The Poor | featured news

Responding to simmering controversy among Catholic bloggers about her new birth control program, Melinda Gates -- a practicing Catholic -- said she will not shrink from her role as an advocate for poor women.

If governors opt their states out of the health law’s Medicaid expansion — as many are now threatening to do — it’s the poorest Americans who would find themselves getting the rawest deal.

Mitt Romney said in an interview set to air Thursday evening that he “misspoke” when he said that he was “not concerned about the very poor.” In an interview with Nevada’s “Face to Face with Jon Ralston,” the former Massachusetts governor and GOP presidential front-runner said he merely flubbed a line that he has said before.

Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans, almost 1 in 2, have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that is shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

Jodie Foster's estranged father faces more than 25 years behind bars after being convicted of bilking more than $100,000 from the poor and elderly in a home-building scheme....

As part of a federal effort to get more U.S. homes connected to broadband, cable companies will offer Internet service for $9.

John William Springs, a retiree who gets nearly $12000 a year in Social Security and disability checks, is $1300 above the poverty threshold: officially, not poor.

India introduced a cheap tablet computer Wednesday, saying it would deliver modern technology to the countryside to help lift villagers out of poverty....

The Census Bureau report also found that median household incomes declined by 2.3 percent in 2010, in a sign of the toll the economic slump has taken.

America’s presumably anti-tax party wants to raise your taxes. Come January, the Republicans plan to raise the taxes of anyone who earns $50,000 a year by $1,000, and anyone who makes $100,000 by $2,000. Their tax hike doesn’t apply to income from investments. It doesn’t apply to any wage income in excess of $106,800 a year. It’s the payroll tax that they want to raise — to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent of your paycheck, a level established for one year in December’s budget deal at Democrats’ insistence. Unlike the capital gains tax, or the low tax rates for the rich included in the Bush tax cuts, or the carried interest tax for hedge fund operators (which is just 15 percent), the payroll tax chiefly hits the middle class and the working poor.