poor and rich

Chester County, the wealthiest county in Pennsylvania with a median household income of close to $85,000. In fact, Chester County is very close to being the wealthiest county in the entire nation, according to a report last year in Forbes Magazine that ranked the county as 24th. Last year saw the median price of a house sell at $276,700.In 2008, the average household income in southern Chester County was $85,547, while the median income in all of Pennsylvania is $50,702, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. To make matters worse, southern Chester County has the fastest growing population in Chester County (102,000 residents in 2008) and is projected to hit 113,000 by 2013. Chester County as a whole has more than 500,000 people and has averaged an increase of 7,500 people per year since 2000. And Chester County's Hispanic population has increased 28.8 percent since 2000.

"Right now, it's a landlord's market in Chester County," said Rivera, housing counselor for Alliance for Better Housing.

The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $915 a month, meaning a person must make $8 per hour and work 88 hours a week to afford it, paying no more than 30 percent of gross income on housing. In southern Chester County the majority of migrant workers make minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. For families, it's worse. Three-bedroom apartments average $1,339, meaning one person must work 129 hours a week at $8 an hour, or two people must work 64 hours per week. Throw in daycare costs, which average about $8,060 annually for toddlers, and it's easy to see how even dual-income families earning minimum wage or even several dollars above minimum wage cannot afford to live in Chester County.

Carrie Freeman, executive director of the United Way of Southern Chester County, an organization that provides financial assistance to agencies that help the needy, said there's a severe lack of affordable housing for hard-working, low-income workers in the area. "We have people here living in very substandard housing conditions," she said. "I've been in trailers where plumbing isn't working and sewage is dropping under the trailer. The wires in the light bulbs are dangling from the ceiling. It's an unbelievably bad housing situation."

Substandard living conditions in Chester County aren't limited to any one culture.

Jackie Maas, director of Tick Tock Learning Center in Avondale, said she's seen deplorable living conditions in diverse housholds. "I have African-American and white families that have the same issues relating to poverty," she said. "I know a family renting a trailer and it's infested with cockroaches and rain comes in. They don't have enough money for food. It happens right here. We have children who sleep in inferior accommodations. We had a child two years who slept on tires. There are pockets of poverty in Chester County. It's sad."

Currently, one in 19 households in Chester County is living in poverty, according to the most recent survey performed for the Chester County Department of Community Development. Poverty is defined as an individual with an income of less than $16,350 per year or $23,350 for a family of four. Poverty in Chester County is concentrated in pockets. In the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District, where the median sales price of a home is $453,500, poverty is virtually nonexistent. Travel about a mile south to Kennett, and the face of poverty is evident. There are 586 single-parent families who live in the Kennett School District and nearly 350 families live in mobile homes. Many of those homes have codes violations and substandard living conditions. Single-parent families are hardest hit. A single mother in Chester County with one infant preschool child needs to earn $69,613 yearly to be self-sufficient, according to the most recent survey. Self-sufficiency measures the real costs of meeting basic needs and is meant to assess the costs facing working-age, nondisabled and nonelderly households.

"People I meet every day are just trying to eke out an existence," said Jay Malthaner, executive director of Good Neighbors Inc., a Christian home repair ministry for low-income residents in southern Chester County. "These people are living on the edge and aren't sure where to get help from."

Those earning a low-income often do not own cars. In southern Chester County, in fact, 1,644 households do not own cars. Others take public transportation, which is limited to certain routes, largely along the Route 1 corridor. And still others walk to work. Mike Pia Jr. of Kaolin Mushroom Farm in Kennett Township said about 30 percent of employees walk.

http://dailylocal.com/articles/2011/02/27/news/srv0000010991756.txt?viewmode=default

The ILO Report

In 2006 each US worker produced $63,885 (£31,651) of wealth . In May 2005 the average wage was $37,870

The International Labour Organisation report shows that the productivity gap between the US and most other developed economies continued to widen. The acceleration of productivity growth in the US has outpaced that of many other developed economies. However, Americans work more hours per year than workers in most other developed economies. This is why, measured as value added per hour worked, Norway has the highest labour productivity level (US$ 37.99), followed by the United States (US$ 35.63) and France (US$ 35.08).

