{"id":64916,"date":"2014-11-11T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2014-11-11T14:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=64916"},"modified":"2014-12-21T14:00:06","modified_gmt":"2014-12-21T19:00:06","slug":"voters-are-reasonably-disappointed-in-the-democratic-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/11\/11\/voters-are-reasonably-disappointed-in-the-democratic-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Voters are Reasonably Disappointed in the Democratic Party"},"content":{"rendered":"

Electing Republicans will certainly not improve things, but it is hard to blame people for feeling that the Democratic Party has abandoned them.<\/p>\n

President Obama had hoped that recent signs of economic strength would benefit Democrats in the recently completed election. \u00a0Job creation has picked up, the unemployment rate is falling, and growth is stronger. Yet,\u00a0most Americans have not enjoyed any real gains during this so-called expansionary period.<\/p>\n

The following two charts highlight this on the national level.\u00a0 The\u00a0first<\/a>\u00a0shows how income gains made during the expansion period have been divided between the top 1% and everyone else. \u00a0 There is not a lot to say except that there is not a lot of sharing going on.<\/p>\n

\"1<\/a><\/p>\n

The\u00a0second<\/a>\u00a0shows trends in real median household net worth. \u00a0While declines in median net worth are not surprising in a recession, what is noteworthy is that median net worth has continued to decline during this expansion. \u00a0Adjusted for inflation the average household is poorer now than in 1989.<\/p>\n

\"2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Oregon provides a good example of state trends. \u00a0The chart\u00a0below<\/a>\u00a0shows that the poverty rate in Oregon is actually higher now than it was during the recession.<\/p>\n

\"1<\/a><\/p>\n

The poverty rate for children is even higher. In 2013, 21.6 percent of all Oregon children lived in families in poverty.<\/p>\n

And, not surprisingly, communities of color\u00a0experience<\/a>\u00a0poverty rates far higher than non-Hispanic whites.<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

More promising is movement building to directly advance community interests. \u00a0One example: voters in five states\u00a0passed measures<\/a>\u00a0to boost minimum wages. \u00a0 Another was the\u00a0successful effort<\/a>\u00a0in Richmond, California to elect progressives to the city council over candidates heavily supported by Chevron, which hoped to dominate the council and overcome popular opposition to its environmental and health and safety policies.<\/p>\n

Originally posted at Reports from the Economic Front<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>Cross-posted at Pacific Standard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nMartin Hart-Landsberg is a professor of economics at Lewis and Clark College<\/a>. You can follow him at Reports from the Economic Front<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Electing Republicans will certainly not improve things, but it is hard to blame people for feeling that the Democratic Party has abandoned them. President Obama had hoped that recent signs of economic strength would benefit Democrats in the recently completed election. \u00a0Job creation has picked up, the unemployment rate is falling, and growth is stronger. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1853,"featured_media":64923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[223,29,36,12498,778,85,285],"class_list":["post-64916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-childrenyouth","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-economics-great-recession","tag-intersectionality","tag-politics","tag-raceethnicity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2014\/11\/24.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64916"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65488,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64916\/revisions\/65488"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}