Pre revolution: CENSUS - one in three Americans — either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it

It doesn’t matter if you are conservative, libertarian, progressive, liberal or moderate, this kind of number about Americans should shrivel the scrotums and anuses of every politician because it means SYSTEM FAILURE.

Older, Suburban and Struggling, ‘Near Poor’ Startle the Census

By JASON DePARLE, ROBERT GEBELOFF and SABRINA TAVERNISE

WASHINGTON — They drive cars, but seldom new ones. They earn paychecks, but not big ones. Many own homes. Most pay taxes. Half are married, and nearly half live in the suburbs. None are poor, but many describe themselves as barely scraping by.

Down but not quite out, these Americans form a diverse group sometimes called “near poor” and sometimes simply overlooked — and a new count suggests they are far more numerous than previously understood.

When the Census Bureau this month released a new measure of poverty, meant to better count disposable income, it began altering the portrait of national need. Perhaps the most startling differences between the old measure and the new involves data the government has not yet published, showing 51 million people with incomes less than 50 percent above the poverty line. That number of Americans is 76 percent higher than the official account, published in September. All told, that places 100 million people — one in three Americans — either in poverty or in the fretful zone just above it.

After a lost decade of flat wages and the worst downturn since the Great Depression, the findings can be thought of as putting numbers to the bleak national mood — quantifying the expressions of unease erupting in protests and political swings. They convey levels of economic stress sharply felt but until now hard to measure.

The Census Bureau, which published the poverty data two weeks ago, produced the analysis of those with somewhat higher income at the request of The New York Times. The size of the near-poor population took even the bureau’s number crunchers by surprise.

“These numbers are higher than we anticipated,” said Trudi J. Renwick, the bureau’s chief poverty statistician. “There are more people struggling than the official numbers show.”

Outside the bureau, skeptics of the new measure warned that the phrase “near poor” — a common term, but not one the government officially uses — may suggest more hardship than most families in this income level experience. A family of four can fall into this range, adjusted for regional living costs, with an income of up to $25,500 in rural North Dakota or $51,000 in Silicon Valley.

But most economists called the new measure better than the old, and many said the findings, while disturbing, comported with what was previously known about stagnant wages.

“It’s very consistent with everything we’ve been hearing in the last few years about families’ struggle, earnings not keeping up for the bottom half,” said Sheila Zedlewski, a researcher at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan economic and social research group.

This means that CEO and Board positions pay cannot be 200-500 times line workers, and commissions and bonuses for secured derivatives cannot be paid at sale, but OVER MATURATION. It means govt stimulation of funds cannot be sprayed about as some political palliative to shut up the masses. It means stock and financial performance based upon measures not directly related to profit making sales CANNOT be the measure of success. It means govt funds must be to BACK UP american businesses engaged in research and engineering, NOT production. It means American success is in the people who produce and service STUFF, not just think up and design for production in Shenzen, Tolucca and Djakarta. It means govt must ACT THAT WAY or GO.

That is the bitter and unavoidable reality.

Delay only means one political extreme or the other will be selected.

Must be selected.

The warning signs not just for America, but for all who depend on her (which MAY BE EVERYONE) could not be more unmistakable.

Free enterprise does not mean those who handle money do best at other’s expenses. Nor does it mean those who make the laws can exempt themselves legally from what is immoral. Nor does it mean those who shape the opinions of govt, advise business and teach in academia can self select to be above the workers financially by warping the reality to the advance of a political class composed of themselves, business and a govt elite which is deaf and blind and segregated.

This is a meritocracy, not an oligarchy of an apartheid political class which in financial terms makes no distinction between a progressive and conservative elite.