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# Foreshadowing the Year 2021: Half of America Facing Poverty
July 13 2020
Written by Paul Buchheit.
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**PERSPECTIVE**-Volunteers speak with a woman while boxes of food for the needy from the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida are being packed in her car during a drive through event at City of Destiny church.
The demand for food continues in the Orlando, Florida area due to the large numbers of service workers and others who have become unemployed due to the coronavirus pandemic. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
There is something perverse about an economic system in which the [stock market](http://www.gurufocus.com/stock-market-valuations.php) keeps climbing while people are dying. And in which [20 individuals](https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#d49967c3d788) can own as much wealth as the entire [bottom half](http://www.youdeservefacts.org/GWD_2019-14.xls) of the population. For the great majority of Americans without a share of the stock market, and for those who can't work from home, the pandemic is adding the prospect of a financial collapse to all their other concerns.
**Half of America was** [**In or Near Poverty**](https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/11/05/evidence-pours-poverty-getting-much-worse-america) **BEFORE the Pandemic**
Anywhere from [half](https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2020/02/19/financial-survey-debt-loans-credit/#6bb7e0f31578) to [three-quarters](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/09/shutdown-highlights-that-4-in-5-us-workers-live-paycheck-to-paycheck.html) of Americans are living [paycheck-to-paycheck](https://www.aboutschwab.com/modernwealth2019). The [American Psychological Association](https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2017/state-nation.pdf) recently estimated that 62% of us are stressed by money issues. According to the Credit Suisse [2019 Global Wealth Databook](https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/about-us/research/publications/global-wealth-databook-2019.pdf), 34 million American adults are among *the world's poorest* 10%—because of debt.
But poverty is not just a number. We can skip past official measures that are [based on](https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL33069.pdf) an outdated 1950s cost of living. The World Bank [defines](https://gsdrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/PovertyInequalityTG.pdf) poverty as "pronounced deprivation in well-being." That describes the millions of American workers in health care and personal care and food service and transportation and hospitality and retail who are now risking their lives.
There is poverty in the diminishing quality of life for Americans who are [unable to pay](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/07/americans-healthcare-medical-costs) for medical treatment during years of declining health, and instead turn to life-threatening [opioid](https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/how-can-policy-address-the-opioid-crisis-and-despair-in-america/) painkillers. Poverty is the stress of delinquent [rent and mortgage](https://www.newyorkfed.org/newsevents/news/research/2018/rp180517) payments; the steady [decline](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/vanishing-middle-class) of jobs that pay enough to support a family; the deadening [impact](https://theconversation.com/distress-status-wars-and-immoral-behaviour-the-psychological-impacts-of-inequality-75183) of financial instability on physical and mental well-being. The [United Nations](http://undocs.org/A/HRC/38/33/ADD.1) [describes](https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22533&LangID=E) America as a nation near the bottom of the developed world in safety net support and economic mobility, with the highest infant mortality rate in the developed world, the world's highest incarceration rate, and the highest obesity levels. Low-income Americans are often surrounded by [food deserts](https://www.voanews.com/usa/pandemic-worsens-food-deserts-235-million-americans), with insufficient access to [clean water](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/08/14/63-million-americans-exposed-unsafe-drinking-water/564278001/) and sanitation, and with [pollution levels](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/19/climate/us-air-pollution-trump.html) that have been compared to [third-world](http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-countries-with-the-highest-pollution-deaths-mortality-rates-2017-10/#10-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-123942-18-of-all-deaths-1) countries. The extreme level of inequality in the U.S. has triggered a surge in drug and alcohol and suicide ["deaths of despair"](https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/deaths-of-despair-covid19-american-inequality-by-anne-case-and-angus-deaton-2020-06) that continue to increase among poor Americans during the COVID-19 crisis.
**Big Tech Is Getting Richer**
In March, 2020 the [market capitalization](https://ycharts.com/companies/GOOGL/market_cap) for Big Tech (Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook) was $4.1 trillion. In early July it was $6.6 trillion. A 60 percent increase in under four months! No one has profited more from 75 years of [taxpayer input](https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/27/no-were-not-all-together-how-super-rich-are-cheating-america) than these companies. But instead of supporting new jobs they're preparing their employees for a [slowdown](https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2020/04/17/tim-cook-apple-employee-all-staff-coronavirus.html), while smaller tech companies are going right ahead with [layoffs](https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-coronavirus-technology-layoffs/).
