Well, duh. The people doling out taxpayer cash on endless wars are also those who invest in groups like Blackwater. And besides, taking care of your elderly and poor isn’t as sexy as dropping bombs and decimating communities.
The Article: 9 Economic Facts That Will Make Your Head Spin by Lynn Stuart Parramore in AlterNet.
The Text: 1. Recovery for the rich, recession for the rest.
Economic recovery is in rather limited supply, it seems. Research by economist Emmanuel Saez shows that the top 1 percent has enjoyed income growth of over 11 percent [3] since the official end of the recession. The other 99 percent hasn’t fared so well, seeing a 0.4 percent decline in income.
The top 10 percent of earners hauled in 46.5 percent of all income in 2011, the highest proportion since 1917 – and that doesn’t even include money earned from investments. The wealthy have benefitted from favorable tax status and the rise in stock prices, while the rest have been hit with a continuing unemployment crisis that has kept wages down. Saez believes this trend will continue in 2013.
2. Half of us are poor or barely scraping by.
Enjoy. That is, if your face doesn’t collapse from all the cringing. “Fossils are boring.” Really? Really?
Well, I still want to know why Obama didn’t do more to make it divert course. Some foreign policy.
The Article: Prison and the Poverty Trap by John Tierney in The New York Times.
The Text: Why are so many American families trapped in poverty? Of all the explanations offered by Washington’s politicians and economists, one seems particularly obvious in the low-income neighborhoods near the Capitol: because there are so many parents like Carl Harris and Charlene Hamilton.
For most of their daughters’ childhood, Mr. Harris didn’t come close to making the minimum wage. His most lucrative job, as a crack dealer, ended at the age of 24, when he left Washington to serve two decades in prison, leaving his wife to raise their two young girls while trying to hold their long-distance marriage together.
His $1.15-per-hour prison wages didn’t even cover the bills for the phone calls and marathon bus trips to visit him. Struggling to pay rent and buy food, Ms. Hamilton ended up homeless a couple of times.
