Last updated on July 25th, 2012 at 10:42 am
How stupid do Republicans think Americans are? You can not blame President Obama for rising poverty, that is just stupid. Let me tell you why.
Rising income is the first step to eliminating poverty. The problem is, 89% of all income growth since the 1970s has been accumulated by the top 10% of income earners. That leaves 11% of all income growth for 90% of Americans to share.
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Breaking this down to dollar amounts, if income grew $100 dollars and the population was 100 people, $89 dollars worth of income would go to 10 people and $11 dollars would be split amongst 90 people.
This is specifically what causes poverty, when the fruits of your labor are not being given to you. Furthermore, the Republicans tell us that tax breaks will enable the wealth to trickle down to the rest of Americans. Well, that conservative theory failed profoundly.
Each and every time minimum wage is discussed, the Republicans stop it. They object to it and fight against it fiercely. Right now, federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. That equals to $15,080 a year. Break this down per month and it comes to a mere $1,256 dollars a month.
Depending on where you live, the average single bedroom apartment is probably around $700 dollars a month. So that leaves $600 left over for you to put food on the table, which may cost you $150 dollars a month if you are single.
Now you have $406 dollars left for utilities, right? So that is another $300 a month including heat,electric, T.V and phone. I know I am probably low balling the utilities. Notice no cell phone right?
Forget a car to get to work.
What I am trying to point to is another aspect of how Republicans fight against the interests of the workers. They blame Obama for rising poverty, but do everything to make the situation worse. Tax cuts do not create wealth, nor do they spread it around; Raising wages and increasing union members both have a positive impact of wealth creation and fair distribution of it.
What Republicans have done is made it extremely easy for the poor to remain poor by allowing the wealthy ownership society to hoard their wealth from the workers.
Look at income growth in the Clinton years, it is a small perspective of what an entire generation missed out on.
But overall, income growth has been held by a small percentage of people, even though it was the bottom 90% that helped create the wealth the top 10% have.
