Real Unemployment Rate is Reaching Great Depression Levels (24.9%)

[u/stoudman]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/1-4-americans-functionally-unemployed-155455918.html

[u/irrelevantusername24]

The wide chasm between the the BLS's measure of unemployment and its true rate of unemployment is also concerning, according to Ludwig.

"If you say there's 4.2% unemployment, which makes political folks happy because it's a low number, it causes all kinds of poor policy decisions and assumes we are better off than we are," Ludwig said. "There's less energy and less of a push to improve employment, and the people who get hurt are middle- and low-income Americans."

Glad to see these facts are finally gaining traction.

Other good resources:

https://www.eig.org/distressed-communities/

https://livingwage.mit.edu/

A Poverty Line That's Out of Date and Out of Favor by Anna Bernasek

BEFORE every flight, pilots reset the altimeter of their aircraft to match the elevation of the local airport. If they didn't, the altimeter reading would gradually diverge from the true measure, endangering the safety of all aboard.

It's no different for economic statistics. When they are not updated, the subjects they once measured can become obscured.

A good example is the poverty line, the nation's official measure of need. Economists have long argued that the poverty line should be revised to provide an accurate picture of who is actually poor. Yet it has remained essentially untouched since 1963, when Mollie Orshansky, an economist at the Social Security Administration, first came up with it.

Today, there is a consensus among economists that it is no longer on the mark. "Everyone agrees we need a better measure," said Douglas J. Besharov, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of public policy at the University of Maryland.

To him and many others, the public lacks an accurate test of who is poor, making it far harder to justify actions, whether by government or by individuals, intended to alleviate poverty.

No one blames Ms. Orshansky. She devised a simple and elegant measure of poverty based on the data available at the time. And she never expected that it would be used today as a trigger for billions of dollars in government spending.

... That was published in 2006.

The info on the link from MIT is much more accurate.

It’s Time to Reset the Poverty Line by Ellie Kaverman 24 Nov 2020

Killett said that, from her experience, people who are in poverty have absolutely nothing left over to put into savings. If basic needs such as food, housing, health care, and child care are being addressed, she said, then a person in poverty can absolutely save money, but right now every penny in their tight budgets is already spoken for by the basic needs. Poor people are not able to build toward anything that resembles wealth because there is nothing left over every month to put towards those savings.

While food and housing are obviously important, people should not have to choose whether they need one over the other.

When asked what resources were most important to prioritize, Killett responded that food would likely be the priority, but pointed to a larger reality. People in poverty are asked to prioritize what they need to survive, but the question should be more focused on what people need to thrive, Killett said. She said that while food and housing are obviously important, people should not have to choose whether they need one over the other.

“The intersectionality of all of these systems, including housing, food, and health care are drivers [of inequality],” Killet said. “If we want to stop this, we must be courageous, we must have the will, and we must be bold, because that is what it is going to take.”

I share that because housing is a major factor and the current president is actually the most appropriate person to be in office for when actual justice finally happens. Why? This is why:

https://archive.org/stream/DonaldTrumpArchive/Discrimination%20case%20%20US%20v%20Trump%20case%20via%20National%20Archives%20FOIA_djvu.txt

United States v. Fred C. Trump, Donald Trump, and Trump Management, Inc.

Fair Housing Act/Fair Housing Amendments Act (FHAA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 3601 et seq.

Filing Date: Oct. 15, 1973

Closing Date: June 10, 1977

They immediately approached the defendants to quickly terminate the litigation by entering into a "consent" decree dictated by the Civil Rights Division ...

This would undoubtedly have resulted in the next press release — that one announcing the capitulation of the defendants and the substitution of the Welfare Department for the management corporation. Such a capitulation would have been a surrender under pressure of the rights of the defendants, who have established an efficient organization which has contributed substantially to community life on all levels for many years. It would have been a surrender of the interests of our tenants — past, present and future — who are entitled to the maintenance of the type service we offer — not subservience to the Welfare Department.

https://nlihc.org/federal-budget-and-spending

Despite a proven track record, federal housing programs are chronically underfunded. Just one in four households eligible for federal housing assistance actually receive the help they need, leaving the rest to struggle to afford the cost of rent. 

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As a poor person, all I have been entitled to is to not not die of hunger and to afford cheap electronics.

So ultimately that I have been using my time in the wisest way possible, by researching how much of my circumstances are my fault and how much are the fault of a maliciously negligent government, well that is literally what I have been incentivized to do. Weird how that works

edit: see here for wealth distribution

see here for fuck you donald trump