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Welcome to Our Generation USA!

Life in the United States!
Below, we cover life in the United States, citizenship (both by birth and naturalization), population makeup (e.g., race, sexuality, ethnicity and income class), Immigration, States and Territories as well as Cities and Metropolitan Areas,  our Federal, State, and Local Governments, etc.


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Life in the United States, including its Social Classes, and Standard of Living
YouTube Video By Robert Reich (2013): "Inequality is real, it's personal, it's expensive and it was created"
​Pictured: Mean Household Income by Ethnicity (as of 2014)

The United States of America (USA), commonly referred to as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a federal republic composed of 50 states, the federal district of Washington, D.C., five major territories, and various possessions.

The 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C. are in central North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwestern part of North America and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific.

The territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. At 3.8 million square miles (9.8 million km2) and with over 320 million people, the U.S. is the world's third largest country by total area (fourth largest by land area) and the third most populous.

The United States is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many other countries. The geography and climate are also extremely diverse, and the country is home to a wide variety of wildlife.

The United States is a highly developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal and real GDP. It leads the world in several measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, and productivity per person. 

While the U.S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services, the manufacturing sector remains the second largest in the world. Though its population is only 4.4% of the world total, the United States accounts for nearly a quarter of world GDP and almost a third of global military spending, making it the world's foremost military and economic power. The United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations.

Social class in the United States is a controversial issue, having many competing definitions, models, and even disagreements over its very existence. 

Many Americans believe in a simple three-class model that includes the "rich", the "middle class", and the "poor".

More complex models that have been proposed describe as many as a dozen class levels; while still others deny the very existence, in the European sense, of "social class" in American society. Most definitions of class structure group people according to wealth, income, education, type of occupation, and membership in a specific subculture or social network.

Sociologists Dennis Gilbert, William Thompson, Joseph Hickey, and James Henslin have proposed class systems with six distinct social classes. These class models feature an upper or capitalist class consisting of the rich and powerful, an upper middle class consisting of highly educated and affluent professionals, a middle class consisting of college-educated individuals employed in white-collar industries, a lower middle class composed of semi-professionals with typically some college education, a working class constituted by clerical and blue collar workers whose work is highly routinized, and a lower class divided between the working poor and the unemployed underclass.


Standard of Living in the United States:

The standard of living in the United States is high by the standards to economists use as this measures of standards of living, and for many decades throughout the 20th century, the United States was recognized as having the highest standard of living in the world. Per capita income is high but also less evenly distributed than in most other developed countries; as a result, the United States fares particularly well in measures of average material well being that do not place weight on equality aspects.

Measures: On the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures health, education, and per capita income levels, the United States is relatively high, currently ranking 3rd.

However, the Human Development Index is not considered a measure of living standards, but a measure of potential living standards were there no inequality: rather, the inequality-adjusted Human Development Index is considered the actual level of human development, taking inequality into account. On the inequality-adjusted HDI, the United States ranked 27th in 2014, tied with Poland.

In 2013, the Economist Intelligence Unit's Where-to-be-born Index, which takes into account material well-being as measured by GDP per capita, life expectancy, political stability, the quality of family life based on divorce rates, community life, crime and terrorism rates, gender equality, the quality of governance, climate, and unemployment rates, ranked the United States at 16th place, tied with Germany.
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The OECD Better Life Index, which measures quality of life according to 11 factors, ranks the United States as 7th among 34 OECD countries.

The home ownership rate is relatively high compared to other post-industrial nations. In 2005, 69% of Americans resided in their own homes, roughly the same percentage as in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Israel and Canada.

In 2007, Americans enjoyed more cars and radios per capita than any other nation and more televisions and personal computers per capita than any other nation with more than 200 million people.

In 2006, median income was $43,318 per household ($26,000 per household member) with 42% of households having two income earners. Meanwhile, the median income of the average American age 25+ was roughly $32,000 ($39,000 if only counting those employed full-time between the ages of 25 to 64) in 2005. 

According to the CIA the gini index which measures income inequality (the higher the less equal the income distribution) was clocked at 45.0 in 2005, compared to 32.0 in the European Union and 28.3 in Germany.

In 2014, median wealth in the United States was $44,900, which put the United States in 19th place, behind many other developed countries.

The United States has one of the widest rich-poor gaps of any high-income nation today, and that gap continues to grow. Some prominent economists have warned that the widening rich-poor gap in the U.S. population is a problem that could undermine and destabilize the country's economy and standard of living.

In 2006, Alan Greenspan wrote that "The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself". In 2013, George Friedman, the head of Stratfor, wrote that the middle class' standard of living was declining, and that "If we move to a system where half of the country is either stagnant or losing ground while the other half is surging, the social fabric of the United States is at risk, and with it the massive global power the United States has accumulated."

See also:
General:







Cities and Metropolitan Areas of the United States by size and including their suburbs

​YouTube Video of New York City Big Bus Tour Uptown & Downtown*​
* -- New York City Big Bus Tour Uptown & Downton - Also The Empire State Building, M&M Store And Central Park: Great experience with Big Bus Tours. Wonderful guides.

Pictured: LEFT: The Manhattan Borough of New York City; RIGHT: and Skyline of Chicago from Lake Michigan

As used below, ​the terms "metropolitan" and "micropolitan" are geographic entities delineated by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for use by Federal statistical agencies in collecting, tabulating, and publishing Federal statistics.

The term "Core Based Statistical Area" (CBSA) is a collective term for both metro and micro areas. A metro area contains a core urban area of 50,000 or more population, and a micro area contains an urban core of at least 10,000 (but less than 50,000) population. Each metro or micro area consists of one or more counties and includes the counties containing the core urban area, as well as any adjacent counties that have a high degree of social and economic integration (as measured by commuting to work) with the urban core.

100 Largest Cities in the United States

By clicking on the above link, you will find information covering incorporated cities, including the 100 most populous Cities of the United States and Puerto Rico.

As defined by the United States Census Bureau, an "incorporated place" includes a variety of designations, including city, town, village, borough, and municipality. A few exceptional Census Designated Places (CDPs) are also included in the Census Bureau's list of incorporated places.

A Listing of Metropolitan Areas in the United States:

The above link includes the most populous metropolitan and micropolitan areas of the United States and Puerto Rico.

A List of Urban Areas In the United States:

When you click on the above link, you will find a list of urban areas in the United States as defined by the United States Census Bureau, ordered according to their 2010 census populations.






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Personal income in the United States
YouTube Video about Personal income in the United States
Pictured: LEFT: Per capita United States income, 2001-2011; RIGHT: Median personal income for the population age 25 or older in 2005 (Courtesy of Brendel Signature at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0)

​Personal income is an individual's total earnings from wages, investment interest, and other sources. The US Census Bureau reported a median personal income of $30,240 for all workers over age 15 with income, and a mean personal income of $44,510 based on the Current Population Survey for 2015. Inflation-adjusted ("real") per-capita disposable personal income rose steadily in the U.S. from 1945 to 2008, but has since remained generally level.

Income patterns are evident on the basis of age, sex, ethnicity and educational characteristics. In 2005 roughly half of all those with graduate degrees were among the nation's top 15% of income earners.

Among different demographics (gender, marital status, ethnicity) for those over the age of 18, median personal income ranged from $3,317 for an unemployed, married Asian American female to $55,935 for a full-time, year-round employed Asian American male.

According to the US Census, men tended to have higher income than women while Asians and Whites earned more than African Americans and Hispanics.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Personal Income in the United States:







Household income in the United States
YouTube Video:  Dual-Career Couples: The Work-Life Balance
Pictured: Median Household Income in the United States as of 2015 (as reported by the United States Census Bureau)

Household income is an economic measure that can be applied to one household, or aggregated across a large group such as a county, city, or the whole country. It is commonly used by the United States government and private institutions to describe a household's economic status or to track economic trends in the US.

Household income is measured in various ways. One key measure is the real median level, meaning half of households have income above that level and half below, adjusted for inflation.

According to the Federal Reserve, this measure was $56,516 in 2015, up $2,798 or 5.2% from the 2014 level of $53,718. This was the largest one-year percentage increase on record.  However, it remained 2.5% below the 1999 peak of $57,909.

The Census Bureau estimated real median household income at $55,775 in 2015, up $2,062 or 3.8% from the 2014 level of $53,713. Household income varies geographically and by race. The overall median has continued to rise steadily, if slowly, to $57,616 in September 2016 according to one unofficial source that reports monthly versus annually.

The distribution of U.S. household income has become more unequal since around 1980, with the income share received by the top 1% trending upward from around 10% or less over the 1953–1981 period to over 20% by 2007. After falling somewhat due to the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009, inequality rose again during the economic recovery, a typical pattern historically.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Household Income in the United States:


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Population Affluence in the United States, including Highest-income by Urban area
YouTube Video: This animation puts the entire US population into perspective
Pictured:
Top: Household vs. Personal Income by Bracket; 
Bottom: Number of Counties by State in the Top 100 Highest-income Counties by Median Household Income

Click here for List of highest-income urban areas in the United States

Affluence refers to an individual's or household's economical and financial advantage in comparison to a given reference group.

Affluence in the United States has been attributed in many cases to inherited wealth amounting to "a substantial head start": in September 2012, the Institute for Policy Studies found that over 60 percent of the Forbes richest 400 Americans had grown up with substantial privilege.

Income is commonly used to measure affluence, although this is a relative indicator: a middle class person with a personal income of $77,500 annually and a billionaire may both be referred to as affluent, depending on reference groups.

An average American with a median income of $32,000 ($39,000 for those employed full-time between the ages of 25 and 64) when used as a reference group would justify the personal income in the tenth percentile of $77,500 being described as affluent, but if this earner were compared to an executive of a Fortune 500 company, then the description would not apply.

Accordingly, marketing firms and investment houses classify those with household incomes exceeding $250,000 as mass affluent, while the threshold upper class is most commonly defined as the top 1% with household incomes commonly exceeding $525,000 annually.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 42% of U.S. households have two income earners, thus making households' income levels higher than personal income levels; the percent of married-couple families with children where both parents work is 59.1%.

In 2005 the economic survey revealed the following income distribution for households and individuals:
  • The top 5% of individuals had six figure incomes (exceeding $100,000); the top 10% of individuals had incomes exceeding $75,000;
  • The top 5% of households, three quarters of whom had two income earners, had incomes of $166,200 (about 10 times the 2009 US minimum wage, for one income earner, and about 5 times the 2009 US minimum wage for two income earners) or higher, with the top 10% having incomes well in excess of $100,000.
  • The top 0.12% had incomes exceeding $1,600,000 annually.

Households may also be differentiated among each other, depending on whether or not they have one or multiple income earners (the high female participation in the economy means that many households have two working members). For example, in 2005 the median household income for a two income earner households was $67,000 while the median income for an individual employed full-time with a graduate degree was in excess of $60,000, demonstrating that nearly half of individuals with a graduate degree have higher earnings than most dual income households.

By another measure - the number of square feet per person in the home - the average home in the United States has more than 700 square feet per person, 50% - 100% more than in other high-income countries (though this indicator may be regarded as an accident of geography, climate and social preference, both within the USA and beyond it) but this metric indicates even those in the lowest income percentiles enjoy more living space than the middle classes in most European nations.

Similarly ownership levels of 'gadgets' and access to amenities are exceptionally high compared to many other countries.

Another, possibly more objective indicator is the fact that immigrants to the US come from all over the world and its net migration rate is among the highest in the world.

Overall, the term affluent may be applied to a variety of individuals, households, or other entities, depending on context. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau serves as the main guideline for defining affluence. U.S. government data not only reveal the nation's income distribution but also the demographic characteristics of those to whom the term "affluent", may be applied.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for further amplification:







History of the United States: Chapter 1 -- Our Nation's Founding
George Washington for Kids | George Washington Biography | George Washington Biography for Kids
Pictured: George Washington

​The date of the start of the history of the United States is a subject of debate among historians. Older textbooks start with the arrival of Christopher Columbus on October 12, 1492 and emphasize the European background of the colonization of the Americas, or they start around 1600 and emphasize the American frontier. In recent decades American schools and universities typically have shifted back in time to include more on the colonial period and much more on the prehistory of the Native Americans.

