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While in any given year 12 to 15 percent of the population is poor, over a ten-year period 40 percent experience poverty in at least one year because most poor people cycle in and out of poverty; they don't stay poor for long periods. Poverty is something that happens to the working class, not some marginal 'other' on the fringes of society.
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- Michael Zweig, What's Class Got to do With It, American Society in the Twenty-first Century, 2004 Those under the age of 18 were the most likely to be impoverished. In 2001 the poverty rate for minors in the United States was the highest in the industrialized world, with 14.8% of all minors and 30% of African American minors living below the poverty threshold. Additionally, the standard of living for those in the bottom 10% was lower in the U.S. than in any other developed nation except the United Kingdom, which had the lowest standard of living for impoverished children. In 2006, poverty rate for minors in the United States was 21.9% - highest child poverty rate in the developed world.
Shamou, our generation isn't exactly set up for success. I'm not sure you fully grasp that, and to what extent.
What service do you propose a typical eighteen year old right out of high school should provide?
(of the 70% who graduate high school)