American Poverty. posted by Richard Seymour

I meant to write about this a few days ago: there has been a dramatic rise in deep poverty in America. Notice, 'deep'. The latest research shows that 37 million Americans are living below the poverty line, of whom 18.3 million are in deep poverty. The article reports that "Nearly two out of three people (10.3 million) in severe poverty are white, but blacks (4.3 million) and Hispanics of any race (3.7 million) make up disproportionate shares." Deep poverty is defined for an individual as living on an income of less than $5,080. Read that again. Less than $5,080. Do you know how fucking little that is? For British readers, that's an annual income of £2,600. The article goes on:

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries.

Yeah. Wonder how that happened?