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Child Hunger Is Exploding In Greece – And 14 Signs That It Is Starting To Happen In America Too
Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,
The world is heading into a horrific economic nightmare, and an inordinate amount of the suffering is going to fall on innocent children. If you want to get an idea of what America is going to look like in the not too distant future, just check out what is happening in Greece. At this point, Greece is experiencing a full-blown economic depression. As I have written about previously, the unemployment rate in Greece has now risen to 27 percent, which is much higher than the peak unemployment rate that the U.S. economy experienced during the Great Depression of the 1930s. And as you will read about below, child hunger is absolutely exploding in Greece right now. Some families are literally trying to survive on pasta and ketchup. But don't think for a moment that it can't happen here.
Sadly, the truth is that child hunger is already rising very rapidly in our poverty-stricken cities. Never before have we had so many Americans unable to take care of themselves. Food stamp enrollment and child homelessness have soared to brand new all-time records, and there are actually thousands of Americans that are so poor that they live in tunnels underneath our cities. But for millions of other Americans, the suffering is not quite so dramatic. Instead, they just watch their hopes and their dreams slowly slip away as they struggle to find a way to make it from month to month. There are millions of parents that lead lives that are filled with constant stress and anxiety as they try to figure out how to provide the basics for their children. How do you tell a child that you can't give them any dinner even though you have been trying as hard as you can? What many families go through on a regular basis is absolutely heartbreaking.
Unfortunately, more poor families slip through the cracks with each passing day, and these are supposedly times in which we are experiencing an "economic recovery". So what are things going to look like when the next major economic downturn strikes?
A recent New York Times article detailed the horrifying child hunger that we are witnessing in Greece right now. At some schools there are reports of children actually begging for food from their classmates...
As an elementary school principal, Leonidas Nikas is used to seeing children play, laugh and dream about the future. But recently he has seen something altogether different, something he thought was impossible in Greece: children picking through school trash cans for food; needy youngsters asking playmates for leftovers; and an 11-year-old boy, Pantelis Petrakis, bent over with hunger pains.
“He had eaten almost nothing at home,” Mr. Nikas said, sitting in his cramped school office near the port of Piraeus, a working-class suburb of Athens, as the sound of a jump rope skittered across the playground. He confronted Pantelis’s parents, who were ashamed and embarrassed but admitted that they had not been able to find work for months. Their savings were gone, and they were living on rations of pasta and ketchup.
Could you imagine that happening to your children or your grandchildren?
Don't think that it can't happen. Just a few years ago the Greek middle class was vibrant and thriving.
And we are starting to see hunger explode in other European countries as well. For example, in the UK the number of people receiving emergency food rations has increased by 170 percent over the past year.
This is one of the reasons why I get upset when people say that "things are getting better". Yes, the stock market has been setting record highs lately, but things are most definitely not getting better.
Even during this false bubble of debt-fueled economic stability that we are enjoying right now, we continue to see hunger and poverty rise dramatically in America.
Since Barack Obama has been president, the number of Americans on food stamps has grown from 32 million to more than 47 million.
Will we all be on food stamps eventually?
Will we all become dependent on the government for our survival at some point?
According to the Boston Herald, even Tamerlan Tsarnaev was receiving government welfare benefits...
Marathon bombings mastermind Tamerlan Tsarnaev was living on taxpayer-funded state welfare benefits even as he was delving deep into the world of radical anti-American Islamism, the Herald has learned.
State officials confirmed last night that Tsarnaev, slain in a raging gun battle with police last Friday, was receiving benefits along with his wife, Katherine Russell Tsarnaev, and their 3-year-old daughter. The state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services said those benefits ended in 2012 when the couple stopped meeting income eligibility limits.
Isn't that crazy?
And yes, there are some people out there that are abusing the system. In fact, the cost of food stamp fraud has risen sharply to approximately $750 million in recent years.
But most of the people on these programs really need the help. Thanks to our incredibly foolish economic policies, there are not enough good jobs for everyone and there never will be again. The percentage of Americans that are unable to take care of themselves is going to continue to rise, and the suffering that we are witnessing right now is going to get much, much worse.
