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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums4 Numbers That Prove America Is a Deeply Messed Up Place
http://www.alternet.org/economy/4-numbers-prove-america-deeply-messed-place1.138,000 Kids Were Homeless while 115,000 Households Were Each Making $10 Million Per Year
Recent data has shown that the richest .1% (115,000 households) have each increased their wealth by an astonishing $10 million per year. As they counted their money on a frigid night in January, 138,000 children, according to the U.S. Department of Housing, were without a place to call home.
2. The Average U.S. Household Pays $400 to Feed and Clothe Walmart, McDonalds, and Other Low-Wage Workers
The Economic Policy Institute reports that $45 billion per year in federal, state, and other safety net support is paid to workers earning less than $10.10 an hour. Thus the average U.S. household is paying about $400 to employees in low-wage industries such as food service, retail, and personal care.
3. As $30 Trillion in New Wealth was being Created, the Number of Kids on Food Stamps Increased 70%
Before the recession, 12 out of every 100 American children got food stamps. After the recession, 20 out of every 100 American children got food stamps.
midnight
(26,624 posts)n2doc
(47,953 posts)midnight
(26,624 posts)Scuba
(53,475 posts)As more and more children go hungry, the largest agricultural firms continue to take taxpayer money to supplement their billions in profits. The 2014 farm bill cut $8.6 billion (over the next ten years) from the food stamp program, of which nearly half of all participants are children. Meanwhile, $14 billion is annually paid out to the largest 10 percent of farm operators.
Sometimes I'm very ashamed of my country.
Unfortunately, it's more and more often instead of declining.
enki23
(7,786 posts).
daleanime
(17,796 posts)thanks for the flame refreshing.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)blm
(112,920 posts)rig the system and shift the tax burden even further away from them and onto working families.
NoJusticeNoPeace
(5,018 posts)and to rig the inheritance tax law.
If you oppose paying higher taxes when you have $50 or $100 million or one billion, then you dont deserve to have that money that you TOOK from us in the first place.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)WillyT
(72,631 posts)BlueJazz
(25,348 posts)This is from Woolworth's in Australia My cousin is a manager in one of them.
Every time I think about the pay difference, I get in one of my moods...the unfairness of it all.
And this is a fucking Woolworth store which isn't that big a deal.
http://www.payscale.com/research/AU/Employer=Woolworths/Hourly_Rate
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)This website says you get $11.49 US dollars for $15 Australian dollars.
http://coinmill.com/AUD_USD.html?AUD=15
That is today anyway.
I don't know how this compares to wages in the US once you convert the money according to the exchange rate.
BlueJazz
(25,348 posts)..all over the place. Even in the past 2 years it's been fairly close to even at times.
Right now is the widest I've seen in a while.
Also, the grocery stores are close to ours. Eating out is higher.
Throw in health care and they still take much better care of their citizens.
I could go back and live there (of course) but I value my friends highly here and love a good fight for equality anyway.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)The same thing has happened with the Canadian dollar as well.
BlueJazz
(25,348 posts)Fred Sanders
(23,946 posts)except it happened the opposite way.
And now that money is free speech and corporations have fully merged with media and with one of two partys in a two party state...America is one black man in charge of the Executive Branch away from true fascism.
seabeckind
(1,957 posts)there's another thread that talks about Rubio joining the rest of us and losing money when selling his home.
Poor guy. Maybe if he asks real nice the realtor will give him a break on the fee.
midnight
(26,624 posts)mountain grammy
(26,568 posts)supply side Reaganomics. We're failing fast.
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)40% of America's wealth and the top 10% control 80% of her wealth. That leaves 20% of America's wealth to be divvied up among the bottom 90% of Americans. Are you part of the top 10% or part of the bottom 90%?
niyad
(112,434 posts)father founding
(619 posts)Let them eat cake !
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)AZ Progressive
(3,411 posts)Including the freedom for the rich to screw the poor, like it has always been throughout history.
AZ Progressive
(3,411 posts)Attitudes of people changed with the rise of the Right Wing in the 70's, who started to attack the labor unions, and especially in the 80's when the perceived value of employees within corporations plummeted with the influence of Reagan and Jack Welch.
FairWinds
(1,717 posts)Australian minimum wage workers also get paid vacations & sick days, health care, and retirement.
And it's not just Australia - McDonald's workers in Denmark earn $ 20 per hour.
