Poverty is the lack of money, need or scarcity. Poverty in the United States is a well-known thing. Poverty is all throughout United States and is getting worse every single year. In the United States, 35 states alone have a ten percent or higher rate of poverty. With the amount of poverty in the United States there has to be something the nation can do to prevent it, right? Wrong. There is no possible way to completely prevent poverty in the United States.
With the United States reaching higher poverty levels by the year, there have been many efforts to prevent poverty. Most of these efforts however, have failed. For example, approximately fifty years ago Lyndon B. Johnson launched the "war on poverty' which has essentially done nothing at all (London 2). Although it did help some people, poverty rates in general have increased greatly. We used to be winning the "war on poverty" but now we are losing. With America going through the great depression then a recession, America is losing hope. We are beginning to come out of a recession, but soon we will go right back into one. .
United States is just going to keep going more into debt because inflation rates are rising and have reached about 132% of disposable income going into debt payments (Glasmeier 1). With people shoveling their money into debt payments, it makes paying for other things like food, water, electricity, and heat close to impossible. The personal savings rate for the nation fell below zero for the first time since the depression. People cannot save their money because they have to spend it on debts and credit card bills. There is no "rainy day" money anymore, people are unable to purchase the things they truly need because they are too far into credit card debts, medical bill debts, and many other debts. People are working minimum wage jobs that will not even pay the bills they have. With most of America's workers being part of the working class, holding minimum wage jobs, we don't have extra money for our needs.