Not that things aren't really, really bad already. Here are some signs that child hunger in America has already started to explode...
#1 Today, approximately 17 million children in the United States are facing food insecurity. In other words, that means that "one in four children in the country is living without consistent access to enough nutritious food to live a healthy life."
#2 We are told that we live in the "wealthiest nation" on the planet, and yet more than one out of every four children in the United States is enrolled in the food stamp program.
#3 The average food stamp benefit breaks down to approximately $4 per person per day.
#4 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps before they reach the age of 18.
#5 It may be hard to believe, but approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are currently living in homes that are either considered to be either "low income" or impoverished.
#6 The number of children living on $2.00 a day or less in the United States has grown to 2.8 million. That number has increased by 130 percent since 1996.
#7 According to Feeding America, "households with children reported food insecurity at a significantly higher rate than those without children, 20.6 percent compared to 12.2 percent".
#8 According to a Feeding America hunger study, more than 37 million Americans are now being served by food pantries and soup kitchens.
#9 For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.
#10 Approximately 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry.
#11 One university study estimates that child poverty costs the U.S. economy 500 billion dollars each year.
#12 In Miami, 45 percent of all children are living in poverty.
#13 In Cleveland, more than 50 percent of all children are living in poverty.
#14 According to a recently released report, 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.
For many more facts about the dramatic explosion of poverty in this country, please see my previous article entitled "21 Statistics About The Explosive Growth Of Poverty In America That Everyone Should Know".
Unfortunately, most of the time statistics don't really tell the whole story. Numbers alone cannot really communicate the soul-crushing despair that millions of American families are enduring on a daily basis at this point.
How can numbers communicate the pain that a child feels when her grandmother does not eat because there is not enough food for everyone in the family? But this is what some families in America actually go through because there is not enough money...
Vanyshia tells about the sacrifices her Grandmother makes so that she and her siblings can eat. “Sometimes my Grandma can’t even eat because she has to feed me and my brother and sister. Sometimes I don’t eat as much as I want to because I leave some for my Grandma because I don’t want her to sit there and starve. Sometimes she doesn’t have enough money to buy food, so she has to go to the bank and borrow money. It makes me feel sad. I don’t want her to be hungry. I just feel sad sometimes,” says Vanyshia.
Things can be particularly tough when you are a single parent. The BBC recently profiled a single mother that is struggling to raise two young children in Iowa...
"We don't get three meals a day like breakfast, lunch and then dinner," says Kaylie. "When I feel hungry I feel sad and droopy."
Kaylie and Tyler live with their mother Barbara, who used to work in a factory. After losing her job, she was entitled to unemployment benefit and food stamps - this comes to $1,480 (£974) a month.
But they were no longer able to afford to live in their house, which along with bills cost $1,326 (£873) a month, leaving little for food or petrol.
Kaylie supplemented their income by collecting cans along the railway track near their old home - earning between two and five cents per can.
For more examples like this one, I encourage everyone to go watch a recent BBC documentary entitled "America's Poor Kids" that you can see right here.
I wonder why we don't see more stuff like this on the mainstream news in this country?
Could it be that the mainstream media does not want to admit how bad things have really gotten?
All of this is also a reminder that we need to be generous to those in need. Times are going to get much, much harder than this, and we are all going to need one another.
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Like using lamination techniques to produce perfectly round (and extremely durable) cart wheels?
Like knowing how to boil animal hides and bones to produce a reliable and strong woodworking adhesive?
Skills that might very well "come in useful" in tomorrow's less than futuristic world, don't you think??
Not a good joke. There actually are a higher percentage of Americans going to bed hungry then Chinese.
I just prepared a meal consisting of pre-packaged Mexican rice, a pre-cut hamburger patty, some shredded cheese and cayenne pepper.
These ingredients--in particular, the beef--would be considered rare and exotic by millions around the world. Fresh meat is still considered a rare delicacy in many places.
The American lifestyle is dangerously out of touch with reality. When the S hits the F, the sheeple will do *anything* to go back to the good ole' days.
"Does that FEMA cell carry ESPN? I'll take two, please."
Does deer, monkey and goat count as FRESH MEAT?
