The New Poor

Victor Thorn
American Free Press
August 16, 2013

 

Amid White House claims that the economy is rebounding, Americans are actually being placated by a vast illusion. During the Great Depression, soup lines stretched around city blocks.

In 2013, these same soup lines exist, except in a different form. Facilitated by yearly trillion dollar deficits, one-sixth of all citizens now collect food stamps. This rapidly expanding welfare state also includes skyrocketing disability claims and other government programs that have provided the necessary optics for what many are calling an invisible depression.

But calculated PR campaigns can only conceal these calamities for so long, especially a disturbing slide toward poverty for middle class workers, many of them white. In a monumental July 28 article, the AP’s Hope Yen revealed that 79% of U.S. adults will, at least once in their lifetime, face prolonged stretches of unemployment, reliance on government aid, or income levels below the poverty line.

While corporate media propagandists fixated for months on George Zimmerman’s alleged profiling of Trayvon Martin, the real story facing our country lies in classism, not racism. Harvard Prof. William Julius Wilson emphasized, “It’s time that America comes to understand that many of the nation’s biggest disparities . . . are increasingly due to economic class position.”

Yen took it a step further. “Hardship is particularly growing among whites.” Although poverty rates for blacks and Hispanics triple that of whites, by sheer numbers those living in a monetary danger zone—characterized as an income level of $23,012 for a family of four—are now 41.5% white.

Despite white families still possessing, on average, six-times the overall wealth of blacks and Hispanics, on July 31 Fox Business Network analyst Charles Payne offered this perspective. “While the nation has been sidetracked with a variety of news headlines promoting racial animosity and a recent speech by Pres. Obama suggesting treatment of black people is moving backwards, there is a major crisis in white America that’s going unnoticed or ignored.”

The reasons are plenty. After the housing bubble burst, many homeowners abruptly realized that they owed more on their residences than they were worth, a condition known as being underwater. Also, even though working class whites still comprise the largest demographic employment bloc, fears regarding Obamacare are compelling companies to primarily only hire part-time or temporary help. In fact, of all jobs created this year, 77% were part-time.

Other factors must be considered. For instance, if Obama’s amnesty bill passes, upwards of 20 million more foreigners will be competing for lower-end jobs. In Appalachia, an ongoing war against coal has decimated many mountain communities, whereas Midwest factory towns still suffer from the effects of outsourcing.

Moreover, insidious programs such as Agenda 21 are gutting rural white America, especially in the heartland, in an attempt to urbanize our population. With recent college graduates struggling to find entry-level jobs, a rise in white single-mother households, increased payroll taxes, and a largely unreported rise in poverty among whites near retirement age, it appears as if the new normal for once thriving white Americans seems to be one of economic dystopia.

The Obama administration’s attempt to “level the playing field” seems to be working according to plan.

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