The Other America

A couple of years ago I was listening to a podcast with Max and Stacy, and she mentioned that a friend had recently gone to the States as a tourist. This friend had intended to start in New York City (I think it was NYC) and travel down the entire East Coast. She only made it as far as -- if I remember rightly -- Virginia, then caught a plane back to Europe because she was so horrified at the poverty. That tale has always stuck in my mind... say, when I'm driving past a tiny rural home with junk in the yard and a sheet tacked over the window.

If you haven't heard of photographer Harvey Finkle, he does some excellent photo journalism on the subject of homelessness, poverty, and advocacy for the poor. The photos in this post are from his gallery on child poverty.

While current national data are not available, the number of schoolchildren in homeless families appears to have risen by 75 percent to 100 percent in many districts over the last two years, according to Barbara Duffield, policy director of the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, an advocacy group.

There were 679,000 homeless students reported in 2006-7, a total that surpassed one million by last spring, Ms. Duffield said.

With schools just returning to session, initial reports point to further rises. In San Antonio, for example, the district has enrolled 1,000 homeless students in the first two weeks of school, twice as many as at the same point last year. (source)

So, maybe 2 million homeless students this year. The last time we went to the library, one of the books my daughter checked out was called "How to Steal a Dog." The protagonist is a girl whose family is living out of their car (she wants to steal a dog to return it for the reward money). I guess this is becoming a mainstream reality.

The number of working Americans turning to free government food stamps has surged as their hours and wages erode, in a stark sign that the recession is inflicting pain on the employed as well as the newly jobless.

While the increase in take-up is often attributed to the sharp rise in unemployment... the Financial Times has learnt that some 40 per cent of the families now on food stamps have “earned income”, up from 25 per cent two years ago.

The agriculture department, which runs the programme, attributes this rise to workers having their hours cut back.

“I’m sort of stunned, it seems like a dire warning . . . that even the jobs people are retaining in this recession aren’t at the wage level and hours level that they need to provide for their families,” said Heidi Shierholz, economist at the Economic Policy Institute. (source)

Jobs and wages must increase or there is no economic recovery. Furthermore, those jobs must come from extraction (things like mining, fishing, and forestry) and from production (manufacturing, textiles, refineries, new infrastructure). Put another way: the recovery must come from well-paid blue collar work. A "jobless" recovery is no recovery at all, but merely a sick joke told by the media.

The poverty rate among older Americans could be nearly twice as high as the traditional 10 percent level, according to a revision of a half-century-old formula for calculating medical costs and geographic variations in the cost of living.

The National Academy of Science's formula, which is gaining credibility with public officials including some in the Obama administration, would put the poverty rate for Americans 65 and over at 18.6 percent, or 6.8 million people....

The overall official poverty rate would increase... to 15.3 percent, for a total of 45.7 million people [emphasis mine], according to rough calculations by the Census Bureau.

(source)

In other words, the real number of poor people in the US is approaching 1 in 6.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) estimates that this recession will create 1.5 million new homeless – nearly double the current number. Half of those people will exist outside the shelter system – in cars, tents, campers, or sleeping bags under highway overpasses....

The rise in long-term tenting and camping is a sign that people’s options are running out, says Nan Roman, president of NAEH. (source)

I think these people are invisible to most of those in charge. In their meetings about interest rates and banking liquidity and GDP and SDR's, nobody is talking, say, jobs projects to build rudimentary cottages in areas with high numbers of homeless families. Nobody is talking about the re-opening of textile mills and foundries. Sure, we'll use stimulus money to re-pave some roads, but where do the new blue collar jobs come from? And how do we make sure they are well-paid jobs when workers get slave wages in so much of the world? The only thing I can think of is so taboo, one dare not whisper it in mixed company: tariffs and protectionism.