Indigenous people lived in what is now the United States for thousands of years before European colonists began to arrive, mostly from England, after 1600. The Spanish built small settlements in Florida and the Southwest, and the French along the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast. By the 1770s, thirteen British colonies contained two and a half million people along the Atlantic coast east of the Appalachian Mountains.

After the end of the French and Indian Wars in the 1760s, the British government imposed a series of new taxes, rejecting the colonists' argument that any new taxes had to be approved by them (see Stamp Act 1765). Tax resistance, especially the Boston Tea Party (1773), led to punitive laws (the Intolerable Acts) by Parliament designed to end self-government in Massachusetts. American Patriots (as they called themselves) adhered to a political ideology called republicanism that emphasized civic duty, virtue, and opposition to corruption, fancy luxuries and aristocracy.

Armed conflict began in 1775 as Patriots drove the royal officials out of every colony and assembled in mass meetings and conventions.

In 1776, the Second Continental Congress declared that there was a new, independent nation, the United States of America, not just a collection of disparate colonies. With large-scale military and financial support from France and the military leadership of General George Washington, the American Patriots won the Revolutionary War.

The peace treaty of 1783 gave the new nation the land east of the Mississippi River (except Florida and Canada). The central government established by the Articles of Confederation proved ineffectual at providing stability, as it had no authority to collect taxes and had no executive officer.

Congress called a convention to meet secretly in Philadelphia in 1787. It wrote a new Constitution, which was adopted in 1789. In 1791, a Bill of Rights was added to guarantee inalienable rights. With Washington as the first president and Alexander Hamilton his chief political and financial adviser, a strong central government was created.

When Thomas Jefferson became president he purchased the Louisiana Territory from France, doubling the size of the United States. A second and final war with Britain was fought in 1812.

Encouraged by the notion of Manifest Destiny, federal territory expanded all the way to the Pacific. The U.S. always was large in terms of area, but its population was small, only 4 million in 1790. Population growth was rapid, reaching 7.2 million in 1810, 32 million in 1860, 76 million in 1900, 132 million in 1940, and 321 million in 2015.

Economic growth in terms of overall GDP was even faster. However, compared to European powers, the nation's military strength was relatively limited in peacetime before 1940. The expansion was driven by a quest for inexpensive land for yeoman farmers and slave owners.

The expansion of slavery was increasingly controversial and fueled political and constitutional battles, which were resolved by compromises. Slavery was abolished in all states north of the Mason–Dixon line by 1804, but the South continued to profit off the institution, producing high-value cotton exports to feed increasing high demand in Europe. 

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the History of the United States (Chapter 1):

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History of the United States: Chapter 2 -- Abolition of Slavery
YouTube Video: Abraham Lincoln - The Gettysburg Address*
* -- Biography.com
​Pictured: President Abraham Lincoln, including delivering the Gettysburg Address

​The 1860 presidential election of Republican Abraham Lincoln was on a platform of ending the expansion of slavery and putting it on a path to extinction.

Seven cotton-based deep South slave states seceded and later founded the Confederacy months before Lincoln's inauguration. No nation ever recognized the Confederacy, but it opened the war by attacking Fort Sumter in 1861.

A surge of nationalist outrage in the North fueled a long, intense American Civil War (1861–1865). It was fought largely in the South as the overwhelming material and manpower advantages of the North proved decisive in a long war.

The war's result was restoration of the Union, the impoverishment of the South, and the abolition of slavery. In the Reconstruction era (1863–1877), legal and voting rights were extended to the freed slave. The national government emerged much stronger, and because of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, it gained the explicit duty to protect individual rights.

However, when white Democrats regained their power in the South during the 1870s, often by paramilitary suppression of voting, they passed Jim Crow laws to maintain white supremacy, and new disfranchising constitutions that prevented most African Americans and many poor whites from voting, a situation that continued for decades until gains of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and passage of federal legislation to enforce constitutional rights.

The United States became the world's leading industrial power at the turn of the 20th century due to an outburst of entrepreneurship in the Northeast and Midwest and the arrival of millions of immigrant workers and farmers from Europe. The national railroad network was completed with the work of Chinese immigrants and large-scale mining and factories industrialized the Northeast and Midwest.

Mass dissatisfaction with corruption, inefficiency and traditional politics stimulated the Progressive movement, from the 1890s to 1920s, which led to many social and political reforms. In 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution guaranteed women's suffrage (right to vote). This followed the 16th and 17th amendments in 1913, which established the first national income tax and direct election of US senators to Congress.

Initially neutral during World War I, the US declared war on Germany in 1917 and later funded the Allied victory the following year.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about The History of the United States -- Chapter 2:

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History of the United States: Chapter 3--From the Great Depression (1929-1939) to the Great Recession (2007-2009).
YouTube Video of President Franklin D. Roosevelt by Biography

​After a prosperous decade in the 1920s, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 marked the onset of the decade-long worldwide Great Depression. Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt ended the Republican dominance of the White House and implemented his New Deal programs for relief, recovery, and reform.

The New Deal, which defined modern American liberalism, included relief for the unemployed, support for farmers, Social Security and a minimum wage.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States entered the ongoing World War II along with Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and the smaller number of Allied nations.

The U.S. financed the Allied war effort and helped defeat Nazi Germany in the European theater. Its involvement culminated in using the newly invented nuclear weapons on Japanese cities that helped defeat Imperial Japan in the Pacific theater.

The United States and the Soviet Union emerged as rival superpowers after World War II. During the Cold War, the US and the USSR confronted each other indirectly in the arms race, the Space Race, proxy wars, and propaganda campaigns. US foreign policy during the Cold War was built around the support of Western Europe and Japan along with the policy of containment, stopping the spread of communism.

The US joined the wars in Korea and Vietnam to try to stop its spread.

In the 1960s, in large part due to the strength of the civil rights movement, another wave of social reforms were enacted by enforcing the constitutional rights of voting and freedom of movement to African-Americans and other racial minorities. Native American activism also rose.

The Cold War ended when the Soviet Union officially dissolved in 1991, leaving the United States as the world's only superpower.

International conflict began to center around the Middle East following the Gulf War. The beginning of the 21st century saw the September 11 attacks by Al-Qaeda on the United States in 2001, which was followed by US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2008, the United States had its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, which has been followed by slower than usual rates of economic growth during the 2010s.

​Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the History of the United States, Chapter 3:
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History of the United States Chapter 4: From 2009 through 2016
YouTube Video: Obama: Osama bin Laden Dead - Full Video
Pictured: President Barack Obama being Sworn in as 44th President of the United States by Supreme Court Justice Roberts (including Obama's wife Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia)

From 2009 to 2010, the 111th Congress passed major legislation such as:
All of these were signed into law by President Obama.

Following the 2010 midterm elections, which resulted in a Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a Democratic-controlled Senate, Congress presided over a period of elevated gridlock and heated debates over whether or not to raise the debt ceiling, extend tax cuts for citizens making over $250,000 annually, and many other key issues. These ongoing debates led to President Obama signing the Budget Control Act of 2011.

In the Fall of 2012, Mitt Romney challenged Barack Obama for the Presidency. Following Obama's reelection in November 2012, Congress passed the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 - which resulted in an increase in taxes primarily on those earning the most money.

Congressional gridlock continued as Congressional Republicans' call for the repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - popularly known as "Obamacare" - along with other various demands, resulted in the first government shutdown since the Clinton administration and almost led to the first default on U.S. debt since the 19th century.

As a result of growing public frustration with both parties in Congress since the beginning of the decade, Congressional approval ratings fell to record lows, with only 11% of Americans approving as of October 2013.
Other major events that have occurred during the 2010s include the rise of new political movements, such as the conservative Tea Party movement and the liberal Occupy movement. There was also unusually severe weather during the early part of the decade. In 2012, over half the country experienced record drought and Hurricane Sandy caused massive damage to coastal areas of New York and New Jersey.

The ongoing debate over the issue of rights for the LGBT community, most notably that of same-sex marriage, began to shift in favor of same-sex couples, and has been reflected in dozens of polls released in the early part of the decade.

In 2012, President Obama became the first president to openly support same-sex marriage, and the 2013 Supreme Court decision in the case of United States v. Windsor provided for federal recognition of same-sex unions. In June 2015, the United States Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationally in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges.

Political debate has continued over issues such as tax reform, immigration reform, income inequality and US foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly with regards to global terrorism, the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and an accompanying climate of Islamophobia.

On November 8, 2016, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to become the President-elect of the United States.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the History of the United States:







Americans
YouTube Video by Melania Trump after a 10 year process "I studied for the test and became a U.S. citizen."
Pictured: Americans of mixed heritage who have made a difference include (L) Jennifer Lopez; (R) Barack Obama

​Americans are citizens of the United States of America. 

The country is home to people of many different national origins. As a result, Americans do not equate their nationality with ethnicity, but with citizenship and allegiance. Although citizens make up the majority of Americans, non-citizen residents, dual citizens, and expatriates may also claim an American identity.

The use in English of the term "American" includes people of the United States derived from its original use to differentiate English people of the American colonies, from English people of England despite its linguistic ambiguity in other senses of the word "American".

"American" can also refer to people from the Americas in general. See Names for United States citizens.

Overview: See also, The majority of Americans or their ancestors immigrated to America or were brought as slaves within the past five centuries, with the exception of the Native American population and people from Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands who became American through expansion of the country in the 19th century, and American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Northern Mariana Islands in the 20th century.

Despite its multi-ethnic composition, the culture of the United States held in common by most Americans can also be referred to as mainstream American culture, a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Northern and Western European colonists, settlers, and immigrants. It also includes influences of African-American culture.

Westward expansion integrated the Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana and the Hispanos of the Southwest and brought close contact with the culture of Mexico. Large-scale immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from Southern and Eastern Europe introduced a variety of elements. Immigration from Asia, Africa, and Latin America has also had impact. A cultural melting pot, or pluralistic salad bowl, describes the way in which generations of Americans have celebrated and exchanged distinctive cultural characteristics.

In addition to the United States, Americans and people of American descent can be found internationally. As many as seven million Americans are estimated to be living abroad, and make up the American diaspora.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about "Americans":







States in the United States, including a List of States and Territories of the United States featuring The Channel Islands
YouTube Video about the Louisiana Purchase
YouTube Video: Island of Puerto Rico 'destroyed' by Hurricane Maria
YouTube Video: Sailing the Channel Islands
Pictured below:
Top: a Map of the United States including State 2-letter Postal Abbreviations.
Bottom: A photo taken by your webhost, with catamarans visible through the Arch of Anacapa Island, which is part of the Channel Islands off the California cost

​A U.S. state is a constituent political entity of the United States of America. There are currently 50 states, which are bound together in a union with each other. Each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a defined geographic territory, and shares its sovereignty with the United States federal government.

Due to the shared sovereignty between each state and the federal government, Americans are citizens of both the federal republic and of the state in which they reside. State citizenship and residency are flexible, and no government approval is required to move between states, except for persons covered by certain types of court orders (e.g., paroled convicts and children of divorced spouses who are sharing custody).

States range in population from just under 600,000 (Wyoming) to over 39 million (California), and in area from 1,214 square miles (3,140 km2) (Rhode Island) to 663,268 square miles (1,717,860 km2) (Alaska). Four states use the term commonwealth rather than state in their full official names.

States are divided into counties or county-equivalents, which may be assigned some local governmental authority but are not sovereign. County or county-equivalent structure varies widely by state. State governments are allocated power by the people (of each respective state) through their individual constitutions. All are grounded in republican principles, and each provides for a government, consisting of three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial.

States possess a number of powers and rights under the United States Constitution; among them ratifying constitutional amendments. Historically, the tasks of local law enforcement, public education, public health, regulating intrastate commerce, and local transportation and infrastructure have generally been considered primarily state responsibilities, although all of these now have significant federal funding and regulation as well.

Over time, the U.S. Constitution has been amended, and the interpretation and application of its provisions have changed. The general tendency has been toward centralization and incorporation, with the federal government playing a much larger role than it once did.

There is a continuing debate over states' rights, which concerns the extent and nature of the states' powers and sovereignty in relation to the federal government and the rights of individuals.

