Over 20% Of U.S. Children Live In A Food Insecure Home

This chart was made using information from the June 2017 UNICEF report on food insecurity among children. While they gave information on every country (and you can access that here), I just listed in the chart the 30 most developed nations. It shows the percentage of children under the age of 15 that lives in a food insecure household (a household in which there is not always enough food or money to buy food).

Being the richest nation in the world, and claiming to be a moral and equal nation, one would think that the United States would have less food insecurity for its children than other nations. Unfortunately, that is not true. There are 24 nations on this list that have a smaller percentage of food insecure children than the United States (and only 5 nations with a higher percentage).

How can this be justified? I don't think it can be justified. The United States has the money to do a lot better than it does. It just doesn't have the moral and political will to do so. It is just a sad fact that our political leaders think it is more important to give tax cuts to rich people and corporations (the people that don't need help) than to feed poor children.

Many Are Born Into Poverty & Inequality - And Can't Escape

(This cartoon image is from cartoonmovement.com.)

Wealth and income inequality is a big problem in this country, and it is only growing worse. It not only causes problems for the economy as a whole, but also for many individuals (especially minorities). We like to think that everyone has equal opportunity in this country, but that is simply not true. Many are born into inequality and poverty, and find that they have no avenue of escape. That's the opinion of economist John Komlos, and I agree with his assessment. Here is what he had to say about this in an article for PBS.org:

Even conservative Republican Alan Greenspan, an ardent advocate of free markets, is beginning to see inequality as a fundamental threat to the system and admits that, “You cannot have the benefits of capitalist market growth without the support of a significant proportion, and indeed, virtually all of the people; and if you have an increasing sense that the rewards of capitalism are being distributed unjustly the system will not stand.”

Well, the system was not standing very sturdily during the days of rage in Baltimore or in Ferguson. So we need to look beyond the ugly surface manifestations of young black men being shot in the back or suffocated and consider the deeper socioeconomic plight of this demographic in this country in 2015. The truth of the matter is that people of color are disadvantaged by the current socio-economic system from the very beginning of their lives.

Problem no. 1: babies born in low-income neighborhoods will go to bad schools. 

Problem no. 2: bad schools mean low educational attainment. In Baltimore, 22 percent of African Americans have no high school diploma compared to 15 percent of whites. At the national level, the ratio is 2:1 (15 percent to 7.6 percent).

Problem no. 3: low skills mean no jobs. The inconvenient truth is that the unemployment rate among African Americans is 10.4 percent — twice that of whites. But that is not the whole picture. The underemployment rate is more relevant, because it reflects more accurately the real amount of pain in the system. The underemployment rate includes people who are so discouraged that they are not looking for work any more or they no longer have gas money to look for a job. This group — 11 percent of the labor force at the national level — also includes those who would like to work full time but can only find part time jobs. That seems bad enough but the blunt truth is that among African Americans the underemployment rate is a whopping 22 percent. (By the way, it is revealing that I had to calculate this number myself because it is kept secret by the statistical bureaus: you won’t find it on any of their internet sites or published statistics. It is too pessimistic for the official circles, so better keep it quiet.)

Think about this 22 percent for a moment: that means that one out five African American does not have a full-time job and are scraping by with the skin of their teeth. They are the excluded. No more hope left for the American dream. There is more sad news: among African American teenagers, the unemployment rate is 25 percent which means that the underemployment rate is probably in the 40-50 percent range. Plenty of time to throw stones at the system or at their representatives.

Problem no 4: of course, no jobs means no incomes. In Baltimore, 12 percent of African American families have total incomes less than $10,000compared to just 4 percent of whites. Poverty rates in Baltimore are also much higher among African Americans than among whites: 28 percent versus 15 percent. No wonder that a third of African American households had to rely on food stamps to keep body and soul together in contrast to just 9 percent of white families. In seven St. Louis County neighborhoods, with the median family income a paltry $21,000, half the population is at or below the poverty line. (The federal poverty rate for a family of four in the lower 48, plus D.C., is $24,250.)

