The Associated Press released some shocking and dismal research over the weekend: “Four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.”
The AP-exclusive survey data “points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.”
The report comes on the heels of President Obama’s economy tour. Obama spent last week assuring crowds that the economy is his “top priority” and proposing ways to “rebuild ladders of opportunity” and erase income inequality.
The “incomes” of Americans may soon be made more equal as more and more people rely on government checks to survive.
“I’ve got a little over twelve hundreds days left in office,” Obama said in one of his speeches. “I am going to spend every waking minute of every one of those days thinking about, and then acting upon, any good ideas out there that are going to help ordinary Americans succeed.”
Not too many “ordinary Americans,” however, are putting their trust in the president’s promises. Gallup released a poll last week that shows a decrease in national consumer confidence. Despair is growing particularly among whites, where pessimism about their families’ economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987.
The president is set to take an eight-day vacation to Martha’s Vineyard next week, and will return, as Jay Carney assured the press, to mend middle-class strife and the economy with some speeches.
“Those speeches,” Carney said, “will have specifics and will have new ideas and both proposals that can be worked on together with Congress, and actions that the president can take using his executive authority and actions he can take through working with outside stakeholders. So that’s sort of the way this will roll out.”
