RebelCapitalist: Financial Information for the Rest of Us

This is American Capitalism

Dec 21, 2010 | By: Mr_Blue | Tags: capitalism, american capitalism

This morning I read two very disturbing reports. Both are an indictment of our economic system. But you won’t hear that in our traditional media.

The first report is from the Working Poor Families Project - here is the press release. The Working Poor Families Project studied 2009 U.S. Census data and found that 1 and 3 working families are low income and near poverty. Here are some of the other key finding:

+ 10 Million low-income working families in the U.S. that’s an increase of nearly a quarter million from 2008.
+ 45 Million people, including 22 Million children live in low-income working families.
+ 43% of working families with at least one minority parent were low-income, nearly twice the proportion of white working families (22%).

Here’s an interesting story on this report - via Huffington Post.

The next report was from CNNMoney.com:

14% of the population is on food stamps. That’s 43 Million people or 1 in 7 Americans.

Sure, these horrible reports can be attributed to the Great Recession but why isn’t the Great Recession attributed to our capitalist economic system. The global financial crisis should be an indictment of our capitalist system. After all Wall Street bankers didn’t have to go hog wild in the mortgage market. And because of their greed and incompetence the rest of us are paying the price. But Wall Street was bailed out and all is well with them - 2010 bonuses are expected to top last years.

Isn’t capitalism just grand?