At the national level 13.9 percent of African American families earn less than $20,000. The comparable share among whites is 5.5 percent. And even more depressingly, the median income has been falling since the year 2000. Among African American families, the decline has been $3,500 — the same as among whites — but in percentage terms the decline is 8.4 percent compared to 5.3 percent among whites. In 2000, the median income among African American families was 63 percent of white incomeswhereas by 2009 it declined to 61.4 percent.

In Baltimore’s census tract no. 1504 — near New Shiloh Baptist Church where the funeral of Freddie Gray, the man whose spine was broken while in police custody in April, was held — 30.6 percent of households have incomes less than $15,000. In nearby tract no. 1506, 43 percent of households earn less than $15,000. This race-based poverty gap also shows up in Ferguson. In census tract number 2119 near Ferguson, 30 percent of households had annual income below $15,000. (Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc., earns as much every morning before noon, including weekends and holidays.) And six miles south of Ferguson, there are dozens of census tracts where the median family income ranges from $100,000 to $163,000. To the black residents of Ferguson, proximity to this evidence that the American Dream is a reality for whites must be a chronic irritant in the best of times, an unbearable provocation in the worst. Under such socio-economic conditions it is difficult to sustain functional families and vibrant communities.

Problem no 5: no income means no wealth, not surprisingly. African Americans are heavily represented among the have-nots of this country. There are 15 million African American households. The poorest 3 million, or 20 percent, of them have no wealth whatsoever, just debt. The median net worth is -$2,500 and the mean net worth is -$21,000. This is worse than among the Russian serfs: they at least had no debt! Among whites, the situation is not very different among the bottom 20 percent. Now let’s look at the next 20 percent, or next 3 million households. Now we get into positive territory but both the median and mean are less than $700. That’s all. Taken together the mean value of the bottom 40 percent of African American households is negative: -$10,000. So the bottom 6 million households still have nothing but debt on average and all in all fully half of the African American population has absolutely no wealth at all — no skin in the game whatsoever. In contrast, in 2004 there were 2,728,000 people in this country with assets worth in excess of $1.5 million. Their total net worth was an astronomical $10,201,246,000,000, that’s $10 trillion.

What is the system that keeps people of color at the lower echelons of the socio-economic hierarchy? It begins at birth. Most of those who happen to be born on the wrong side of the tracks are trapped. So many of them eventually end up on the wrong side of the law or disappear in gang violence. That is why there are 1.5 million missing black men in this country today. We have to realize that children are not responsible for the schools in the neighborhood in which they happened to be born. They chose neither their skin pigment nor their parents. So they can hardly be held responsible for the poverty of their parents or for their dysfunctional neighborhoods. Although they deserve better, they will not get the proper education for a knowledge economy and once they become adults they join the ranks of the have-nots, because there will not be any jobs for them. The employers are not responsible for not hiring those who are unqualified, unskilled, uneducated and without diplomas. So that is the real existing system of Capitalism with a poverty trap. It is against that system that people were throwing rocks. But how do you throw rocks against a system?

This inhumane system will not change until the American people realize that this system is fundamentally and deeply unfair and elect representatives in Congress with a vision to create a capitalism with a human face. All we have to do is to clean up the slums, provide top notch schools capable of competing with those in Finland, bring some jobs back that have been exported to distant shores, and we should be in good shape. No more food stamps, no more welfare payments, no more Medicaid, no more expenditures on incarceration and lower expenditures on the police force! It will be an America in which the determining factor of the life chances of newborns will not depend on the happenstance of the zip code of their birth.

The Number Of Poor Children In School Is Still Growing

The rich have more money than ever before, the corporations are making bigger profits than ever before, and the stock market continues to grow and set record levels. The Republicans (and some Democrats) would like for you to think that means this country has recovered from the Bush recession, and justifies their "trickle-down" economic policies (which have remained intact because they have obstructed all attempts to change it).

