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29 Uncomfortable Truths About Soaring Poverty In America

Tyler Durden's picture




 

Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog,

Did you know that the number of Americans on welfare is higher than the number of Americans that have full-time jobs?  Did you know that 1.2 million public school students in the U.S. are currently homeless?  Anyone that uses the term "economic recovery" to describe what is happening in the United States today is being deeply insulting to the nearly 150 million Americans that are considered to be either "poor" or "low income" at this point.  Yes, things are great in New York City, Washington D.C. and San Francisco, but almost everywhere else economic conditions continue to steadily get worse. 

The gap between the wealthy and the poor is at a level that America has never seen before, and this is beginning to create a "Robin Hood mentality" that could cause a tremendous amount of social chaos in the years ahead.  Anger at the "haves" in America continues to rise at a very alarming pace, and the "have nots" are becoming increasingly desperate.  At some point all of this anger is going to boil over, and you won't want to be anywhere around major population centers when that happens. 

Despite unprecedented borrowing by the federal government in recent years, and despite unprecedented money printing by the Federal Reserve, poverty in the United States keeps getting worse with each passing year. The following are 29 incredible facts which prove that poverty in America is absolutely exploding...

1. What can you say about a nation that has more people getting handouts from the federal government than working full-time?  According to the latest numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of people receiving means-tested welfare benefits is greater than the number of full-time workers in the United States.

2. New numbers have just been released, and they show that the number of public school students in this country that are homeless is at an all-time record high.  It is hard to believe, but right now 1.2 million students that attend public schools in America are homeless.  That number has risen by 72 percent since the start of the last recession.

3. When I was growing up, it seemed like almost everyone was from a middle class home.  But now that has all changed.  One recent study discovered that nearly half of all public students in the United States come from low income homes.

4. How can anyone deny that we are a socialist nation when half the people are getting money from the federal government each month?  According to the most recent numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, 49.2 percent of all Americans are receiving benefits from at least one government program.

5. Signs of increasing poverty are even showing up in the wealthiest areas of the nation.  According to the New York Post, New York subways are being "overrun with homeless".

6. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately one out of every six Americans is now living in poverty.  The number of Americans living in poverty is now at a level not seen since the 1960s.

7. The gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is at an all-time record high.  The wealthy may not consider this to be much of a problem, but those at the other end of the spectrum are very aware of this.

8. The "working poor" is one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population.  At this point, approximately one out of every four part-time workers in America is living below the poverty line.

9. According to numbers provided by Wal-Mart, more than half of their hourly workers make less than $25,000 a year.

10. A recent Businessweek article mentioned a study that discovered that 300 employees at one Wal-Mart in Wisconsin receive a combined total of nearly a million dollars a year in public assistance...

“A decent wage is their demand—a livable wage, of all things,” said Representative George Miller (D-Calif.). The problem with companies like Wal-Mart is their “unwillingness, not their inability, to pay that wage,” he said. “They hand off the difference to taxpayers.” Miller was referring to a congressional report (PDF) released in May that calculated how much Walmart workers rely on public assistance. The study found that the 300 employees at one Supercenter in Wisconsin required some $900,000 worth of public assistance a year.

11. The stock market may be doing great (for the moment), but incomes for average Americans continue to decline.  In fact, median household income in the United States has fallen for five years in a row.

12. The quality of the jobs in America has been steadily dropping for years.  At this point, one out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less.

13. According to a Gallup poll that was recently released, 20.0% of all Americans did not have enough money to buy food that they or their families needed at some point over the past year.  That is just under the record of 20.4% that was set back in November 2008.

14. Young adults are particularly feeling the sting of poverty these days.  American families that have a head of household that is under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.

15. As I wrote about a few weeks ago, one out of every five households in the United States is on food stamps.  Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps.

16. The number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the entire population of Spain.

17. According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of "Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming."

18. 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.

19. The average food stamp benefit breaks down to approximately $4 per person per day.

20. 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.

