#1 The U.S. Census Bureau says that nearly 47 million
Americans are living in poverty right now.
#2 Other numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau are also very
disturbing. For example, in 2007 about
one out of every eight children in America was on food stamps. Today, that number is one out of every five.
#3 According to Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, the
authors of a new book entitled “$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in
America“, there are 1.5 million “ultrapoor” households in the United States
that live on less than two dollars a day.
That number has doubled since 1996.
#4 46 million Americans use food banks each year, and lines
start forming at some U.S. food banks as early as 6:30 in the morning because
people want to get something before the food supplies run out.
#5 The number of homeless children in the U.S. has increased
by 60 percent over the past six years.
#6 According to Poverty USA, 1.6 million American children
slept in a homeless shelter or some other form of emergency housing last year.
#7 Police in New York City have identified 80 separate
homeless encampments in the city, and the homeless crisis there has gotten so
bad that it is being described as an “epidemic”.
#8 If you can believe it, more than half of all students in
our public schools are poor enough to qualify for school lunch subsidies.
#9 According to a Census Bureau report that was released a
while back, 65 percent of all children in the U.S. are living in a home that
receives some form of aid from the federal government.
#10 According to a report that was published by UNICEF,
almost one-third of all children in this country “live in households with an
income below 60 percent of the national median income”.
#11 When it comes to child poverty, the United States ranks
36th out of the 41 “wealthy nations” that UNICEF looked at.
#12 The number of Americans that are living in concentrated
areas of high poverty has doubled since the year 2000.
#13 An astounding 45 percent of all African-American
children in the United States live in areas of “concentrated poverty”.
#14 40.9 percent of all children in the United States that
are being raised by a single parent are living in poverty.
#15 An astounding 48.8 percent of all 25-year-old Americans
still live at home with their parents.
#16 There are simply not enough good jobs to go around
anymore. It may be hard to believe, but
51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.
#17 There are 7.9 million working age Americans that are
“officially unemployed” right now and another 94.7 million working age
Americans that are considered to be “not in the labor force”. When you add those two numbers together, you
get a grand total of 102.6 million working age Americans that do not have a job
right now.
#18 Owning a home has traditionally been a signal that you
belong to the middle class. That is why
it is so alarming that the rate of homeownership in the United States has been
falling for eight years in a row.
#19 According to a recent Pew survey, approximately 70
percent of all Americans believe that “debt is a necessity in their lives”.
#20 At this point, 25 percent of all Americans have a
negative net worth. That means that the
value of what they owe is greater than the value of everything that they own.
#21 The top 0.1 percent of all American families have about
as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent of all American families combined.
Why are there tens of millions of US people living in
poverty? The answer is because of capitalism.
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