With a population of 301 millions, USA is the richest country in the world. Yet in this country 28 million people (9.3 percent of the total population) has to rely on food stamps to feed themselves and their families, that is, just to survive. Food stamps are a badge of poverty in the US. Only the most desperate people would apply for them because of the humiliating stigma attached to them. Yet the number of applicants is steadily rising.
Only people whose earnings are above the official poverty line can apply for this programme. In 2006, in the United States of America, the poverty threshold for a family group of four, including two children, was $20,444 a year – that is $14 per person per day. The present number of recipients of food stamps is up from 26.5 million in 2007. This programme of food stamps was introduced in the 1960s and has never before reached the current level.
Let us take the state of Michigan as an example. It has seen a collapse of its industrial base in the last few years, in particular car production, with the result that one of every eight inhabitants of the state depends on food stamps. This is twice as much as it was in 2000! Forty other states have experienced an increase in applications for the stamps.
The overall unemployment rate in the USA is already around five per cent. Many ordinary Americans are loosing their houses, the pace of job losses is accelerating, and all this is accompanied by fast-rising prices. Moreover, this is the state of affairs before the crisis has really begun to bite. As somebody wrote recently, things are bad in Wall Street but even worse in every other street inhabited by working class Americans.