21. 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."

22. It may be hard to believe, but approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are currently living in homes that are considered to be either "low income" or impoverished.

23. 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.

24. In Miami, 45 percent of all children are living in poverty.

25. In Cleveland, more than 50 percent of all children are living in poverty.

26. According to a recently released report, 60 percent of all children in the city of Detroit are living in poverty.

27. According to a Feeding America hunger study, more than 37 million Americans are now being served by food pantries and soup kitchens.

28. The U.S. government has spent an astounding 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs over the past five years.

29. It has been reported that 4 out of every 5 adults in the United States "struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives".

These poverty numbers keep getting worse year after year no matter what our politicians do.

So is there anyone out there that would still like to argue that we are in an "economic recovery"?

And as I mentioned above, the "have nots" are becoming increasingly angry at the "haves".  For example, just check out the following excerpt from a recent New York Post article...

The maniac who butchered a Brooklyn mom and her four young kids confessed that he did it because he was jealous of their way of life, a police source told The Post on Sunday.

The family had too much. Their income (and) lifestyle was better than his,” the source said.

The bloody suspect was caught holding the kitchen knife he used during the Saturday night rampage inside the Sunset Park apartment where he had been staying with the victims, the source added.

Sadly, this was not an isolated incident.  All over the western world, a "Robin Hood mentality" is growing.  This is something that I am so concerned about that I made it a big part of my new book.  At this point, even wealthy Hollywood-types such as actor Russell Brand are calling for a socialist-style "revolution" and a "massive redistribution of wealth".

Perhaps Brand does not understand that what he is calling for would mean redistributing most of his own wealth away from him.

When the next major wave of the economic collapse strikes, I fear that all of this anger and frustration that are growing among the poor will boil over in some very frightening ways.  I believe that we will see a huge spike in crime and that we will eventually see communities all over America looted and burning.

But I am not the only one that is thinking along these lines.  A new National Geographic Channel movie entitled "American Blackout" attempts to portray the social chaos that could erupt in the event of an extended national power failure...

American Blackout, National Geographic Channel’s two-hour, edge-of-your-seat movie event imagines the story of a national power failure in the United States caused by a cyberattack — told in real time, over 10 days, by those who kept filming on cameras and phones. You’ll learn what it means to be absolutely powerless.

You can view a clip of the film that was made available by NatGeo for the SHTFplan.com community right here.

What would you do if something like that happened to you?

How would you handle desperate, hungry people at your fence asking for food?

And what if those people were armed and were not "asking nicely" for your food?

Don't ignore what is happening in America right now.  It is setting the stage for some very chaotic times.

 

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Tue, 10/29/2013 - 07:30 | 4100711 drendebe10
drendebe10's picture

Sandpaper tbe skin off the kenyan. Monkeyboy and bury him in salt since it all was enabled by him.

Tue, 10/29/2013 - 08:26 | 4100840 Metal Minded
Metal Minded's picture

"Perhaps Brand does not understand that what he is calling for would mean redistributing most of his own wealth away from him."

Is it possible that "Brand DOES understand that what he is calling for would mean redistributing most of his own wealth away from him."?

And if he does, doesn't that make him the unrealistic idealistic utopian in the eyes of the greedy, greedy, greedy, ZH readers?

And, wait a minute!- Doesn't that make Russell Brand a dangerous threat to the greedy, greedy, greedy, ZH readers?

Tue, 10/29/2013 - 08:40 | 4100881 Its_the_economy...
Its_the_economy_stupid's picture

As the wealth of the nation concentrates and is protected from progressive taxation, there is simply not enough capital remaining to fund the working poor. All who post here are not those who have rremoved capital from the system, rather we are those left below the tip of the asset pyramid who the current capital redistribution system can dun.

 

Reading the comments I note that we are wrong to fight among ourselves as to whether the welfare net is overfunded or squandered. It is similar to the red-blue diversion. The system must be changed so that further concentration of wealth does  not occur. This concentration is already greater than at anytime in our Nation's history.

