It is important to highlight the growing inequality of this generation. While the US economy has “created” $30 trillion in new wealth, six million more children have come to rely on food stamps. How does a country become more wealthy…. Yet have more poor children at the same time?
Here are some numbers that show the substantial fall of the middle class over the last 35 years.
1. 138,000 Kids Were Homeless while 115,000 Households Were Each Making $10 Million Per Year
Latest data has shown that the richest 0.1% (115,000 households) have amassed an additional wealth of $10 million per year while an astonishing 138,000 children did not even have a roof over their head, according to the US Department of Housing.
2. The Average U.S. Household Pays $400 to Feed and Clothe Walmart, McDonald’s, and Other Low-Wage Workers
Workers earning less than $10.10 an hour are paid $45 billion per year as federal, state, and other safety net support, reports the Economic Policy Institute. In essence, the average U.S. household is paying about $400 to employees in low-wage industries such as food service, retail, and personal care.
Walmart’s much-publicized $1 wage raise will cost the company about $1 billion a year, while it had reported about $25 billion in profits last year .
The story gets even more shameful. Here’s what a PBS report had to say: Walmart has spent about $6.5 billion per year on stock buybacks to enrich investors, approximately the same total annual amount billed to taxpayers for food stamps, Medicaid, housing, and other safety net programs for the company’s underpaid employees.
3. As $30 Trillion in New Wealth was being Created, the Number of Kids on Food Stamps Increased 70%
Before the global financial crisis and the recession, the root cause of which can attributed to the greed of rich investors, 12 out of every 100 American children were on food stamps. Compare this to the after-recession figure of 20 out of 100 American children. That’s nearly a 70 percent increase; from 9.5 million kids in 2007 to 16 million kids in 2014.
Meanwhile, U.S. wealth has grown by over $30 trillion. Even with that baffling escalation of wealth in the country, the US of A wasn’t able to ensure food security for millions of its most vulnerable citizens.
4. Despite the Decline in Food Security, the Food Stamp Program was Cut by $8.6 Billion and the Money Paid to Corporate Agriculture
While more and more children are living in a state of hunger, the large agricultural firms continue to take taxpayer money in order to supplement their billions in profits. The farm bill of 2014 cut $8.6 billion (over the next ten years) from the food stamp program, of which nearly half of all participants are children. At the same time, the largest 10 percent of farm operators are given benefits worth $14 billion annually.
Paul Buchheit, writing for Commondreams, believes that the mainstream media only highlights the resurgent economy, the booming stock market, and the drop in unemployment, ignoring the reality for the majority of Americans, ” The stock market has enriched only about ten percent of America, handing them millions of dollars since the recession, while the newly available jobs are well below the skill levels of college-trained adults and often without health care and retirement benefits. Too many once-prosperous Americans are beaten up and broken down, waiting in vain for our elected leaders to stop the redistribution of our national wealth.”
Sources:
1. http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/03/16/four-numbers-show-beating-down-middle-america
2. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/biggest-scam-bankrupting-business-middle-class/
Please explore the unbearable conditions prevailing in India and West Bengal.
they dont dont waste billions upon billions upon billions of tax dollars to spy on their own poeple.
What a joke articles like this represent. All it really does is show how many lazy SOB’s live in this country expecting something because their hand is out or they made a sign. Get off your ass and do something beyond panhandling and feeling sorry for yourself. It’s no one’s fault you have nothing. Don’t expect them to subsidize your sloth.
Haha Ben Franklin is all about Corporate Welfare .. haha .. hand outs .. grants and HUGE tax cuts to Billionaires while he attacks the poor. This misguided, brain dead defender of the unjust American corporate model will probably be sitting in a church somewhere today .. haha.
you are blind or a troll. you cant possibly believe that, can you? If you do you have been sleeping for the last 20 years. I hope the fates put you where you need to be to see how wrong your thought process is.
Listen, Ben Franklin: Is that your real name? How many times have been unemployed or had to apply for a job last year? Professional, technical job. Did you take courses? Worked in Safeway for 7.25/hr or cleaned apartments for survival? Maybe you had a sick family member and supported 2-3 people without having your own steady income? Do the calculations, you will know the difference in income and the cost of living. Your ignorance and lack of empathy is similar to tribal thinking. Even animals have better understanding of situations and circumstances to stand up for those in predicament. If you are a manager at some company that hides the books, I won’t be surprised by your attitude to unemployed, under-employed or underpaid. People like you is a joke, self-righteous, stupid bozos, a disgrace to this country.
Well said! I work my ass off and it doesn’t make a difference in the society we have now. Our world….. smh we are all people with the same basic needs. To much power in the wrong hands and to much greed!
Ben Franklin still believes that poverty is a choice. Sure, a part of the people may be responsible for their own problems but most people do not choose to live in poverty but are forced in some way. Not everyone has the same opportunities in life. What you become in life has much to with whom, where and how you grow up. And for those who made mistakes in life, should they be punished indefenitely or should we as society give them a second or third chance?