Now they want to double down on that policy -- cutting the help for ordinary Americans, so they can give even more money to the rich and the corporations. In spite of the failure of their economic policy, they remain convinced that if we just give more to the rich, they will eventually share it with the rest of America. They ignore the fact that none of this money has been shared. Wages remain stagnant (and actually dropping when inflation is accounted for) and the rich now grab all of the rising productivity (instead of it being shared as it used to be).

The fact is that rising wealth for the rich, rising profits for the corporations, and record trades for the stock market are not very good economic indicators for the economy as a whole. The recovery has not reached below the wealthy class -- and the poor, the working class, and even the middle class (which continues to shrink) are all struggling just to maintain their current economic level. And many of them are losing that struggle.

The map above shows a very disturbing economic trend in this country -- the alarming growth of poor children in our schools. For the first time in this country, more than half of all school children qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches. The states in red are those where more than half of the children in schools are poor (for instance, the GOP "economic miracle" state of Texas has 60% of its children qualifying for the program). Isn't it interesting that most of those states are run by Republicans?

Here is how this troubling trend is described by Rebecca Klein in The Huffington Post:

For the first time, more than half of U.S. public school students live in low-income households, according to a new analysis from the Southern Education Foundation.

Overall, 51 percent of U.S. schoolchildren came from low-income households in 2013, according to the foundation, which analyzed data from National Center for Education Statistics on students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. Eligibility for free or subsidized lunch for students from low-income households serves as a proxy for gauging poverty, says the foundation, which advocates education equity for students in the South.

The report shows the percentage of schoolchildren from poor households has grown steadily for nearly a quarter-century, from 32 percent in 1989. "By 2006, the national rate was 42 percent and, after the Great Recession, the rate climbed in 2011 to 48 percent," says the report.

Kent McGuire, president of the Southern Education Foundation, told The Washington Post that the analysis shows poverty has reached a "watershed moment."

“The fact is, we’ve had growing inequality in the country for many years,” McGuire said. “It didn’t happen overnight, but it’s steadily been happening. Government used to be a source of leadership and innovation around issues of economic prosperity and upward mobility. Now we’re a country disinclined to invest in our young people.”

The analysis shows the highest percentages of poor students in Southern and Western states. Mississippi had the highest rate of low-income students -- 71 percent. New Hampshire had the lowest, at 27 percent.

“No longer can we consider the problems and needs of low income students simply a matter of fairness," the report says. "... Their success or failure in the public schools will determine the entire body of human capital and educational potential that the nation will possess in the future."

New GOP Senators Say Gov. Shouldn't Help Feed The Poor

(The cartoon image above is by Mike Konopacki at Huck/Konopacki Cartoons.)

If you think the congressional Republicans have been about as mean as possible, then you're in for a shock in the next two years. The Republicans in the 113th Congress cut the SNAP Program funding (food stamps), and would have made deeper cuts in that program if the Senate had not stopped them. But even those deep cuts the congressional Republicans wanted is not as bad as what the new GOP senators want to do.

There will be ten new Republican senators sworn in to the 114th Congress, and they have already marked themselves as hard-hearted to the extreme. They are Cory Gardner (Colorado), David Perdue (Georgia), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Thom Tillis (North Carolina), Tom Cotton (Arkansas), James Lankford (Oklahoma), Steve Daines (Montana), Mike Rounds (South Dakota), Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia), and Ben Sasse (Nebraska).

Why do I call these ten new senators hard-hearted? Because they have all gotten together and signed a pledge -- a pledge to completely eliminate the SNAP Program (food stamps). That's right. They don't just want to cut some of the funding going to feed poor Americans -- they want to do away with the whole program.

Now you may be thinking that they just want to replace that program with another government program -- one that would work better. But that is not true. David Perdue makes their intentions pretty clear when he says the SNAP Program needs to be replaced "with free market solutions". And in case you didn't know it, "free market solutions" is Republican code for not spending any government money on a thing.

What is that "free market solution"? It's pretty simple. These are all teabagger senators who have completely bought into the ludicrous and failed "trickle-down" GOP economic policy. They actually believe that if they give more tax cuts to the rich, eliminate regulations on Wall Street and the giant banks, and give the huge corporations a lower tax rate and more subsidies, that will somehow magically lift the poor out of poverty. It has never worked in the past (when it only increased poverty and food insecurity), but Republicans (including these new teabaggers) are not ready to give up a policy that puts more money into the bank accounts of the rich.

