A survey conducted by the US Census Bureau says that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, or at least something like that...
The typical Riverside County household earned $53,508 last year, a 3 percent increase over the inflation-adjusted $51,895 average recorded for 1999, according to the 2006 American Community Survey and 2000 Census.
At the same time -- even as unemployment remained low -- the poverty rate swelled from 8.9 percent in 1999 to 11.7 percent last year in San Diego County and from 10.7 percent to 12.2 percent in Riverside County.
Read the full article here...
http://www.nctimes.com/..../top_stories/1_01_108_28_07.txtThe article goes on to say that the higher poverty rate was caused by illegal aliens pouring into our area.
The federal government's definition of "poverty", for the year 2006, is if they were in a family of four that earned about $20,600 or less.
It's difficult for me to classify them as "impoverished". If these people were to go back to Mexico, then they would be impoverished. But here in the USA, they're doing damn good. They've got free schools and free healthcare. Heck, even if they had to pay for these services, it'd still be 10-times better than what they'd have in Mexico.
These people are hardly suffering while they're here. We're simply evaluating them through our own standards of living.
Perhaps it would have been more accurate to evaluate only American citizens, and see if we truly are getting poorer.
Labels: Illegal-Aliens, Poverty-Index
