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109,631,000 Americans on Welfare...
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The 35.4 Percent: 109,631,000 on Welfare
August 20, 2014 - 4:35 AM
By Terence P. Jeffrey
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109,631,000 Americans lived in households that received benefits from one or more federally funded "means-tested programs" — also known as welfare — as of the fourth quarter of 2012, according to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau.
The Census Bureau has not yet reported how many were on welfare in 2013 or the first two quarters of 2014.
But the 109,631,000 living in households taking federal welfare benefits as of the end of 2012, according to the Census Bureau, equaled 35.4 percent of all 309,467,000 people living in the United States at that time.
When those receiving benefits from non-means-tested federal programs — such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment and veterans benefits — were added to those taking welfare benefits, it turned out that 153,323,000 people were getting federal benefits of some type at the end of 2012.
Subtract the 3,297,000 who were receiving veterans' benefits from the total, and that leaves 150,026,000 people receiving non-veterans' benefits.
The 153,323,000 total benefit-takers at the end of 2012, said the Census Bureau, equaled 49.5 percent of the population. The 150,026,000 taking benefits other than veterans' benefits equaled about 48.5 percent of the population.
When America re-elected President Barack Obama in 2012, we had not quite reached the point where more than half the country was taking benefits from the federal government.
It is a reasonable bet, however, that with the implementation of Obamacare — with its provisions expanding Medicaid and providing health-insurance subsidies to people earning up to 400 percent of poverty — that if we have not already surpassed that point (not counting those getting veterans benefits) we soon will.
What did taxpayers give to the 109,631,000 — the 35.4 percent of the nation — getting welfare benefits at the end of 2012?
82,679,000 of the welfare-takers lived in households where people were on Medicaid, said the Census Bureau. 51,471,000 were in households on food stamps. 22,526,000 were in the Women, Infants and Children program. 20,355,000 were in household on Supplemental Security Income. 13,267,000 lived in public housing or got housing subsidies. 5,442,000 got Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. 4,517,000 received other forms of federal cash assistance.
How do you put in perspective the 109,631,000 people taking welfare, or the 150,026,000 getting some type of federal benefit other than veterans' benefits?
Well, the CIA World Factbook says there are 142,470,272 people in Russia. So, the 150,026,000 people getting non-veterans federal benefits in the United States at the end of 2012 outnumbered all the people in Russia.
63,742,977 people live in the United Kingdom and 44,291,413 live in the Ukraine, says the CIA. So, the combined 108,034,390 people in these two nations was about 1,596,610 less than 109,631,000 collecting welfare in the United States.
It may be more telling, however, to compare the 109,631,000 Americans taking federal welfare benefits at the end of 2012 to Americans categorized by other characteristics.
In 2012, according to the Census Bureau, there were 103,087,000 full-time year-round workers in the United States (including 16,606,000 full-time year-round government workers). Thus, the welfare-takers outnumbered full-time year-round workers by 6,544,000.
California, the nation's most-populated state, contained an estimated 38,332,521 people in 2013, says the Census Bureau. Texas had 26,448,193 people, New York had 19,651,127, and Florida had 19,552,860. But the combined 103,984,701 people in these four massive states still fell about 5,646,299 short of the 109,631,000 people on welfare.
In the fourth quarter of 2008, when President Obama was elected, there were 96,197,000 people living in households taking benefits from one or more federal welfare programs. After four years, by the fourth quarter of 2012, that had grown by 13,434,000.
Those 13,434,000 additional people on welfare outnumbered the 12,882,135 people the Census Bureau estimated lived in Obama's home state of Illinois in 2013.
http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/te...631000-welfare
Only 15% more and we can kiss America good bye, no country can survive that type system half working half not, liberals believe that will bring about their socialist agenda but it will simply bring communism and internal war.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
30 stats to show to anyone that does not believe the middle class is being destroyed
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"Down and Outsourced" - Michael D'Antuono
Michael Snyder
Activist Post
The 30 statistics that you are about to read prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a staggering pace. Yes, the stock market has soared to unprecedented heights this year and there are a few isolated areas of the country that are doing rather well for the moment. But overall, the long-term trends that are eviscerating the middle class just continue to accelerate.
