Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Poverty numbers

It seems that the big domestic news today is that the number of people in poverty in the United States has swelled to a record 46.2 million people. More people are making less money than ever before. Of course, in the United States, poverty is defined as a family of four making about 22,000 per year, and they have things like food stamps, free or subsidized school lunches, and the best medical care that the world can provide. Many get rent assistance and every project I've been around in the Deep South has air conditioning and heating. A person in poverty in the United States lives like a prince in many other countries. No one in the US knows what grinding poverty actually is.

Still, there are more pore folks today than there were last year. This handy graphic from the Census bureau shows how income has declined under this presidency.

So, the question that the pore folks (and the rest of us) have to answer; are we in better shape now than under the last President? I think we all know the answer to that question. One wag opined that President Obama loves poor people, he's trying to make millions more of them.

1 comment:

Old NFO said...

Sigh... figures don't lie, but liars figure out ways to 'skew' the truth...