Four in 5 Americans Face Near-poverty and no work or opportunities under Obama

So when someone asks, “How is the American Empire doing”, you can tell them that four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives. Sound like a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream. Sure, chump change you cannot believe in under the tutelage of one of the most perfidious and mendacious politicians alive – Barrack Obama. But hey, why blame him, he is just the janitor for the ruling class, right?

The Associated Press newest survey points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy (meaning outsourced labor to third world countries), a widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.

The findings come as President Barack Obama tries to renew his administration’s emphasis on the economy, saying in recent speeches that his highest priority is to “rebuild ladders of opportunity” and reverse income inequality. “Rebuild the ladders of opportunity?” Who does this coin operated henchman think he is kidding? The soaring rhetoric is now not only old, but will assure no democrat has the confidence of any American

Racism is sure to rise now even more as hardship is particularly growing among whites. Pessimism among this racial group about their families’ economic future has risen to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy “poor.” They too are poor and that is the point; they are poor and in debt under corporate America and the Obama stewardship of hardship where entire cities declare bankruptcy and entire states are broke.

“I think it’s going to get worse,” said Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., a declining coal region in Appalachia. Married and divorced three times, Salyers now helps run a fruit and vegetable stand with her boyfriend but it doesn’t generate much income. They live mostly off government disability checks. This is the bread and circus we saw in Rome. Give the poor bread so they do not riot and give the poor circus so they cannot think.

Salyers stated what most people know:

“If you do try to go apply for a job, they’re not hiring people, and they’re not paying that much to even go to work. Children, she said, have “nothing better to do than to get on drugs” (http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Poverty-Struggling-Whites/2013/07/28/id/517420?s=al&promo_code=9898-1?s=al&promo_code=1452A-1). Yes, drugs and prisons occupy the landscape of “Hope” and ‘profit’ for Wall Street and the military industrial dope dealing complex.

While racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty, race disparities in the poverty rate have narrowed substantially since the 1970s, census data show. Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in the government’s poverty data, engulfing more than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge being published next year by the Oxford University Press. So, do not be surprised if this racial divide is ginned up by the ruling class to divide and conquer and tell ‘whites’ that it is the new majority of Latinos and other ‘minority groups’ that are Sandman taking their dreams away.

Marriage rates are in decline across all races, and the number of white mother-headed households living in poverty has risen to the level of black ones. The whole institutional basis for civilization in the US is declining while employment slithers away and deracinated lives litter the landscape.

William Julius Wilson, a Harvard professor who specializes in race and poverty stated:

“It’s time that America comes to understand that many of the nation’s biggest disparities, from education and life expectancy to poverty, are increasingly due to economic class position.”

He noted that despite continuing economic difficulties, minorities have more optimism about the future after Obama’s election, while struggling whites do not. Don’t be so sure, Mr. Harvard. There is little hope among blacks and Latinos who see unemployment rates in the high forty percent if not higher (http://www.epi.org/publication/unemployment-rates-whites-latinos-african-americans/).

But Wilson is right on one point:

“There is the real possibility that white alienation will increase if steps are not taken to highlight and address inequality on a broad front” (ibid).

Yes, racism is always used to blame working people for the crimes of the ruling class, namely growing inequality. And with education a fleeting dream replaced by a for-profit nightmare there is a great, if not likely chance, that racial tensions will escalate perhaps to Civil War levels.

Nationwide, the count of America’s poor remains stuck at a record number: 46.2 million, or 15 percent of the population, due in part to lingering high unemployment following the recession. While poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics are nearly three times higher, by absolute numbers the predominant face of the poor is white.

Add to this that more than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four, accounting for more than 41 percent of the nation’s destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks. Although this might be hard to swallow, it is true.

The Invisible poor

Sometimes termed “the invisible poor” by demographers, lower-income whites generally are dispersed in suburbs as well as small rural towns, where more than 60 percent of the poor are white. Concentrated in Appalachia in the East, they are numerous in the industrial Midwest and spread across America’s heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains.

