SO what's the market based solution for this?
THE WORKING POOR
Sun Apr 25, 9:40 AM ET Add Top Stories - Chicago Tribune to My Yahoo!
By Tim Jones Tribune national correspondent
…Theresa and Rocky Ware toil in the ranks of the working poor, a growing category of millions of Americans who play by the rules of the working world and still can't make ends meet.
After tapping friends and family, maxing out their credit cards and sufficiently swallowing their pride, at least 23 million Americans stood in food lines last year--many of them the working poor, according to America's Second Harvest, the Chicago-based hunger relief organization. The surge in food demand is fueled by several forces--job losses, expired unemployment benefits, soaring health-care and housing costs, and the inability of many people to find jobs that match the income and benefits of the jobs they lost.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank, reported recently that 43 million people are living in low-income working families with children. Other government data show the number of people living below the official poverty line grew by more than 3.5 million from 2000 to 2002, to 34.6 million. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture (news - web sites) reported that the number of Americans who don't know where their next meal will come from--categorized as "food insecure"--jumped from 31 million to 35 million between 1999 and 2002.
"The reach of the economic slowdown has really pulled in a lot of folks who never expected to be poor," said Stacy Dean, director of food stamp policy for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "What you see now is families turning to private relief for what often is a very small amount of help."
"This is not just a function of unemployment. A larger percentage of Americans are working poor, and the numbers have been growing for nine years," said Robert Forney, CEO of America's Second Harvest. "This could be the low-water mark for the economy, but for a whole lot of Americans--40 million of them--the option of [earning] a living wage and benefits? Forget it."