Around 15% of the American population lives in poverty (including 20% of the nation's children), and the SNAP program insures they have enough to eat (without having to sacrifice some other need -- housing, clothing, education, transportation, etc.). But these new Republicans don't care about that. They will happily throw many millions of poor children and adults under the bus to get more money to give to the rich. They will tell you that private charities can feed the poor, but that is just not true. In fact, the failure of private efforts to solve the hunger problem in this country is why we had to create the SNAP Program in the first place.

Making this hard-hearted approach to governing even harder to understand is the fact that every one of those new senators (and most of the people who voted for them) loudly claim to be christian. They obviously need to read the portions of their bible where Jesus commanded them to feed and clothe the poor. How christian can they be while ignoring some of the most important commandments of their "savior"?

(The cartoon image above is by Bill Day at cagle.com.)

Poverty Is Violence - And Inexcusable

Both of these men are right. Poverty is violence, and it is not just incomprehensible, but inexcusable, that children still go hungry in a world with so much wealth. And Americans must shoulder a lion's share of the blame, since we live in the richest country in the world. Where is our social conscience? Why do so many U.S. politicians not even want to feed the hungry in our own country, when we should be doing so much worldwide?

Failing As Humans

No one is born being as mean-spirited and hard-hearted as the current batch of congressional Republicans -- and the people that taught them that greed is more important than their fellow human beings are some pretty sick puppies. They are all badly in need of a sense of shame.

Poverty In The United States Remains High

The United States Census Bureau has issued it's latest report on poverty in the United States. The report is for 2012 -- the latest full year for which there are statistics. In 2011, there were 46,247,000 people living below the poverty level. That number climbed to 46,496,000 in 2012 -- an increase of about 249,000 people. That was not enough new people in poverty to raise the official percentage, so it remains at about 15% of the total population -- but it's still an increase, and is indicative of the continuing economic problems in this country.

The top chart shows the demographic breakdown of poverty in this country, giving the percentage of each group living in poverty. Note that the South (where the Republicans are strongest and able to dictate economic policy) is the area of the country with the highest percentage of people living in poverty(16.5%), while the Midwest and Northeast have the lowest levels of poverty (13.3% and 13.6% respectively).

The report also shows that minorities, women, and young people also have high rates of poverty -- and this is especially true of those under the age of 18 (showing that 21.8%, or more than one out of 5 children in America, are living in poverty). In this poor economy, it's definitely better to be a white male adult living outside the South.

The second chart shows poverty by age and gender. Note that in all age groups, there are more women living in poverty than men. The last chart shows the picture of poverty on the family level. While it is too much in all groups, it is by far the worst among families headed by single women (which is not surprising, since this group has the largest percentage of people working for minimum wage or less).

These numbers are inexcusable, even in this struggling economy. All Americans should be ashamed that nearly 47 million people (about 15% of the population) live under the poverty level -- and that the number of those living in poverty continues to grow. This country has the money to significantly lower the number of people living in poverty, but instead of doing that, our politicians have chosen to give that money to the rich and the corporations (the only two groups in this country making record-breaking incomes/profits), and to waste it engaging in unnecessary wars.

Like it or not, this paints a picture of just what kind of society we are -- and it's an ugly picture.

Child Poverty Is Commonplace In The U.S.

This chart from UNICEF should shame every single American. We live in the richest nation in the world, and yet have nearly the highest child poverty rate (23.1%) of any developed nation. That means nearly one out of every four children in this country is living in poverty. Only Romania has a higher child poverty rate (23.6%), and it is just barely higher. Compare that to the nations of northern Europe, all of whom have a rate under 8%.

Right-wingers like to call those northern European nations "socialist" countries -- like that is something bad. But while those nations have some socialist elements in their economy (along with some capitalist elements), what they do not have is a high rate of child poverty. That's because the income and wealth of those countries is more evenly distributed -- and they have a good social safety net to give the poor and disadvantaged a hand up.

