Poverty increases substantially under Obama and the Democrats

[_bcspace]

Like many Americans who move to the suburbs, Tara Simons came to West Hartford, Conn., because she wanted her daughter to grow up in a nice, safe place with good schools.

Her fall from a more financially secure suburban life to one among the working poor also happened for the same reason it's happened to so many others. She had a bout of unemployment and couldn't find a new job that paid very well.

As a single mother, that's made it hard to hold on to the suburban life that is, in her mind, key to making sure her daughter gets off to the right start.

"I'm basically paying to say I live in West Hartford," she said. "It is worth it."

It's a struggle that many Americans bruised by the weak economy can relate to.

The number of suburban residents living in poverty rose by nearly 64 percent between 2000 and 2011, to about 16.4 million people, according to a Brookings Institution analysis of 95 of the nation's largest metropolitan areas. That's more than double the rate of growth for urban poverty in those areas.

"I think we have an outdated perception of where poverty is and who it is affecting," said Elizabeth Kneebone, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of the research. "We tend to think of it as a very urban and a very rural phenomenon, but it is increasingly suburban."

Sprawling and Struggling: Poverty Hits America's Suburbs

[_Kevin Graham]

Thank you unbridled capitalism. Without it, there'd be no poor.

Of course this article doesn't say anything bcspace attributes to it. And obviously, thanks to Bush's economic collapse which was happening as Obama took office, there are going to be a number of economic factors heading downhill throughout the recession and beyond.

But bcspace wants you to believe Obama has done something specifically to increase poverty. It is the same game Right Wingers love to play with the correlation = causation fallacy. That's all they have. They point to some tragic economic fact resulting from Bush, and then say its "under Obama" now. Such a sophomoric understanding of economics is typical on the Right.

In reality the poverty rate was well over 13% in 2008 and it is no just over 16%. That's three percentage points in four years, and it would have been much worse had Obama not been in office.

[Guest]

Thank you unbridled capitalism. Without it, there'd be no poor.

Without free-market economic relations, economic liberty, and property rights, there would be no poor. I see. And yet another very good reason to consider Mr. Graham well outside any possible consideration as to intellectual credibility.

Of course this article doesn't say anything bcspace attributes to it. And obviously, thanks to Bush's economic collapse which was happening as Obama took office, there are going to be a number of economic factors heading downhill throughout the recession and beyond.

But bcspace wants you to believe Obama has done something specifically to increase poverty. It is the same game Right Wingers love to play with the correlation = causation fallacy. That's all they have. They point to some tragic economic fact resulting from Bush, and then say its "under Obama" now. Such a sophomoric understanding of economics is typical on the Right.

In reality the poverty rate was well over 13% in 2008 and it is no just over 16%. That's three percentage points in four years, and it would have been much worse had Obama not been in office.

Here's the new book:

http://www.brookings.edu/research/books ... yinamerica

Brookings is a center-Left think tank, and has historically taken liberal to moderate positions on a variety of issues. To Kevin, Brookings (the only think tank on the Left he has never, in my experience, ever sourced) probably appears as a hotbed of "right wing" nefariousness. To a neo-communist like Mr. Graham, however, anything to the right of The Little Red Book probably appears suspicious.

[_Kevin Graham]

Of course I never once said anything about Brookings or questioned the data they provided. Had Droopy actually read my post he'd know this. I reject bcspaces's characterization of their argument. Nothing in the article says what bcspace implies, that the cause for increased poverty has something to do with Obama and the "Democrats". Unless you've been living on the moon, and/or have a serious learning disability, it should be obvious that the negative economic factors Right Wingers love to point out "under Obama" were all caused by the economic collapse, which was gift wrapped for us by George Bush. They refuse to acknowledge any signs of recovery.

Funny how they don't want to use this same correlation = causation argument when it comes to the improving unemployment rate, or the booming stock market. Unemployment has been gradually dropping to 7.7 from a high of 10.1.

But Obama cannot have had anything to do with that turnaround. No, of course not.

[_Droopy]

thanks to Bush's economic collapse...

Bush had utterly nothing to do with the economic collapse, and no serous argument can be adduced showing why any reasonably intelligent adult should believe such. We know why the collapse occurred, and equally why it has been prolonged for such an extended period of time with no end yet in sight.

The collapse and continuing recession/stagnation is a result, just as was the case with the New Deal, of the policies created to deal with the initial crisis, and the genesis of the crisis itself lies in decades of money and credit manipulation and a massive and aggressive federal housing policy regime within a number of government agencies, including the Reno justice department, HUD, Fanny and Freddie, the CRA, and other programs aimed at the fundamentally mythical problem of "redlining." The bundling of hundreds of billions of toxic sub prime paper and the viral infection of larger portions of the economy with it was the "tipping point" for the meltdown.

[_Droopy]

economic factors Right Wingers love to point out "under Obama" were all caused by the economic collapse, which was gift wrapped for us by George Bush.

While I rarely allow Republicans to escape unscathed for their aiding and abetting of much of what the Democrats do when in positions of power, responsibility for the economic collapse itself was probably as close a 100% Democrat engineered catastrophe (one of many they've generated over the course of the 20th century) as we're likely to see. Bush had nothing whatsoever to do with it (although he does bear responsibility for initiating the wealth and investment destroying fiat money creation and "stimulus" programs that were key to provoking the economic crisis in the first place and which have saddled future generations (effectively forever, given the present and future size of the federal debt) with financial burdens from which they will never be able to free themselves.

Unemployment has been gradually dropping to 7.7 from a high of 10.1.

The real unemployment rate is now at approximately 14.6% - well into the mid-range of 1930s depression levels (the high hit 25%).

But Obama cannot have had anything to do with that turnaround. No, of course not.

Unlikely. The vast majority of the stimulus money created and spent during his first term was used fundamentally as a slush fund to pay-off political supporters and entities, and much of the rest of it (quantitative easing, and a massive quantity of fiat money that went who-knows-where and was not disclosed to congress etc. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-2 ... ncome.html ) has gone overseas as "bailout" funds. The few private sector jobs created since Obama took office should probably be put down to the overall resilience and strength of America's dynamic, free-market economic system and the perseverance and determination of the American people in weathering this storm, not any government programs that have come out of either the late Bush administration or the first Obama term, none of which have been even slightly economically rational and a number of which have been clearly calculated to do further damage.

[_Brackite]

The real unemployment rate is now at approximately 14.6% - well into the mid-range of 1930s depression levels (the high hit 25%).

The "real unemployment rate" is now at 14.3%, which is down from 15.0% last year. The Economy is not great yet, but it is better than it was a year ago.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000