Extreme poverty on the rise in America

Evan Soltas blogs about economic policy and data. He has a post that describes something that no one in politics and the media is discussing, namely the startling increase in the number of people living in extreme poverty.

The unambiguous statistical trend since 2000 has been large increases in the fraction of Americans at the extreme end of poverty, with little to no change in the fraction of Americans considered "near poor." The poor, in other words, are getting poorer -- or more precisely, poverty in America is becoming an increasingly extreme and unequal phenomenon.

Evan defines extreme poverty as people living on less than half of the federal poverty threshold.

To give you a sense of what that means, the awful extremity of extreme poverty: a single person under 65 must have made less than $5,851, and a family of four must have made less than $11,509.

The desperately poor. People with almost nothing to their name. Approximately 6.7% of Americans live in extreme poverty, the highest level in over 50 years. That is over 20 million people. That is one out of every 15 Americans.

Evan's take home message is that recessions take the greatest toll on the poorest of the poor.

Recessions, in fact, appear to affect disproportionately the extreme poor, rather than those closer to the federal poverty threshold or the "near poor," those whose income is less than twice the federal poverty threshold.

It is fascinating that politicians have responded to the budget shortfalls created by the Great Recession by cutting programs and benefits for the poor while creating new tax breaks for corporations. Never mind that there is no evidence that corporate welfare creates jobs or helps close budget shortfalls. However, what is certainly true is that the have-nots will suffer. It is also true that tax cuts for the wealthy do not trickle down to the desperately poor. Evan has a graph that nicely illustrates that the ride for the poorest has gotten even bumpier since the era of fraudulent "supply side" economics began in 1981.

Anyone seriously hoping for the return of Christ better think twice. He will not like what He sees. For example, we now have 20 million people living in desperate straits. Where are all the Christians falling all over themselves to help them? Apart from a few nuns on a bus, our religious leaders are too busy talking about contraception and homosexuality. Yes, pray with all your might and soul that Jesus does not return soon. He will be disgusted by many who call themselves Christians. I pray that God opens the eyes of our religious leaders.