As Jesus said in the Gospel of Mark:

"For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them
good: but me ye have not always."
Mark 14:7, KJV

It is no surprise then that year after year, the rich continue to grow
richer, while the poor grow ever poorer. Below is an article from the New
York Times.


Last Year's Poverty Rate Was Highest in 12 Years

By ERIK ECKHOLM - NYT

September 10, 2009


In the recession, the nation's poverty rate climbed to 13.2 percent last
year, up from 12.5 percent in 2007, according to an annual report released
Thursday by the Census Bureau. The report also documented a decline in
employer-provided health insurance and in coverage for adults.

The rise in the poverty rate, to the highest level since 1997, portends even
larger increases this year, which has registered far higher unemployment
than in 2008, economists said.

The bureau said 39.8 million residents last year lived below the poverty
line, defined as an income of $22,025 for a family of four.

In another sign of both the recession and the long-term stagnation of
middle-class wages, median family incomes in 2008 fell to $50,300, compared
with $52,200 the year before. This wiped out the income gains of the
previous three years, the report said.

Adjusted for inflation, in fact, median family incomes were lower in 2008
than a decade earlier.

"This is the largest decline in the first year of a recession we've seen
since the Census Bureau started collecting data after World War II," said
Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard University, referring to household
incomes. "We've seen a lost decade for the typical American family."

The share of American residents who said they lacked health insurance
throughout the entire year remained steady, at 15.4 percent, or 46.3 million
people. But the total masked some more worrisome trends that are helping to
drive the debate over a national health care overhaul.

Continuing an eight-year trend, the number of people with private or
employer-sponsored insurance declined, while the number of people relying on
government insurance programs including Medicare, Medicaid, the children's
insurance program and military insurance rose.

The share of children who were uninsured declined, to 9.9 percent from 11
percent in 2007, apparently because of the federal government's special
efforts to insure low-income children. But at the same time, the share of
adults aged 18 to 64 without health insurance rose, to 20.3 percent in 2008
from 19.6 percent in 2007.

In a speech Thursday to promote his health care overhaul, President Obama
referred to the census survey and said that things had grown worse since
September 2008. "Over the last 12 months, it's estimated that the ranks of
the uninsured have swelled by nearly six million people," he said.

The accuracy of the census numbers, which are collected each spring for the
previous year as part of the Current Population Survey, is subject to
debate. Family incomes in the poverty area do not include the value of food
stamps, money received through tax credits or unreported income. On the
other side, the poverty threshold has not been adjusted over the years to
reflect the rising relative costs of housing and medical care and does not
take account of large regional differences in the cost of living.

Whatever the flaws, which remain similar every year, "we think the C.P.S.
data present a very good measure of the trends over time," David S. Johnson,
chief of the housing and household economic statistics division of the
Census Bureau, said Thursday in an audio news conference.

Because unemployment has climbed so much more sharply in 2009 -- averaging 9
percent, compared with an average of 5.8 percent in 2008 -- "the real spike
in poverty is going to be in the '09 numbers, which we get next year," said
Sheldon Danziger, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan
and co-editor, with Maria Cancian, of the coming book "Changing Poverty,
Changing Policies" (Russell Sage Foundation).



Jeff Snyder, SysOp - Armageddon BBS  Visit us at endtimeprophecy.org port 23
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