Like that last line. The rest of us us have become sharecroppers on corporate plantations. That is a great way of saying 70% of all workers are underpaid. 

The news has top executives getting paid $17 million or $2 to $3 million a year. How can any one be worth that much money? Then the rest of us hardly earn enough to pay our rent?

I wonder if in this great recession, a lid was put on wages at $1 million and the rest went to food banks, Housing Programs, would this world be better?  I Think we would be out of this recession within a year.

Even if just people on disability were given $400 extra dollars to work with for 6 months, the land would be back on its way to standing on it economic feet.

Like many  of you out there, I am not a mathematician. But I know enough to know if welfare mothers the disabled and the working poor got half the bail out that Banks got, America would be great. 

Depression veterans had to (mostly) die off before we repeated the mistakes of the Roaring 20's.

Both senior citizens and the disabled (on Social Security) have taken a series of hits in recent years, and poverty has increased significantly among this segment of the population.

One issue that isn't "politically correct" to discuss, but a reality for older Americans, is the extreme tobacco tax. Most smokers are over the age of 50, many are low-income, and they grew up in an era when we still believed people should have freedom of choice. (Note: To stem the arguement before it starts, no, smoking is not a public health risk, due to stringent smoking restrictions and the fact that so few smoke. The most carcinogenic smoke is the kind with oil particles -- from motor vehicles, not cigarets. It's our cars that are melting polar ice, destroying the rain forests, irrepeairably damaging the ecology, putting all life on Earth in very real danger. Not cigarets.)

Under 20% of US adults smokes, so they have no voice. It's "common knowledge" that tobacco companies are all-powerful, yet they have been powerless to stem the tax hikes, and have not been allowed to publicly dispute claims that equate a cigaret with a nuclear bomb.

All of that said, consider: The cost of 6 oz. of loose tobacco soared from $16 to $38 this year alone, all of it going to gov,presumably for healthier endeavors, like permanent war. (Note: Tobacco taxes are NOT, and never were,  earmarked for health care.) Even if you don't smoke, you might have a car, which is draining your income just as much. This is apparently how government recoups Social Security payment.

2010 will be the second time in recent years when Social Security recipients will have no cost-of-living increase, as basic consumer costs continue to rise.

Getting a job is a hard choice because it can mean taking a job from a young person who desperately needs it in our post-welfare era, and after 30+ years of massive corporate welfare has been used to move hundreds of thousands of US jobs to foreign countries.  They have children; do I have the right to supplement my income so that I can eat better, maybe get some new clothes, when so many young families are ending up homeless, unable to feed their children adequately?  I do not.

Virtually all of our budget goes into two things: War and "tax relief" for corporations and the wealthy, still on the long-disproved trickle-down theory. Meanwhile, poverrty rises, the infrastruction deteriorates. Do we have what it takes to demand a reversal of this, to start investing in this country and the American people, and to put (gasp!) real rules on corporate welfare?

Everything in Leigh Graham'sarticle and the comments is evidence we have been living in a flawed economic and social model for the last several decades. I am fortunate to remember a time when the older generation and their wisdom acquired form experience was respected.

We used economic protectionism to prosper communities. Everyday life things were produced and sold in the local economy, kept money in the community, and turned or multiplied in the community involving more and more people making a living. The old rule of thumb was ,"A dollar turning in the community would pass through the hands of over 6 people before it left the community". In other words, over 6 people would make a living off a dollar turning in the community. Today dollars are leaving communities and the USA and domestic poverty is increasing.

With great respect to Leigh Graham's credentials, I would like to hear an evaluation from her on the effects of money and jobs leaving the US. I question if the true effect of the trade imbalance is actually 6 times the actual dollar amount.

Yes you are right our current Povertry Level IS delusional.

And millionaires are getting breaks, in taxes. But the Cost studies shows we are spending more money unwisely because the people in power do not Understand it cost less to cure poverty and homelessness then to keep homelessness. Gee in the early 30's their were hobos, Today they are Homeless, Different nouns same actions same pain. 

DH In Maine some of the tobacco money goes go into Health care.  I think we are, exactly what it takes to move America into a day where we share earthly goods.  We will need the financial backing of the middle class living off of our hard work they say monkeys can, do-but they cant it will little matter if Prices goes down or wages go up and price stays pat.

I think human kind can get over their greed and insecurity. We already have a group who knows how to fix poverty. Ask anyone who robbed Peter to pay Paul, all it take is more money to those at the bottom. 

This is what I am going to tell students from the 50 states which will be meeting at Chicago this coming week end.

And our government continues to send $36B of our Taxdollars overseas in "foreign aid" that the lobbyists and big corporations get rich off of.