news from inflationland

[lektrode]

The retail data can be quirky but it fits in with everything else we know. The numbers of people on food stamps have reached 43.2m, an all time-high of 14pc of the population. Recipients receive debit cards – not stamps -- currently worth about $140 a month under President Obama’s stimulus package.
found this 10jan2011 on: http://inflation.us/news.html


pulled from:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/c...have-nots.html



The US Conference of Mayors said visits to soup kitchens are up 24pc this year. There are 643,000 people needing shelter each night.
Jobs data released on Friday was again shocking. The only the reason that headline unemployment fell to 9.4pc was that so many people dropped out of the system altogether.
The actual number of jobs contracted by 260,000 to 153,690,000. The “labour participation rate” for working-age men over 20 dropped to 73.6pc, the lowest the since the data series began in 1948. My guess is that this figure exceeds the average for the Great Depression (minus the cruellest year of 1932).
“Corporate America is in a V-shaped recovery,” said Robert Reich, a former labour secretary. “That’s great news for investors whose savings are mainly in stocks and bonds, and for executives and Wall Street traders. But most American workers are trapped in an L-shaped recovery.”



comments?
when we start hearing this from 'overseas' media, what to think?

[lektrode]

Re: news from inflationland

pulled from:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/c...have-nots.html

more from above (the bottom line, actually)
There is no easy solution to creeping depression in America and swathes of the Old World. A Keynesian `New Deal’ of borrowing on the bond markets to build roads, bridges, solar farms, or nuclear power stations to soak up the army of unemployed is not a credible option in our new age of sovereign debt jitters. The fiscal card is played out.
So we limp on, with very large numbers of people in the West trapped on the wrong side of globalization, and nobody doing much about it. Would Franklin Roosevelt have tolerated such a lamentable state of affairs, or would he have ripped up and reshaped the global system until it answered the needs of his citizens?

comments??
when we start hearing this from 'overseas' media, what to think?

[lektrode]

Re: news from inflationland

comments??
when we start hearing this from 'overseas' media, what to think?

the _author_ of the story above posited:
"The fiscal card is played out.
So we limp on, with very large numbers of people in the West trapped on the wrong side of globalization..."

not so sure on that - just imagine if the 'stimulous' had actually been spent on INFRASTRUCTURE, vs biz-as-usual, defined as "jobs saved or created" (which was _pure_ bullshit) and just imagine that the .gov spent it on simply repaving the 'free'ways, rebuilding the _existing_ bridges (where appropriate of course, maybe not in Minn MN) - i mean, just think of how many REAL JOBS CREATED would've happened???

just sayin - too bad that didnt happen - but i'm certain they bought a few more jobs in the polysci depts in the .edu sector...

[zoog]

Re: news from inflationland

The retail data can be quirky but it fits in with everything else we know. The numbers of people on food stamps have reached 43.2m, an all time-high of 14pc of the population. Recipients receive debit cards – not stamps -- currently worth about $140 a month under President Obama’s stimulus package.
found this 10jan2011 on: http://inflation.us/news.html


pulled from:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/c...have-nots.html



The US Conference of Mayors said visits to soup kitchens are up 24pc this year. There are 643,000 people needing shelter each night.
Jobs data released on Friday was again shocking. The only the reason that headline unemployment fell to 9.4pc was that so many people dropped out of the system altogether.
The actual number of jobs contracted by 260,000 to 153,690,000. The “labour participation rate” for working-age men over 20 dropped to 73.6pc, the lowest the since the data series began in 1948. My guess is that this figure exceeds the average for the Great Depression (minus the cruellest year of 1932).
“Corporate America is in a V-shaped recovery,” said Robert Reich, a former labour secretary. “That’s great news for investors whose savings are mainly in stocks and bonds, and for executives and Wall Street traders. But most American workers are trapped in an L-shaped recovery.”



comments?
when we start hearing this from 'overseas' media, what to think?

The UK media seems particularly fixated on the US food stamp issue. It was an independent.co.uk report posted by Mega back in 2008 that first prompted me to put together the chart I have posted from time to time. Back then it was "only" 10% of the population...



Interestingly, while participation in the food stamp program declined along with TANF and SSP-MOE (the latter two more commonly known as "Welfare") after Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, SNAP participation has been rising since 2001, while TANF / SSP-MOE continue to drop.

The percentage of the population in welfare programs is now below where it was in 1960. The welfare reform act made it increasingly difficult to get into those programs, as well as making them only temporary for all but a few cases. More applications are denied each month than approved.