Daily Meme: What Recovery?

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  • Yesterday, the Census Bureau released the latest data on our nation's poorest residents. The news wasn't reassuring.
  • The U.S. poverty rate remained unchanged last year, stubbornly stuck at 15 percent.
  • Twenty-two percent of Americans under age 18 were living in poverty in 2012.
  • The gap between rich and poor households didn't budge in any statistically significant way either.
  • As for the gender wage gap, that stopped closing a decade ago.
  • Men working full-time, year-round are making less now than they did in 1973.
  • Families are making less than they did in 1989.
  • Median incomes have gone down 8.3 percent since 2007.
  • State and local results will be released later in the week, but it's already clear that the West is faring the post-recession period the best.
  • Recent research shows that poverty's effects on a life reach further than we thought. "The effect of being poor and having to manage a hard financial problem is equivalent to the loss of 13 IQ points-comparable not only to the loss of a full night's sleep but also to that of being a chronic alcoholic, or being 60 years old rather than 45."
  • Gross Domestic Product, however "is up 23 percent since 2000 - $3 trillion," which provies that "it takes more than a growing economy to lift the bottom half."
  • Our federal food stamps program also keeps 4 million people above the poverty line. House Republicans are moving to eradicate the program completely.
  • Low-income housing is growing more expensive even as wages stagnate, and people with steady jobs sometimes find it an impossible expense.
  • John Cassidy summed up the not so pretty picture painted by the data perhaps best: "Income stagnation can't be wished away or inflated away: it's a central and intractable fact of modern American life, and it provides the backdrop for almost everything that happens in Washington-the coming antics not excepted. Political polarization, posturing, and gridlock aren't fun to watch. But in a country where a successful economic model has broken down, they are just what you'd expect to see."

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