Bits & Pieces
Thirty years ago, 10 percent of California’s general revenue fund went to higher education and 3 percent to prisons. Today nearly 11 percent goes to prisons and 8 percent to higher education.
The top 1 percent of Americans now take in roughly one-fourth of America’s total income every year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent now controls 40 percent of the total. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent.
Seventy-five percent of young Americans, between the ages of 17 to 24, are unable to enlist in the military today because they have failed to graduate from high school, have a criminal record or are physically unfit.
The United States has both the highest overall poverty rate and the highest childhood poverty rate of any major industrialized country on earth, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Poverty rate rises in America:
One in six Americans are now living below the poverty line and the number of people whose income falls in the category of “poverty” is growing at a rapidly accelerating rate.
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