the strong and the robust

NYT reports that the U.S. Poverty Rate Rose for the fourth consecutive year.

The census's annual report card on the nation's economic well-being showed that a four-year-old expansion had still not done much to benefit many households. Median pretax income, $44,389, was at its lowest point since 1997, after
inflation.

Maybe this "expansion" is called rich profiteering? That the strengths of a nation's stock market doesn't reflect it's overall economic health? That the policies of the Bush administration continue to devalue the poor, workers, and the "middle class" ? Nope, according to the admin:

The poverty rate "is the last, lonely trailing indicator of the business cycle," said Elizabeth Anderson, chief of staff in the economics and statistics administration of the Commerce Department.

The last indicator? Oh, I forgot: trickle down! So the poverty indicator is just measuring how tiny the last droplet of water that reaches most Americans is. There's a whole lake that the rich are hob nobbing on right now. They have boats and expensive champagne. I feel reassured.

In more economic news, your mommy's pay falls off every time she gives birth. Because employer's tend to track women with children into less well paid positions, women with children earn "from 3 to 10 percent less per child compared to employed women with children." Considering that women continue to make 3/4 of men's pay in the U.S. workforce (fyi the gap is back on the rise again), the fact that they are punished further for choosing to reproduce (while men are often rewarded with tonier positions because they have "a family to provide for") might account for why women are so much more likely to be poor.