Poverty Rate Has Climbed then Remained Steady Under Obama

"Look, I can conjure light with my hands, but I cannot solve all of the poor's problems because of greed, Republicans, Israel, racism, Bush, and some obscure YouTube video. Otherwise folks everywhere would be living the good life."

But no one much cares. Obama and the Democrats now make their appeals to the middle-class, because they believe the poor are in their back pocket-- especially with the voting irregularities in poor districts. So give them bread (SNAP) and circuses, and forget them. Now the Dems can concentrate on bringing the middle-class under their heel-- I mean in the federal government's fold-- with ObamaCare and EPA regulations which will cause the costs of electricity to go through the roof, thus increasing production and transportation costs for goods you find at the store.

Oh, and what's a gallon of gas going for today? That used to be an issue when Bush was president, but I guess now we just have to be stifle oil refineries' output to fight global warming.

From the NRO piece by Mona Charen:

The great advantage of being a liberal/progressive in America is that you are always judged on your intentions (or stated intentions) and not on results. While the pundits are swooning for Piketty and Warren, may we have even a moment’s pause to consider how well Obama’s brand of progressivism has done for the poor and middle class? 

Poverty has increased under Mr. Obama’s watch. It ticked up during the recession, which is to be expected and was obviously not a result of Obama’s policies. But after the recession ended, and after the first much-vaunted “recovery summer” (2010) and then the second (2011), poverty continued to climb. The poverty rate has now been stuck at 15 percent for three consecutive years. This is a 50-year high. Enrollment in the food-stamp program (SNAP) has increased by 39 percent. 

So there are more Americans living in poverty under President Obama than under his predecessor. If he were a Republican, this reality would be widely acknowledged. It’s better to be a Democrat.  

Now, how is the class to whom the president so frequently panders doing? Jeffrey Anderson of The Weekly Standard looked at Census Bureau data and found that typical American household income has not only dropped during Obama’s tenure, it has declined more since the end of the Great Recession than it did during the downturn. Real inflation-adjusted income for the median household fell 1.8 percent during the recession. It fell 4.4 percent during the recovery.

Obamanomics' redistribution in action! But holding Obama accountable to the consequences of his policies is unfair and racist... or something. Besides Obama is a complete success. Just ask Obama cheerleader Matt Yglesias.

 Democrats know only one song, and it goes: Let’s make more people dependent upon government. They’re crooning it vapidly now in anticipation of an Elizabeth Warren candidacy or a Piketty tax in which the treasures of the George Soroses and Warren Buffetts of the world (oh, sorry, my mistake; they’re actually drooling over the fortunes of the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson) will be widely distributed. 

But redistribution doesn’t bring prosperity. Look around you. Obama has raised taxes on the rich several times (some taxes are buried in Obamacare). We spend seven of every ten federal dollars on sending checks to the poor and the middle class. Under Obama, the disability rolls have exploded, removing people from the world of work. Labor-force participation rates have declined steeply, and while the administration has blamed Baby Boom retirements, the percentage of adults age 25–54 in the workforce has declined as well. More than twice as many people have joined the ranks of the disabled under SSDI as have gotten jobs since 2009. According to the 2012 Social Security trustees report, SSDI may be out of funds as early as 2015. 

About 25 percent of the poor in America are working. Only about 2.9 percent work full time. Government largesse can keep people from destitution, but it cannot provide a ladder out of poverty. Only jobs can do that. [emphasis mine]

But hey, let's remember that only racists call for jobs to be created for the poor. And also remember job creation is all just a capitalist plot to get a cheap labor force. The only true freedom from capitalist serfdom is to be dependent on the government's largesse. Everyone knows that...