Mass Poverty, Social Inequality And The Thirdworldization Of America

Center for Economic and Policy Research co-director Dean Baker calls poverty America’s “new growth industry.” The state of today’s America is deplorable.

In his latest May 3 analysis, economist John Williams said “April “employment and unemployment data were nonsense: the economy remains in serious trouble.”

About 23% of Americans wanting work can’t find it. Most jobs are temp or part-time low pay/poor or no benefit service ones with no futures. Conditions are getting worse, not better.

Federal, state and local government jobs were lost. Construction shed 6,000 jobs. Zero manufacturing jobs were created. Most good ones are overseas. They’ve been offshored to low-wage countries.

Economist David Rosenberg called April a “potemkin payroll report. Where’s the income hiding,” he asked? Average wage-based income declined 0.4%. It was the biggest drop since last October.

Market analyst Graham Summers discussed “a truly horrible economic reality” beneath April’s headline job numbers. The average workweek declined by 0.2 hours. The average manufacturing workweek was down 0.3%.

Fewer overall hours worked subtracts 15 minutes per week. Applied to private sector employment, it’s “the equivalent of over 21 million work hours lost in one month.”

It’s the biggest decline since April 2009. At that time, the economy was “absolutely imploding. It’s numerical equivalent of firing 718,000+ people.”

It’s how companies begin dealing with downturns. “They don’t start laying people off en masse….they start cutting work hours bit by bit.”

Mass layoffs arrive during “full-blown recessions. The first stage “is already happening.” Clear signs show it.

Markets are euphoric. They’re hitting new highs. Economic contraction is ignored. It happened in 2000 and 2008. Warning signs look ominously like earlier.

Peter B. Edelman co-directs Georgetown University’s Center on Poverty, Inequality, and Public Policy. He calls “low-wage work” in America “pandemic.”

America “descended into poverty,” said Paul Craig Roberts. Growing millions struggle to get by. Many are “one medical problem or lost job away from homelessness.”

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