In a time where the big discussion is rather or not we should extend tax cuts to the top 2% of earners in the country, this is what’s happening:
The poverty rate rose to 14.3 percent during 2009 from 13.2 percent the previous year as household income stayed flat and the number of people without health insurance reached its highest level since such data has been collected, the government announced Thursday.
The first year of Barack Obama’s presidency started with 700,000 people losing their jobs each month and sensational reports of formerly middle-class families crowding tent cities across the country. The tent cities, it turned out, were there before the recession started, but the rise in poverty was real: For working age people between 18 and 64, 2009 saw the highest poverty rate — 12.9 percent — since 1965.
Remember all the crap about “redistribution of wealth” from the 2008 campaign? Well it’s still going on, but not in the way Republicans portrayed it.