 

Don't fight among yourselves, you are falling into the trap.

Tue, 10/29/2013 - 11:36 | 4101481 SMG
SMG's picture

Really good point, thanks.

Tue, 10/29/2013 - 08:43 | 4100887 Duude
Duude's picture

When asked where all the jobs went, most people would point to US manufacturers outsourcing jobs. The truth of the matter is the housing industry is no longer pulling its weight. In the 50 years through 2007, new resident  and multiple family  building was exponentially higher on average than we've seen in the last 4 years. We're at 34% of the building rate we were at for the 50 year period through 2007. That's huge!  Now add to that a low standard of primary and secondary education and you might end up with a pretty high proportion of the population on the dole. But the government isn't helping but hindering the path to new employment. If it isn't more regulation its paying people to do nothing. If people aren't challenged they'll channel surf with a bong in one hand and a remote in the other. It is the path of least resistance. 

Tue, 10/29/2013 - 09:39 | 4101045 Nimby
Nimby's picture

My fear is that the Fed wins.  They know they they can't stop the train wreck.  They are printing money to try to slow it down; to try to keep it from occuring too quickly.

 

If they can allow the collapse to occur incrementally, slowly, then the sheep can adapt and accept their environment.  Sure, they'll be some really rough spots, but so long as they can keep making people think it is going to get better as it slowly gets worse, they win.

 

America, once the refuge for the freeman the world over, will become his unmarked grave.

Tue, 10/29/2013 - 10:43 | 4101294 Vuke
Vuke's picture

Nimby, yes, a controlled collapse but with some light at the end of the tunnel.  First, some acceptable agreement on a world currency standard (tied to gold convertibility) then a return of confidence and productivity.

Unfortunately, the financial and political elite have run amok so the correction may take years..........Until then it's currency debasement everywhere.

Tue, 10/29/2013 - 14:58 | 4102388 el Gallinazo
el Gallinazo's picture

Yeah, that is a real great light at the end of the tunnel.  More like an uncoming train.  A global currency supervised by the IMF or the BIS.  Neofeudal debt serfdom v. 2.0.  And a currency "tied to gold"  doesn't mean shit if you still have fractional reserve banking either "backed by gold" or just fiat.  Few realize that even when the USA was on the gold standard, treasury paper were fractionally backed by gold, though a lot higher than 10%.

Been reading David Graeber's book, Debt: The First 5000 Years.  Great read.  No wonder Skull and Bones refused to give him tenure.  Almost everything we learned is crap.  Won't be long before American dads start selling off their daughters into slavery like in Babylon.

Tue, 10/29/2013 - 10:23 | 4101204 Took Red Pill
Took Red Pill's picture

What's he talking about? Things are great! I know a financial advisor who just bought his wife a $36,000 sable coat!

Tue, 10/29/2013 - 11:53 | 4101561 dizzyfingers
dizzyfingers's picture

Vuke: and shit sandwiches for the rest of us.

Tue, 10/29/2013 - 12:30 | 4101722 Trampy
Trampy's picture

As anyone in the largest city (500 K metro area) of my state knows, we had a very severe windstorm last June that tore down trees and destroyed quite a few homes in my neighborhood, because it happened during a summer that was getting our "normal" several inches of rain in what we call monsooon season.  Last year we only got about an inch of rain the entire year and because this is one of the poorest states, inadequate roof maintenance or  delayed replacement can be avoided temporarily by sopping up water leaks with pots and pans, and then blankets and rugs.

Of course all those downed trees from the 80-mph wind gusts took down power lines and my own residential block of 50/50 owned/rental homes near the university offered a very interesting situation of haves versus have-nots because for three blocks all the homes on my side of the street had no electricity but we could look out from our porches or front yards and see that our "neighbors" across the asphalt street were all lit up at night and they had been inconvenienced for only an hour a few hours before the sun went down, so they maybe were unable to cook dinner at home but that was all.

