US poverty on track to rise to highest since 1960s

[st louis steve]

US poverty on track to rise to highest since 1960s
By HOPE YEN | Associated Press –WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.
Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.
The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.
Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.
"I grew up going to Hawaii every summer. Now I'm here, applying for assistance because it's hard to make ends meet. It's very hard to adjust," said Laura Fritz, 27, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., describing her slide from rich to poor as she filled out aid forms at a county center. Since 2000, large swaths of Jefferson County just outside Denver have seen poverty nearly double. http://news.yahoo.com/us-poverty-track- ... nance.html

[laney]

I go to the grocery store every two weeks and I nearly faint at the price increases I see every time. I see all these families with children and I am like, "How do they feed them"?

I wonder just how many families are on food assistance programs now. And the ones that are on them, that doesn't buy clothes, household goods, ect. I don't know what people are going to do. And while the grocerie prices keep rising the packages keep shrinking. Does anyone else feel this way?

[GodsStudent]

I go to the grocery store every two weeks and I nearly faint at the price increases I see every time. I see all these families with children and I am like, "How do they feed them"?

I wonder just how many families are on food assistance programs now. And the ones that are on them, that doesn't buy clothes, household goods, ect. I don't know what people are going to do. And while the grocerie prices keep rising the packages keep shrinking. Does anyone else feel this way?

It's not only groceries, it's everything. I have had a business for 20 years now and we still charge the same thing for our services that we did 20 years ago, yet the income doesn't go anywhere near as far as it did back then. With the price of gas and groceries and everything else creeping up, we are constantly having to turn away from things we used to be consumers of. Even movie tickets used to be around 5 bucks. Now, $10.50 .....so......we seldom, if ever, attend movies anymore.