Wot Recovery (2)

Human suffering is real and government austerity harshness is official policy. Social injustice is rife and there exists growing human misery. Inequality is appalling and a race to the bottom persists. Most working people only get by from paycheck to paycheck, one missed paycheck away from possible homelessness, hunger and despair. Household income keeps dropping while the prices of goods and services keeps rising. Vital benefits are being cut when most needed while the large corporation receive handouts. Massive public and private corruption in high places takes its toll while workers many are humiliated by being obliged to go begging from government departments.

The rich have never had it better while we ordinary mortals the hard times keep getting harder. Growing poverty. High unemployment. Jobs paying poverty or sub-poverty wages, with few or no benefits. Households need two or three jobs just to get by. Many facing the impossible choice between food and medicines, eating or paying the heating bill. Food banks supplement recipients when benefits run out. Millions struggle daily to pay rent or mortgages and cover commuting costs. The poor stay poor. Economic disadvantage for the overwhelming majority translates into ill health, missed educational opportunity, and – increasingly – the familiar symptoms of depression: alcoholism, obesity, gambling, and minor criminality.

US Census data show around half the population living in poverty or bordering it affecting nearly 60% of children. America has a higher percent of working poor than any other industrialized country. US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) data show over 600,000 homeless Americans on any given night. Including nearly 140,000 children. Over 57,000 veterans. America’s hunger crisis is real. A daily reality for nearly 50 million people. Affecting around 13 million families. Mostly hardworking ones. Not earning enough to live on. About 16 million children don’t get enough to eat. One in six Americans face hunger. So do one in five children. Missing meals is commonplace. Nutritious balanced diets for growing millions don’t exist. Belly-fillers substitute. Food stamps provide a woefully inadequate $1.40 per person per meal.

US wealth gap is wider than any time since the Great Depression. The share of total income earned by the top 1 percent of families was less than 10 percent in the late 1970s but now exceeds 20 percent as of the end of 2012. The share of total household wealth owned by the top 0.1 percent increasing to 22 percent in 2012 from 7 percent in the late 1970s. The top 0.1 percent includes 160,000 families with total net assets of more than $20 million in 2012. The wealthiest 160,000 families own as much wealth as the poorest 145 million. America’s top 1% has more wealth than the bottom 95%. The 400 richest families have as much as the bottom 50%.  It’s about 10 times as unequal as income. In 2013, the median wealth of the nation’s upper-income families ($639,400) was nearly seven times the median wealth of middle-income families ($96,500), the widest wealth gap seen in 30 years when the Federal Reserve began collecting these data. America’s rich have a median net worth nearly 70 times greater than low-income families. White household wealth is 13 times greater than for Blacks. Ten times more than for Hispanics. Wealth inequality doubled since 2003. America’s top 5% has 426.5 times the wealth of bottom 25% households.

In 1965, one in 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today it’s one in six. In the 1970s, about one in 50 Americans were on food stamps. Now it’s one in five. Over half the population needs aid to survive.

The same story can be told of nearly every other country in the world with minor adjustments to the  details and statistics.  So-called economic recovery is pure fantasy.