Category: Poverty & income gap
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Debt Bondage Update
by James A. Bacon As student loan debt passed the $1.3 trillion mark, 43% of the roughly 22 million Americans with student loans were not making their loan payments, according to new numbers published by the U.S. Department of Education. About 3.6 million borrowers were in default on $56 billion in student debt as of Jan. 1, meaning they…
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Demographic Mystery Almost Solved
by James A. Bacon And now for an answer to the fascinating question posed by Hamilton Lombard on the StatChat blog: why African-Americans living in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware have the highest median incomes anywhere in the United States (see “A Demographic Mystery“)…. Ultimately, he says, the answer can be traced to the history of slavery…
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A Demographic Mystery
The median income for African-Americans among the 50 states is highest in Maryland, second highest in Delaware and third highest in Virginia. The flip side of the coin is that the counties with the lowest African-American poverty rates are overwhelmingly clustered in the Mid-Atlantic, as can be seen in the map above. What’s going on?…
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Fed Theft Update: $749 Billion from Bank Depositors
Federal Reserve Bank suppression of interest rates has cost bank depositors $749 billion in interest income on savings accounts, CDs, and money market accounts over the past six years, according to Richard Barrington with MoneyRates.com. Quantitative Easing has made possible one of the greatest redistributions of wealth in United States history. Unlike with taxes, which…
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The Decimation of Coal Production and Alienation of the Working Class
In rejecting the extension of coal tax credits Friday, Governor Terry McAuliffe noted that the number of coal miners employed in Virginia has tumbled from 11,100 in 1988 to less than 3,000 in 2015. At one time — the late 70s and early 80s, as I recall — coal mining employed more than 20,000. Since then,…
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Sorry, College Kids, Living off Beer and Pizza Does Not Make You Poor
As readers know, I am a data junkie, and I post a lot of maps and charts highlighting, among other things, the variations of wealth and poverty in Virginia. The data is useful in helping us understand social, economic and political dynamics of the state, but they usually come with an asterisk. Poverty rates tend…
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Are the End of Times Upon Us?
by James A. Bacon Surely we have reached the end of times of apocalyptic lore when the leading Republican candidate for president flapped his arms during a national debate and assured the American people that not only are his hands of respectable size but so is another part of his anatomy. “I guarantee you, there’s no problem,”…
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The Structural Racism of Student Loan Debt
by James A. Bacon Americans now owe $1.3 trillion in student loan debt, exceeding the amount they owe on credit cards ($700 billion) or automobile loans ($1 trillion). Unlike other forms of debt, student loans are disproportionately concentrated among young people. Further, student loans are uniquely onerous because the debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy…
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In an Age of Washington Gridlock, the Laboratory of Democracy Is looking Pretty Good
by James A. Bacon Seventy-two percent of Americans think the United States is headed in the “wrong direction,” according to a recent AP-Gfk poll, and most of those discontents attribute their sentiment to the dysfunction of American politics. That’s no surprise given the gridlock that has beset Washington, D.C. — gridlock resulting from the polarization of…
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VLDS Big Data Just Got Bigger
by James A. Bacon This blog post is geeky, but it’s important — so stick with me! If you favor public policy based on what works as opposed to public policy based on ideology or political muscle, then you should be very encouraged by the progress made by the Virginia Longitudinal Data Survey (VLDS) in incorporating new…
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The Student Indebtedness Dilemma
by James A. Bacon The problem of student debt is finally getting high-level attention in Virginia, as evidenced by a panel discussion on the subject hosted in Richmond over the weekend. It’s less clear that anyone has a realistic idea of what to do about it. Some one million Virginians owe a total of $30…
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A Greater Role for Nurse Practitioners
by James A. Bacon While Medicaid expansion may have been dead on arrival at the General Assembly this year, the Senate Education and Health Committee has been thinking of other ways to improve medical access for Virginia’s poor. One solution is to loosen the regulatory restrictions that limit the ability of nurse practitioners to handle…
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The Small Business Route out of Poverty
by James A. Bacon UnBoundRVA is my kind of anti-poverty initiative! The organization identifies people in low-income neighborhoods who have the potential to succeed as small business owners, and then provides them a year of training, advice and networking support as they develop a business plan. Once the business models are in place, each hopeful business owner makes…
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IG of the Day: Virginia GINI
Where is income inequality in Virginia the most severe? College towns like Blacksburg, Charlottesville and Harrisonburg, and poor, rural mill-town jurisdictions like Danville and Grayson, Halifax and Greensville Counties. Where is inequality in Virginia least evident? In the Washington suburbs and a broad swath of rural counties in eastern Virginia. That’s the insta-analysis of a…
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Your Tax Breaks at Work
by James A. Bacon The Terraces at Manchester, a 148-unit luxury apartment across the river from downtown Richmond, opened in August. Its amenities include views of downtown and the river, an outdoor pool, a club room, a sky lounge, a rooftop dog park and, of course, an active urban lifestyle. Its cheapest apartment, with a…