us join their ranks. When will that be? Who knows, but the story shows it's happening faster all the time. Is it likely to slow down much as the empire's structure crumbles from within and without? What happens then? I really don't know, but human nature being what it is, and the American "character" being what it is, it seems hard to see how that ends with smiles and laughter.