Poverty Line

During the election cycle we tend to ask: What does America mean; where are we going? And then someone decides to check on the Indians to find out the answer, as though Indians represent America's soul hidden in the attic. And of course politicians have long stood next to their "souls" and posed for pictures on the campaign trail. Within the last year, Diane Sawyer and "20/20" did a special on the sorry conditions at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, and the New Yorker featured a grim photo essay on Pine Ridge too. The New York Times published a piece on brutal crime at the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming and another on the deep financial problems at Foxwoods, the Pequot-owned "world's largest" casino in Connecticut.

The recession has hit middle-income and poor families hardest, widening the economic gap between the richest and poorest Americans as rippling job layoffs have ravaged household budgets. The wealthiest 10% of Americans -- those making more than $138,000 each year -- earned 11.4 times the roughly $12,000 made by those living near or below the poverty line in 2008, according to newly released census figures. That ratio was an increase from 11.2 in 2007 and the previous high of 11.22 in 2003.

Differentials in pay, perks and power between CEOs and their workers in this country are very disproportionate. One out of seven people in this country do live under the poverty line, as the article states. It is a sin that UC President Gardner earns $307,900 in addition to all of his benefits, while the UC system is forced to raise student fees by 40% and cut its budget by $300 million. But these facts are only too well known by most people. Time (and space in the editorial section)

"Rising War Over Raising Pay" (Oct. 28) laid out the issues in an evenhanded way, but we would like to clarify a couple of points about the proposed living wage ordinance. The article said that I cited census data showing that 40% of minimum wage workers live below the poverty line. Minimum wage workers are de facto below the poverty line because they make no more than $9,500 per year; the federal poverty line is $15,600. The correct statistic is that nearly 40% of workers in Los Angeles earn less than the poverty line.

The U.S. poverty rate in 1985 registered an overall decline but the poverty rate for America's 18 million Latinos is at a historic high, the Census Bureau said. In the government's latest study on U.S. poverty, "Characteristics of the Population Below the Poverty Level," the bureau said there were 33.1 million Americans living in poverty in 1985, a rate of 14%, slightly lower than the 1984 estimate of 14.4%. The government set the poverty line for a family of four at $10,989 annual income.

Your Feb. 20 article about the L.A. children who can't attend school because they literally have no shoes tore my heart out. Shades of "Angela's Ashes." But L.A. isn't Limerick, Ireland! It is the United States of America! And we live in the richest state in the nation. The humiliation the children feel because they have to wear rags and go barefoot is almost worse than the hunger. How can we possibly cheer our booming economy while 72% of our children live below the poverty line? I wonder, I wonder!

The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that almost 1 in 6 Americans was living below the federal poverty line in 2010, the highest percentage since 1993 and the largest number in at least five decades. The same day, the head of the Congressional Budget Office told a newly created deficit-reduction committee that the federal government couldn't sustain the services it had been providing for decades without major reductions in other spending, significant increases in taxes or both. As distressing as those presentations were, they merely reinforced what is already common knowledge: The economy is in terrible shape, and the federal government can't afford to do much to help.

A local talk radio host called recently wanting to know "where those numbers" came from. My agency was using L.A. poverty statistics to promote the Weekend to End Poverty, an anti-poverty event. He thought they were so outrageous that he couldn't believe them. Unfortunately, 750,000 kids in Los Angeles not only believe those numbers, they live them. Yes, there are three-quarters of a million poor children in the city of angels. And those figures were calculated before Sept.

The number of people living in poverty declined in 1984, the first significant improvement since 1976, but the total is still much worse than when the Reagan Administration took office, the Census Bureau said today. The government's annual report on poverty showed 14.4% of the American population--33.7 million --below the official poverty line in 1984, a major reduction of 1.8 million people from the 15.3% proportion in 1983.

Robert Kuttner criticizes the Reagan Administration for its proposed welfare reforms in his article (Editorial Pages, Nov. 3), "A New, Cynical Assault on the Poor." He purports that the federal government will eliminate all social safety-net programs and establish in their place one comprehensive cash-transfer program. While he totally concerns himself with the prospect of a decrease in funds allocated to the welfare state, he fails to analyze the benefits of such a program. The cash-transfer reforms would empower the poor to make decisions regarding their own lives and their own welfare.