Economic Security not looking good for the USA

Hard to believe AP's article  that  only 20% of  the present day Americans  will not  suffer joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare during their lifetime.  IMO, if this is really the case,  it should be blamed largely on the credit card industry.  If not for the easy money, people would have learnt to spend within their means and would have also learned to keep aside something from their paychecks for a rainy day knowing they would have no other recourse but themselves to look after themselves if times turned ugly.  The free money from the lenders plus the government's "goodies for votes" strategy is the ruin of not only America but many other countries.

What never ceases to amaze me is how developed countries like the USA can let their own countries decline to such horrific and deplorable low standards (according to same article  more than half the population living in certain areas live below the poverty line) but keep sending billions of dollars overseas to uplift people of other countries.   "Charity begins at home" .... is a  wise saying but meant to be understood only  by the wise, and unfortunately that breed is not found in Washington DC.

Hope Yen writing at AP:
....Signs of declining economic security. Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.

Survey data exclusive to The Associated Press points to an increasingly globalized U.S. economy, the widening gap between rich and poor and loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs as reasons for the trend.

The findings come as President Barack Obama tries to renew his administration's emphasis on the economy, saying in recent speeches that his highest priority is to "rebuild ladders of opportunity" and reverse income inequality.

Hardship is particularly on the rise among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among that racial group about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987. In the most recent AP-GfK poll, 63 percent of whites called the economy "poor."

"I think it's going to get worse," said Irene Salyers, 52, of Buchanan County, Va., a declining coal region in Appalachia. Married and divorced three times, Salyers now helps run a fruit and vegetable stand with her boyfriend, but it doesn't generate much income. They live mostly off government disability checks.

"If you do try to go apply for a job, they're not hiring people, and they're not paying that much to even go to work," she said. Children, she said, have "nothing better to do than to get on drugs."

While racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty, race disparities in the poverty rate have narrowed substantially since the 1970s, census data show. Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in government data, engulfing more than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge being published next year by the Oxford University Press.............