Working Poor: Almost Half Of U.S. Households Live One Crisis From The Bread Line
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/31/working-poor-liquid-asset-poverty_n_1243152.html
What does it mean to be poor?
If it means living at or below the poverty line, then 15 percent of Americans -- some 46 million people -- qualify. But if it means living with a decent income and hardly any savings -- so that one piece of bad luck, one major financial blow, could land you in serious, lasting trouble -- then it's a much larger number. In fact, it's almost half the country.
"The resources that people have -- they are using up those resources," said Jennifer Brooks, director of state and local policy at the Corporation for Enterprise Development, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group. "They're living off their savings. They're at the end of their rope."
The group issued a report today examining so-called liquid asset poverty households -- the people who aren't living below the poverty line, but don't have enough money saved to weather a significant emergency.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Or "bad luck". It's not "bad luck" that your engine throws a rod and you need to get another car (notice I didn't say "new"
. It's not an "unfortunate circumstance" that you get diagnosed with a cancer and need to have medical treatment. Both are somewhat inevitable results of aging, in the first case machinery, in the second, the human body. Viewing these events as "crises" feeds into the narrative that "it's your own fault if you are poor", never mind the system that set it up that way in the first place.
The reason people have no resources to meet these contingencies, is that their contingency fund has been sucked up to add to the wealth at the top. Do you know how much a rainy day fund of $5000 for every American family would detract from the Wall Street bonus pool?