States and their residents are represented in the federal Congress, a bicameral legislature consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Each state is represented in the Senate by two senators, and is guaranteed at least one Representative in the House. Representatives are elected from single-member districts; seats in the House are distributed among the states in proportion to the most recent constitutionally mandated decennial census.

Each state is also entitled to select a number of electors to vote in the Electoral College, the body that elects the President of the United States, equal to the total of representatives and senators from that state.

The Constitution grants to Congress the authority to admit new states into the Union. Since the establishment of the United States in 1776, the number of states has expanded from the original 13 to 50. Alaska and Hawaii are the most recent states admitted, both in 1959.

The Constitution is silent on the question of whether states have the power to secede (withdraw) from the Union. Shortly after the Civil War, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Texas v. White, held that a state cannot unilaterally do so.

Click here for a List of States, including (for states) their state capital, largest city, date of statehood, Population, and area in square miles.

Click here for a List of United States Territories.

See Also: ___________________________________________________________________________

List of States and Territories of ​​the United States

The United States of America is a federal republic consisting of 50 states (four of which use the term commonwealth rather than state in their full, legal state name), a federal district (where the nation's seat of government--Washington, D.C.—is located), five major territories, and various possessions.

The 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., are in central North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwestern part of North America (also bordering Canada) and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

States are the primary subdivisions of the United States, and possess a number of powers and rights under the United States Constitution, such as regulating intrastate commerce, running elections, creating local governments, and ratifying constitutional amendments.

Each state has its own constitution, grounded in republican principles, and government, consisting of three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. All states and their residents are represented in the federal Congress, a bicameral legislature consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Each state is represented by two Senators, while Representatives are distributed among the states in proportion to the most recent constitutionally mandated decennial census. 

Additionally, each state is entitled to select a number of electors to vote in the Electoral College, the body that elects the President of the United States, equal to the total of Representatives and Senators in Congress from that state.

Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1 of the Constitution grants to Congress the authority to admit new states into the Union. Since the establishment of the United States in 1776, the number of states has expanded from the original 13 to 50. Each new state has been admitted on an equal footing with the existing states.

As provided by Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress exercises "exclusive jurisdiction" over the federal district, which is not part of any state. Prior to passage of the 1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which devolved certain Congressional powers to an elected mayor and council, the district did not have an elected local government.

Even so, Congress retains the right to review and overturn laws created by the council and intervene in local affairs. As it is not a state, the district does not have representation in the Senate. However, since 1971, its residents have been represented in the House of Representatives by a non-voting delegate. Additionally, since 1961, following ratification of the 23rd Amendment, the district has been entitled to select three electors to vote in the Electoral College.

In addition to the 50 states and federal district, the United States has sovereignty over 14 territories. Five of them (American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) have a permanent, nonmilitary population, while nine of them (the United States Minor Outlying Islands) do not.

With the exception of Navassa Island, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, which are located in the Caribbean, all territories are located in the Pacific Ocean. Navassa Island is claimed by Haiti.

One territory, Palmyra Atoll, is considered to be incorporated, meaning the full body of the Constitution has been applied to it; the other territories are unincorporated, meaning the Constitution does not fully apply to them.

Ten territories (the Minor Outlying Islands and American Samoa) are considered to be unorganized, meaning they have not had an Organic Act enacted by Congress; the four other territories are organized, meaning they have had an Organic Act that has been enacted by Congress.

The five inhabited territories each have limited autonomy in addition to having territorial legislatures and governors, but residents cannot vote in federal elections.

California is the most populous state, with 38,332,521 residents (2013 estimate); Wyoming is the least populous, with an estimated 582,658 residents.

The District of Columbia, with an estimated 646,449 residents as of 2012, has a higher population than the two least populous states (Wyoming and Vermont). The largest state by area is Alaska, encompassing 665,384 square miles (1,723,337 square kilometers), while the smallest is Rhode Island, encompassing 1,545 square miles (4,002 square kilometers).

The first state to ratify the current Constitution was Delaware, which it did on December 7, 1787, while the newest state is Hawaii, which was admitted to the Union on August 21, 1959.

The largest territory in terms of both population and size is Puerto Rico, with 3,725,789 residents as of the 2010 Census and a total area of 5,325 square miles (13,792 square kilometers).

The most recent entity to come under the sovereignty of the United States in its current form is the Northern Mariana Islands, which formally did so on November 3, 1986.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for a List of States and Territories of the United States:






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National Holidays in the United States
YouTube Video: Boston Pops Orchestra* and its  Fourth of July Spectacular
*--Boston Pops Orchestra
Pictured: Two National Holiday celebrations with awesome fireworks displays include: (L) Fourth of July; (R) New Years Eve in Times Square, New York City

In the United States, a federal holiday is an authorized holiday which has been recognized by the US government. Every year on a US federal holiday, non-essential federal government offices are closed, and every federal employee is paid for the holiday. Private-sector employees required to work on a legal holiday may receive holiday pay in addition to their ordinary wages.

Federal holidays are designated by the United States Congress in Title V of the United States Code (5 U.S.C. § 6103). Congress has authority to create holidays only for federal institutions (including federally owned properties) and employees, and for the District of Columbia. However, as a general rule other institutions, including banks, post offices, and schools, may be closed on those days. In various parts of the country, state and city holidays may be observed in addition to the federal holidays.

Click on any of the following blue Hyperlinks for more about National Holidays in the United States:







National Monuments in the United States  Including a List, as well as Protected Lands 

​YouTube Video: National Geographic - Amazing Flight Over The Grand Canyon
(National Geographic Channel)

​Pictured:​Top Row: (L) Statue of Liberty; (R)  Marine Corps War Memorial (Iwo Jima)
Bottom Row: (L)  Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park; (R) The Wave found in the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument in Arizona.

Click here for a List of National Monuments in the United States.

A National Monument in the United States is a protected area that is similar to a National Park, but can be created from any land owned or controlled by the federal government by proclamation of the President of the United States.

National monuments can be managed by one of several federal agencies:
​National monuments can be so designated through the power of the Antiquities Act of 1906. President Theodore Roosevelt used the act to declare Devils Tower in Wyoming as the first national monument.
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The protected areas of the United States are managed by an array of different federal, state, tribal and local level authorities and receive widely varying levels of protection. Some areas are managed as wilderness, while others are operated with acceptable commercial exploitation.

As of 2015, the 25,800 protected areas covered 1,294,476 km2 (499,800 sq mi), or 14 percent of the land area of the United States. This is also one-tenth of the protected land area of the world. The U.S. also had a total of 787 National Marine Protected Areas, covering an additional 1,271,408 km2 (490,893 sq mi), or 12 percent of the total marine area of the United States.

Some areas are managed in concert between levels of government. The Father Marquette National Memorial is an example of a federal park operated by a state park system, while Kal-Haven Trail is an example of a state park operated by county-level government.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Protected Areas of the United States:







Charities in the United States, including a List
YouTube Video: Jerry Lewis* and MDA**
*-Jerry Lewis; **-MDA (Muscular Dystrophy Association)
Pictured: Charity in America: The Recipients

Click here for a List of Charities in the United States.

In the United States, a charitable organization is an organization operated for purposes that are beneficial to the public interest.

There are different types of charitable organizations. Every U.S. and foreign charity that qualifies as tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRS) is considered a "private foundation" unless it demonstrates to the IRS that it falls into another category.

Generally, any organization that is not a private foundation (i.e., it qualifies as something else) is usually a public charity as described in Section 509(a) of the Internal Revenue Code.

In addition, a private foundation usually derives its principal funding from an individual, family, corporation, or some other single source and is more often than not a grantmaker and does not solicit funds from the public. In contrast, a foundation or public charity generally receives grants from individuals, government, and private foundations, and while some public charities engage in grantmaking activities, most conduct direct service or other tax-exempt activities.

This leads to another distinction: Foundations that are generally grantmakers (i.e. they use their endowment to make grants to other organizations, which in turn carry out the goals of the foundation indirectly) are usually called "grantmaker" or "non-operating" foundations.

These of course tend to be private foundations, but some private foundations (and most public charities) use their received funds to directly engage in service activities themselves and achieve their goals "personally," so to speak.

Examples of a non-operating private foundation are the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Examples of operating foundations or public charities include: 
The requirements and procedures for forming charitable organizations vary from state to state, as do the registration and filing requirements for charitable organizations that conduct charitable activities, solicit charitable contributions, or hire professional fundraisers.

In practice, the detailed definition of "charitable organization" is determined by the requirements of state law where the charitable organization operates, and the requirements for federal tax relief by the IRS.

Resources exist to provide information, even rankings, of US charities.

Federal Tax Relief:

Federal tax law provides tax benefits to nonprofit organizations recognized as exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC). The benefits of 501(c)(3) status include exemption from federal income tax as well as eligibility to receive tax deductible charitable contributions. To qualify for 501(c)(3) status most organizations must apply to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for such status.

Several requirements must be met for a charitable organization to obtain 501(c)(3) status. These include the organization being organized as a corporation, trust, or unincorporated association, and the organization’s organizing document (such as the articles of incorporation, trust documents, or articles of association) must limit its purposes to being charitable, and permanently dedicate its assets to charitable purposes.

The organization must refrain from undertaking a number of other activities such as participating in the political campaigns of candidates for local, state or federal office, and must ensure that its earnings do not benefit any individual. Most tax exempt organizations are required to file annual financial reports (IRS Form 990) at the state and federal level. A tax exempt organization's 990 and some other forms are required to be made available to public scrutiny.

The types of charitable organization that are considered by the IRS to be organized for the public benefit include those that are organized for:
  • Relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged
  • Advancement of religion
  • Advancement of education or science
  • Construction or maintenance of public buildings, monuments, or works
  • Lessening the burdens of government
  • Lessening of neighborhood tensions
  • Elimination of prejudice and discrimination
  • Defense of human and civil rights secured by law
  • Combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency

A number of other organizations, including those organized for religious, scientific, literary and educational purposes, as well as those for testing for public safety and for fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and for the prevention of cruelty to children or animals, may also qualify for exempt status.

Charity Regulation Bodies: United States Internal Revenue Service

See Also:






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Our Nation's Capital: Washington D.C. including its Federal Buildings
YouTube Video: A Tour of Our Nation's Capital
Pictured: Clockwise from top right: United States Capitol, Washington Monument, the White House, Smithsonian Institution Building, Lincoln Memorial and Washington National Cathedral

Click here for a List of Federal Buildings in Washington, D.C.

​Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as "Washington", "the District", or simply "D.C.", is the capital of the United States.

The signing of the Residence Act on July 16, 1790, approved the creation of a capital district located along the Potomac River on the country's East Coast. The U.S. Constitution provided for a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress and the District is therefore not a part of any state.

The states of Maryland and Virginia each donated land to form the federal district, which included the pre-existing settlements of Georgetown and Alexandria. Named in honor of President George Washington, the City of Washington was founded in 1791 to serve as the new national capital.

In 1846, Congress returned the land originally ceded by Virginia; in 1871, it created a single municipal government for the remaining portion of the District.

Washington had an estimated population of 681,170 as of July 2016. Commuters from the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs raise the city's population to more than one million during the workweek. The Washington metropolitan area, of which the District is a part, has a population of over 6 million, the sixth-largest metropolitan statistical area in the country.

The centers of all three branches of the federal government of the United States are in the District, including the Congress, President, and Supreme Court.

Washington is home to many national monuments and museums, which are primarily situated on or around the National Mall. The city hosts 176 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of many international organizations, trade unions, non-profit organizations, lobbying groups, and professional associations.

A locally elected mayor and a 13‑member council have governed the District since 1973. However, the Congress maintains supreme authority over the city and may overturn local laws. D.C. residents elect a non-voting, at-large congressional delegate to the House of Representatives, but the District has no representation in the Senate. The District receives three electoral votes in presidential elections as permitted by the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1961.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Washington, D.C.
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Landmarks in the United States, including a List of Landmarks by State
YouTube Video of The Gateway Arch* in St. Louis, MO
​* -- Gateway Arch (St. Louis, MO)
Pictured: National Landmarks include (Clockwise from upper left corner):  USS Constitution; Alcatraz Island; Lincoln’s Tomb; Boston Lighthouse

Click here for a List of National Landmarks by State.