Going back to the 1980s, never have whites been so pessimistic about their futures, according to the General Social Survey, a biannual survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. Just 45 percent say their family will have a good chance of improving their economic position based on the way things are in America.

The divide is especially evident among those whites who self-identify as working class. Forty-nine percent say they think their children will do better than them, compared with 67 percent of nonwhites who consider themselves working class, even though the economic plight of minorities tends to be worse.

Although they are a shrinking group, working-class whites — defined as those lacking a college degree — remain the biggest demographic bloc of the working-age population. In 2012, Election Day exit polls conducted for the AP and the television networks showed working-class whites made up 36 percent of the electorate, even with a notable drop in white voter turnout.

By race, nonwhites still have a higher risk of being economically insecure, at 90 percent. But compared with the official poverty rate, some of the biggest jumps under the newer measure are among whites, with more than 76 percent enduring periods of joblessness, life on welfare or near-poverty.

Buchanan County, in southwest Virginia, is among the nation’s most destitute based on median income, with poverty hovering at 24 percent. The county is mostly white, as are 99 percent of its poor.

More than 90 percent of Buchanan County’s inhabitants are working-class whites who lack a college degree, as if that would help them. Higher education long has been seen there as nonessential to land a job because well-paying mining and related jobs were once in plentiful supply. These days many residents get by on odd jobs and government checks. They also are sold student loans under the auspice that if they just had a commodified diploma their lives would be better.

In 2011 that snapshot showed 12.6 percent of adults in their prime working-age years of 25-60 lived in poverty. But measured in terms of a person’s lifetime risk, a much higher number — 4 in 10 adults — falls into poverty for at least a year of their lives (ibid).

Poverty climbs for all in America save the one percent

The risks of poverty also have been increasing in recent decades, particularly among people ages 35-55, coinciding with widening income inequality. For instance, people ages 35-45 had a 17 percent risk of encountering poverty during the 1969-1989 time period; that risk increased to 23 percent during the 1989-2009 period. For those ages 45-55, the risk of poverty jumped from 11.8 percent to 17.7 percent.

Higher recent rates of unemployment mean the lifetime risk of experiencing economic insecurity now runs even higher: 79 percent, or 4 in 5 adults, by the time they turn 60.

The fact is there are no jobs and will not be any as automation and more outsourcing strip the nation like it was a landmine. Capitalism does not create jobs it destroys them.

By 2030, based on the current trend of widening income inequality, close to 85 percent of all working-age adults in the U.S. will experience bouts of economic insecurity.

Mark Rank, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who calculated the numbers stated it well:

“Poverty is no longer an issue of ‘them’, it’s an issue of ‘us’. Only when poverty is thought of as a mainstream event, rather than a fringe experience that just affects blacks and Hispanics, can we really begin to build broader support for programs that lift people in need” (ibid).

The Obama Deception

Last November, Obama won the votes of just 36 percent of those non-college whites, the worst performance of any Democratic nominee among that group since Republican Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide victory over Walter Mondale.

Some Democratic analysts have urged renewed efforts to bring working-class whites into the political fold, calling them a potential “decisive swing voter group” if minority and youth turnout level off in future elections. “In 2016 GOP messaging will be far more focused on expressing concern for ‘the middle class’ and ‘average Americans,'” Andrew Levison and Ruy Teixeira wrote recently in The New Republic.

The message from corporate America is the same: see yourself as a person of a ‘race’ and then look to blame other ‘races’ for your difficulties and oppression. While you do this, we, the banksters, hoaxsters and fraudsters will laugh all the way to the bank while we book our trips to Aspen, Europe and buy up real property while stuffing our riches in off-shore banks.

Face it: America is dead. You can’t resuscitate a dead corpse. Bury the damn Empire and start a new system that affords dignity, respect and opportunities for all people, regardless of race. If not, get ready for some heady violence as people look to others for blame. And you can say hello to Jeb Bush and the anti-Castro Cuban mobsters in 2016 if there is no meaningful analysis and change.