Poor In America: Cable TV, Cell Phones, Video Games and More

Mac Slavo
July 28th, 2011
SHTFplan.com
49 Comments

In America we’ve been conditioned so that when we hear the term poverty it evokes feelings and images of destitution and hopelessness – people who are hungry, without clothes and homeless. There is no doubt that a certain segment of the population lives this way – roughly half of a percent of Americans (about one in every 200) experience homelessness in any given year.

However, the majority of poor Americans are not as bad off as we may have been led to believe – at least in terms of everyday amenities. With a government social network that includes benefits like unemployment, food stamps, welfare, rental and mortgage assistance, and health care, the poor in America are still doing fairly well compared to their counterparts in most other countries around the world.

The following chart from The Heritage Foundation http://www.heritage.org/Research/Report ... is-Poverty shows that even poor Americans – those who fall below the official income poverty line – usually have a DVD player, video gaming system, multiple televisions, a computer, washer and dryer, cable TV, dedicated internet, a cell phone, and in a very limited amount of cases, even a jacuzzi.



The figures were taken in a government consumption survey near the height of the financial and economic bubble in 2005.

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