{"id":277562,"date":"2016-11-06T00:53:06","date_gmt":"2016-11-05T23:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=277562"},"modified":"2016-11-06T02:46:57","modified_gmt":"2016-11-06T01:46:57","slug":"poverty-rose-96-u-s-house-districts-obamas-presidency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/poverty-rose-96-u-s-house-districts-obamas-presidency\/","title":{"rendered":"Poverty Rose in 96% of U.S. House Districts, During Obama\u2019s Presidency"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/a><\/p>\n

On November 3rd, Morning Consult\u2019s Jon Reid bannered, “Poverty on the Rise in Nearly All House Districts\u201d<\/span><\/a> and he reported that, “A\u00a0Brookings Institution study<\/span><\/a>, released less than a week before the election, shows that the number of people living in\u00a0poverty has increased in 96 percent of congressional districts between 2000 and 2010-2014.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

That finding fits along with others, such as that the economic \u2018recovery\u2019 after Barack Obama came into the White House in 2009, went virtually entirely to the very rich.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the top experts on wealth-inequality in the United States, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, American wealth-inequality soared faster during 2003-2013 than ever since the period 1923-1928, right before the Great Crash of 1929. Their study\u00a0\u201cWealth Inequality in the United States Since 1913\u201d<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0published in the May 2016 Quarterly Journal of Economics<\/i>, reported that ever since the remilitarization of the U.S. from the 2003 invasion of Iraq onward (and continuing under Obama, with boosts to NATO, and invasions such as of Libya in 2011), the percentage of total wealth owned by the richest .1% of American families (those families whose net worth was $111 million or higher) rose from 15% of the total in 2003, to 22% of the total in 2013, and this means that the percentage going to the lower 99.9% declined from 85% down to 78% during that time. <\/span><\/p>\n

America\u2019s soaring inequality during the George W. Bush Presidency continued unaffected by the 2009 change of Presidential Administrations.<\/span><\/p>\n

In fact: whereas Bush’s stock-market plunge in 2006-2008 hit the richest the hardest, Obama\u2019s coming into office restored their lost wealth rapidly, while the wealth of the bottom 90% of the U.S. population flatlined throughout his Presidency. The Obama economic recovery was no recovery at all for the bottom 90% of Americans.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not just wealth but personal income also soared for the super-rich under Obama. The \u201cShare of income earned by top 0.1% wealth holders\u201d soared throughout Obama\u2019s Presidency, at least up through 2012, which is the latest figure shown there for that. So: at least the bottom 90% of U.S. families have experienced none of the Obama economic recovery; what \u2018recovery\u2019 from the \u2018recession’ there is, went only to the very rich.<\/span><\/p>\n

Findings such as those are consistent with, and might help to explain, the finding in the new Brookings study, that 96% of House districts have experienced increased poverty under Obama. The nation\u2019s poor have gotten political rhetoric, but not much else, and the middle class also have received no net benefit, under Obama.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse On November 3rd, Morning Consult\u2019s Jon Reid bannered, “Poverty on the Rise in Nearly All House Districts\u201d and he reported that, “A\u00a0Brookings Institution study, released less than a week before the election, shows that the number of people living in\u00a0poverty has increased in 96 percent of congressional districts between 2000 and 2010-2014.\u201d That […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":277565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[115,698,398,545,49,964],"class_list":{"0":"post-277562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-hillary-clinton","10":"tag-income","11":"tag-inequality","12":"tag-usa-news","13":"tag-wealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}