Paying The Piper-Part Six-Incomes Fall, Poverty Rises

Yesterday, the Census Bureau released figures showing the nation's poverty rate climbed to 14.3% (figures go through 2009), the highest since 1994. There are now 43.6 million Americans living poverty, the most since the 1960s. The number of people without health insurance also increased, presumably as businesses tried to cut costs during the economic downturn, and the new health care law doesn't take full effect until 2014, if it survives Republican attempts to repeal or kill it by refusing to fund certain parts of it.*

While I don't believe George W. Bush is a bad person, his economic policies, and those policies that have been put into place in the last three decades have taken a TERRIBLE toll on many Americans. Newly released figures show that the median income for Americans fell nearly 5% between 2000 and 2009.** Of course incomes for the top 20% rose, and how much do you want to bet that the increases at the very top 1 to 2% were higher than most?***

I've noted here before that "Morning Joe," on cable channel MSNBC, is one of my favorite shows. Today, host Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, and none other than conservative Republican commentator Pat Buchanan talked about these very figures I've mentioned above. Buchanan said that he has had "big differences with his party" over many of the economic policies of the last few decades, most put into place by Republicans, although at times with help from some Democrats. Buchanan threw some figures out, and I have no idea how accurate these figures are, but he said that during Bush's eight years in office, more than 50,000 manufacturing plants closed in America! As a result, he stated that 6 million manufacturing jobs ("the highest income jobs for working class Americans," he added) disappeared, with many of these jobs going to China. Scarborough mentioned "three decades of American decline." Remember, these were two Republicans talking about this, not two Democrats.

If you're a Republican, God bless ya! We need differing points of view, as neither political party has a monopoly on good ideas, and certainly neither has a monopoly on virtue. I just hope you'll go look into that mirror and say to yourself, "I think we've got a problem here." That's a start! Don't be in denial! What is terribly troubling to me now is to hear Republican officeholders acting as if they had nothing to do with creating the economic situation this country is in. It's as if they learned nothing! That's a recipe for more decline. (A Word History is below the notes)

Related previous article:
http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2007/06/you-wont-need-time-machine.html

* The health care bill (now law) was not great, but it was a start. A number of Republican members of Congress and some Republican candidates are indicating they will try to repeal or "de-fund" the health care law, if Republicans take over Congress in the November elections. The Republican senatorial candidate in Alaska (Joe Miller) has noted that with a Democratic president, no repeal will be possible, as the president will veto any such legislation, but Miller advises that he will aim to "de-fund" the law, thus effectively killing it.

** See the Wall Street Journal for today, the front page article, "Lost Decade for American Income," by Conor Dougherty and Sara Murray.

*** I'm not against people making money, even lots of money, but in my lifetime I've found that most Americans are pretty sensible. We want businesses to make money, we understand it, we get it! There will always be those who resent someone who made a dime off of them, but they are in the distinct minority, probably like 2%. The other side of the coin is, however, Americans also know when they see excess, and we've seen excess. There has been a tremendous transfer of wealth to the upper incomes, and they were already, well, the upper incomes.

WORD HISTORY:
Poverty-This word goes back to the Indo European root "pau," which meant "little, few," and which then spawned the Latin offshoot "paupertas." (Latin is an Indo European language related to English, but further down the family tree.) Old French, a Latin-based language, continued with "poverte," and English then acquired the word from French in the late 1100s. Initially it was spelled as the French word, "poverte," but later took on the modern spelling. It is closely related to both "poor" and "pauper." In Old English we used a form of the base "earm" to relate words connected to poor and poverty, and in our close relative German, they still have "arm"(not the same as the body part, which is spelled the same in German), which is obviously close to our old word.