By Jaime Ortega Simo.
Economic Disparities on the rise.
According to the Census Bureau in the last decade the number of people living bellow poverty increased from 31.6 million in 2000 to 46.2 million in 2010.
The gap between the poverty line has increased and it could get worse if the right policies are not applied.
“It’s staggering,” said in a phone conversation Feb. 8 by Lane Vanderslice, editor for the World Hunger Organization.
“One in seven people in the U.S. reaches the poverty line,” Vanderslice said. “Since 2007 the poverty was about 12.5%, the base line was 2.6%, a 20% increase of the national poverty level.”
As for Ohio Vanderslice said that the unemployment rate in Ohio went from 5% to 3% in February 2007 to 10.6% in November 2009. The decline went down only 1.6% in December 2011.
For Vanderslice the economic upheaval and disparity within the wealth gap was caused by the recession in 2008, the bust of the housing bubble, and the exportation of jobs overseas.
“The line of unemployment is dropped and the issue of supporting jobs for a long time for the middle class has been hallowed,” Vanderslice said. “Well paid jobs are much harder to get.”
Vanderslice reiterated that the gap between rich and poor is increasing and jobs are being shipped overseas.
“There has also been a particularly big shift in the percentage of income nationally attributed to the rich,” and he added, “Rich are living on their wealth, diversifying their portfolios and investing overseas.”
Lucia Dun, Professor of applied economics at The Ohio State University, said in a phone conversation Feb. 8, “The gap is widening and the money is going to the top hands.”
“A major implication in poverty is that the health care of people is affecting people’s quality of life,” Dun said.
For Dun, the emerging privatized sector is not responsible for the economic gap between rich and poor, but political instability is. Therefore, in order to cure the problem, education levels need to grow in the U.S. now as education is going to be harder to access in the future.
“Education needs to be more affordable,” Dun said. “People need to get back to the workforce.”
Andrew Fieldhouse, a policy analyst for the Economic Policy Institute said in an e-mail Feb. 8, “Recently, the increasing concentration of capital income at the top if the earnings distribution has been the biggest driver of income inequality, followed by changes in tax policy.”
Fieldhouse believes that the best solution for the gap disparities is to raise the revenue and equalize income levels.
“Equalizing the tax treatment of ordinary income and capital income would substantially advance both objectives,” he said.
“Comprehensive tax reform will have to raise more revenue and restore a greater degree of progressivity to the tax code, so that effective tax rates continue to rise with ability to pay,” Fieldhouse said.
