GLARING CAMPAIGN OMISSION

Gone are the days when most American families could take a road trip with the family in their station wagons. They might be working weekends at their second jobs or they might not be able to afford the gas! The middle class is dying as more and more are becoming lower income. And this article is correct--neither party is addressing the poor very much. Some households with both parents working are making so little that they still qualify for aid--wages are down but they are working us harder. With their homes hanging by a thread--housing is another disturbing issue (like gun control) that neither candidate addresses. The article that I linked below is a little too brainy for me--I don't know what a quintile is--but I think I get the gist of it. Here's two telling excerpts:

"The U.S. government, in fact, tacitly admits that the 2nd quintile is decidedly low-income. Here’s how.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—an federal agency under the aegis of the Department of Health and Human Services—classifies those living at 133 percent or below the federal poverty line (FPL) as “low-income” for the purposes of Medicaid eligibility. Today, a family of four living at 133 percent of the FPL earns $30,657 annually and accounts for over half of those in the Census Bureau’s 2nd quintile classification.

Further, when household income levels are disaggregated by race it turns out that the median household income for Black ($32,229) and Latin ($38,624) families effectively falls below the Census Bureau’s middle quintile designation. In other words, the average Black and/or Latin family in 2012 cannot be classified as middle-income."

"Data like these have determinative implications for campaign discourse and beg a simple question: why isn’t any major party candidate speaking candidly about low-income people, the working poor, or the indigent? With a full 15 percent of Americans living below the poverty line—7 percent of which live below half of the poverty line—and another 30 percent between the FPL  and double it, all this talk of the middle-class seems misplaced and misguided.  It’s pure ideology.

So as the campaign season trundles on we must as ourselves the following question: am I truly a middle-income American or is that what I’ve come to believe because a wealthy politician told me so?  And moreover, are my interests being legitimately represented on the campaign trail?"


HERE'S THE LINK IF YOU WANNA READ MORE:

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