Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,
A population of illiterate, non-thinking morons can’t possibly obtain good paying jobs. This country spends $12,000 per public school student per year on education and this is the outcome? The factual data presented below paints a picture of an empire in rapid decline. We are too far gone. No amount of money or presidential election is going to change this course. We chose this path in the 1960s and now we will reap the consequences.
Education
- In a study of literacy among 20 ‘high income’ countries; US ranked 12th
- Illiteracy has become such a serious problem in our country that 44 million adults are now unable to read a simple story to their children.
- 50% of adults cannot read a book written at an eighth grade level
- 45 million are functionally illiterate and read below a 5th grade level
- 44% of the American adults do not read a book in a year
- 6 out of 10 households do not buy a single book in a year
Economy
- According to the Pew Research Center, the median income of middle-class households declined by 4 percent from 2000 to 2014.
- The Pew Research Center has also found that median wealth for middle-class households dropped by an astounding 28 percent between 2001 and 2013.
- There are still 900,000 fewer middle-class jobs in America than there were when the last recession began, but the population has grown significantly larger since that time.
- According to the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year.
- An astounding 48.8 percent of all 25-year-old Americans still live at home with their parents.
- According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 49 percent of all Americans now live in a home that receives money from the government each month, and nearly 47 million Americans are living in poverty right now.
- In 2007, about one out of every eight children in America was on food stamps. Today, that number is one out of every five.
- The median net worth of families in the United States was $137, 955 in 2007. Today, it is just $82,756.