Finance, Forex and Investments

If our economy is doing so well, why is there stories like this?

U.S. Poverty Data Raise New Questions About Cost of War Haider Rizvi, OneWorld US Fri Aug 31, 6:19 PM ET NEW YORK, Aug 31 (OneWorld) - It is one of the most affluent countries in the world, but sill millions of people in the United States find it very difficult to put a nice meal on their dinner table. Nationwide, more than 36 million people, or nearly 13 percent of the total population, lived in poverty last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau report released this week. Among those officially considered "poor," over one third are children, most of them non-white minorities such as African Americans, Latinos, and Asians. The data reveals continued inequality and concentration of wealth in the United States, with the top 20 percent of households receiving over 50 percent of the nation's income, while the lowest 20 percent got just a little over 3 percent. "The impact of race, ethnicity, and gender is extremely disturbing," notes Roberta Spivek of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization involved in numerous campaigns for economic and social rights. According to the data, more than 8 percent of non-Hispanic whites, about 10 percent of Asians, over 20 percent of Hispanics, and some 24 percent of African Americans are "poor." Although the Hispanic poverty rate went down by about 1 percent last year, African Americans and non-White Hispanics are still about three times more likely than whites to be poor. Single mothers figure among the nation's poor who suffer the most. "Being a single mother has an alarming effect," Spivek noted, reflecting on the gender-specific aspect of the numbers. The data shows that more than 28 percent of women raising their children without husbands are condemned to suffer from poverty. Those married but impoverished are estimated to be around 5 percent. The official poverty threshold in 2006, which many experts believe to be too low, was $20,614 for a family of four, about $16,000 for a family of three, around $13,000 for a family of two and a little over $10,000 for an individual. Last year, according to the census report, about 47 million Americans had no access to health insurance. Once again, official figures suggest that most of those who lack health care are individuals and families from non-white minorities. In Spivek's analysis, Hispanics, American Indians, and Alaska natives are three times more likely than whites to lack access to medical care. Noting that currently the U.S. government spends about $720 million a day on the war in Iraq, Joyce Miller, a human rights activist associated with AFSC, said that amount could buy school lunch for 1 million children. With that money, according to her, the government could also provide over 400, 000 children with health care. http://news.yahoo.com/s/oneworld/20070831/wl_oneworld/45361528041188602495

Public Comments

1. Because of the educational system. Nice sentence. Then you blame someone else because you never opened that book on Grammar.
2. HUMAN priorities backwards. Severe cases of 'Cranial Rectosis" are epidemic in DC. They don't CARE about the voters, just their pet projects.
3. We believe what gets repeated to us day after day. If you are not feeling the wealth, you must be doing something wrong. Somehow you should be able to work more than 40 hours a week. Somehow you should be able to pay outrageous health care premiums. Somehow you should be able to pay for your groceries. If not, work harder! It's only another myth that Repulbicans like to throw around. Watch how all of this will get blamed on the Democrats.