Over the past decade or so, the percentage of Americans that are working has gone way down, the quality of our jobs has plummeted dramatically and the wealth of the typical American household has fallen precipitously. Meanwhile, we have watched median household income decline for five years in a row, we have watched the rate of homeownership in this country decline for eight years in a row and dependence on the government is at an all-time high.
Being a part of the middle class in the United States at this point can be compared to playing a game of musical chairs. We can all see chairs being removed from the game, and we are all desperate to continue to have a chair every time the music stops playing. The next time the music stops, will it be your chair that gets removed?
And in this economy, you don't even have to lose your job to fall out of the middle class. Our paychecks are remaining very stable while the cost of almost everything that we spend money on consistently (food, gas, health insurance, etc.) is going up rapidly. Bloomberg calls this "the no-raises recovery"...Call it the no-raises recovery: Five years of economic expansion have done almost nothing to boost paychecks for typical American workers while the rich have gotten richer.Meager improvements since 2009 have barely kept up with a similarly tepid pace of inflation, raising the real value of compensation per hour by only 0.5 percent. That marks the weakest growth since World War II, with increases averaging 9.2 percent at a similar point in past expansions, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data compiled by Bloomberg.There are so many families out there that are struggling right now. So many husbands and wives find themselves constantly fighting with one another about money, and they don't even understand that what is happening to them is the result of long-term economic trends that are the result of decades of incredibly foolish decisions. Without middle class jobs, we cannot have a middle class. And those are precisely the jobs that have been destroyed during the Clinton, Bush and Obama years. Without enough good jobs to go around, we have seen the middle class steadily shrink and the ranks of the poor grow rapidly.
The following are 30 stats to show to anyone that does not believe the middle class is being destroyed...
1. In 2007, the average household in the top 5 percent had 16.5 times as much wealth as the average household overall. But now the average household in the top 5 percent has 24 times as much wealth as the average household overall.
2. According to a study recently discussed in the New York Times, the "typical American household" is now worth 36 percent less than it was worth a decade ago.
3. One out of every seven Americans rely on food banks at this point.
4. One out of every four military families needs help putting enough food on the table.
5. 79 percent of the people that use food banks purchase "inexpensive, unhealthy food just to have enough to feed their families".
6. One out of every three adults in the United States has an unpaid debt that is "in collections".
7. Only 48 percent of all Americans can immediately come up with $400 in emergency cash without borrowing it or selling something.
8. The price of food continues to rise much faster than the paychecks of most middle class families. For example, the average price of ground beef has just hit a brand new all-time record high of $3.884 a pound.
9. According to one recent study, 40 percent of all households in the United States are experiencing financial stress right now.
10. The overall homeownership rate has fallen to the lowest level since 1995.
11. The homeownership rate for Americans under the age of 35 is at an all-time low.
12. According to one recent survey, 52 percent of all Americans cannot even afford the house that they are living in right now.
13. The average age of vehicles on America’s roads has hit an all-time high of 11.4 years.
14. Last year, one out of every four auto loans in the United States was made to someone with subprime credit.
15. Amazingly, one out of every six men in their prime working years (25 to 54) does not have a job at this point.
16. One recent study found that 47 percent of unemployed Americans have “completely given up” looking for a job.
17. 36 percent of Americans do not have a single penny saved for retirement.
18. According to one survey, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.
19. More than half of all working Americans make less than $30,000 a year in wages.
20. Only four of the twenty fastest growing occupations in America require a Bachelor’s degree or better.
21. In America today, one out of every ten jobs is filled by a temp agency.
22. Due to a lack of decent jobs, half of all college graduates are still relying on their parents financially when they are two years out of school.
23. Median household income in the United States is about 7 percent lower than it was in the year 2000 after adjusting for inflation.
