South By North Strategies, Ltd.

A front-page story in Sunday’s issue of The New York Times looks at the potential human toll of slow economic growth. Especially hard hit will be individuals who have or will fall out of the middle class, yet current social insurance systems are unprepared to accommodate the growing numbers of long-term unemployed. From the article:

“We have a work-based safety net without any work,” said Timothy M. Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “People with more education and skills will probably figure something out once the economy picks up. It’s the ones with less education and skills: that’s the new poor.”