Lets look at the numbers. This is terrible.

[Nimble_Idea]

http://money.cnn.com/2004/08/26/news/economy/poverty_survey/

1.3 million more people are in poverty now.
1.4 million have lost their healthcare insurance

In 4 years I project that there will be 5 million more in poverty
and 10-15 million more without helthcare.

[joefree1]

1. 1009

US causalities in Bush's hoily crusade in Iraq.

[salvorhardin]

2. To add a little perspective

That's 12.5% of the entire freaking U.S. population. 35.9 MILLION people folks... and these are last year's numbers.

Assuming the 12.5% number stayed constant and using the July 2004 population statistic for the U.S. of 293,027,571 that would amount to 36.6 million people in poverty as of July. Personally I would bet that the poverty rate in 2004 would be closer to 13%.

The poverty threshold for 2003 was $18,810, $14,680, $12,015 and $9,393 for a family of 4, 3, 2 and 1 respectively.

[katusha]

3. also for the "investor class"

Dow Jones close on day of bush inauguration: 10,578.24
Dow Jones close last Friday: 10,313.07
that is a NEGATIVE growth of: 2.5%
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=%5EDJI&a=00&b=1&c=2001&d=00&e=31&f=2001&g=d


NASDAQ close on day of bush inauguration: 2,757.91
NASDAQ close last Friday: 1,894.31
that is a NEGATIVE growth of: 31.3%
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/hp?s=%5EIXIC&a=00&b=1&c=2001&d=00&e=31&f=2001&g=d

[Career Prole]

4. Middle class continues to shrink...

There's no standard definition of "middle class," so we looked at households with pre-tax income of between $25,000 and $75,000 -- a group occupying roughly the middle half of the Census income distribution tables. As we noted before, that group grew smaller during the economic recession of 2001 and the initially slow recovery of 2002. Now the new Census figures indicate it continued to decline in 2003, and while this time some of the middle group were moving up , a larger portion were moving down.
http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=249

(The article is actually an admission by Factcheck that they spoke to soon the first time...
"In our Aug. 3 article , "Kerry's Dubious Economics," we said Kerry based his claim that "our great middle class is shrinking" on some pretty stale numbers. We said his statement "may well be untrue" because it was based on 2002 figures and didn't account for recent economic growth. Now fresh numbers are available -- and Kerry's statement is looking a lot better."}

You eat that crow this minute, young man!
:spank: