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Indy708

08/26/01 9:54 PM

#3253 RE: Meme #3252

Meme- Re: US Poverty.

>>"What...did you hear something...wait...yes...that's it...I distinctly hear the theme from "Rocky" playing in the distance. I'm so glad I'm appropriately dressed in little jogging shorts. I'm going to do a lap around my computer. <VBG>"<<

Egads, Madame Meme. Is that the sound of hair growing on your lovely, "White Shoulders", I hear and why do you reek with the odor of testosterone? <G>


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Neuromancer

08/26/01 11:24 PM

#3254 RE: Meme #3252

Re: Neuro-Meme-U.S. Poverty

What...did you hear something...wait...yes...that's it...I distinctly hear the theme from "Rocky" playing in the distance. I'm so glad I'm appropriately dressed in little jogging shorts.

Oh pee-shaw Meme. I'd get bundled up were I you since Hell is surely freezing over when I admit defeat. I was just trying to get the little WEAC turtle to peek out of his shell and open up a dialogue. But, alas, there he remains... upturned and slowly dying in the fullness of the afternoon sun.

Regarding your CNN puff piece. Here, from the copious mouth of Robert B. Reich himself:

Labor secretary Robert B. Reich said in a speech recently that the US economy has entered a period of healthy expansion but an expansion occurring “at the expense of the workers propelling it”.

Reich said that “ominous forces” have physically divided the country, leaving an “overclass” in the safety of the elite suburbs, an “underclass quarantined in surroundings that are unspeakably bleak, and often violent” and a new “anxious class” trapped “in the frenzy of effort it takes to preserve their standing” as more and more families try to patch together two and sometimes more pay cheques to meet their basic needs. Reich went on to describe widening gaps in income, health care and pensions, which he said are spurring the “disintegration” of the middle class.


http://jinx.sistm.unsw.edu.au/~greenlft/1994/167/167p19.htm

OK, so the quote was a little older than the puff piece and most of its data is from the 80's. So here are some more current stats:

In constant 1996 dollars, here's how the figures shape up, according to Census Bureau data:

Between 1980 and 1989, household income for the poorest one-fifth of families rose from $8,547 annually to $8,780.

By 1996, it had sunk back to $8,596.

Meanwhile, the annual income of the richest fifth of the nation rose from $87,797 in 1980 to $115,514 in 1996.

In other words, the wealthiest people were making 10.3 times more than the poorest quintile of households in 1980 -- but 13.4 times as much in 1996.


http://www.ncpa.org/pd/economy/pdeco/dec97nnn.html


OK. That makes two of my articles to your one.

Do I win?