Joel D. Skene

The Census Bureau released their report on poverty and income. It’s grim. Poverty as a nation is up to 15.1%, which when you break it down means that one in every six people is extremely poor. Poverty is even worse here in Michigan at 16.2% and REALLY bad for children in Michigan, where 23.5% of kids are under the poverty level statewide and in Detroit 53.6%. 

And whenever you look at the poverty level it’s important to know that the figure was originally based off of food costs. Since it was created in the 1950s, most living expenses like housing and health care have increased much more than food, but we still measure it the same way. Here is a helpful image which demonstrates just how much the cost of health care has increased compared to food.

As you can see, we have an incredibly outdated method for seeing how many people are actually living in poverty. But the news doesn’t get any better for poor people, especially in Michigan. Next weekend, thousands of people will start losing their cash assistance, and food stamps has just been severely cut forcing about 15,000 people to lose some level of help in buying food.

You might ask, why has poverty increased so much when our economy is now so much bigger than it was in the 1950s? If there is so much more money, where is it? That is an excellent question that for some reason no one in the news media bothers to ask. The Census Bureau’s report has some helpful information on that as well.

As you can see, yearly income for the poor has risen only $2,600 over 45 years, and if you ask me, that’s a pretty lousy raise. Income for the middle class has risen even less, but for the top 10% it’s jumped over $50,000. That jump is even higher when you look at the top 5% and 1%.

When we cut services for the poor and continue tax cuts for the rich we are literally taking money out of the pockets of the neediest amount us and handing it to billionaires. It’s completely inhumane, yet to suggest that we don’t continue this reverse Robin Hood mentality is said to be committing class warfare. This proves to me that conservatives in this country don’t know what real class warfare is, and if they are going to accuse us of it just for stating facts we may as well actually wage it.

I’m incredibly thankful that some people in New York and Chicago are taking to the streets for the Occupy Wallstreet movement. More and more I believe that civil disobedience is going to be the only thing that creates some real change. And these peaceful protesters are already facing the kind of violent resistance you would expect from people trying to protect the wealthy. Here is a clip posted today of women who are standing still being caged in and maced by police.

I hope this leads more people to action. The only way our politicians will start putting people ahead of profits is if we demand it of them.