Most unemployed no longer receiving benefits

If anyone is looking for any more reasons why OWS is so popular, here you go. Despite plenty of screams and whines from the right, the US welfare state is really small and nothing close to what exists in the rest of the industrialized world. On the other hand, corporate giveaways including bank bailouts add up to a lot more money and it's not even close.

Here's what happens to the 99%:

Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent — a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America's 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more.

Congress is expected to decide by year's end whether to continue providing emergency unemployment benefits for up to 99 weeks in the hardest-hit states. If the emergency benefits expire, the proportion of the unemployed receiving aid would fall further.

The ranks of the poor would also rise. The Census Bureau says unemployment benefits kept 3.2 million people from slipping into poverty last year. It defines poverty as annual income below $22,314 for a family of four.