Recession Gets Worse For Main Street

The government and many pundits have been trying to tell us that things are getting better in America.   Obviously they have been looking at Wall Street, where record bonuses are being given out, and not at Main Street.   While the richest Americans, who are fixing to receive even more through a continuance of massive tax cuts, are doing very well, the rest of America is not.

For most of America the recession is far from over.   There are millions of Americans that are still unemployed or underemployed -- around 17-18%.   And while a very few minimum wage jobs are created, good paying jobs continue to be eliminated or shipped overseas.   It will probably be years before the folks on Main Street can start coming out of this recession (which we will be calling a depression before long).

But the lack of jobs is only one aspect of the economic savagery being experienced by many Americans.   The fact is that an ever-growing number of families are unable to feed themselves without help from food banks and government food stamps (and at least 20% of America's children live in these families).

According to the Department of Agriculture, who controls the food stamp program, increasing numbers of people are applying for food stamps.   In September, there were 42.9 million people collecting food stamps -- about 14% of the total population (a 1.2% rise over August, and a 16.2% rise over this time last year).

Here in Texas, where our Republican leadership tells us the economy is good, we have about 3,837,839 people receiving food stamps -- 15.5% of the population (and a 24.6% rise over last year).   That doesn't sound too good to me.   Here are the states that have 15% or more of their population on food stamps (in alphabetical order):

Alabama..........849,785 (18%)
Arizona..........1,044,410 (15.8%)
Arkansas..........483,309 (16.7%)
District of Columbia..........128,759 (21.5%)
Florida..........2,881,019 (15.5%)
Georgia..........1,693,976 (17.2%)
Kentucky..........804,538 (18.6%)
Louisiana..........864,112 (19.2%)
Maine..........237,530 (18%)
Michigan..........1,884,751 (18.9%)
Mississippi..........601,432 (20.4%)
Missouri..........928,183 (15.5%)
New Mexico..........390,154 (19.4%)
North Carolina..........1,476,207 (15.7%)
Oklahoma..........613,531 (16.6%)
Oregon..........738,702 (19.3%)
South Carolina..........832,651 (18.3%)
Tennessee..........1,267,478 (20.1%)
Texas..........3,837,839 (15.5%)
Washington..........1,006,518 (15.1%)
West Virginia..........343,764 (18.9%)

Those are some shameful statistics (and 22 more states are in double digits).   Yet the Republicans tell us they can't help these hurting Americans because it would increase the deficit -- but they don't mind increasing the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars to help the rich (the only people who don't need help).   Does that make any sense?