What's the difference? Unions.
Takket
(21,424 posts)Reverse Robin Hood in effect
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)maybe it should be #5?
calimary
(80,693 posts)That's more damaging than anything else, seems to me, because THAT infuses and informs all these other problems - the income inequality, the neglect of children living in poverty, the hideously-selfish and thoroughly un-Christian IGMFU/"Sucks to be YOU" mentality that this helps foster. How many deliberate and defiant DUMB-ASSES are there voting their equally DUMB-ASS favorites into political power positions? And how many of those successful DUMB-ASS candidates are then able to fuck the rest of us up one side of the street and down the other - on every issue from poverty and malnourishment to the very survival of our species on this planet??
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Response to xchrom (Original post)
1000words This message was self-deleted by its author.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)that are ok with this condition and want to continue the status quo of Wall Street domination of our economy.
Ask yourself if your candidate supports ending poverty or supports Wall Street.
Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)Be appointed actual president rather than simply as the one that manages the President's decisions. He would go into detail about how whomever holds the CEO position at any given moment would sit in the chair and sign the bills, he did make a good point as to how a Corp could hold unlimited terms providing they changed CEO's every 8 years, a very pragmatic way of granting president for life status to a person that just happened to be born a corporation.
Interesting conversation actually. Very adult. Very passionate as the spittle flew from his lips
Man from Pickens
(1,713 posts)there are 24 vacant houses in the US for every homeless person
Sister to TxTowelie
(117 posts)to increase their weekend backpacks of love program. More kids need help with food and hygiene products on the weekends. We've been fortunate that people have stepped up to provide more assistance to the kids.
The level of child poverty in the US is shameful.
clarice
(5,504 posts)Blue Owl
(49,913 posts)n/t
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Last edited Tue Mar 17, 2015, 01:12 AM - Edit history (1)
The GOP is the consistent voice of the ultra wealthy. Their goal is the elimination of all but the 1% and their trusted servants. None of this should be a surprise.They and others see the year 2030 as when they will accomplish this, and they will, without well organized opposition. It is indeed organizing right now, as for many involved trying to save public interests and programs are seeing a backlash against the GOP.
We're at a tipping point. Time is still not on our side. But we have nearly two years to vote those in office nationally who will support our goals. At least this is what people I met with this weekend are gleaning from the many reports with real life Democrats who are resisting on every level.
It just never makes the news. We've had some very heartening victories lately and are not going to give in. The work is from meeting to meeting, district to district, county to state, through the federal level. We follow the bills through legislatures and know exactly what is going on, who is for us and who is against. We nurse along the ones that support our vision, which is New Deal, and we adapt to make it even more inclusive than before.
We resist, following each to see that the bad ones are lost. If we lose, we start again and keep track of our friends and enemies and are on the look out for allies, but we know who they are. In all things, we know that majority and seniority rule in legislatures and we work to keep those with our vision supported.
Too many lives are at stake for us to stay home, and I bow to those able to do more than I can now.
proverbialwisdom
(4,959 posts)Number Of Homeless Children In America Surges To All-Time High: Report
By DAVID CRARY and LISA LEFF
Posted: 11/17/2014 5:49 am EST Updated: 11/18/2014 3:59 pm EST
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) The number of homeless children in the U.S. has surged in recent years to an all-time high, amounting to one child in every 30, according to a comprehensive state-by-state report that blames the nation's high poverty rate, the lack of affordable housing and the impacts of pervasive domestic violence.
Titled "America's Youngest Outcasts," the report being issued Monday by the National Center on Family Homelessness calculates that nearly 2.5 million American children were homeless at some point in 2013. The number is based on the Department of Education's latest count of 1.3 million homeless children in public schools, supplemented by estimates of homeless pre-school children not counted by the DOE.
The problem is particularly severe in California, which has one-eighth of the U.S. population but accounts for more than one-fifth of the homeless children with a tally of nearly 527,000.
Carmela DeCandia, director of the national center and a co-author of the report, noted that the federal government has made progress in reducing homelessness among veterans and chronically homeless adults.
"The same level of attention and resources has not been targeted to help families and children," she said. "As a society, we're going to pay a high price, in human and economic terms."
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YOHABLO
(7,358 posts)And most who do know of these numbers do not CARE ! I got mine, you go and get yours. Too bad.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)Thespian2
(2,741 posts)that many of us Americans live in Canada.