The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty [...]

Interviews with six demographers who closely track poverty trends found wide consensus that 2009 figures are likely to show a significant rate increase to the range of 14.7 percent to 15 percent.

Should those estimates hold true, some 45 million people in this country, or more than 1 in 7, were poor last year. It would be the highest single-year increase since the government began calculating poverty figures in 1959. The previous high was in 1980 when the rate jumped 1.3 percentage points to 13 percent during the energy crisis.

Among the 18-64 working-age population, the demographers expect a rise beyond 12.4 percent, up from 11.7 percent. That would make it the highest since at least 1965, when another Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, launched the war on poverty that expanded the federal government's role in social welfare programs from education to health care.

The top 1% of the country means about 3 million people. Fifteen times as many have slipped into poverty. Among children, we're talking about 20% living in poverty. We have another 170,000 families in homeless shelters. Obviously, from those links, it's clear this gets some coverage. But in proportion to the near-daily drumbeat of how the rich will deal with a 4.6% increase in their top marginal tax rate, it's not even close.

That's a staggering number of people living in poverty; more staggering, perhaps, is the relative indifference on the part of those who actually have the power to effect positive changes in people's lives.  "A rising tide lifts all boats" was the expression used by the Clinton administration; that seems to have morphed into "a rising tide of economic hardship drowns those who can't afford a boat - and I'm not sharing."  

Realize that there has come to be an acceptance of a double-digit unemployment rate as the norm.  Add to it the whining of the rich over the burdens they face over an end to the Bush rate cuts.  The bottom line in this country seems to be, "if you don't have, you don't matter; sit down, shut up, and be grateful for the little we throw you now and again."

Extending the cuts is better than not extending them, but I don't see an extension as truly helping those who need it, given that so many of them don't even pay income taxes.  It won't create any jobs - even as it sucks up all the attention away from doing something that would - it won't get people spending again; it's politics, optics, bumper stickers.  A way to deny how much real deprivation there is out here - and I don't mean that someone had to cancel the purchase of a bigger private plane, or cut back on trips to Europe, but the kind that means people don't have a secure place to live or enough to eat.  It'll make some people feel better - kind of like the way one feels about giving the homeless guy on the street $5.00 - but that isn't near enough.

I'd pay more tax if it meant someone who has nothing could have something, but the French Revolution-style mindset seems to be, "I don't care if you have nothing - as long as I have more and more and more."

"I would tend to wonder how much the tax cut actually influences spending behavior," said Chris Cornell, an economist who mined government reports back to 1989 for West Chester, Pennsylvania-based Moody's Analytics. "Spending by the top 5 percent of households seems much more closely tied to business- cycle issues than it does to tax-cut issues."

The Moody's research covering couples earning more than $210,000 found that spending by the wealthy is more likely to be influenced by the ups and downs of the stock market than changes in income-tax rates.

Stock-market performance is the "primary factor that is driving the savings of the top 5 percent of households," said Mustafa Akcay, economist and co-researcher of the savings data.