Wordless Wednesday: Poverty
Wednesday October 15, 2008
Today is the second annual blog action day. The topic is poverty. This post is a compare/contrast: "today" (2008) and "yesterday" (1933).
In the current (6 Oct 2008) photo: The City of Reno has set up a tent city in the shadow of downtown high-rise casinos because existing homeless shelters are overcrowded. Nevada has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Economists predict an 8.6% unemployment rate for Nevada in 2009. The unemployment rate in August was 7.1%, the highest in 23 years. McCain is calling for an end to income tax on unemployment benefits; the national unemployment rate in September was 6.1%.
In the archival (Winter 1933) photo: A man waits in a breadline in San Francisco. (Photo by Dorothea Lange/National Archive). From 1929–1933, unemployment increased from 4% to 25%.
Photos: Getty Images