Trickle Down Economics

McClatchy newspaper group did an analysis of poverty in America, and found distressing news. 16 million, yes, that’s 16,000,000, people in America are severely poor.

A family of four with two children and an annual income of less than $9,903 — half the federal poverty line — was considered severely poor in 2005. So were individuals who made less than $5,080 a year.
The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005. That’s 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period.

The rich get richer and the poor stay poor.

The plight of the severely poor is a distressing sidebar to an unusual economic expansion. Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries. That helps explain why the median household income for working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

I’d like for our conservative friends to explain this. They say the best way to take care of people is to stimulate business so that business will create jobs. Throw in some tax cuts as well so all that capital will be freed up to work its magic in the marketplace. Well, okay. President Bush has certainly been pro business; why is poverty increasing? Considering the notable increase in worker productivity, why is the median household income level declining?

Sure, some of it is kids working part time jobs, but that can't explain such a huge increase, nor the decline in the household income level.

Trickle down economics doesn’t work. It’s not trickling down.