Congressmen's incomes triple while America gets poorer

I answered your question quite directly. I don't think someone not homeless would trade "up" to be homeless, do you?

Maybe you want to ask about the bottom 20%...

Even then, the bottom 20% 40 years ago aren't bottom 20% now. People move up in life - economists call it mobility.

And I know a lot of people who make well below the median income (like $28K vs $43K) who I wouldn't call poor at all.

 

The real number of homeless people is ~3M. The report you cite is people they counted (were able to count). In fact, if you read your link, it says, " Point-in-time count methodologies vary and are imperfect and as such the aggregated numbers do not represent a precise count of homeless people."

Wikipedia says this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States

As many as 3.5 million people experience homelessness in a given year (1% of the entire U.S. population or 10% of its poor), and about 842,000 people in any given week.[21][22]

Or:

http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/How_Many.html

There are several national estimates of homelessness. Many are dated, or based on dated information. For all of the reasons discussed above, none of these estimates is the definitive representation of "how many people are homeless.” In a recent approximation USA Today estimated 1.6 million people unduplicated persons used transitional housing or emergency shelters. Of these people, approximately 1/3 are members of households with children, a nine percent increase since 2007. Another approximation is from a study done by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty which states that approximately 3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them children, are likely to experience homelessness in a given year (National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, 2007).

These numbers, based on findings from the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, Urban Institute and specifically the National Survey of Homeless Assistance Providers, draw their estimates from a study of service providers across the country at two different times of the year in 1996. They found that, on a given night in October, 444,000 people (in 346,000 households) experienced homelessness – which translates to 6.3% of the population of people living in poverty. On a given night in February, 842,000 (in 637,000 households) experienced homelessness – which translates to almost 10% of the population of people living in poverty. Converting these estimates into an annual projection, the numbers that emerge are 2.3 million people (based on the October estimate) and 3.5 million people (based on the February estimate). This translates to approximately 1% of the U.S. population experiencing homelessness each year, 38% (October) to 39% (February) of them being children (Urban Institute 2000).

It is also important to note that this study was based on a national survey of service providers. Since not all people experiencing homelessness utilize service providers, the actual numbers of people experiencing homelessness are likely higher than those found in the study, Thus, we are estimating on the high end of the study’s numbers: 3.5 million people, 39% of which are children (Urban Institute 2000).

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As for the rest of my "rambling," I suggested maybe your question would be better asked about the lower 20% of earners. The cutoff to make that bottom 20% is $18,500 per year for a "household" (includes one or more earners).

The cutoff to make the bottom 1% is $2500/year.

You sure you want to continue with the bottom 1% are doing great thing?

 

You ask what you think is a simple question, but the answer isn't so simple. I mentioned mobility in a previous post. This is the effect where people start out their careers in the bottom 20% of earners and end up in the top 20% of earners along the way. Very few people are stuck in that bottom 20% or 10% for their careers.

Maybe you're asking about buying power. So today you can buy many things for a lot less money than they cost 40 years ago. But if you want an education or a complex medical procedure, you're going to be paying a LOT more. Housing is also ridiculously more expensive today, even with the market crash. Food is more expensive, too. So is gasoline.

Maybe you're asking about govt. programs. We're spending a $trillion in debt each year to support a lot of people. 99 weeks of unemployment in most places, and people are enrolling in Social Security's disability program when those 99 weeks expire.

Having lived through the past 40 years, I find that while the intention is good, keeping people reliant on govt. programs to survive destroys the peoples' spirits and does limit a person's mobility. It's never been worse than today.

Or maybe you want to compare our poor with the poor in other countries. In Mexico, a good job pays $300/month, and those jobs are few and far between. I've been there and seen their poor living in huts that look like they came from Gilligan's Island (bamboo walls and palm leaf roofs). I think all but that bottom 1% here who live on the streets and eat out of dumpsters wouldn't trade places.

 

You confuse Reagan with JFK and LBJ. The previous president warned us of the military-industrial complex. Those two ignored the warning and gave us Vietnam.