**How It's Getting Worse for Over Half of America**
The pandemic is primarily [impacting](https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/19/us-address-impact-covid-19-poor) low-income communities and people of color, cutting into their incomes, threatening their futures. Their job situations were precarious even before the virus hit. As [Brookings](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/04/28/our-employment-system-is-failing-low-wage-workers-how-do-we-make-it-more-resilient/) notes, "A lack of labor market protections exacerbates these workers' insecurity...Fifty-three million Americans, 44 percent of the labor force, earn low wages." Recent changes in minimum wage laws could all be for nought. "One month could wipe out 10 years of progress," [says](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-will-supercharge-american-inequality/608419/) Mark Muro of the Brookings Institution. And the misery will likely continue. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta [reports](https://www.frbatlanta.org/blogs/macroblog/2020/07/08/firms-do-not-anticipate-regaining-pre-covid-employment-levels-through-2021) that firms do not anticipate regaining pre-COVID employment levels in 2021.
A Columbia University study [predicts](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/upshot/coronavirus-prediction-rise-poverty.html) a "coming poverty epoch, rather than an episode"; although the university's Center on Poverty [added](https://www.povertycenter.columbia.edu/news-internal/coronavirus-cares-act-forecasting-poverty-estimates) that the effects could be mitigated by the federal CARES (Coronavirus Relief) Act. The suffering will be global, and long-term. The World Bank [expects](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/elevated-extreme-poverty-to-persist-through-2021-world-bank/articleshow/76300465.cms) extreme poverty levels to persist throughout the coming year.
The pandemic has caused chaos in the American job market, but you wouldn't know it from free-market groups who [insist](https://fee.org/articles/technology-creates-more-jobs-than-it-destroys/) that "we will be just fine." Both the [World Economic Forum](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/09/18/machines-will-create-million-more-jobs-than-they-displace-by-world-economic-forum-says/%3FoutputType=amp) and [Dell Technologies](https://www.delltechnologies.com/content/dam/delltechnologies/assets/perspectives/2030/pdf/SR1940_IFTFforDellTechnologies_Human-Machine_070517_readerhigh-res.pdf) assure us that advanced computer technologies will drive the future job market.
But this is not the Industrial Revolution. Today's machines are doing our *thinking* for us. The creative work that remains is being done by fewer and fewer people. Most people are not technology-oriented, and they're not able to work with AI and iPhone apps and analytics.
**Hope for the Future**
It has already become clear that large-scale, coordinated federal government [assistance](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/21/us/politics/coronavirus-poverty.html) makes a big difference. We are going to need a guaranteed income. Just a two-percent tax on total financial wealth would generate enough revenue to provide nearly a [$14,000 annual stipend](https://www.youdeservefacts.org/20200427_Analysis.txt) to every American household (including those of the richest families).
Or [guaranteed jobs](https://www.routledge.com/Disposable-Americans-Extreme-Capitalism-and-the-Case-for-a-Guaranteed/Buchheit/p/book/9781315616803). Employment is waiting in long-neglected fields like social services. The work chosen by freed-up Americans may be entrepreneurial, as newfound incomes unleash talents that were previously suppressed by personal financial concerns. It could potentially take highly creative forms, as in the 1930s, when the Works Progress Administration hired thousands of artists and actors and musicians to help sustain the cultural needs of the nation.
The one certainty is that many of the ill effects of poverty will be relieved if people are given the opportunities that a rich nation can easily provide.
***(***[***Paul Buchheit***](https://www.amazon.com/Disposable-Americans-Capitalism-Guaranteed-Interventions/dp/1138671762/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485178598&sr=1-1&keywords=Disposable+Americans+Paul+Buchheit) *is an advocate for social and economic justice, and the author of numerous papers on economic inequality and cognitive science. He was recently named one of 300 Living Peace and Justice Leaders and Models. He is the author of "*[***Disposable Americans: Extreme Capitalism and the Case for a Guaranteed Income***](https://www.amazon.com/Disposable-Americans-Capitalism-Guaranteed-Interventions/dp/1138671762/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485178598&sr=1-1&keywords=Disposable+Americans+Paul+Buchheit)*" (2017). Contact email: paul (at)* [*youdeservefacts.org.*](http://youdeservefacts.org) *Posted first at CommonDreams.org)*
*-cw*
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