What do you say when corporate profits are soaring at a time when one in three families in the world's richest country are below the poverty line?
That's the latest from the Working Poor Families Project, which researches and advocates for working families. The Wall Street Journal reports that one in three US families, more than 10 million of them, earned less than 200% of the poverty level, which the researchers considered "low income." They were earning less than $43,512, the low-income threshold for a family of four with two children. More than 22 million children were part of low-income families last year, and according to the report, it just creates an appalling cycle. "For many children, poverty persists into adolescence and adulthood, and is associated with higher risks of dropping out of school, teens having children and lower earnings for young adults," says the report.
According to the research, some 250,000 families were pushed below that threshold with more people losing jobs in the US and unemployment now sitting at 9.8%. In other words, it's getting worse.
Add to that the findings that the US is now experiencing its highest levels of poverty in four decades. With no end in sight to the economic meltdown, one in seven Americans is now below the poverty line.
How do we reconcile this with US corporate profits soaring more than 40% in the year through to June 2010? The companies are making money, cutting back, sacking people and creating the growing poverty in the US.
no comment untill now