A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance.

Of over 85,000 places listed on the country's National Register of Historic Places, only some 2,500 are recognized as National Historic Landmarks.

A National Historic Landmark District may include contributing properties that are buildings, structures, sites or objects, and it may include non-contributing properties. Contributing properties may or may not also be separately listed.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about National Historic Landmarks:
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Non-Profit Organizations in the United States, including a List by Type, City and State
YouTube Video: The American Red Cross* and their Work During the Missouri Floods
​* -- American Red Cross

Click here for a List of Non-profit organizations in the United States.

A nonprofit organization (also known as a non-business entity) is an organization that has been formed by a group of people in order "to pursue a common not-for-profit goal", that is, to pursue the stated goal expressly without the intention of distributing excess revenue (i.e. profit) to members or leaders.

A nonprofit organization is often dedicated to furthering a particular social cause or advocating for a particular point of view. In economic terms, a nonprofit organization uses its surplus revenues to further achieve its purpose or mission, rather than distributing its surplus income to the organization's shareholders (or equivalents) as profit or dividends. This is known as the non-distribution constraint. The decision to adopt a nonprofit legal structure is one that will often have taxation implications, particularly where the nonprofit seeks income tax exemption, charitable status and so on.

The terms nonprofit and not-for-profit are not consistently differentiated across jurisdictions. In layman's terms they are usually equivalent in concept, although in various jurisdictions there are accounting and legal differences.

The nonprofit landscape is highly varied, although many people have come to associate NPOs with charitable organizations. Although charities do make up an often high-profile or visible aspect of the sector, there are many other types of nonprofit organization. Overall, they tend to be either member-serving or community-serving.

Member-serving organizations include mutual societies, cooperatives, trade unions, credit unions, industry associations, sports clubs, retired serviceman's clubs and advocacy groups or peak bodies – organizations that benefit a particular group of people, i.e. the members of the organization.

Typically, community-serving organizations are focused on providing services to the community in general, either globally or locally: organizations delivering human services programs or projects, aid and development programs, medical research, education and health services, and so on.

It could be argued many nonprofits sit across both camps, at least in terms of the impact they make. For example, the grassroots support group that provides a lifeline to those with a particular condition or disease could be deemed to be serving its members (by directly supporting them) and the broader community (through the provision of a service for fellow citizens).

Many NPOs use the model of a double bottom line in that furthering their cause is more important than making a profit, though both are needed to ensure the organization's sustainability.

Although NPOs are permitted to generate surplus revenues, they must be retained by the organization for its self-preservation, expansion, or plans. NPOs have controlling members or a board of directors. Many have paid staff including management, whereas others employ unpaid volunteers and executives who work with or without compensation (occasionally nominal).

Designation as a nonprofit does not mean that the organization does not intend to make a profit, but rather that the organization has no 'owners' and that the funds realized in the operation of the organization will not be used to benefit any owners. The extent to which an NPO can generate surplus revenues may be constrained or use of surplus revenues may be restricted.

Some NPOs may also be a charity or service organization; they may be organized as a profit corporation or as a trust, a cooperative, or they exist informally. A very similar type of organization termed a supporting organization operates like a foundation, but they are more complicated to administer, hold more favorable tax status and are restricted in the public charities they support. Their goal is not to be successful in terms of wealth, but in terms of giving value to the groups of people they administer to.

NPOs have a wide diversity of structures and purposes. For legal classification, there are, nevertheless, some elements of importance:
  • Management provisions s
  • Accountability and auditing provisions
  • Provisory for the amendment of the statutes or articles of incorporation
  • Provisions for the dissolution of the entity
  • Tax statuses of corporate and private donors
  • Tax status of the founders.

Some of the above must be (in most jurisdictions in the USA at least) expressed in the organization's charter of establishment or constitution. Others may be provided by the supervising authority at each particular jurisdiction.

While affiliations will not affect a legal status, they may be taken into consideration by legal proceedings as an indication of purpose.

Most countries have laws that regulate the establishment and management of NPOs and that require compliance with corporate governance regimes. Most larger organizations are required to publish their financial reports detailing their income and expenditure publicly.

In many aspects, they are similar to corporate business entities though there are often significant differences. Both not-for-profit and for-profit corporate entities must have board members, steering-committee members, or trustees who owe the organization a fiduciary duty of loyalty and trust. A notable exception to this involves churches, which are often not required to disclose finances to anyone, including church members.

In the United States, nonprofit organizations are formed by filing bylaws or articles of incorporation or both in the state in which they expect to operate. The act of incorporation creates a legal entity enabling the organization to be treated as a distinct body (corporation) by law and to enter into business dealings, form contracts, and own property as individuals or for-profit corporations can.

Nonprofits can have members, but many do not. The nonprofit may also be a trust or association of members. The organization may be controlled by its members who elect the Board of Directors, Board of Governors or Board of Trustees. A nonprofit may have a delegate structure to allow for the representation of groups or corporations as members. Alternatively, it may be a non-membership organization and the board of directors may elect its own successors.

The two major types of nonprofit organization are membership and board-only. A membership organization elects the board and has regular meetings and the power to amend the bylaws.

A board-only organization typically has a self-selected board and a membership whose powers are limited to those delegated to it by the board. A board-only organization's bylaws may even state that the organization does not have any membership, although the organization's literature may refer to its donors or service recipients as 'members'; examples of such organizations are Fairvote and the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. 

The Model Nonprofit Corporation Act imposes many complexities and requirements on membership decision-making. Accordingly, many organizations, such as Wikimedia, have formed board-only structures.

The National Association of Parliamentarians has generated concerns about the implications of this trend for the future of openness, accountability, and understanding of public concerns in nonprofit organizations. Specifically, they note that nonprofit organizations, unlike business corporations, are not subject to market discipline for products and shareholder discipline of their capital; therefore, without membership control of major decisions such as the election of the board, there are few inherent safeguards against abuse.

A rebuttal to this might be that as nonprofit organizations grow and seek larger donations, the degree of scrutiny increases, including expectations of audited financial statements. A further rebuttal might be that NPOs are constrained, by their choice of legal structure, from financial benefit as far as distribution of profit to members and directors is concerned.

After a nonprofit organization has been formed at the state level, the organization may seek recognition of tax-exempt status with respect to U.S. federal income tax. That is done typically by applying to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), although statutory exemptions exist for limited types of nonprofit organization.

The IRS, after reviewing the application to ensure the organization meets the conditions to be recognized as a tax exempt organization (such as the purpose, limitations on spending, and internal safeguards for a charity), may issue an authorization letter to the nonprofit granting it tax-exempt status for income-tax payment, filing, and deductibility purposes.

The exemption does not apply to other federal taxes such as employment taxes. Additionally, a tax-exempt organization must pay federal tax on income that is unrelated to their exempt purpose. Failure to maintain operations in conformity to the laws may result in the loss of tax-exempt status.

Individual states and localities offer nonprofits exemptions from other taxes such as sales tax or property tax. Federal tax-exempt status does not guarantee exemption from state and local taxes and vice versa. These exemptions generally have separate applications, and their requirements may differ from the IRS requirements.

Furthermore, even a tax-exempt organization may be required to file annual financial reports (IRS Form 990) at the state and federal levels. A tax-exempt organization's 990 forms are required to be available for public scrutiny. An example of a nonprofit organization in the US is Project Vote Smart.

Governance: The board of directors has ultimate control over the organization, but typically an executive director is hired. In some cases, the board is elected by a membership, but commonly, the board of directors is self-perpetuating. In these 'board-only' organizations, board members nominate new members and vote on their fellow directors' nominations.

Part VI, section A, question 7a of the Form 990 asks 'members, stockholders, or other persons who had the power to elect or appoint one or more members of the governing body?'

Accreditation: A nonprofit organization in the United States can receive an accreditation by undergoing a third-party review from the Standards for Excellence Institute to ensure efficient use of resources.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Non-Profit Organizations:





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Made in the USA
Video: "Made in America Resource Guide"* by ABC News
*-- 'Made in America' Resource Guide: Where to Find American Companies
Pictured: ​Safety Products Made in the USAy Products Made in the USA

​The Made in USA mark is a country of origin label indicating the product is "all or virtually all" made in the United States. The label is regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

In general, goods imported into the United States must have a country of origin label unless excepted, but goods manufactured in the United States can be sold without any sort of "Made in the USA" label unless explicitly required. Requirements to label domestic content include automobiles and textile, wool, and fur products. Any voluntary claims made about the amount of U.S. content in other products must comply with the FTC’s Made in USA policy.

A Made in USA claim can be expressed (for example, "American-made") or implied. In identifying implied claims, the Commission focuses on the overall impression of the advertising, label, or promotional material. Depending on the context, U.S. symbols or geographic references (for example, U.S. flags, outlines of U.S. maps, or references to U.S. locations of headquarters or factories) may convey a claim of U.S. origin either by themselves, or in conjunction with other phrases or images.

For more about "Made in the USA", click on any of the following blue hyperlinks:







Foreign Trade of the United States, including a List of Exports and Imports as well as the Balance of Trade
​​YouTube Videos:
How to File a Complaint with the Federal Trade Commission
Are Trade Deficits Good Or Bad For The Economy? by Ayn Rand Institute 

​ ​
Foreign trade of the United States comprises the international imports and exports of the United States, one of the world's most significant economic markets. The country is among the top three global importers and exporters.

​The regulation of trade is constitutionally vested in the United States Congress. After the Great Depression, the country emerged as among the most significant global trade policy-makers, and it is now a partner to a number of international trade agreements, including the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Gross U.S. assets held by foreigners were $16.3 trillion as of the end of 2006 (over 100% of GDP).

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Foreign Trade of the United States:







List of Regions in the United States
YouTube Video: What is American Culture?

Official Regions of the United States:

Based on the Census Bureau: 
The United States Census Bureau defines four statistical regions, with nine divisions. The Census Bureau region definition is "widely used … for data collection and analysis," and is the most commonly used classification system.

Regional divisions used by the United States Census Bureau:
  • Region 1: Northeast
    • Division 1: New England (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont)
    • Division 2: Mid-Atlantic (Delaware, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania)
  • Region 2: Midwest (Prior to June 1984, the Midwest Region was designated as the North Central Region.)
    • Division 3: East North Central (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin)
    • Division 4: West North Central (Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota)
  • Region 3: South
    • Division 5: South Atlantic (Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, District of Columbia, and West Virginia)
    • Division 6: East South Central (Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee)
    • Division 7: West South Central (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas)
  • Region 4: West
    • Division 8: Mountain (Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming)
    • Division 9: Pacific (Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington)
Puerto Rico and other US territories are not part of any census region or census division.

Standard Federal Regions:

The ten standard federal regions were established by OMB (Office of Management and Budget) Circular A-105, "Standard Federal Regions," in April, 1974, and required for all executive agencies. In recent years, some agencies have tailored their field structures to meet program needs and facilitate interaction with local, state and regional counterparts. However, the OMB must still approve any departures.
  • Region I: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont
  • Region II: New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands
  • Region III: Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia
  • Region IV: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee
  • Region V: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin
  • Region VI: Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas
  • Region VII: Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska
  • Region VIII: Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming
  • Region IX: Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands
  • Region X: Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Washington

Click on the blue hyperlinks below for more about List of Regions in the United States: ​






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Political Composition of the United States
YouTube Video: How is power divided in the United States government

Political composition (also referred to as administrative divisions) of the United States are the various recognized governing entities that together form the United States.

The first-level political (administrative) division of the United States is the state. There are 50 states, which are bound together in a union with each other.

Each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a defined geographic territory, and shares its sovereignty with the United States federal government. According to numerous decisions of the United States Supreme Court, the 50 individual states and the United States as a whole are each sovereign jurisdictions.

All state governments are modeled after the federal government and consist of three branches (although the three-branch structure is not Constitutionally required): executive, legislative, and judicial. They retain plenary power to make laws covering anything not preempted by the U.S. Constitution, federal statutes, or treaties ratified by the U.S. Senate, and are organized as presidential systems where the governor is both head of government and head of state (even though this too is not required).

The various states are then typically subdivided into counties. Louisiana uses the term parish and Alaska uses the term borough for what the Census terms county-equivalents in those states.

