The Census’ Supplemental Poverty Measure paints a different picture of the poor and the social safety net. by TANVI MISRA Oct 20, 2014 In 1987, President Ronald Reagan announced defeat at the hands of the “war on poverty“—a war his predecessor Lyndon Johnson had waged since 1967. InThe Atlantic the year after, Nicholas Lemann explained why … Continue reading What If We Had Measured #Poverty Differently for the Past 50 Years? | CityLab→
By Jared Bernstein September 15, 2014 Robert Samuelson covers some useful ground this morning, reviewing income and net worth trends from the recent Survey of Consumer Finances, a triennial (it comes out every three years) survey of family income and wealth. I wanted to add a few points regarding timing of the trends he cites.
You Can’t Understand Ferguson Without First Understanding These Three Things – Reflections from a former state senator from St. Louis By Jeffrey Smith You can’t really understand Ferguson—the now-famous St. Louis suburb with a long history of white people sometimes maliciously, sometimes not, imposing their will on black people’s lives—unless you understand Kinloch.
Sometimes a single story has a way of standing in for everything you need to know. In the case of the up-arming, up-armoring and militarization of police forces across the country, there is such a story. Not the police, mind you, but the campus cops at Ohio State University now possess an MRAP; that is, … Continue reading The Criminalization of Everyday Life | BillMoyers→
Months after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said budget constraints forced him to push for pension cuts and mass school closures, an analysis of government documents reveals the city has $1.71 billion in special accounts often used to finance corporate subsidies. While the Emanuel administration has rejected open records requests for details of the subsidies, evidence … Continue reading Rahm Emanuel Cuts Schools, Pensions While Preserving Fund For Corporate Subsidies→
By Greg Kaufmann US poverty (less than $19,090 for a family of three): 46.5 million people, 15 percent Children in poverty: 16.4 million, 23 percent of all children, including 39.6 percent of African-American children and 33.7 percent of Latino children. Children are the poorest age group in the US
So why aren’t Democrats talking about it? By Jaime Fuller Today, President Obama will be in Denver, talking about improvements in the economic picture and his work toward making them happen. The unemployment rate is at 6.1 percent, and the United States has added 1.4 million new jobs since the beginning of 2014.
You often find people talking about our economic difficulties as if they were complicated and mysterious, with no obvious solution. As the economist Dean Baker recently pointed out, nothing could be further from the truth. The basic story of what went wrong is, in fact, almost absurdly simple: We had an immense housing bubble, and, … Continue reading Paul Krugman: Build We Won’t |NYTimes→
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