With the United States’ official poverty rate now at a seventeen year high of 15.1 percent — and an actual poverty level that may be substantially higher — the absurdity of President Obama’s advocacy of so-called ‘green jobs’ is increasingly clear.

The continuing decline of the economies of the West, in general, and of the United States, in particular, is often measured in cold statistics; according to press reports, the skyrocketing poverty rate means that approximately 46.2 million Americans were living in poverty in 2011 — a jump of 2.6 million over the 2009 statistic. As the Washington Post reports:

The total number of people living in poverty — defined in 2010 as at or below an income of $22,314 for a family of four — is now at the highest level in the 52 years the statistic has been collected.
The continued rise in poverty was just the latest manifestation of a troubled economy that has left 14 million Americans out of work and caused unemployment to hover above 9 percent for 25 of the past 27 months.
While record numbers of Americans live in poverty and millions more are unemployed and underemployed, the utopian schemes of Obama and others to inaugurate a new, “green” economy is laid bare for as one more empty promise.

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Photo: People wait in line to enter a job fair in New York, Wednesday, April 16, 2008.: AP Images