Because this outage was localized from a burnt-out transformer from a power surge during the storm, my home and the others were considered a low priority by the power company.

The timing of this event just happened to be exactly 168 hours after my next-door neighbor had gone to every home on both sides of the street to sign us up for a Neighborhoood Watch organization.  So he had the names and phone numbers of all these people on both sides of the street who had agreed to take part.  A sensible person might have thought that it was a fortuitous coincidence.   Not!

Not a single person on the other side of the street with electric power offered ANYTHING to the have-nots.  Quite a few of them had electric outlets in their front yards.  But no, nobody offered to let us use theri outlets say to charge a cell phone or something trivial like that.  No ice.  Nothing.  It seemed like they were afraid we'd ask them for something so they ran inside like cockroaches when they returned form their shopping to fill their refrigerators with fresh food while we were throwing away all the spoiled food from our refrigerators on the second and third day of no power.

As expected, I have two next-door neighbors, and both were without power.  One of them was the couple who had talked to everyone about neighborhood watch and had all their names and numbers.  The other one is a family of immigrants where the husband is clearly disabled and the wife is a foreign immigrant with limited English, and they have two very young children, like 3 and 4 years old.  Every day my neighbors can see thaat it takes a big production just for them to move their two beautiful little blond girls back and forth between their privately owned home and their car in their driveway.  These are not crack-heads or meth cookers.

Not a single person offered them any help whatsoever, even though anyone with a heeart would immediately see that this was very hard on their children.

It was summer and with no AC I could hear their children crying, all through the night.

On the third night of this I decided to keep calling the power company until they would do something to restore our power.  It was like 1 AM and I called again to say that the children next door were crying and were in obvious discomfort and the PLEASE do something, because I'd seen repair crews that day just a few blocks away and instead of coming over to my block after doing that job they diskappeared.

The lady on the phone told me that if I believed the children were in danger that it was my obligation to call the police.  The power company knew that there were two children in that house, but they had no way of knowing the father was disabled and the mother a recent immigrant.  I blew my top but had enough composure to politely tell here that I do not want to be responsible for being the one who called the police who came and then took away a mother's two children ... for absolutely no fault of her own.  She paused and said with some compassion that she'd talk to her supervisor.

Two hours later a Darth Vader truck showed up and it seemed to be doing some kind of electromagnetic surveillance.  The neighboorhoood watch guy ran out in his pajamas to move his car and open a gate.  I knew help was finally scheduled.

By 8 AM our power had been restored after being without for over 30 hours, but there was no way in hell that i was going to his stupid neighborhood watch meeting and at the top of my lungs so that everyone on teh block could hear me i told them all that they could go to hell because they weren't even human.

I later talked at length with the couple who have the two children and they both confirmed that I was the only person on the entire block who had offered them anything during the almost full three days of being without power.  And they figured out that I had gotten the power company to do something on account of their chidren crying.

Ten days without power and then some of your neighors will have noisy generators running and others have nothing?  Sounds like a sure recipe for murder.

Tue, 10/29/2013 - 15:31 | 4102516 Atticus Finch
Atticus Finch's picture

"28. The U.S. government has spent an astounding 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs over the past five years."

Of course in that same time, over $6 trillion and counting went to war in the Middle East for the benefit of the Oil and Banking Industries, and recent external accounting that 12 trillion dollars in defense spending cannot be accounted for.

The US is a failed state from any perspective.

Tue, 10/29/2013 - 18:53 | 4103042 dreadnaught
dreadnaught's picture

it just seems WRONG that you can now go into McDonalds, Pizza Hut etc and buy meals....actually ive read thet FOOD STAMPS were not really intended for the poor-but a a vehicle to pass out even more tax dollars into big Agra/Corporate food-and now, fast food-

and the amount of chips ice cream and Coca Cola i see at checkstands...many obese...and driving the ailses in carts...

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