Compared with Bill Gates or the Walton family, we are all poor. Clearly poverty in every country depends on where you draw the line. Take China for example. Under Mao there was no officially admitted poverty. Yet at that time even the elite class didn’t have the living standards comparable to the poor Chinese today. I have volunteered in the local food banks and I can honestly tell you that this society is very generous when it comes to helping poor Americans. They came in their own cars, and left with full trunks of milk, cakes, pastas, steaks and fruits/vegetables. If the poor Chinese know what their American counterparts enjoy, all of them would join tens of thousands of Chinese illegal immigrants to cross the U.S.-Mexican borders.
The official poverty rate in 2022 was 11.5 percent, with 37.9 million people in poverty. Neither the rate nor the number in poverty was significantly different from 2021 (Figure 1 and Table A-1).
The official poverty rate for Black individuals decreased between 2021 and 2022. The 2022 rate was the lowest on record (Table A-3).
1 Food Bank, 全美有200 food banks，60,000 partner。每6個人就有一個在food bank領過食物。總共有四十萬美國家庭受益。2022年，共有4,900萬人從food bank受益。
2 Food Stamp, 12.4%的美國人接受Food Stamp，又叫The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)。 2022年, 平均每人每月領取$230.88。
3 Unemployment Benefit, 2024年5月，美國一個月總共付出$29.2億用在了Unemployment Benefit上。
比起中國用習思想扶貧，這個是不是更實在？