Posted on 09/02/2018 9:33:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
By virtually any yardstick, the U.S. economy is doing great. Unemployment is near a two-decade low. The stock market is strong. Corporate profits are at record highs.
Yet a report out this week finds that almost half of Americans are having trouble paying for basic needs such as food and housing.
The Urban Institute, a left-leaning Washington think tank, surveyed more than 7,500 adults about their experience making ends meet. It found that about 40% of people ages 18 to 64 faced some sort of hardship last year.
“It’s certainly surprising and disconcerting that so many people are having difficulty meeting their basic needs,” said Michael Karpman, a research associate at the Urban Institute and coauthor of the report.
“What we found is that a lot of people have to devote much of their income to fixed expenses like rent or healthcare,” he told me. “If they’re hit with a large, unexpected expense, they simply can’t cover it.”
The stats become more troubling the deeper you drill down. More than 35% of families with at least one working adult reported difficulty meeting at least one basic need last year.
Almost a quarter of Americans experienced food insecurity, which is to say they didn’t always know if they’d be able to eat if they were hungry.
A staggering 18% faced issues paying medical bills, and nearly as large a percentage reported skipping treatment for an ailment because they couldn’t afford it.
Slightly more than 10% of Americans missed a rental or mortgage payment. Thirteen percent couldn’t pay a utility bill.
While much of these economic woes were concentrated among lower-income households, the Urban Institute found that many middle-class families also struggled to pay their bills.
“About 20% of middle-class people are having trouble, mostly with healthcare,” Karpman said.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Remember all the discussion of Cloward-Piven at the time? Obama clearly wanted to crash the entire system.
You are correct. This is a completely false premise in the United States.
One can fairly argue that half or more of the world population lives a semi-subsistence or complete subsistence life. If they do not work that day they do not eat that day or a day in the future. Fortunately, this is true for fewer people today than ever before in human history, but it is still a fact.
Humans need food, water, shelter, warm clothing, and basic sanitation. Everything else is a luxury. The choices people make on how to spend their money are just that, their choices. If you neglect a basic need for the sake of a luxury that is a choice you make. If people want to see true poverty it exists and it is tragic, but if anyone writes such tripe about America and directly or indirectly blames a President they are dishonest in the extreme.
Trump has derailed many of the usual talking points of the left - bigly. They keep trotting out the same crap and it sounds even more ridiculous now.
The success formula in our country is so darn simple and easy:
1. Get a good education.
2. Stay sober.
3. Show up to work on time and deliver an honest day’s work.
4. Don’t have kids before getting married.
5. Don’t spend more than you make. Don’t waste money on toys.
6. Put your income into three budget buckets: immediate consumption; savings for your near-term needs like car repairs and property tax; and savings for retirement.
You’re right Pollard, wages have been stagnant forever.
Wages do need to increase and Trump is trying to make that happen, but he’s being fought at every turn. The main reason we need to get rid of illegals is to get rid of the guy that’ll work for $2 an hour and get an American in that job working for better wages. That solves two problems, it get the illegal out of the country and gets the American off of food stamps and into a productive job. The chamber of commerce types are terrified they won’t be able maintain their bloated profit margins so they’re on an all out assault against Trump.
It’s for the same reason we need to get manufacturing back in this country. Having your widget manufactured in China by workers making peanuts just imports their standard of living along with the cheap products. We need these products made in the U.S. by U.S. workers making a decent wage, I don’t care if it drives up the prices some or a head of lettuce gets more expensive. This reliance on sub-wage labor both at home and abroad has impoverished our own people. The only people that benefit from this are the executive suite and democrats because they get a new crop of voters that are hooked on welfare because we’ve created a system where companies don’t have to pay market wages.
BS for the useful idiots.
And, the EASIEST, most efficient (and LEGAL) method of correction is:
REMOVING THE HAND OF GOVT FROM THE POCKET(s) OF THE PEOPLE via following the Constitution and enforcing the Law (those that are/were made pursuant thereof)
Foreign concept to Leftists & totalitarian thugs (I repeat myself)
The priorities that are practiced today in American households-—single up to 20 kids are disgusting.
Not only do they all have to have that $4000 big screen TV, they then have to pay for the EXTRA power that TV uses.
Wait until Calif is depending on Solar & wind power & those fancy TV’s go dark in the middle of the Super Bowl.
== ALL HANDS ON DECK.........to repel invaders.
We obviously have too many fat people with iphones living in “poverty”.
Half of all real salt-of-the-earth Americans, or all the combined illegals, welfare bums and other human detritus in the country? Define your terms.
Obamacare greatly increased premiums, some almost 100%, while at the same time raising deductibles and copays. Thanks to “O” more of their money goes to his failed program.
Get real. They sell big screens for less than 500 bucks.
I can assure you, having a 55" or 60" TV is not a benchmark for high dollar lavish living.
I’m going to quote Dave Ramsey here.
70% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, a rate steady for years.
80% of “upper class” Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
Most are not in that situation because they are poor. They are living that way because they thought they had to lease a luxury car, charged too many meals out on credit cards, bought the most house they could afford as a sign they “made it”.
For the majority, this is due to CHOICES.
I will say the bottom 20% that Liberals screwed over by saying we’ll focus on sexual minorities instead of the poor, we want more legal and illegal immigrants to compete with you for jobs and welfare ARE being helped by the Trump boom.
Everyone else, it is typically your own darn fault.
Under Obama’s economy I knew of engineers and computer scientists who were unemployed.
We have the richest poor people in the world.
Oh, but they deserve to live in a place free of racist, homophobic Trumptards...no matter how much it costs! :)
Dunno bout your area, but there is an abundance of fat people working in the local hospitals roun here.......Guess they know they are gonna NEED the insurance huh ?
“The economy may be booming, but nearly half of Americans can’t make ends meet”
AND THAT, mon ami, makes them better off than 99% of all who have lived on ‘Gods Good Green Earth’ ..
Then maybe half of Americans are living beyond their means.
Amazing! between January 2009 and January 2017 NO Americans were out of work, none were on food stamps, none had to go without, none had to walk rather than drive, and there were no homeless.
Lo and behold, suddenly since February 2017, everyone has been starving, no one is working, 30 million are homeless, and the country is going to hell in a handbasket.
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