Dunno about deer or monkey, but you'll find Goat is very good.
Unlike most commercial cow breeds, goats are physiologically tough - OK if your "need" is Show (or Ornamental) Breeds, they do need supplements, but for your "run of the mill" Farmyard / Smallholding goat, they can (and will) eat almost anything, and thrive on whatever they can get.
Despite their reputation for charging at everything (which is not exactly the whole truth) they make excellent pets.
If you MUST have a Cow - try the Pinzgauer breed - not much bigger than the largest goat breeds, and again a very robust variety. Adequate milk producers too - one cow will easily provide sufficient milk for an average sized family.
Where is fresh meat considered a rare delicacy? Not in North/South America, Europe or China/East Asia.
probably the workers paradise of north korea.
"child hunger is already rising very rapidly in our cities" Maybe Texas is an outlier but in Houston they are giving free meals to all school children. Not just breakfast, but three meals a day. And the parents of those kids have the EBT cards to get food for them. If the children are hungry, what are they doing with all that food. Socialism, it's all for the kids you know.
That was one of the ridiculous stats.
Greece should have exited the Euro last year and they would have been starting the road to recovery. Instead, the Greeks were instilled with fear from their EU masters and corrupt government. Same story everywhere, when we will the m-asses awake?
"Instead, the Greeks were instilled with fear"
Er, what I recall is that they were instilled with a puppet from the ECB named Lucas Papademos, after the troika removed G. Papandreou because he said "I'll put it to a referendum". The Greek people had nothing to do with it. The so-called "national leaders" are bought and paid for. Every time. Here just the same as there and everywhere else. Democracy is a zombie; the oligarchs are in charge everywhere.
BTW, it's sheer coincidence that Papademos spent years as chief economist at the Boston Fed. And I don't want to hear any of you saying otherwise. I mean it.
As usual, blacks and Mexicans are the #1 contributing factor to poverty and crime statistics.
Left behind in the Walmart carousel system(designed so that some merchandise can be sold two times ) can probably feed America’s Poor.
For the sake of diversity, lets have a white only poverty statistic..
Right, the same kids all walking around with cell phones glued to the side of there head, wearing $100.00 sneakers, stuffing there face with a Big Mac and Super Sized Soda. If you want to know what hunger is about go to Sudan. Americas have become a bunch of cry babies, that want the Government to do everything from them up to and including wipeing there ass!
"Food Insecurity" in the us? Is that a code word for more handouts?
Are you fucking serious?
http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/childhood.html
When was the last famine in the US?
How many children die of hunger annually in the US?
Greece produces and disigns latest electronics, software and feeds 1/3rd of the world. Right, I forgot.
" this comes to $1,480 (£974) a month.
But they were no longer able to afford to live in their house, which along with bills cost $1,326 (£873) a month, leaving little for food or petrol."
Are you kidding. Poor family? With more than 2800 USD a month? I don't take that serious it's a sad joke.
" this comes to $1,480 (£974) a month.
But they were no longer able to afford to live in their house, which along with bills cost $1,326 (£873) a month, leaving little for food or petrol."
Are you kidding. Poor family? With more than 2800 USD a month? I don't take that serious it's a sad joke.
Will I have to sell my 2011 Kia Soul .... in order to get food stamps ?
Sorry to burst your buble, but any significant 'child hunger' existing in America does not follow from the facts the author presented. Your 'low-income' households raise the fattest little bastards of all.
Welcome to an 'american' world. Cosy place to live in, you'll see.
the solution is LOWER TAXES, XL PIPELINE AND DRILL BABAY DRILL.and export LNG. We hAve enough LNG resources to sell to China to pay off the national debt and restart manufacturing jobs in the USA. Politicinas wont do it because it erodes their POWER. If we wait long enough China will find other suppliers and we as usual will be boxed out. WAR is Natures way...
Welcome to the 0bama economy.
'the UK the number of people receiving emergency food rations has increased by 170 percent over the past year.' - I'd take that with a pinch of salt as their not willing to give up their Sky TVs.
Cafe at work weighs the salad,costs a fortune,burger and fries cheaper.