24. Approximately one out of every four part-time workers in America is living below the poverty line.
25. It is hard to believe, but more than one out of every five children in the United States is living in poverty in 2014.
26. According to one study, there are 49 million Americans that are dealing with food insecurity.
27. Ten years ago, the number of women in the U.S. that had jobs outnumbered the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps by more than a 2 to 1 margin. But now the number of women in the U.S. on food stamps actually exceeds the number of women that have jobs.
28. If the middle class was actually thriving, we wouldn’t have more than a million public school children that are homeless.
29. If you can believe it, Americans received more than 2 trillion dollars in benefits from the federal government last year alone.
30. In terms of median wealth per adult, the United States is now in just 19th place in the world.
This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse Blog. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.
http://endoftheamericandream.com/
https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net...81411525_n.jpg Human Events
Obama ranks dead last for economic growth among all presidents since 1932:
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The Obama economic record: The worst five years since World War II | Human Events
Although some of the policies responsible for slow growth began before Obama...
humanevents.com
The Obama economic record: The worst five years since World War II
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By: Tracy C. Miller
8/20/2014 10:58 AM
IMF Lowers Estimate Of US Economic Growth In 2014
The International Monetary Fund foresees the U.S. economy growing a modest 2 percent this year, below its previous estimate of 2.7 percent. That would be nearly identical to the economy's 1.9 percent growth in 2013.
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Video at the page link:
In spite of the claims by President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors regarding his administration’s economic accomplishments, the U.S. economy has grown very slowly in the years since the Great Recession of 2008-09. After four years of slow growth, the latest data reveals that the U.S. economy shrank at a 2.9 percent annual rate during the first quarter of 2014.
That figure has been widely reported, but here are some figures that have not been reported, and they are quite eye-opening:
Over the first five years of Obama’s presidency, the U.S. economy grew more slowly than during any five-year period since just after the end of World War II, averaging less than 1.3 percent per year. If we leave out the sharp recession of 1945-46 following World War II, Obama looks even worse, ranking dead last among all presidents since 1932. No other president since the Great Depression has presided over such a steadily poor rate of economic growth during his first five years in office. This slow growth should not be a surprise in light of the policies this administration has pursued.
An economy usually grows rapidly in the years immediately following a recession. As Peter Ferrera points out in Forbes, the U.S. economy has not even reached its long run average rate of growth of 3.3 percent; the highest annual growth rate since Obama took office was 2.8 percent. Total growth in real GDP over the 19 quarters of economic recovery since the second quarter of 2009 has been 10.2 percent. Growth over the same length of time during previous post-World War II recoveries has ranged from 15.1 percent during George W. Bush’s presidency to 30 percent during the recovery that began when John F. Kennedy was elected.
Economic growth is usually faster than normal following a recession as entrepreneurs find more productive ways to employ the resources that were idle during the recession. How rapidly the economy grows and recovers depends partly on whether market forces are allowed to allocate resources, including labor, to their most productive uses. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has pursued several policies that make it harder for market forces to work. These include: bailouts, expansion of entitlement programs, regulation of the economy, tax increases, and huge government deficits.
Bailouts have resulted in capital being stuck in businesses that are either inefficiently run or have failed to produce goods and services that consumers’ value highly. In the absence of bailouts, some firms would have gone bankrupt and the capital reallocated to vibrant firms that are producing what consumers demand in a cost-effective way.
Expansion of government entitlement programs, such as food stamps and unemployment compensation, has reduced the incentive to be employed. The average benefit per recipient of food stamps jumped by approximately 25 percent between 2007 and 2010 due to rule changes. It also became easier to qualify for food stamps. As Richard Vedder points out in a Wall Street Journal editorial, the number of food stamp recipients rose by over 7 million between 2010 and 2012, a period of falling unemployment.