Counties and county equivalents may be further subdivided into townships. Towns in New York, Wisconsin and New England are treated as equivalents to townships by the United States Census Bureau. Towns or townships are used as subdivisions of a county in 20 states, mostly in the Northeast and Midwest.

Population centers may be organized into incorporated cities, towns, villages, and other types of municipalities. Municipalities are typically subordinate to a county government, with some exceptions. Certain cities, for example, have consolidated with their county government as consolidated city-counties.

In Virginia, cities are completely independent from the county in which they would otherwise be a part. In some states, particularly in New England, towns form the primary unit of local government below the state level, in some cases eliminating the need for county government entirely.

The government of each of the five permanently inhabited U.S. territories is also modeled and organized after the federal government. Each is further subdivided into municipalities. Guam uses the term Village and the U.S. Virgin Islands uses the term Districts, American Samoa uses the terms district and Unorganized atolls.

Other U.S. subnational divisions include the District of Columbia, several minor outlying islands, and Indian reservations, all of which are administered by the Federal government.

Each Indian Reservation is subdivided in various ways. For example, the Navajo Nation is subdivided into agencies and Chapter houses. While the Blackfeet Nation is subdivided into Communities. The Federal government also maintains exclusive jurisdiction over military installations and American embassies and consulates located in foreign countries.

Other special purpose divisions exist separately from those for general governance, examples of which include conservation districts and Congressional districts.

According to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, Federal and state governments are established and recognized by the U.S. Constitution and state constitutions. Federally recognized Indian tribal governments are recognized by the U.S. Constitution, treaties, statutes and court decisions.

Other entities may be recognized as governments by state law, court decision, or an examination of facts and circumstances that indicate it has the characteristics of a government, such as powers of taxation, law enforcement and civil authority.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Political Divisions of the United States:







Rural America, including Rural Areas in the United StatesPictured: "Is ​the Economic Recovery Leaving Rural America Behind?" (by Modern Farmer Magazine)
The United States is largely composed of rural areas. Seventy-two percent of United States' land area belongs to rural counties, but in 2014, just 46.2 million Americans (roughly 15% of the population of the country at the time) lived in these areas.

The rural population of the United States has declined from 2010-2014 by about 30,000 people per year, the first period of overall population decline for rural America. By contrast, the urban population in the 2010s has grown by more than two million annually.

Over the 2010-2014 time period, some 1,300 rural counties lost population, mostly in areas dependent on farming, manufacturing, or resource extraction. Of the 700 rural counties growing in population, most are "in scenic areas such as the Rocky Mountains or southern Appalachia, or in energy boom regions such as in the northern Great Plains.

The rural poverty rate for U.S. rural counties as of 2014 is 18.1%, compared to an urban poverty rate to 15.1%. Rural poverty is highest among racial and ethnic minorities. As of 2016, about 7 percent of homeless people in the United States live in rural areas, although some believe that this is an underestimate.

There are also significant health disparities between urban and rural United States. The per capita rate of primary care physicians is lower in rural areas of the country (65 primary care physicians per 100,000 rural Americans, compared to 105 primary care physicians for urban and suburban Americans). 

Rural Americans are also more likely than other Americans to suffer from chronic health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

A study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics in 2015 analyzed data on U.S. youth suicide rates from 1996 to 2010. It found that the rates of suicides for rural Americans age 10 to 24 was almost double the rate compared to their urban counterparts. This was attributed to social isolation, greater availability of guns, and difficulty accessing healthcare.

See also: ​___________________________________________________________________________

Rural areas in the United States

Approximately 97% of United States' land area is within rural counties, and 60 million people (roughly 19.3% of the population) reside in these areas.

Demographics:

​Most rural counties are experiencing persistent population decline.

Compared with households in urban areas, rural households had lower median household income ($52,386 compared with $54,296), lower median home values ($151,300 compared with $190,900), and lower monthly housing costs for households paying a mortgage ($1,271 compared with $1,561). A higher percentage owned their housing units “free and clear,” with no mortgage or loan (44.0 percent compared with 32.3 percent).

States with the highest median household incomes in rural areas were Connecticut ($93,382) and New Jersey ($92,972) (not statistically different from each other). The state with the lowest rural median household income was Mississippi ($40,200). Among rural areas, poverty rates varied from a low in Connecticut (4.6 percent) to a high in New Mexico (21.9 percent).

About 13.4 million children under the age of 18 live in rural areas of the nation.
Children in rural areas had lower rates of poverty than those in urban areas (18.9 percent compared with 22.3 percent), but more of them were uninsured (7.3 percent compared with 6.3 percent). A higher percentage of "own children" in rural areas lived in married-couple households (76.3 percent compared with 67.4 percent). ("Own children" includes never-married biological, step and adopted children of the couple).

As of 2016, about 7 percent of homeless people in the United States live in rural areas, although some believe that this is an underestimate.

​History:

Rural America was the center of the Populist movement of the United States in the 1890s. Since the 1930s, rural America has largely been a stronghold for the Republican Party with the exception of Vermont given its numerous Democrats elected to office in the 21st century.

Health:

There are significant health disparities between urban and rural areas of the United States.

The per capita rate of primary care physicians is lower in rural areas of the country (65 primary care physicians per 100,000 rural Americans, compared to 105 primary care physicians for urban and suburban Americans). Rural Americans are also more likely than other Americans to suffer from chronic health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

A study published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics in 2015 analyzed data on U.S. youth suicide rates from 1996 to 2010. It found that the rates of suicides for rural Americans age 10 to 24 was almost double the rate among their urban counterparts. This was attributed to social isolation, greater availability of guns, and difficulty accessing healthcare.

Not withstanding the economic and health challenges, a 2018 survey of rural adults found a majority felt they were better off financially than their parents at the same age. They thought their children would also experience such improvement. Forty percent said their lives came out better than they expected.

See also:







Library of Congress
YouTube Video: The Library of Congress Is Your Library
Pictured: ​Library of Congress (L-R): Exterior, Interior (Reading Room)

The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the de facto national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States.

The Library is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.; it also maintains the Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia, which houses the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

The Library of Congress claims to be the largest library in the world. Its "collections are universal, not limited by subject, format, or national boundary, and include research materials from all parts of the world and in more than 450 languages. Two-thirds of the books it acquires each year are in languages other than English."

The Library of Congress moved to Washington in 1800, after sitting for eleven years in the temporary national capitals of New York (New York City) and Philadelphia. John J. Beckley, who became the first Librarian of Congress, was paid two dollars per day and was required to also serve as the Clerk of the House of Representatives.

The small Congressional Library was housed in the United States Capitol for most of the 19th century until the early 1890s. Most of the original collection had been destroyed by the British in 1814, during the War of 1812.

To restore its collection in 1815, the library bought from former president Thomas Jefferson his entire personal collection of 6,487 books.

After a period of slow growth, another fire struck the Library in its Capitol chambers in 1851, again destroying a large amount of the collection, including many of Jefferson's books. After the American Civil War, the Library of Congress grew rapidly in both size and importance, which sparked a campaign to purchase replacement copies for volumes that had been burned from other sources, collections and libraries (which had started to appear throughout the burgeoning United States).

The Library received the right of transference of all copyrighted works to have two copies deposited of books, maps, illustrations and diagrams printed in the United States. It also began to build its collections of British and other European works and then of works published throughout the English-speaking world.

This development culminated in the construction between 1888 and 1894 of a separate, extensive library building across the street from the Capitol, in the Beaux Arts style with fine decorations, murals, paintings, marble halls, columns and steps, carved hardwoods and a stained glass dome. It included several stories built underground of steel and cast iron stacks.

The Library's primary mission of researching inquiries made by members of Congress is carried out through the Congressional Research Service, traces its origin to 1914, and was first permanently authorized (as the Legislative Reference Service) with the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946.

Although the Library is open to the public, only high-ranking government officials may check out books and materials (except through Inter-Library Loan, which is available to the public). The Library promotes literacy and American literature through projects such as the American Folklife Center, American Memory, Center for the Book, and Poet Laureate.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Library of Congress:
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Foreign Trade of the United States, including its Balance of Trade and a Comparison of Imports and Exports
​YouTube Video: U.S. Trade War with Canada?
Pictured Below: Trade between Canada and the United States

Foreign trade of the United States comprises the international imports and exports of the United States, one of the world's most significant economic markets. The country is among the top three global importers and exporters.

The regulation of trade is constitutionally vested in the United States Congress. After the Great Depression, the country emerged as among the most significant global trade policy-makers, and it is now a partner to a number of international trade agreements, including the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Gross U.S. assets held by foreigners were $16.3 trillion as of the end of 2006 (over 100% of GDP).

The country has trade relations with many other countries. Within that, the trade with Europe and Asia is predominant. To fulfill the demands of the industrial sector, the country has to import mineral oil and iron ore on a large scale. Machinery, cotton yarn, toys, mineral oil, lubricants, steel, tea, sugar, coffee, and many more items are traded.

The country's export list includes food grains like wheat, corn, and soybean. Aeroplane, cars, computers, paper, and machine tools required for different industries.

In 2016 United States current account balance was -$469.4 Billion

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Foreign Trade of the United States: ​___________________________________________________________________________


YouTube Video: Is the China trade deal a good move with America? (Fox Business)
Pictured Below: Comparison of the respective trade countries doing business with China (124) vs. United States (56)

United States Balance of trade:

​The 1920s marked a decade of economic growth in the United States following a Classical supply side policy. U.S. President Warren Harding signed the Emergency Tariff of 1921 and the Fordney–McCumber Tariff of 1922. Harding's policies reduced taxes and protected U.S. business and agriculture.

Following the Great Depression and World War II, the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference brought the Bretton Woods currency agreement followed by the economy of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1971, President Richard Nixon ended U.S. ties to Bretton Woods, leaving the U.S. with a floating fiat currency.

Over the long run, nations with trade surpluses tend also to have a savings surplus. The U.S. generally has developed lower savings rates than its trading partners, which have tended to have trade surpluses. Germany, France, Japan, and Canada have maintained higher savings rates than the U.S. over the long run.


Comparison of Imports vs. Exports of the United States:

The Following is a comparative list of (Top) the balance of trade in 2015  (Bottom) imports vs exports of the United States in 2014
Click here to learn for More About the Comparison of Imports from and Exports to the United States.








Free Trade Agreements between the United States and other Countries including NAFTA
YouTube Video: Environmental Regulation and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
​YouTube Video: President Donald Trump Says He Will Renegotiate NAFTA
Free Trade Agreements Between the United States and Other Countries:

The United States is party to many free-trade agreements (FTAs) worldwide.

Beginning with the Theodore Roosevelt administration, the United States became a major player in international trade, especially with its neighboring territories in the Caribbean and Latin America. Today, the United States has become a leader of the free trade movement, standing behind groups such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (later the World Trade Organization).

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about United States Free Trade Agreements: ___________________________________________________________________________​
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The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is an agreement signed by Canada, Mexico, and the United States, creating a trilateral trade bloc in North America. The agreement came into force on January 1, 1994. It superseded the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement between the U.S. and Canada.

NAFTA has two supplements: the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC) and the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC).

Most economic analyses indicate that NAFTA has been a small net positive for the United States, large net positive for Mexico and had an insignificant impact on Canada.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about NAFTA:







Standard of Living in the United States
​YouTube Video: Comparing Quality of Life vs. Standard of Living
(Video courtesy of an online course being taught at the University of California, "ICS 5: Global Disruption and Information Technology".)
Below Chart: Gross Domestic Product vs.Household Income (Courtesy of Frichmon - Own work, Public Domain):

___________________________________________________________________________

Below: Median gross annual household and personal income in 2005:

The standard of living in the United States is high by the standards that most economists use, and for many decades throughout the 20th century, the United States was recognized as having the highest standard of living in the world. Per capita income is high but also less evenly distributed than in most other developed countries; as a result, the United States fares particularly well in measures of average material well being that do not place weight on equality aspects.

Measures:

In the United Nations Human Development Index, which measures health, education, and per capita income levels, the United States is relatively high, currently ranking 8th. However, the Human Development Index is not considered a measure of living standards, but a measure of potential living standards were there no inequality: rather, the inequality-adjusted Human Development Index is considered the actual level of human development, taking inequality into account. On the inequality-adjusted HDI, the United States ranked 27th in 2014, tied with Poland.

