Poverty is one of the most major problems in the United States today. Poverty is defined as the state of one who lacks a socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. The poverty rate in the year 2001 was around 15%-20%. In the year 2000 there were approximately 281 million people in the United States. This means that there are approximately 56.2 million people in the United States living in poverty. This statistic should make any middle class American sick to his stomach. There are many causes and effects of poverty. In fact, many of the effects add to the causes. There are also many solutions, or at least theoretical solutions that one might have to decrease poverty in the United States.
One cause of poverty is the ever-present problem of unemployment. The unemployment rate in the US has been around 6% lately. This is a terrible fact. This means that about eight million people are unemployed in the United States. This statistic certainly helps out in the poverty department. Many people are in poverty because they are unemployed, or are supposedly being supported by someone who is unemployed. One way of perhaps reducing unemployment would be to make it more affordable for people to attend college or technical schools in which they might learn how to do a certain job, which in turn would make the job market a lot more accessible to them.
Another cause of poverty is that some people are just too lazy to get out in the world and try to make a life for themselves. An example of this is most of the people living on welfare. I feel that most of these people are just looking for an easy way to live their lives. Most of them are succeeding in this goal. They are living jobless, carefree lives while the hard-working tax payers pay for them to sit at home with their illegitimate children and drink beer all day. I believe this problem can be tied in with the solution I gave in the previous paragraph.