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JESSICA DESVARIEUX: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore.
And welcome to this edition of The Henry Report.
Now joining us is the man behind the report, James Henry. He's a leading economist, attorney,
and investigative journalist who has written extensively about global issues.
Thanks for joining us, James.
JAMES HENRY: You're quite welcome.
DESVARIEUX: So, James, let's get right into it and discuss President Obama's State of
the Union address, where he focused a lot on income inequality. What was your response
to the president's speech?
HENRY: Well, first of all, I'm glad he's waked up and, you know, finally discovered this
issue. I mean, six months ago, when I talked to senior economists at the White House, they
weren't using poverty or inequality as targets for how well they were doing on any policies.
And so this is a real, you know, recognition that poverty and inequality have both grown
dramatically in the last five years.
You know, we're talking about economic recovery, but it turns out that the top 1 percent of
the population has captured about 95 percent of the income gains since 2008 during this
recovery.
On the side of poor people, we now have about 16 million kids living in poverty. In the
absence of any government assistance, we would have 70 million Americans, close to 25 percent
of the population, living in poverty. With government assistance, we now have 50 million
people, and half of them are living below the half-poverty line, which is $11,500 a
year for a family of four. If we go back 50 years, when the war on poverty was started
by Martin Luther King and L. B. J., we had actually poverty levels that are not much
higher than what we're seeing today, and they've increased dramatically in the last decade.
So I'm glad that President Obama has finally recognized what a lot of other people have
been talking about, this dramatic growth in poverty and income inequality and wealth inequality
on his watch.
The concern is, you know, what are we going to actually get done about it. And I was hoping
that he would have used this speech to educate Americans about how it's in everyone's interest
to address these problems. And if you do polls on this issue, it turns out that less than
half of Americans think that poverty is an important problem for us to address. And I
think other presidents have--like F. D. R. and L. B. J. have been able to use the bully
pulpit that the White House provides to educate the public on how important this issue is.
We know he has a hard time getting anything done in Congress, and he's going off in the
direction of trying to do executive actions unilaterally. I think it's more important
for him to actually use these opportunities to educate people about how serious a problem
we're facing.
DESVARIEUX: Alright. James Henry, thank you so much for joining us.
HENRY: You're quite welcome.
DESVARIEUX: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.