In 2013, the Economist Intelligence Unit's Where-to-be-born Index, which takes into account material well-being as measured by GDP per capita, life expectancy, political stability, the quality of family life based on divorce rates, community life, crime and terrorism rates, gender equality, the quality of governance, climate, and unemployment rates, ranked the United States at 16th place, tied with Germany.

The OECD Better Life Index, which measures quality of life according to 11 factors, ranks the United States as 7th among 34 OECD countries.

The homeownership rate is relatively high compared to other post-industrial nations. In 2005, 69% of Americans resided in their own homes, roughly the same percentage as in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Israel and Canada. In 2007, Americans enjoyed more cars and radios per capita than any other nation and more televisions and personal computers per capita than any other nation with more than 200 million people.

Change Over Time:
​
In colonial America, the standard of living was high by 18th century standards. Americans could choose their diet from a diverse range of plants and animals from Europe and the Western Hemisphere, and this, combined with favorable weather conditions, ensured that Americans never had to deal with harvest failures. There was little exposure to epidemic diseases, and low wealth inequality, ensuring that even the poor were well-fed.

Historians have used height to measure living standards during this time as average adult heights can point to a population's net nutrition - the amount of nutrition people grew up with as compared to biological stress which can cause lower heights in adulthood, stemming from things like food deprivation, hard work, and disease. According to military records of American and European men, Americans were on average two to three inches taller than Europeans.

Average heights showed little change until the second quarter of the 19th century, with the Industrial Revolution. The growth of canals, steamboats, and railways, as well as the public school system, mass immigration, and urbanization, increased exposure to diseases.

Food prices rose in the 1830s, and industrialization brought along with it growing wealth inequality and business depressions that further worsened the situations of the poor. As a result, average stature and life expectancy declined, and only rebounded from 1910 to 1950, as incomes rose, urban conditions became less crowded, and public health measures were put in place.

From the 1930s up until 1980, the average American after-tax income adjusted for inflation tripled, which translated into higher living standards for the American population.

Between 1949 and 1969, real median family income grew by 99.3%. From 1946 to 1978, the standard of living for the average family more than doubled. Average family income (in real terms) more than doubled from 1945 up until the 1970s, while unemployment steadily fell until it reached 4% in the 1960s. 

Between 1949-50 and 1965–66, median family income (in constant 2009 dollars) rose from $25,814 to $43,614, and from 1947 to 1960, consumer spending rose by a full 60%, and for the first time, as noted by Mary P. Ryan, "the majority of Americans would enjoy something called discretionary income, earnings that were secure and substantial enough to permit them to enter sectors of the marketplace that were once reserved for the affluent." In 1960, Americans were, on average, the richest people in the world by a massive margin.

During the 1960s, median family incomes increased by over 33%, while per capita expenditures on recreation and meals grew by over 40%. From 1959 to 1969, median family income (in 1984 dollars) increased from $19,300 to $26,700. By 1969, 79.6% of all households owned at least one car, 82.6% owned a refrigerator or freezer, 79% owned a black and white television set, 31.9% owned a color television set, and 70% owned a washing machine. Leisure time also increased.

By 1970, it was estimated that the average workingman in America had 140 days off work each year. US work hours fell by 10.7% between 1950 and 1979, though the decline was still around half that of Western Europe.

In 1980, the American standard of living was the highest among the industrial countries, according to the OECD. Out of the 85 million households in the United States, 64% owned their own living quarters, 55% had at least two TV sets, and 51% had more than one vehicle.

In terms of possession of telephones, TV sets, school enrollments, animal protein in diets, and energy consumption, the United States was far ahead of other industrialized countries.

Wealthy and middle class and a majority of poor Americans had higher after-tax incomes than their counterparts almost anywhere else in the world. By 1985, the US per capita income was $11,727, one of the highest among industrialized countries. By the mid-1980s, 98% of all households had a telephone service, 77% a washing machine, 45% a freezer, and 43% a dishwasher.

In the 1990s, the average American standard of living was regarded as amongst the highest in the world, and middle class and poor Americans were still, on average, richer than their counterparts in almost all other countries, though the gap with some European countries had noticeably narrowed.

Current:

​In 2006, median income was $43,318 per household ($26,000 per household member) with 42% of households having two income earners. Meanwhile, the median income of the average American age 25+ was roughly $32,000 ($39,000 if only counting those employed full-time between the ages of 25 to 64) in 2005.

According to the CIA the gini index, which measures income inequality (the higher the less equal the income distribution), was clocked at 45.0 in 2005, compared to 32.0 in the European Union and 28.3 in Germany.

The US has... a per capita GDP [PPP] of $42,000... The recent onrush of technology largely explains the gradual development of a "two-tier labor market"...

Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households... The rise in GDP in 2004 and 2005 was undergirded by substantial gains in labor productivity... Long-term problems include inadequate investment in economic infrastructure, rapidly rising medical and pension costs of an aging population, sizable trade and budget deficits, and stagnation of family income in the lower economic groups.

In 2014, median wealth in the United States was $44,900, which put the United States in 19th place, behind many other developed countries. In 2015, median wealth in the United States was 55,775.

The United States has one of the widest rich-poor gaps of any high-income nation today, and that gap continues to grow. Some prominent economists have warned that the widening rich-poor gap in the U.S. population is a problem that could undermine and destabilize the country's economy and standard of living.

In 2006, Alan Greenspan wrote that "The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself". 

In 2013, George Friedman, the head of Stratfor, wrote that the middle class' standard of living was declining, and that "If we move to a system where half of the country is either stagnant or losing ground while the other half is surging, the social fabric of the United States is at risk, and with it the massive global power the United States has accumulated."

In 2015 a report was done that showed that 71 percent of all workers in America made less than $50,000 in 2014. For a family of four to live a middle class lifestyle, it was estimated that they would need $50,000 a year. For workers that make less than that, their standard of living is lacking. Since 1971, the middle income was above 50% of the population in the U.S. In 2015, the middle class income consisted of 49.9% of the population. The middle class continues to shrink and standard of living continues to decrease.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Standard of Living in the United States:







Income Tax in the United States including Impact of President Trump's Proposed Tax Code Changes on the Federal Budget (by the Committee for Responsible Federal Budget CRFB)

​White House Proposes Deep Cuts To Safety Nets With 'Taxpayer First' Budget Plan by National Public Radio May 22, 2017

YouTube Video: How Trump's proposed tax plan could impact you by CBS News

​Pictured: Debt-to-GDP Under Mr. Trump's Proposal (as of Sept. 22, 2016)

Income Tax in the United States: 

In the United States, a tax is imposed on income by the federal government, most state governments, and many local governments. The income tax is determined by applying a tax rate, which may increase as income increases, to taxable income as defined. Individuals and corporations are directly taxable, and estates and trusts may be taxable on undistributed income.

In the United States, the term 'payroll tax' usually refers to 'FICA taxes' that pay into Social Security and Medicare, while 'income tax' refers to taxes that pay into state and federal general funds.

Partnerships are not taxed, but their partners are taxed on their shares of partnership income. Residents and citizens are taxed on worldwide income, while nonresidents are taxed only on income within the jurisdiction.

Several types of credits reduce tax, and some types of credits may exceed tax before credits.

An alternative tax applies at the federal and some state levels.

Taxable income is total income less allowable deductions. Income is broadly defined. Most business expenses are deductible. Individuals may also deduct a personal allowance (exemption) and certain personal expenses, including home mortgage interest, state taxes, contributions to charity, and some other items. Some deductions are subject to limits.

Capital gains are taxable, and capital losses reduce taxable income to the extent of gains (plus, in certain cases, $3,000 or $1,500 of ordinary income). Individuals currently pay a lower rate of tax on capital gains and certain corporate dividends.

Taxpayers generally must self assess income tax by filing tax returns. Advance payments of tax are required in the form of withholding tax or estimated tax payments. Taxes are determined separately by each jurisdiction imposing tax. Due dates and other administrative procedures vary by jurisdiction. April 15 following the tax year is the last day for individuals to file tax returns for federal and many state and local returns. Tax as determined by the taxpayer may be adjusted by the taxing jurisdiction.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Income Tax in the United States:
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White House Proposes Deep Cuts To Safety Nets With 'Taxpayer First' Budget Plan
by National Public Radio May 22, 2017

"The Trump administration says it can balance the federal budget within a decade. Its proposal calls for significant cuts to social safety net programs and assumes more robust economic growth.

The administration released what it calls a "Taxpayer First" budget on Tuesday.

"This is, I think, the first time in a long time that an administration has written a budget through the eyes of the people who are actually paying the taxes," White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told reporters in a briefing on Monday.
The plan was crafted with a skeptical eye toward programs that serve the needy. Over a decade, it calls for hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and disability benefits.

"We are not kicking anybody off of any program who really needs it," Mulvaney said on Tuesday. "We have plenty of money in this country to take care of the people who need help.

We don't have enough money to take care of people, everybody who doesn't need help."
He argued that areas that the White House plans to put more resources — national security, law enforcement, paid parental leave — were campaign promises. "And that's why I say these numbers are simply the president's policies put on pager."

Below, how the budget cuts Trump proposes would affect our Safety Net:

Click here to read full NPR Article.








Wage Gap in the United States by Race
YouTube Video: The Racial Wealth Gap in America by the Urban Institute
Pictured: Courtesy of the United States Census Bureau

In the United States, despite the efforts of equality proponents, income inequality persists among races. Asian Americans have the highest average income, followed by White Americans, Latino Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans. 

A variety of explanations for these differences have been proposed—such as differing access to education, two parent home family structure (70% of black children are born out of wedlock), high school dropout rates and experience of discrimination—and the topic is highly controversial.

When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, it became illegal for employers to discriminate based on race; however, income disparities have not flattened out. After the passage of the act, the wage gap for minority groups narrowed, both in absolute difference with white wages and as a percentage of white wages, until the mid-1970s; at this time, progress for many racial minorities slowed, stopped, or reversed.

As of 2009, the median weekly wage for African American and Hispanic workers was about 65 percent and 61 percent that of White workers, respectively. Asian workers' median wage was about 101 percent that of white workers. Overall, minority women's wages in comparison to those of white women are better than minority men's wages when compared to those of white men.

Knowing the inequalities in the wages of various races is useful for understanding the overall racial inequality in the United States because of the integral role that wages play. Wages from the labor market are the primary source of income for most families in America, and income is a socio-demographic status indicator that is important in understanding the building of wealth.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Wage Gap in the United States by Race:






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Political Ideologies in the United States
YouTube Video: Donald Trump's incendiary rhetoric history by CNN
Pictured: (L) “Black Lives Matter” Movement; (R) Ku Klux Klan Protest

​Political ideologies in the United States refers to the various ideologies and ideological demographics in the United States. Citizens in the U.S. generally classify themselves as adherent to positions along the political spectrum as either liberal, progressive, moderate, or conservative. 

Modern American liberalism aims at the preservation and extension of human, social and civil rights as well as the government guaranteed provision of positive rights. It combines social progressivism and to some extent, ordoliberalism and is highly similar to European social liberalism.

American conservatism commonly refers to a combination of economic liberalism and libertarianism, and to an extent, social conservatism. It aims at protecting the concepts of small government and individual liberty, while promoting traditional values on some social issues.

The ideological position a person or party takes may be explained in terms of social and economic policy. The ideological positions a person assumes on social and economic policy issues may differ in their position on the political spectrum. Milton Friedman, for example, was left-of-center on social issues but right-of-center on fiscal matters and thus is often identified as libertarian. Several ideological demographics may be identified in addition to or as subgroups of liberals and conservatives with nearly every possible ideology being found in the general population.

In the United States, the major parties overlap heavily in terms of ideology, with the Democrats more to the left and the Republicans more to the right. Social scientists Theodore Caplow et al. argue, "the Democratic party, nationally, moved from left-center toward the center in the 1940s and 1950s, then moved further toward the right-center in the 1970s and 1980s." 

Small parties such as the Libertarian Party play a minor role in American politics.

The size of ideological groups varies slightly depending on the poll. Gallup/USA Today polling in June 2010 revealed that 42% of those surveyed identify as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 20% as liberal. 