A number of changes associated with the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (the economic stimulus package passed after Obama was elected) resulted in greater after-tax benefits to being unemployed. These include exempting part of unemployment insurance benefits from federal income taxes and subsidizing health insurance costs for laid off workers. Unemployment benefits also were extended for up to 99 weeks. In addition, the federal government developed mortgage modification formulas for banks to use, which resulted in a bigger reduction in interest payments for those with lower incomes.
The combined effect of a more generous food stamp program, more generous benefits for unemployed workers and mortgage modification formulas is to offset a considerable percentage of the reduction in income from being unemployed. This results in less incentive to work. If less people work, less output is produced and real GDP grows more slowly.
In addition to the policies described above, health care reform has also likely contributed to less employment and output in the economy. By requiring all firms employing more than 50 workers to provide health insurance coverage, the Affordable Care Act has discouraged some firms from hiring workers, while giving other firms an incentive to reduce hours or lay off workers.
Finally, uncertainty about the future direction of the economy has resulted in fixed investment that is only 93 percent as high as it was in 2006. This uncertainty likely stems from a combination of recent bailouts, huge and unsustainable government deficits, Federal Reserve monetary policy and growing government regulation such as Dodd-Frank and health care reform. Investment is what makes workers more productive thereby driving economic growth.
Although some of the policies responsible for slow growth began before Obama took office, he has expanded those policies and added new ones as well. It is necessary that those policies be reversed if the U.S. economy is going to again grow as rapidly as it did during most of the 2oth century. Such growth is vital both as a means to lift people out of poverty and to raise the revenue necessary to pay for Social Security and Medicare benefits to a growing population of retirees. Unfortunately, in the meantime, the lack of growth under Barack Obama during the last five years has been literally the worst for any president since World War II.
http://humanevents.com/2014/08/20/th...paign=heupdate
https://fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net...49441efb7dc308 Conservative Daily
Wake-up call...
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Percentage of Americans Now on Welfare Paints a Disturbing Picture of the State of Our Economy
A very troubling percentage.
ijreview.com
Percentage of Americans Now on Welfare Paints a Disturbing Picture of the State of Our Economy
581 Shares By Kevin Boyd 1 day ago
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The economy is struggling and, as a result, more and more Americans have turned to the government for welfare.
The percentage of Americans now receiving a federally-funded “means-tested program” now stands at 35.4%. When you add pensions, unemployment, Social Security, and Medicare to the mix, the percentage of Americans relying on government for part or all of their subsistence is 49.5% of the American population.
From CNSNews.com:But the 109,631,000 living in households taking federal welfare benefits as of the end of 2012, according to the Census Bureau, equaled 35.4 percent of all 309,467,000 people living in the United States at that time.
When those receiving benefits from non-means-tested federal programs — such as Social Security, Medicare, unemployment and veterans benefits — were added to those taking welfare benefits, it turned out that 153,323,000 people were getting federal benefits of some type at the end of 2012.
It’s important to separate those receiving retirement benefits, pensions, and even unemployment from those receiving “means-tested benefits” because in theory, the recipients of the former have pre-paid their benefits, whereas those receiving welfare have to have tax money appropriated to give them their benefits.
Which means-tested welfare program is the largest?82,679,000 of the welfare-takers lived in households where people were on Medicaid, said the Census Bureau. 51,471,000 were in households on food stamps. 22,526,000 were in the Women, Infants and Children program. 20,355,000 were in household on Supplemental Security Income. 13,267,000 lived in public housing or got housing subsidies. 5,442,000 got Temporary Assistance to Needy Families. 4,517,000 received other forms of federal cash assistance.Medicaid enrollment is set to only increase as Obamacare forces more people into the program. Also, these numbers do not include those receiving Obamacare subsidies, which can be received by anyone making 400% of the poverty level.
It is clearly not sustainable to have a country where more than half of the country is receiving benefits from the government. It will force tax rates to go up and lessen flexibility on other federal spending as the tax base shrinks.
We need to find ways as a country to reduce the number on welfare and help them become more self-reliant.
http://www.ijreview.com/2014/08/1702...re-will-shock/
At least 30% don't speak English. JMO