In the United States, we have a poor social safety net. It barely provides for a subsistence level of living -- and even then, not for all who need it. And we have the biggest gap between the rich and the rest of our people of any nation in the developed world (and actually worse than some third-world countries). And many in our government (the Republicans and blue dog Democrats) want to cut the social safety net further, to pay for new and bigger tax cuts for the rich (the same people who are hoarding most of this nation's wealth).

What we need in the U.S. is to re-establish some economic justice. Since the imposition of "trickle-down" economics by Republicans in the 1980s (and enhanced by Bush after 2000), economic justice has slowly disappeared (along with a good chunk of the middle class). If we don't kick the remaining Republicans out of power and change this failed economic policy, we'll soon be left with a country composed only of the rich and poor -- and that outrageous child poverty rate of 23.1% will look like the good old days (as it climbs much higher).

One Of America's Greatest Shames

I have posted about this topic before, but I was reminded of it by a story on another blog (Under The Mountain Bunker), and since I consider the number of children who are forced to live and grow up under poverty conditions to be one of this country's greatest shames, it is well worth revisiting. The above chart, from the International Business Times, shows the percentage of children who live in poverty in the 35 developed nations.

There are 15 nations that have managed to keep their child poverty rate under 10% -- Iceland (4.7%), Finland (5.3%), Cyprus (6.1%), the Netherlands (6.1%), Norway (6.1%), Slovenia (6.3%), Denmark (6.5%), Sweden (7.3%), Austria (7.3%), Czech Republic (7.4%), Switzerland (8.1%), Ireland (8.4%), Germany (8.5%), France (8.8%), and Malta (8.9%). While it is unacceptable for any child to have to live in poverty, at least these nations show that they are actively trying very hard to eliminate the problem.

There are another 18 nations who have a child poverty rate between 10% and 19%. That is too much, but pales in comparison to the two only countries on this list with a child poverty rate of more than 20% -- the United States (23.1%) and Romania (25.5%).

The poverty rate is defined here as living in a family with an income of less than half of the country's median income. For example, in the United States that would be a family of four trying to live on less than $22,050 a year (or $1837 a month). Th report was put out by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).

The really crazy part of this is that a country with a high rate of children's poverty is just inviting future problems (which are probably going to be much more expensive than just dealing with the problem). That's because children living in poverty have a greater chance of having "cognitive and behavior problems, are less likely to complete a high school education, and statistically will experience more years of unemployment as an adult". The behavior problems and lack of education also make it more likely they will have criminal justice problems.

We must make a greater effort to solve this problem in the United States. It is ridiculous that the richest country in the world would be competing with Romania to see who can have the highest percentage of children living in poverty. Sadly, most politicians don't even want to talk about the poor, let alone do something about them. They'd rather talk about new tax cuts, cutting social programs and money for education, or spending more money on an already-bloated military budget. Those things won't solve the problem -- just make it worse.

Do you think a childhood poverty rate of 23.1% is acceptable? If not, then it is time to put some pressure on the politicians of all political parties. We can start by demanding an increase in social programs designed to help poor children (like school & summer lunch programs), adequately fund education, raise the minimum wage to a decent level, make sure job training and child care is available for parents, create new programs to create jobs, strengthen unions, make sure affordable housing is available and provided, etc.

I know there are those, especially right-wingers, who say we cannot afford to do those things. I disagree. We cannot afford not to do them. We can pay for them by putting people back to work, increasing taxes on those who can afford it, and significantly (or even drastically) cutting our military budget. It is time to stop pandering to the rich and the corporations, fix our broken economy, and help hurting Americans -- especially the children. They are, after all, our future.

The Shame Of The U.S. - Child Poverty

The United States is the richest country in the world -- and it has been for quite a while. How then, can we explain the chart above? It seems that out of the 35 richest (most developed) nations, all of them but one (Romania) has less child poverty than the United States -- significantly less for most of them.

