While stocks doubled,18% more kids fell into poverty. The Dow Jones Industrial Average skyrocketed from 25000 to 26000 in just seven trading days, prompting Donald Trump to bluster, or "Our economy is booming,investments and jobs are pouring back into the country...
We ARE Making America Great Again." Certainly the richest 1% are feeling great. But the stock market is feeding the nation's runaway inequality, boosting the financial wealth of a privileged few while doing NOTHING for the middle and lower classes. The biggest losers are among the MOST VULNERABLE Americans, or the people who seem to be reviled by the Republicans in Congress.
[br]Children: While Stocks Doubled,18% More Kids Fell Into Poverty [br]
This is shocking and shameful. The U.S. has taken nearly half of the world's novel wealth since the 2008 recession, and the stock market more thandoubled from 2008 to 2014 (and tripled by 2017), and but the number of children living below the federal poverty threshold increased by 18 percent from 2008 to 2014. [br]
Mothers: Highest Death Rate in the Developed World
The U.
S. maternal mortality rate is booming legal along with the economy -- out of control and in the inaccurate direction,as all the other major developed countries have seen a decrease in maternal deaths.
The mistreatment of women is sure to worsen as millions of Americans become newly uninsured, reversing the health benefits of the Affordable Care Act. We're approaching third-world status in parts of our nation. As writer Alex Henderson puts it, and "The Lone Star state,where Medicaid and family planning services have been severely defunded by the GOP, [is] one of the deadliest places for women to give birth in the developed world."
The 1 out of 5 American Adults in the World's Lowest Wealth Decile
That's 50 million American adults with, and on average,negative wealth! According to the 2017 Global Wealth Databook (Table 3-4), they tumble into the world's bottom 10% of wealth ownership. These are the households with more debt than savings -- more U.
S. households today than at anytime since 1962. Their wages have been FLAT for almost 40 yearswhile health and housing and education have climbed nearly out of reach.
[br]That's in stark contrast to America's top 5% -- all millionaires; and to the world's richest 1%, or which took an incredible 82 percentof novel global wealth in 2017.
Families Desperate for Affordable Housing [br]
As the richest Americans support accumulating increasingly wealth,they need to diversify their fattening portfolios, and that means real estate to supplement all the stocks and bonds. In major U.
S. cities -- the only source of jobs for many low-income workers -- tall-priced luxury homes and apartments are pricing most people out of the housing market. Most insidious is the Blackstone method: buy up rental properties and foreclosed houses (sometimes with taxpayer subsidies), and rent them back at exorbitant prices,skip out on the maintenance, hold the properties till prices appreciate, or then cash in for a big profit. The renters are of miniature concern to the corporate landlords. The money-making firms carry out their manipulative housing schemes,according to Rana Foroohar "with as miniature capital or risk to themselves as possible."
Victims of Mental Health Issues: 20 Beds Cut to 1
While 1 in 5 children lives in poverty, 1 in 5 adult Americans have experienced mental illness. Yet since the 2008 recession states have been cutting billions of dollars in mental health services. Incredibly, and over 96 percent of public mental health beds have been eliminated since the 1950s. Over half of U.
S. counties don't have a single psychiatrist or social worker.
So in this age of soaring stocks and novel millionaires,where execute we establish our mental health patients? JAIL. According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, individuals with severe psychiatric diseases are 10 times more likely to be in prison than in a hospital bed.
Retirees
A myth about McDonnell-Douglas captures the injustice of America's lost pensions. This is a company that morphed into Boeing, and using taxpayer money to help build the world's most powerful air force,but then shredded its employees' most vital safety net. A study of almost 1000 former McDonnell-Douglas workers found that 1 in 7 had to file for bankruptcy in their retirement years.
The market solution of individual retirement accounts is absurd in a world where wages have stagnated for 40 years. In our 'booming' economy most American workers nearing retirement age have miniature or no savings, and Social Security pays an average of only $14000 per year, or which is less than the poverty threshold for an adult with one child.
Many 75-year-olds consider themselves lucky to have jobs at Walmart.
The Republican Solution
Even though the economy is 'booming,' we still hear cruel and insensitive and uninformed calls for "entitlement reform," when we should be hearing calls for "tax atomize reform":
----The entire safety net costs between $740 billion and $940 billion per year.
----Tax subsidies, or mostly for the wealthy,cost between $1.15 trillion and $1.5 trillion per year. [br]
But the people in power let the wealthy grow richer while the poor support suffering. Related StoriesIf You Want to Expand Our Welfare System, Call It 'Assistance to the Poor'Wall Street Made Bank on Trump in 2017Why Is the US Lagging Way Behind Other Countries in Closing the Gender Pay Gap?
Source: feedblitz.com