In other words, they don’t have enough to eat. Many parents out there choose to skip a meal (or two) each day just so that their kids can have full stomachs.  But sometimes the money runs out completely, and that is when it gets really tough. In recent years, the wealthy have been doing quite well, and many of them have very little sympathy for the struggles of the poor.

But the cold, hard reality of the matter is that the gap between the wealthy and the poor is now the largest that it has been since the 1920s, and approximately one-third of the entire nation cannot even afford the basics each month. Consider the following statistics. The average American can’t scrape together $500 for an emergency. A third of Americans can’t afford food, shelter, and healthcare. Healthcare for a family now costs $28k about half of median income, which is $60k. Those are very sobering numbers, and you won’t often hear them repeated by the mainstream media.

At this point, more than half of all US households with children receive assistance from the government each month. The middle class is steadily eroding, and the ranks of the “working poor” have been growing rapidly. Many of the working poor are single parents, and they often suffer in silence because they don’t want those around them to look down on them. It can be absolutely soul crushing to work as hard as you possibly can day after day and it still isn’t enough.

In the end, you have got to do what you have got to do in order to survive from month to month. At one time, America’s “endless prosperity” seemed like it would roll on indefinitely, but now we have entered a different era. Things are going to be tough during the days to come, and we are all going to need more flexibility than ever before.