I know most everybody wants to believe the hype of the American Dream…..the old “work hard and get ahead”…..well that is a thought from yesteryear……it has NO reality in the 21st century…..
A personal from 12 years ago…..https://lobotero.com/why-poverty/
We are the generation that gets to witness the end of the American Dream. The numbers that you are about to see tell a story. They tell a story of a once mighty economy that is dying. For decades, the rest of the planet has regarded the United States as “the land of opportunity” where almost anyone can be successful if they are willing to work hard. And when I was growing up, it seemed like almost everyone was living the American Dream. I lived on a “middle class” street and I went to a school where it seemed like almost everyone was middle class. When I was in high school, it was very rare to ever hear of a parent that was unemployed, and virtually every family that I knew had a comfortable home and more than one nice vehicle. But now that has all changed. The “American Dream” has been transformed into a very twisted game of musical chairs. With each passing year, more people are falling out of the middle class, and most of the rest of us are scrambling really hard to keep our own places. Something has gone horribly wrong, and yet Americans are very deeply divided when it comes to finding answers to our problems. We love to point fingers and argue with one another, and meanwhile things just continue to get even worse. The following are 22 numbers that are very strong evidence of the death of the American Dream… http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/the-death-of-the-american-dream-in-22-numbers
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-oualaalou/a-broken-american-system-_b_7200806.html
Thanx to these dismal numbers the truth is that the Middle Class is disappearing…….
Everyone loves the middle class. Everyone claims to be middle-class—some to put a gloss on their sketchy escutcheons, others to dodge chastisement for their awkward riches. But in fact both the socioeconomic reality and the concept of the middle class have been turned on their heads and, at the same time, trivialized into a mere lifestyle choice.
Economically, the middle classes were once proprietors, self-employed owners of property and their own labor. Morally, they were the equivalent of “solid citizens”: decent, hard-working, law-abiding, temperate, proper, staid, virtuous, and—well, moral. The qualifications for being middle class have gotten a whole lot looser, to say the least.
What Middle Class?
Poverty is on the rise yet again……but what is poverty? I wrote a post many years ago that explains why poverty……https://lobotero.com/why-poverty/
Think about it!
The average annual income is less than $50,000….that works out to about $900 a week……ever tried living on that?
Recently, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released their report on the Usual Weekly Earnings of Wage and Salary Workers. Using information from the fourth fiscal quarter of 2018, the BLS claims that in that quarter, the median income for a full-time wage or salary worker on a weekly basis was $900. For a 40-hour work week, this translates to a yearly income of approximately $46,800. This is a 5% increase on the previous year.
When seasonal adjustments (holidays, severe weather, etc.) are taken into account by the BLS, the median weekly earnings are $897, or about $46,644 per year.
These are very general numbers. After all, according to the BLS for this quarter there were 115.9 million full-time wage and salary workers in the U.S.
. https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/average-income-in-us-14852178
The truth is that poverty is expanding it is like the spread of a disease……and as such should be treated like a disease and work on a cure for the expansion……
None of it feels like enough. I feel as though I am wired for a permanent state of fight or flight, waiting for the other shoe to drop, or the metaphorical week when I don’t eat. I’ve chosen not to have children, partly because—despite any success—I still don’t feel I have a safety net. I have a huge minimum checking account balance in mind before I would ever consider having children. If you knew me personally, you might get glimpses of stress, self-doubt, anxiety, and depression. And you might hear about Tennessee.
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-poverty-is-like-a-disease
I feel that we need to return to the 1960s and the War on Poverty ideal…..we fight all sorts of problems in the world and poverty is one that could solve some of the other pressing problems…..there is a cure……we just have to want to cure the disease of poverty.
Contrary to myths propagated by many critics, the War on Poverty was not narrowly focused on “expanding welfare.” “No doles,” stipulated President Johnson, and his legislative initiatives included aid to schools and universities, new job training programs, public housing initiatives, new Medicare health coverage for the elderly and Medicaid coverage for the poor, and other programs that have endured, such as Head Start, Job Corps, and Community Health Centers.
The War on Poverty’s pivotal assault on racial discrimination often goes unmentioned. In addition to persuading Congress to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Johnson administration used the federal purse to desegregate schools, hospitals, community boards, and neighborhood programs. As new grants flowed, threats to withhold funding made
Nor should the War on Poverty be discussed only in the past tense. It is still being fought today. Although the original coordinating agency, the Office of Economic Opportunity, was disbanded in the early 1970s, many programs are still funded under new names in other agencies.
https://scholars.org/contribution/accomplishments-and-lessons-war-poverty
I stand by my assertion that Poverty is a disease and as such should be treated thusly.
I Read, I Wrote, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”
Gulf South Free Press 