If things are so good, why are they so bad?

The Corporate Media and the Bush Administration are cooing and gooing over the (supposed) 7.2% growth rate for the last quarter. They point to it as a "sign" that the economy is not just in recovery, but a period of growth. Might I recommend a deep breath?

We have (supposedly) been in a "recovery" (jobless) for virtually the full time that Bush II has been in office. I have bemoaned to anyone who would listen that a "jobless" (and indeed job LOSS) recovery wasn't going to help out the overwhelming majority of the population. While the banners are flown for how well we are doing, somehow jobs are not among those good things. More people are in poverty. More people are hungry. This is a three year trend of growing job loss, poverty, and hunger. One must ask, "Who is recovering?"

It reminds me (sadly) of the news during "the boom" when "all boats were floating" at the same time that food banks were being overrun (please note that Clinton was guilty of erasing the poor as well).

Below are excerpts from two articles"

A Time of Need Is Upon Us (Editorial, NY Times, 11/02/03)

"As New York City teems once more with a boom-time population of eight million, its signature Dickensian dichotomy brims before our eyes: poverty and homelessness are on the rise even as the streets hum with ambitious newcomers and the average price of a Manhattan apartment rockets toward the million-dollar mark. The city's clashing mix of opulence and opportunity, hard labor and raw daily indigence has rarely been so palpable. Neither has the need for some down-home charity. For all its resilience after the Sept. 11 disaster, the city finds 18 of 100 residents impoverished."

More U.S. Families Hungry or Too Poor to Eat, Study Says NY TImes, 11/02/03.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 (AP) — Despite the nation's struggle with obesity, the Agriculture Department says, more and more American families are hungry or unsure whether they can afford to buy food.

About 12 million families last year worried that they did not have enough money for food, and 32 percent of them experienced someone's going hungry at one time or another, the agency said in a report released on Friday.

Nearly 3.8 million families were hungry last year to the point that someone in the household skipped meals because the family could not afford them. That is 8.6 percent more families than in 2001, when 3.5 million were hungry, and a 13 percent increase from 2000.

The report was based on a Census Bureau survey of 50,000 households. It was the third year in a row the department found an increase in the number of people who were hungry or uncertain whether they could afford their next meal.

...
Most poor families struggling with hunger tried to ensure that their children were fed, the report said. Nonetheless, one or more children in an estimated 265,000 families occasionally missed meals last year because the families either could not afford to eat or did not have enough food at home. The report estimated there were 567,000 hungry children in all.

What gets forgotten is that those with the least resources are the first to feel economic downturns and the last to feel the upturns. Politicians watch their own, and their owners, pockets swell and believe that to be the nation's reality (just trying to take a positive interpretation here). Viewing that, they seem to feel moral in "getting tough on the poor." So we get Welfare Reform during "the boom" and then we get tougher Welfare Reform for the current "recovery."

This "recovery" is happening in a globalized environment, just as the crash happened in a globalized environment. The economists keep shaking their heads, unable to predict or explain because the nation-based economic models don't work any more. How can we recover and lose jobs? How can productivity increase, but hours worked not increase? One hint might be workers' time being "off the clock," another might be selling from inventory. But anyway, living wage jobs are being "off-shored" at an increasing rate. That is going to further swell the ranks of the poor and the hungry even if the economy continues to improve. I don't understand why folks aren't realizing that the economic indicators increasingly do NOT reflect what is happening in the average person's life. I also don't get how as a nation we can continue to be so blind and arrogant to talk about "lazy freeloaders" and overlook 1) there are no jobs, and 2) that children are being dramatically, and negatively, impacted. This is a true example of "spin" if I ever saw one. To make the lives of almost 40% of the population just disappear.

Posted by rowan at November 4, 2003 12:51 PM | TrackBack | [eMail this article!] |