The report also highlights that throughout the rest of world ;-

“Hundreds of millions of women and men are working hard and long but without the conditions they need to lift themselves and their families out of poverty; they risk falling deeper into poverty..."

Whereas the unemployed want to work but lack the opportunity to do so, the working poor are working but do not earn enough to escape poverty. 1.3 billion working poor who live with their families on less than US$ 2 per day per family member. Half of all women and men employed are considered vulnerable to poverty and carry a higher risk of being unprotected, without social security and without a voice at work. Over 70 per cent of the workers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are in such vulnerable employment.

CAPITALISM IS WORKING ONLY FOR THE FEW .

American Poverty

American poverty has often featured on this post for the simple reason that the nation that claims to be the richest , the most democratic and the most socially mobile also demonstrates the contradictions of capitalism and how it fails to provide for not just a few but for many .

Latest figures confirm the failure of capitalism

More than one in ten Americans, or 36.5 million people, live in poverty in the United States, with children and blacks the worst hit, an annual report by the US Census Bureau .

12.8 million children under the age of 18, or around one-third of the poor, existed in 2006 on incomes below the threshold used by the Census Bureau to determine who lives in poverty.

Total number of Americans without health coverage had risen by three million to 47 million.

Three times more black people -- 24.3 percent -- lived in poverty than the 8.2 percent of white people who did.

To put the figures in perspective - The number of poor out of the total US population of 302 million was equivalent to the entire state of California , one-and-a-half times the population of Malaysia or nearly everyone in Poland living in poverty.

Analysts argue that economic growth was benefiting only the already-haves, and slammed the reports findings, on children in particular, as unacceptable.
"I looked at the bottom 20 and 30 percent, and income is not rising," Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution think-tank told AFP. "At the very most, I would say the story at the bottom is mixed but I certainly would not say we are improving either income or, certainly not, earnings at the bottom," he said.

Rio - Worse than a War Zone

Not so long after posting this blog about the emerging under-class in the rapidly growing mega-city slums , i now read about this .

Clashes between police and drug traffickers in a slum in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro have left at least 13 people dead , conflicting reports suggested up to 19 people had died. . Guns and grenades were used in the fighting, with armoured vehicles and helicopters backing police units. More than 30 people had been killed and 80 injured since the police first surrounded the slums in northern Rio known as Complexo do Alemao (the German Complex) on 2 May. The German Complex home for 130,000 people consists of 18 shantytowns with names such as Little Farm, Faith Hill and Happy Ending. Most residents earn less than 404 reais ($207) a month, the state's minimum wage. Wednesday's police operation was the biggest to date, triggering fierce fighting for several hours in the slums . Just next door, a smaller Vila Cruzeiro slum has been under police occupation for six weeks, clashes with drug traffickers occurring almost daily. Seventeen people have been killed and 60 -- mostly innocent bystanders -- wounded since May 1st .
Elsewhere in Rio there are plans to ring two slums in Rio de Janeiro with a 10-foot wall to help the security forces control the Rocinha and Vidigal favelas that overlook the city's richest districts and most fashionable beaches. Global Justice described the proposed barrier as "social apartheid"

A 2002 report concluded that more young people below the age of 18 are killed by guns each year in Rio de Janeiro than in many areas of the world formally at war. The study concluded that there are strong similarities between children involved in drug wars in Rio's slums and child soldiers elsewhere in the world. There are estimated to be between 5-6,000 armed children in Rio.

The report details how the gangs employ teenagers to guard their domains.
Sometimes they are even given ranks and called soldiers. The levels of violence are comparable to a war zone. In the last 14 years, for instance, almost 4,000 under-18-year-olds were killed by firearms in Rio alone. That compares, the report says, with just under 500 children killed in the fighting between Palestinians and Israelis in the same period.

The report only covered Rio de Janeiro but there are similar levels of violence in other Brazilian cities. In particular, areas of Sao Paolo have some of the highest murder rates of the hemisphere .

The cause of this recent outbreak of violence between the "haves" and the "have-nots" was the need for the Brazilian government to re-assert control over Rio , in preparation for the Pan-American games on 13 July. Some 5,500 athletes and around 800,000 tourists are expected to visit the city for the games which will , of course , accrue a lot of revenue for the "haves" . About 7,000 troopers from the National Public Security Force will guard the streets, aided by 18,000 state police .