What Recovery? Americans on Food Stamps Outnumber Population of Spain!

• What Recovery? Americans on Food Stamps Outnumber Population of Spain! 
  by Michael Lombardi | Business 2 Community, via http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ , Jun 25, 2013 
  As of March of this year, 47.7 million Americans are now on some form of food stamps. Between 2000 and 2012, the number of Americans resorting to food stamps increased more than 171%. In 2000, there were just 17.1 million Americans on food stamps. (Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture, June 7, 2013.)
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  There are more individuals on food stamps in the U.S. economy than the entire population of Spain—46.17 million. (Source: World Bank web site, last accessed June 21, 2013.)
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  That costs the government money. The expenditure for food stamps in 2012 was $74.6 billion, almost 116% higher than what it paid in 2008. That’s a cost that could pick up even more speed if, as all indicators show, inflation begins to rise.
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  The key stock indices in the U.S. economy have skyrocketed since the Great Recession, due in large part to money printing, but the average American Joe hasn’t seen his living conditions improve—in fact, they have actually deteriorated.
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  Instead, the rich appear to be getting richer and the poor are facing more challenges, while the middle class is disintegrating. According to a Pew Research report, the bottom 93% of households in the U.S. economy witnessed their net worth drop by four percent between 2009 and 2011. The richest seven percent of U.S. households saw their wealth increase by 28% in the same period. (Source: Associated Press, April 23, 2013.)
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  The misery for the middle class doesn’t end here; the Census Bureau reported in the first-quarter that home ownership in the U.S. economy dropped to its lowest level in 18 years. Just 65% of Americans owned their homes in the first quarter, as compared to 65.4% in the same period a year ago. (Source: Bloomberg, April 30, 2013.)
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  I have said this before: economic growth occurs when a country’s citizens are able to find work to make money, spend, and save. But then the U.S. economy is still far from that.
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