The Research Office of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has released its new report on child poverty. They define a child as living in poverty if he/she is in a family that must exist on 50% less than the average disposable income in the country in question. In the United States, that would be a family living on the minimum wage, or less. And any family living on the minimum wage or less in the United States is truly in dire financial difficulty.

Out of the 35 developed nations, only two of them had a rate of child poverty that exceeded 20% -- the United States at 23.1% and Romania at 25.5%. The number 33 nation, Latvia, beat the United States by 4.3% having a child poverty rate of 18.8%. Fifteen of the nations had a child poverty rate of less than 9%. They are:

1. Iceland...............4.7%
2. Finland...............5.3%
3. Cyprus...............6.1%
4. Netherlands...............6.1%
5. Norway...............6.1%
6. Slovenia...............6.3%
7. Denmark...............6.5%
8. Sweden...............7.3%
9. Austria...............7.3%
10. Czech Republic...............7.4%
11. Switzerland...............8.1%
12. Ireland...............8.4%
13. Germany...............8.5%
14. France...............8.8%
15. Malta...............8.9%

These nations have all made a concerted and humanitarian effort to keep their children from having to grow up in poverty -- and they are succeeding (although some work still needs to be done). But with 23.1% of all children in the United States currently living in poverty, one would have to question just how hard the U.S. government is trying to eliminate child poverty. It would seem obvious that the United States is not trying hard enough, since the richest nation in the world should be leading the world in eliminating child poverty (at least in the top ten).

Do the American people care that nearly a quarter of all children in this country lives in poverty? If they vote to return the Republicans to power in November, the answer would be no, they don't care. That's because the Republican, instead of trying to lift children out of poverty, want to drastically cut social programs (that clothe, feed, and house those children) and education (which provides the only route out of poverty for those children).

Could they be more hard-hearted or morally reprehensible? Aren't we our brother's keeper -- especially when it comes to children? Why should anyone look to the U.S. for leadership when it won't even take care of its children?

Mean Policies Of The Congressional GOP

Some of you may think the picture and words above are more than a little bit harsh. After all, no one would really deny poor kids a nutritious lunch just to give rich people (who are already making record profits in this recession) bigger tax breaks, would they? The very idea of it is unthinkable. That is, unthinkable to anyone but congressional Republicans.

As mean-spirited and hard-hearted as it sounds, that is exactly what congressional Republicans are proposing. They want to keep all of the current tax breaks for the rich, and they want to give the rich (and corporations) massive new tax breaks -- and they want to do it on the backs of the poor and children (by taking food out of their mouths).

Just a few days ago, the Republican-dominated House Agriculture Committee approved a bill cutting billions of dollars from the SNAP Program. It includes an $11.5 billion cut that would kick 1.8 million low-income people off food stamp roles. It would also end free school meals for over 280,000 children in struggling families. And you can bet when this awful bill reaches the House floor, the Republican-dominated House will gleefully pass it.

The Republicans say these cuts are needed so they can add more money for the military to the budget (even though the Pentagon says that money is not needed), and to pay for new tax cuts for the wealthy. The really crazy part of all this is that these are the same politicians who brag publicly about what wonderful "christians" they are. It makes me wonder if they have ever read the words of the Jesus they claim to love and follow (since his teachings certainly don't favor the rich over the poor).

In 2010, they forced a tax cut for multi-million dollar estates that costs the federal budget about $11.5 billion a year -- a tax cut they would like to see extended (along with new tax cuts for the rich they are proposing). That money, which the rich could easily afford to pay, would fund food aid for that 1.8 million poor people and the 280,000 children's school lunches for the next 10 years.

This is just one more example that shows the Republicans don't care about anyone but the rich. For them, the hundreds of millions of other Americans should have been born rich if they wanted (or needed) any government help. How can any decent person vote for the Republican Party?  

Economy Still Hurting The Poor & The Young

The economic pundits are telling us that the recession is over. These myopic pundits must be just looking at Wall Street and corporate America, because those are the only sectors of our economy that have recovered and are doing well. Everyone else is still hurting and waiting for the "recovery" to reach down to them. Unemployment is still too high and wages are either stagnant or dropping (except for the richest people).

