179.8 - Outrage of the Week: the sick rich

Outrage of the Week: the sick rich

Now for our other regular feature, it's the Outrage of the Week, which this week is brief and to the point.

More than 20% of workers laid off in the last five years haven't found new jobs, according to a Rutgers University survey released couple of weeks ago. Among those who say they've found a new job, 46% said it came with a pay cut and 44% reported a drop in status.

Two-thirds of all adults said the recession hurt their standard of living - and more than half of them think those changes are permanent.

Despite five years of economic recovery, poverty is still stubbornly high in America.

According to the latest figures from the Census Bureau, more than 45 million people, or 14.5 percent of all Americans, lived in poverty line last year. That's a half percentage point lower than 2012, but still 2.2 percentage points above 2006.

(Poverty level was defined as an annual income of no more than $11,490 a single person and $23,550 for a family of four.)

Meanwhile, median household income stood at just under $52,000 last year, 8% below what it was in 2007 and 9% below where it was at its 1999 peak: fifteen years of getting literally less than nowhere.

And while this is happening, the Wall Street Journal can whine about how you can be making $400,000 a year, which is approaching eight times the median household income in the US, and still feel like you're just scraping by and the administration of Wisconsin Gov. Scott WalkAllOverYou can reject a call to raise the minimum wage in the state by saying that "there is no reasonable cause to believe” that the minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour, that's $15,080 a year full time, less than 2/3 the poverty rate for a family of four, his administration can say that "there is no reasonable cause to believe” that $7.25 an hour is not a living wage.

I have said before and I will say again, the rich in our country are, on the whole, sick. Psychologially, spiritually, ethically, morally, sick to their very souls. They are an outrage, matched by the outrage that we put up with it.

Sources cited in links:
http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/22/news/economy/long-term-umemployment-survey/
http://www.app.com/story/inthemoney/2014/09/22/rutgers-heldrich-center-study-shows-great-recession-lingers/16055689/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/16/poverty-household-income_n_5828974.html
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/10/1328621/-The-Wall-Street-Journal-cries-about-the-poverty-of-making-400-000-a-year
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_Real_Household_Median_Income_thru_2012.pdf
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/walker-minimum-wage-has-no-purpose