"Record Number Of Americans In Extreme Poverty" : U.S. Economist ~ THE 5TH ESTATE ASIA

Tuesday, September 02, 2014

"Record Number Of Americans In Extreme Poverty" : U.S. Economist

Tuesday, September 02, 2014

Americans have only themselves to blame; they could have stopped this bullshit a decade ago however beer and circus took precedence as cowardice, illiteracy, complacency and ignorance won out over action

PRESS TV
09/01/2014

Poverty and unemployment is worsening in America, with a “record number” of US households in extreme poverty and depending on government benefits to survive, an American economist tells Press TV.

“The United States has problems with unemployment and has problems with poverty and a record number of people meeting the standard of extreme poverty,” said Mark Thornton, senior fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Alabama and a research fellow with the Independent Institute in California.

“Extreme poverty in the United States is now over 4 percent, that means they have less than $2 cash per person, per day,” Thornton said in a phone interview on Monday. “We also have over 20 percent of Americans on food stamps with a record number of households receiving food stamps and other government welfare benefits,” the economist stated. “So the direction of change in the United States has been negative with respect to poverty over the last several years and that doesn’t seem to be turning around anytime soon.”

“We have just as much people in poverty today in the United States as we did 50 years ago with nearly one third of the US population qualifying at below the poverty level at any one point during the year, so the conditions for poor Americans have gotten worse and there’s very little light at the end of the tunnel with respect to Americans getting jobs and getting out of poverty.”

A study published last year by two US economists showed slightly more than one in every 25 American households with children is surviving on less than $2 per day of income from all sources. The findings were originally published in June 2013 by Social Science Review, but have not been reported in the mainstream media.

Titled, “Rising Extreme Poverty in the United States and the Response of Federal Means-Tested Transfer Programs,” the researchers reported that there has been “an increase in the prevalence of extreme poverty among US households with children between 1996 and 2011.”

Furthermore, the study said, “The prevalence of extreme poverty has risen sharply since 1996, particularly among those most impacted by the 1996 welfare reform,” which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton and which embodied numerous elements of President Ronald Reagan’s views on poverty.

AHT/HRJ

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