This is especially true among young adults in America. As these young people try to enter the workforce, they are finding that they must accept lower wages. In fact, those without a college education would have made more in the 1970's than they could make today. And it's not a whole lot better for the college educated. They are finding starting wages lower than they were is the 1990's.

The one so-called "bright spot" is that the difference in wages between young men and young women is getting smaller. Sadly though, this is not because young women are making more. It is because the wages of young men are dropping faster than for young women. And employers can get away with paying ever shrinking starting wages because unemployment is so high.

And the unemployment is staying abnormally high even though Wall Street and corporate America is no longer hurting, because the congressional Republicans have obstructed the efforts of the president (and Democrats) to create jobs. They are doing this to keep their corporate masters happy -- and those corporate executives love the current situation, because they no longer have to pay decent wages to get workers.

Here’s a breakdown of the numbers:

• The entry-level hourly wage of a young male high school graduate in 2011 was 25.3 percent less than that for the equivalent worker in 1979, a drop of roughly $4.00 per hour in 2011.
• Among women, the entry-level high school wage fell 14.2 percent over the same period, and dropped by $1.64 last year.
• Wages for high-school educated women are still far below those of their male counterparts, a gap of 15 percent.
• In 2011 the hourly wage of entry-level male college graduates was just a bit over $1.00 higher than in 1979, a rise of 5.2 percent over thirty-two years.
• Women college grads did better, with their wages growing by 15.4 percent, or $2.50, from 1979 to 2011.
• The gender pay gap among this group, however, still persists. The hourly wage for college educated men was $21.68 in 2011, compared with $18.80 for women.

The lower starting wages and the falling wages of those already employed (due to the lack of wages to keep up with inflation and all the benefits of increases in productivity going only to the rich), is affecting our society as a whole. Census Bureau figures have shown us that about half of the United States population is either living below the poverty line or classified as low income (making less than 50% above the poverty line).

That figure alone should shock Americans into demanding that the government do something to create jobs and help those hurting Americans. But it gets even worse. We now learn that the number of households living in extreme poverty (where each member of the household lives on less than $2 a day) has doubled in the last 15 years. In 1996, 636,000 households lived in extreme poverty. Today that figure has climbed to 1.4 million households.

And in that same time period the number of children being raised in extreme poverty has also doubled -- from 1.4 million in 1996 to about 2.8 million currently. And the numbers of households (and children) living in extreme poverty keeps growing larger. It grows larger because the Republicans block job creation efforts and cut social programs meant to keep people out of extreme poverty.

Of course there are those who will accuse me of waging class warfare by pointing out these economic injustices. To an extent they are right. There is a class war going on in America. It was declared and is waged by the rich on ordinary Americans. And they are winning it. It is time for the 99% to fight back.

Swelling The Ranks Of The Poor

Republican congressmen/women like to talk a lot about class warfare. Their talk is really code for keeping the rich in the advantageous position they have, and preventing any new laws that might distribute income and wealth more evenly throughout the population. After years of funneling the nation's riches into the pockets of the rich, the very idea of "economic justice" is anathema to them.

But the truth is that there is a class warfare going on, and it has been happening for the last thirty years -- a war directed by Republicans on behalf of the 1% and waged against American workers. It started with Reagan's initiation of trickle-down economics about 1980, and was kicked into high gear in the presidency of George W. Bush. Over that thirty year period the income of the 1% of richest Americans has increased by over 270%, while the wages of the bottom 80% of Americans has been stagnant (and has actually dropped in the power of what those wages will purchase).

Republicans now want to blame the recession for the economic hurt that is being felt by far too many Americans. And in a way, that is partially true. But the truth is that the recession (brought on by the Republican economic policies) just hastened a process that was already well under way before the recession hit in late 2007. A report by the Economic Policy Institute tells us that during the period between 2000 and 2007 (before the recession hit), the real median income of working-age households fell by $2,114. That's a drop of over $176 a month, and that is a drop in real dollars, not purchasing power.

