Remember Mitt Romney’s infamous “poor” comment? If not, here it is again:

“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich; they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95% of Americans who right now are struggling.”

Well, it got me thinking: Romney was actually being honest about Americans in general. We don’t - none of us - spend much time thinking about the very poor.

But we should, because we have a real problem in this area, an economic, political and moral problem.

By Romney’s calculations, if 95% of Americans fall in the middle class, then there must be less than 5% of Americans who qualify as poor.

Well, no.

The number from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the association of the world’s developed economies, is actually 17.3%.

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Posted on 14 February, 2012, 3:26pm. This post has 2 notes.
tags: | #economics | #politics | #society 
  1. leakingbadly said: Why doesn’t Fareed Zakaria have a Tumblr? Seriously.
  2. drinkthe-koolaid posted this