In another polling in June 2010, 40% of American voters identify themselves as conservatives, 36% as moderates and 22% as liberals, with a strong majority of both liberals and conservatives describing themselves as closer to the center than to the extremes. As of 2013, self-identified conservatives stand at 38%, moderates at 34%, and liberals at 23%.

In a 2005 study, the Pew Research Center identified nine typological groups. Three groups were identified as part of each, "the left," "the middle," and "the right." In this categorization system, "the right" roughly represents the Republican base, those on "the left" the Democratic base and those in "the middle" independents.

Within the left are the largely secular and anti-war "Liberals", the socially conservative but economically left "Conservative Democrats", and the economically "Disadvantaged Democrats" who favor extended government assistance to the needy. In "the middle" are the optimistic and upwardly mobile "Upbeats", the discouraged and mistrusting "Disaffecteds," and the disenfranchised "Bystanders."

The right compromises the highly pro-business "Enterprisers," the highly religious "Social Conservatives" (also known as the Christian right), and the "Pro-Government Conservatives" who are largely conservative on social issues but support government intervention to better their economic disposition.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Political Ideologies in the United States:
​






[Your Webhost: In the following you will find topics covering the United States Space Program, from its inception and moon landings, the two Voyager Space probes launched 40 years ago and still active, the Remote Landing of the Mars Curiosity Rover, and completing with the Global Positioning Satellite System (GPS) used in mapping and directions by everyone]

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) including Timeline for Space Exploration and a List of Missions
YouTube Video of Neil Armstrong - First Moon Landing 1969
Pictured: L-R: Mercury-Atlas 6 launch on February 20, 1962; Ed White performs the first US spacewalk in 1965 during the Gemini 4; Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, 1969

Click here for a List of NASA Missions.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower established NASA in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

Since that time, most US space exploration efforts have been led by NASA, including the Apollo moon-landing missions, the Skylab space station, and later the Space Shuttle.

Currently, NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the Space Launch System and Commercial Crew vehicles. The agency is also responsible for the Launch Services Program (LSP) which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches.

NASA science is focused on better understanding Earth through the Earth Observing System, advancing heliophysics through the efforts of the Science Mission Directorate's Heliophysics Research Program, exploring bodies throughout the Solar System with advanced robotic spacecraft missions such as New Horizons, and researching astrophysics topics, such as the Big Bang, through the Great Observatories and associated programs.

NASA shares data with various national and international organizations such as from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite.

For Further Amplification, click on any of the following:
​Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for the Timeline for Space Exploration:
See also: ___________________________________________________________________________


NASA'a Voyager Space Program: including a New York Times article about the Voyager: "A Reverie for the Voyager Probes, Humanity’s Calling Cards"
​
YouTube Video: Voyager Space Program: Voyager at 40: Keep Reaching for the Stars
For more about the above YouTube: In the late summer of 1977, NASA launched the twin Voyager spacecraft. These remote ambassadors still beam messages back to Earth 40 years later, with data from their deep space travels. Voyager 1 is about 13 billion miles from Earth in interstellar space, and Voyager 2 is not far behind.

Pictured: Montage of planets and some moons the two Voyager spacecraft have visited and studied

​The Voyager program is a continuing American scientific program that employs two robotic probes, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, to study the outer Solar System. 

They were launched in 1977 to take advantage of a favorable alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, and are now exploring the outer boundary of the heliosphere in interstellar space.

Although their original mission was to study only the planetary systems of Jupiter and Saturn, Voyager 2 continued on to Uranus and Neptune, and both Voyagers are now tasked with exploring interstellar space. Their mission has been extended three times, and both probes continue to collect and relay useful scientific data. Neither Uranus nor Neptune has been visited by any probe other than Voyager 2.

On 25 August 2012, data from Voyager 1 indicated that it had become the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, traveling "further than anyone, or anything, in history". As of 2013, Voyager 1 was moving with a velocity of 17 kilometers per second (11 mi/s) relative to the Sun.

Data and photographs collected by the Voyagers' cameras, magnetometers, and other instruments revealed previously unknown details about each of the giant planets and their moons. Close-up images from the spacecraft charted Jupiter’s complex cloud forms, winds, and storm systems and discovered volcanic activity on its moon Io.

Saturn’s rings were found to have enigmatic braids, kinks, and spokes and to be accompanied by myriad "ringlets." At Uranus Voyager 2 discovered a substantial magnetic field around the planet and 10 additional moons.

Its flyby of Neptune uncovered three complete rings and six hitherto unknown moons as well as a planetary magnetic field and complex, widely distributed auroras. Voyager 2 is still the only spacecraft to have visited the ice giants.

The Voyager spacecraft were built at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, and they were funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which also funded their launchings from Cape Canaveral, Florida, their tracking, and everything else concerning the space probes.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Voyager Space Program: ___________________________________________________________________________

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Mars Landing of the Curiosity Rover (2012)
YouTube Video: Curiosity Has Landed
​Pictured: Mars Landing Curiosity Rover (see more under the following image)

About the above picture: This self-portrait of NASA's Curiosity Mars rover shows the vehicle at the "Big Sky" site, where its drill collected the mission's fifth taste of Mount Sharp. The scene combines dozens of images taken during the 1,126th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work during Mars (Oct. 6, 2015, PDT), by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera at the end of the rover's robotic arm. The rock drilled at this site is sandstone in the Stimson geological unit inside Gale Crater. The view is centered toward the west-northwest. It does not include the rover's robotic arm, though the shadow of the arm is visible on the ground. Wrist motions and turret rotations on the arm allowed MAHLI to acquire the mosaic's component images. The arm was positioned out of the shot in the images, or portions of images, that were used in this mosaic. This portrait of the rover was designed to show the Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument atop the rover appearing level. This causes the horizon to appear to tilt toward the left, but in reality it is fairly flat. For scale, the rover's wheels are 20 inches (50 centimeters) in diameter and about 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide. The drilled hole in the rock, appearing grey near the lower left corner of the image, is 0.63 inch (1.6 centimeters) in diameter.

Mars Curiosity Rover:

Curiosity is a car-sized rover designed to explore Gale Crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission (MSL).

Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011, at 15:02 UTC aboard the MSL spacecraft and landed on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012, 05:17 UTC.

The Bradbury Landing site was less than 2.4 km (1.5 mi) from the center of the rover's touchdown target after a 560 million km (350 million mi) journey. The rover's goals include an investigation of the Martian climate and geology; assessment of whether the selected field site inside Gale Crater has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life, including investigation of the role of water; and planetary habitability studies in preparation for human exploration.

In December 2012, Curiosity's two-year mission was extended indefinitely. On August 5, 2017, NASA celebrated the fifth anniversary of the Curiosity rover landing and related exploratory accomplishments on the planet Mars.

Curiosity's design will serve as the basis for the planned Mars 2020 rover. As of November 26, 2017, Curiosity has been on Mars for 1887 sols (1938 total days) since landing on August 6, 2012. (See current status.)

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Curiosity Mars Rover:







​Common Scams and Frauds by USA.Gov
YouTube Video: Watch Out for IRS Imposter Phone Calls
​YouTube Video: Veterans and Service members: Find Help to Tackle Debt, Scams and Fraud (by USA.Gov)

Find information on common scams and frauds that can happen to you:

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about each including what you can do to protect yourself.







Cybersecurity in the United States, as governed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS): "Is the United States doing enough to prevent Russian hacking?" by The Atlantic Magazine June 29, 2017
YouTube Video: "We are the DHS"

"America Needs a 'Dead Man's' Switch" by the Atlantic Monthly, June 29, 2017:

"The U.S. must establish policies that can protect its electoral system and respond to foreign actors in real-time.

Few people in Washington now doubt that Russia tried to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. As more information about the response to that interference has been publicly disclosed, it’s become clear that key decisions were made by good people trying to do the right thing for the right reasons that nevertheless led to bad outcomes.

The accounts of former FBI Director James Comey and of other government officials indicate that, in the run up to the election, their choices were influenced by the fear of appearing political—even as their actions inadvertently may have created exactly that impression.

Make no mistake—Russia will attack again. Yet right now, America hasn’t made any progress towards building a nonpartisan system that could respond to Russia—or any other foreign adversary. The United States has made no policy changes to ensure that if the exact same situation presented itself in next year’s congressional midterms or in the 2020 presidential election, its leaders wouldn’t face the same hard choices that Obama’s White House faced last summer.

Neither Obama nor any future president can respond to interference in our election without provoking accusations of partisanship. America needs a system that credibly protects its electoral system and responds to foreign actors in real-time. In my service as the assistant attorney general for national security until last October, I saw first-hand the determination of foreign adversaries to exploit American vulnerabilities.

After the 2016 campaign, foreign actors realize that effective attacks can disrupt American democracy. Unless the United States takes the response out of the realm of partisan politics, by setting up something akin to a “dead man’s switch” that triggers automatically when something goes awry, they’ll attack again—and succeed.

The United States intelligence community—all 17 agencies—has concluded that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election. As Comey put it during his congressional testimony, there is “no fuzz … whatsoever” on the question of Russia’s activities. Even

President Trump referred in a recent tweet to Russian “meddling” in the election.
But Russia’s advanced, sophisticated, and multi-pronged attack on American democracy last year isn’t exactly breaking news.

In fact, it was clear during the presidential campaign. By late September, the two top Democrats on the congressional intelligence committees outlined their belief that Russia was behind the attacks on Hillary Clinton’s campaign; in October, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson in a joint statement announced “that the intelligence community is confident the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations.”

​Despite these concerns, the Obama administration waited until after the election to retaliate against Russia, including imposing tough sanctions and expelling Russian diplomats.

Deciding how to respond to Russia during the campaign was a difficult decision, former Obama officials have said repeatedly in recent weeks. As they explained, any harsh response could have been seen as Obama unfairly influencing the campaign, using the power of his office to help his favored candidate. Some Republicans would have cried abuse of power; throughout this period, after all, their candidate for president was claiming repeatedly that the election was “rigged,” refusing even to say that he’d accept the outcome of the November election if he lost.

Any response in the run-up to the election would have carried potential risks. But in the end, the absence of a forceful and immediate bipartisan U.S. response gave Russia far too much space and time to continue its campaign of interference. The pre-election warnings, in hindsight, were too little too late. Only afterwards did Russia face any punishment, and it was not sufficient to convince Russia that the costs outweigh the benefits.

So what could the United States have done differently? There is no wall high enough or moat wide enough to keep out a dedicated adversary—that’s particularly true in cyberspace. The U.S. must create guidance and policies that ensure that decision-makers are able to navigate the same tricky political waters when the next attack comes.

Retaliation for such attacks should be prescribed in advance—agreed upon by the intelligence community, the White House, and congressional leadership.​

This begins with mapping out a nonpartisan process in advance, one that relies on the career government-intelligence professionals and analysts whose professional lives have been spent drawing conclusions about foreign motives—and then uses the tools the U.S. already has at its disposal to respond.

A body like the National Intelligence Council (NIC), the group of career analysts who help issue consensus national intelligence assessments, could be designated in advance to monitor whether a foreign actor is seeking to interfere with an election—whether through disinformation campaigns, hacking candidates or political parties, or through actual attacks on the election infrastructure.

If the NIC finds with a high degree of confidence that a foreign power—Russia or any other country—is trying to influence the election or undermine confidence in it, it should make that finding public as fast as possible. Even if it can’t say in detail what precise impact a foreign adversary is having, in order to protect intelligence sources and methods, the American people deserve better real-time information regarding the sanctity and security of the democratic process.

This analysis and conclusion should be conducted entirely removed from political appointees, just as the Justice Department traditionally defers to career professionals and prosecutors in making sensitive decisions around political corruption cases to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.

The response cannot be allowed to be sidetracked by partisan politics, as it appears it was last fall when Republican leaders in Congress refused to sign on to statements condemning Russia’s efforts. Taking his inspiration from Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which sees an attack on one country as an attack on the whole alliance, Senator Lindsey Graham has called for bipartisan agreement in advance that “an attack on one party is an attack on all.”

