It’s not news that Americans are terrible at saving. We talk about it year after year after year. New to the 2016 conversation, though, is the fact that just 37% of Americans could pay for a $500 emergency using money from a savings account. The other two-thirds would have to resort to cutting their spending, charging to a credit card or borrowing from friends and family.

Source: 63% Of Americans Don’t Have Enough Savings To Cover A $500 Emergency

It didn’t begin under Trump. And has been getting worse under Democratic and Republican administrations. Our government is controlled by the 1 percent. And they are plundering the economy with the help of the two-party system:

A study for the U.N. Human Rights Council has concluded 40 million people in the United States live in poverty — and more than half of those live in “extreme” or “absolute” poverty.

The 20-page report by Philip Alston, U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, says U.S. policies benefit the rich and exacerbate poverty.

“The United States has the highest income inequality in the Western world, and this can only be made worse by the massive new tax cuts overwhelmingly benefiting the wealthy,” Alston said in a statement about the report.

The report cites vast numbers of middle-class Americans “perched on the edge,” with 40 percent of the adult population saying they would be unable to cover an unexpected $400 expense.

The global economy created a record number of billionaires last year, exacerbating inequality amid a weakening of workers’ rights and a corporate push to maximize shareholder returns, charity organization Oxfam International said in a new report.

The world now has 2,043 billionaires, after a new one emerged every two days in the past year, the nonprofit organization said in a report published Monday. The group of mostly men saw its wealth surge by $762 billion, which is enough money to end extreme poverty seven times over, according to Oxfam.

According to separate data compiled by Bloomberg, the top 500 billionaires’ net worth grew 24% to $5.38 trillion in 2017, while the world’s richest person, Amazon.com Inc.’s Jeff Bezos, saw a gain of $33.7 billion.

Source: Study: Billionaires Could End Extreme Poverty 7 Times Over | Money