Limbaugh Is Still A Big Fat Idiot

I normally don't post much about the stupid things Rush Limbaugh says on his radio program for a few reasons. First, I don't want to give him any more publicity than he already gets. Second, he has the right to say what he wants about elected officials no matter how stupid it is. These officials put themselves up for criticism when they chose to run for public office, and as adults, they are perfectly capable of defending themselves. Third, most people already know he's an idiot. But attacking poor children is so far beyond the pale that I feel I must say something.

Limbaugh, who has many millions of dollars, is now upset that the government might actually give poor children a nutritious meal during the summer while school is out. On his June 16th show he opposes the feeding of poor children (even though he obviously misses no meals himself) and suggests that if poor children want to eat they should go "dumpster diving". And he even has the audacity to suggest that he is being of benefit to these children by making this suggestion.

If you have a strong stomach and can control your anger enough not to throw objects at your computer screen, this is what he said:

"You know, one of the benefits of school being out, in addition to your kids losing weight because they're starving to death out there because there's no school meal being provided, one of the benefits of school being out, college campi being vacant this time of year, is that our audience levels go up. I think, you know what we're going to do here, we're going to start a feature on this program: "Where to find food." For young demographics, where to find food. Now that school is out, where to find food. We can have a daily feature on this. And this will take us all the way through the summer. Where to find food. And, of course, the first will be: "Try your house." It's a thing called the refrigerator. You probably already know about it. Try looking there. There are also things in what's called the kitchen of your house called cupboards. And in those cupboards, most likely you're going to find Ding-Dongs, Twinkies, Lays ridgy potato chips, all kinds of dips and maybe a can of corn that you don't want, but it will be there. If that doesn't work, try a Happy Meal at McDonald's. You know where McDonald's is. There's the Dollar Menu at McDonald's and if they don't have Chicken McNuggets, dial 911 and ask for Obama.

There's another place if none of these options work to find food; there's always the neighborhood dumpster. Now, you might find competition with homeless people there, but there are videos that have been produced to show you how to healthfully dine and how to dumpster dive and survive until school kicks back up in August. Can you imagine the benefit we would provide people?"

It is amazing to me that this porcine piece of crap can even bring himself to say such a mean-spirited thing out loud -- let alone on nationwide radio. He may think that's funny. I don't. How can he be fine with spending over a trillion dollars to fight two unnecessary wars and oppose the government spending a modest amount to make sure poor children get at least one nutritious meal a day? That makes no sense at all.

How can people listen to this idiot on the radio without throwing up?

$100 Laptops Ready To Start Production

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization says it is now ready to mass produce their $100 laptops. They have instructed their hardware producers to ramp up production, and hope to have many computers ready for sale in October of 2007.

The computers are meant for poor children in emerging nations. OLPC says the main purpose of the computers is educational, but they will also be able to connect to the internet through WiFi. OLPC is hoping to connect children all over the world through the tiny green and white 1GB computers.

The computer is a pretty stripped down model compared to the computers we in the developed nations are used to. They really wouldn't be able to perform modern office functions, but they should be very functional for the educational and communication needs of these children.

The computers have a rugged plastic water-proof case and have been engineered to be very energy-efficient. They don't even need to have electricity available, since they are designed to run off solar-power, a foot-pump or a string-pull charger. The machines use a stripped-down version of open source software.

The machines have been successfully tested in Nigeria and Brazil. Curently they cost $176, but OPLC believes that with mass production and bulk sales they believe they will get the cost down to $100 (they need to sell 3 million to get this done).

Even though the machines were meant for sale to the governments of emerging nations, there is now talk of selling the machines to the public at large. One idea is to require the consumer to buy two (with the second going to a child in a developing country). So far, orders have come from the governments of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nigeria, Thailand, Libya and Pakistan.

I think this is a brilliant idea, and I hope that governments and charitable organizations all over the world will purchase millions of them and put them into the hands of poor children. It's just a fact of life today that both computer and educational literacy are a must if we expect these people to join the modern world.

I hope they sell many millions of the little green and white machines.