That is a child.. You are so ignorant. At what age are children Able to work in America? Because I know you can’t work until you are 16 in canada, and even if those children start working right away when there 16, all there opertunities and education are gone, as well as there childhood. There is no reason for this if the states have more money then before… Maybe a program could be set in place to help parents get into a better career. There is absolutely no need to call them lazy.. Especially since the article states that half that number is children who are unable to work.. Poor babies 🙁
Ben your comment was spoken like the privileged person you probably are.
Do you even know how to read or did you just look at the picture and then start spouting ignorant, baseless, right wing propaganda? That entire article was about children. But even before I get into that, what about the hundreds of thousands of mentally ill homeless that are out there? They just being lazy? Or the hundreds of thousands of homeless veterans that our government sent to war and then ignored? A lot of them are one in the same. But I’m sure they’re just being lazy freeloaders too right? The whole point of this article is that theres plenty of wealth in this country just sits in the laps of ignorant, greedy people like you who appear to have lost all empathy.
You must be in the per centage that makes good money. Alot of homeless and poor people once were where u probably are now. When shit happens in your life that is beyond your control, and you find yourself hungry or homeless…I hope you remember how cruel you were when you had it all.
I have tried my hardest to find a job since I was 16, 6 years ago, and iv had no luck. Theres no jobs unless u know somebody or it’s under the table. U work hard all week for that $200-$500 paycheck… By the time u get what u need and pay ur bills ur down to change. TThere’s no jobs unless u have college education and not everyones parents have the money to put there kids in college. U gotta go try ur best to find a job that probably isn’t even there… And then they wonder why there are so many repeat offenders, theives, and drug dealers. U gotta eat somehow. U can’t go hunt ur food because Ull get in trouble for that if u don’t have everything registered and licensed through the government…. Total control.
Ur an idiot by the way.
lmao Ben you are so amazingly stupid.
The 1% uses the citizens united bill to OPENLY and FREELY buy and sell politicians, over 200,000 different companies use offshore tax havens to dodge taxes.
1/3rd of all US dollars are in the hands of just FIVE companies, and 87% of this money is kept overseas.
But yea, I’m sure lazy people are the issue here. People like you are hilarious. Fucking moron of the highest degree if you dont understand why wealth inequality is THE issue.
Trump supporter spotted!
Ben Franklin fuck you and your entitled shit , you are exactly what is wrong with America! Why don’t you eat a bag of dicks and die. I swear people like you talk so much shit but what a little bitch you would be if you were in a different situation, if you lived the life some of these people have to live. I bet you are a spoiled tiny dicked little bastard who nobody really likes. Fuck you and rot in hell you greedy heartless bastard!
Yousir Aranassho I completely agree with everything you said about Ben. He is a dumbfuck, and he should strongly consider taking a bath in gasoline whilst smoking.
Ben Franklin still believes that poverty is a choice. Sure, a part of the people may be responsible for their own problems but most people do not choose to live in poverty but are forced in some way. Not everyone has the same opportunities in life. What you become in life has much to with whom, where and how you grow up. And for those who made mistakes in life, should they be punished indefenitely or should we as society give them a second or third chance?
Yes this country sucks me and more as the years go by. economic life is getting harder and harder, while social life is getting more and more controlled and policed. The government(s) are out for themselves and are therefore incompetent. There is little goodwill in the government’s behavior. wars, interest groups, no moral compass etc…the words are untrue etc… listen to Cruz and his flat tax simplistic bullshit. a flat tax is not fair to the poor and small companies even though its simplicity is appealing on first approach. another politician lining up to lie to people and deceive them again. doesn’t matter what side they are from they all lie. vote them all out.
Nobody wants the people, they only want them to buy diapers but they don’t want their kids!!!
Hey if i can help please invite me to America
i live in country iran islamic republic and my house it have 5 million dollar value and if i can help please invite me to America
immigration is too Hard with a lot of Hard LAW for the reason i can not come to America without official support
I live in much the same situation here in the united kingdom, i have a Mexican wife and i have seen the poverty stricken helpless in the city there, i come back to the uk and see homelessness people living off the bread line working 40 hour weeks and lots of wrong stuff going on. I think things need to be drastically changed how can you have a poverty stricken first world country. We have border issues but also we have laziness but if we sorted it out i think the problems would still be here in other sectors it would be like shifting it for one issue to the next robbing peter to pay paul type of thing and then the rich sit pretty and stick up 2 fingers. I hope there is a change but in my life time i think not i just have faith that the world will one day be a better place not a perfect or full of peace as that just not possible but a resolution so we all mattered.
Government welfare and dependence exacerbate poverty. Welfare dependents make more money than working people. Sounds strange but true. Socialism fails everywhere- in Russia, Cuba, even in Europe. So don’t attack the US CAPITALIST SOCIETY. Those pictures are Socialist propaganda of people who desperately want to come to the US. Heal you system first before attacking America. No one form the US wants to go and live in your Socialist system. Everyone wants to come to America. Anyone who is unhappy here can immediately leave. So shut up and go home.