Half of U.S. Households Now Have at Least
One Person on Government Benefits
By Michael Lombardi, MBA for Profit Confidential
According to a just-released U.S. Census Bureau study, a jaw-dropping 49.1% of U.S. households have at least one person in the home receiving some type of government benefit (source: Wall Street Journal, May 26, 2012).
In 1983, this survey from the Census Bureau revealed that a much lower 30% of households received some type of government benefit. Thirty years later, there has been a 64% increase in the number of people receiving some form of government assistance! So much for that economic recovery!
The government benefit most cited that a member of a household received was Medicaid, followed by food stamps.
The study suggests that, as more people struggle to make ends meet in this supposed economic recovery, families are forced to live together under one roof (very common in Europe), creating more and more multigenerational households than in the past, which again does not point to an economic recovery.
A recent study by The National Center for Education just released a study that confirms that economic recovery hasn’t showed up. The unemployment rate among full-time high-school students is the worst it has been in 20 years!
Thirty-two percent of high-school students held a job in 1990, as compared to just 16% today. The reason for the 50% drop in school students with job: it has to do with retired people.
Retired people are worse off financially today than they were in 1990, which means the retirees need to take on jobs to make ends meet. The elderly are pushing high-school students to the side! To young people, there is no economic recovery!
The National Center for Education also noted that 52% of full-time college students worked in 2000, but now only 40% do, as fewer jobs are available.
A survey from Rutgers University illustrates how the economic recovery has not taken hold. The survey reveals only 53% of college graduates have a full-time job.
The unemployment rate for college graduates in this country is at the highest it has been in years. And we are to believe an economic recovery is underway?
The Census Bureau is concerned that, at this level of government assistance—49.1%—taxes are going to have to rise in order to continue paying out all of these benefits to people in need. Of course, with this weak economic recovery and a high unemployment rate, people will not accept higher taxes.
Until real jobs are created, we cannot say we have a true economic recovery. Until then, we are just stuck in quicksand, sinking deeper and deeper, until we reach the point where we won’t be talking economic recovery, but we will be talking the next recession. (See: The 2013 U.S. Recession…
One Person on Government Benefits