Retaliation for such attacks should also be prescribed in advance—a menu of options, agreed upon by the intelligence community, the White House, and congressional leadership, that would pull from the many tools used over the past decade to deter and influence foreign countries’ bad behavior in cyberspace.

The United States has shown in recent years the many weapons in its arsenal for responding to cyber attacks from foreign nations—including public condemnations, international sanctions, the expulsion of foreign diplomats, and even the filing of criminal charges.

These responses have already helped shape the behavior of adversaries like North Korea, China, and Iran—and the U.S. should make more use of them in the future, as well as employing additional covert methods.

The United States took many of these actions after the election, leveling sanctions, expelling Russian diplomats, and closing Russian compounds inside the United States. But it is clear in retrospect that the response should have come sooner and with bipartisan backing. In the future, particularly if procedures are worked out in advance, the United States could lead decisive multilateral action with other western democracies at the first sign of interference—as allies like France, the United Kingdom, and Germany all share an interest in promoting democratic institutions and keeping foreign actors out of their own elections.

The message must be clear to foreign adversaries long before America approach its next election: Any attempt to attack campaigns, candidates, or voting systems will be met with prompt and strong retaliatory action. Attacks on elections are attacks on America—and should be protected against at all costs.

[End of Atlantic Monthly Article]
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​Cybersecurity as found uder the Department of Homeland Security web site:

Our daily life, economic vitality, and national security depend on a stable, safe, and resilient cyberspace.

Cyberspace and its underlying infrastructure are vulnerable to a wide range of risk stemming from both physical and cyber threats and hazards. Sophisticated cyber actors and nation-states exploit vulnerabilities to steal information and money and are developing capabilities to disrupt, destroy, or threaten the delivery of essential services.

On January 5, 2017, the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security released a draft report to President Trump in response to the Executive Order on Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure issued on May 11, 2017. 

The report, which was created with broad input from stakeholders and experts, summarizes the opportunities and challenges in reducing the botnet threat, and offers supporting actions to be taken by both the government and private sector in order to reduce the threat of automated cyber-attacks. Learn More.

Click here for more about the DHS Website.
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United States Department of Homeland Security (Wikipedia)

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is a cabinet department of the United States federal government with responsibilities in public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-terrorism, border security, immigration and customs, cyber security, and disaster prevention and management. 

DHS was created in response to the September 11 attacks, and is the youngest U.S. cabinet department.

In fiscal year 2017, it was allocated a net discretionary budget of $40.6 billion. With more than 240,000 employees, DHS is the third largest Cabinet department, after the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs. 

Homeland security policy is coordinated at the White House by the Homeland Security Council. Other agencies with significant homeland security responsibilities include the Departments of Health and Human Services, Justice, and Energy.

The former Secretary, John F. Kelly, was replaced by Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on December 5, 2017.

Function:

Whereas the Department of Defense is charged with military actions abroad, the Department of Homeland Security works in the civilian sphere to protect the United States within, at, and outside its borders. Its stated goal is to prepare for, prevent, and respond to domestic emergencies, particularly terrorism. 

On March 1, 2003, DHS absorbed the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and assumed its duties. In doing so, it divided the enforcement and services functions into two separate and new agencies: Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Citizenship and Immigration Services. The investigative divisions and intelligence gathering units of the INS and Customs Service were merged forming Homeland Security Investigations.

Additionally, the border enforcement functions of the INS, including the U.S. Border Patrol, the U.S. Customs Service, and the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service were consolidated into a new agency under DHS: U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The Federal Protective Service falls under the National Protection and Programs Directorate.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about the Department of Homeland Security:
​






​
​Note that the Next 16 Topics cover the Human Body:

The Human Body
​YouTube Video: Human Body Systems and Functions
Pictured: The Human Body as Elements of the human body by mass. Trace elements are less than 1% combined (and each less than 0.1%).
​The human body is the entire structure of a human being. It is composed of many different types of cells that together create tissues and subsequently organ systems. They ensure homeostasis and the viability of the human body.

It comprises a head, neck, trunk (which includes the thorax and abdomen), arms and hands, legs and feet.

The study of the human body involves anatomy, physiology, histology and embryology.

The body varies anatomically in known ways. Physiology focuses on the systems and organs of the human body and their functions. Many systems and mechanisms interact in order to maintain homeostasis, with safe levels of substances such as sugar and oxygen in the blood.

The body is studied by health professionals, physiologists, anatomists, and by artists to assist them in their work.

Composition (also see above Picture):

The human body is composed of elements including hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, calcium and phosphorus. These elements reside in trillions of cells and non-cellular components of the body.

The adult male body is about 60% water for a total water content of some 42 liters. This is made up of about 19 liters of extracellular fluid including about 3.2 liters of blood plasma and about 8.4 liters of interstitial fluid, and about 23 liters of fluid inside cells. The content, acidity and composition of the water inside and outside cells is carefully maintained. The main electrolytes in body water outside cells are sodium and chloride, whereas within cells it is potassium and other phosphates.

Cells:

The body contains trillions of cells, the fundamental unit of life. At maturity, there are roughly 30–37 trillion cells in the body, an estimate arrived at by totalling the cell numbers of all the organs of the body and cell types. The body is also host to about the same number of non-human cells as well as multicellular organisms which reside in the gastrointestinal tract and on the skin. Not all parts of the body are made from cells.

Cells sit in an extracellular matrix that consists of proteins such as collagen, surrounded by extracellular fluids. Of the 70 kg weight of an average human body, nearly 25 kg is non-human cells or non-cellular material such as bone and connective tissue.

Cells in the body function because of DNA. DNA sits within the nucleus of a cell. Here, parts of DNA are copied and sent to the body of the cell via RNA. The RNA is then used to create proteins which form the basis for cells, their activity, and their products. Proteins dictate cell function and gene expression, a cell is able to self-regulate by the amount of proteins produced. However, not all cells have DNA – some cells such as mature red blood cells lose their nucleus as they mature.

Tissues:
​The body consists of many different types of tissue, defined as cells that act with a specialized function. The study of tissues is called histology and often occurs with a microscope. The body consists of four main types of tissues – lining cells (epithelia), connective tissue, nervous tissue and muscle tissue.

Cells that lie on surfaces exposed to the outside world or gastrointestinal tract (epithelia) or internal cavities (endothelium) come in numerous shapes and forms – from single layers of flat cells, to cells with small beating hair-like cilia in the lungs, to column-like cells that line the stomach. Endothelial cells are cells that line internal cavities including blood vessels and glands. Lining cells regulate what can and can't pass through them, protect internal structures, and function as sensory surfaces

Organs:

​See also: List of organs of the human body

Organs, structured collections of cells with a specific function, sit within the body. Examples include the heart, lungs and liver. Many organs reside within cavities within the body. These cavities include the abdomen and pleura.

Systems:

See also: List of systems of the human body

Circulatory System:

Pictured below: The Human Circulatory System as a Diagram of the human heart 1. Superior Vena Cava 2. 4. Mitral Valve 5. Aortic Valve 6. Left Ventricle 7. Right Ventricle 8. Left Atrium 9. Right Atrium 10. Aorta 11. Pulmonary Valve 12. Tricuspid Valve 13. Inferior Vena Cava (Courtesy of Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0)​
​
Main article: Circulatory system

The circulatory system comprises the heart and blood vessels (arteries, veins and capillaries).

The heart propels the circulation of the blood, which serves as a "transportation system" to transfer oxygen, fuel, nutrients, waste products, immune cells and signalling molecules (i.e., hormones) from one part of the body to another.

The blood consists of fluid that carries cells in the circulation, including some that move from tissue to blood vessels and back, as well as the spleen and bone marrow.
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Digestive System:
Pictured Below: Human Digestive System
Main article: Digestive system

​The digestive system consists of the mouth including the following:

    the tongue and teeth, 
    esophagus, 
    stomach,
    gastrointestinal tract, 
    small and large intestines,
    rectum,
    liver, 
    pancreas, 
    gallbladder,
    and salivary glands.


It converts food into small, nutritional, non-toxic molecules for distribution and absorption into the body.
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Main article: Digestive system

​The digestive system consists of the mouth including the following:
It converts food into small, nutritional, non-toxic molecules for distribution and absorption into the body.
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Human Endocrine System:
Pictured below: The Endocrine System
​Main article: Endocrine system

The endocrine system consists of the principal endocrine glands: the pituitary, thyroid, adrenals, pancreas, parathyroids, and gonads, but nearly all organs and tissues produce specific endocrine hormones as well. The endocrine hormones serve as signals from one body system to another regarding an enormous array of conditions, and resulting in variety of changes of function
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Human Immune System:
Pictured below: The Human Immune System
​​Main article: Immune system

The immune system consists of the white blood cells, the thymus, lymph nodes and lymph channels, which are also part of the lymphatic system. The immune system provides a mechanism for the body to distinguish its own cells and tissues from outside cells and substances and to neutralize or destroy the latter by using specialized proteins such as antibodies, cytokines, and toll-like receptors, among many others
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Pictured Below: Human Integumentary system
Human Integumentary system

Main article: Integumentary system

The integumentary system consists of the covering of the body (the skin), including hair and nails as well as other functionally important structures such as the sweat glands and sebaceous glands. The skin provides containment, structure, and protection for other organs, and serves as a major sensory interface with the outside world.
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Pictured Below: Human Lymphatic System (Female)
​​Musculoskeletal System

Main article: Musculoskeletal system

The musculoskeletal system consists of the human skeleton (which includes bones, ligaments, tendons, and cartilage) and attached muscles.

It gives the body basic structure and the ability for movement. In addition to their structural role, the larger bones in the body contain bone marrow, the site of production of blood cells.

Also, all bones are major storage sites for calcium and phosphate. This system can be split up into the muscular system and the skeletal system.
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Nervous system:

Main article: Nervous system

The nervous system consists of the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) and the peripheral nervous system consists of the nerves and ganglia outside the brain and spinal cord.

The brain is the organ of thought, emotion, memory, and sensory processing, and serves many aspects of communication and controls various systems and functions.

The special senses consist of vision, hearing, taste, and smell.

The eyes, ears, tongue, and nose gather information about the body's environment.
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Pictured Below: The Male and Female Reproductive Systems:
​​Reproductive system:

Main article: Human reproductive system

​The reproductive system consists of the gonads and the internal and external sex organs.

The reproductive system produces gametes in each sex, a mechanism for their combination, and in the female a nurturing environment for the first 9 months of development of the infant.
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Pictured Below: Human Respiratory system
​Human Urinary system:

Main article: Urinary system

The urinary system consists of the kidneys, ureters, bladder, and urethra. It removes toxic materials from the blood to produce urine, which carries a variety of waste molecules and excess ions and water out of the body.
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Pictured below: Human Anatomy.
Human Anatomy:

Main articles: Outline of human anatomy and Anatomy

Human anatomy is the study of the shape and form of the human body. The human body has four limbs (two arms and two legs), a head and a neck which connect to the torso.

The body's shape is determined by a strong skeleton made of bone and cartilage, surrounded by fat, muscle, connective tissue, organs, and other structures.

The spine at the back of the skeleton contains the flexible vertebral column which surrounds the spinal cord, which is a collection of nerve fibers connecting the brain to the rest of the body. 

Nerves connect the spinal cord and brain to the rest of the body. All major bones, muscles, and nerves in the body are named, with the exception of anatomical variations such as sesamoid bones and accessory muscles.

Blood vessels carry blood throughout the body, which moves because of the beating of the heart. Venules and veins collect blood low in oxygen from tissues throughout the body. These collect in progressively larger veins until they reach the body's two largest veins, the superior and inferior vena cava, which drain blood into the right side of the heart.

From here, the blood is pumped into the lungs where it receives oxygen and drains back into the left side of the heart. From here, it is pumped into the body's largest artery, the aorta, and then progressively smaller arteries and arterioles until it reaches tissue.

Here blood passes from small arteries into capillaries, then small veins and the process begins again. Blood carries oxygen, waste products, and hormones from one place in the body to another. Blood is filtered at the kidneys and liver.

The body consists of a number of different cavities, separated areas which house different organ systems. The brain and central nervous system reside in an area protected from the rest of the body by the blood brain barrier.

The lungs sit in the pleural cavity. The intestines, liver, and spleen sit in the abdominal cavity.

​Height, weight, shape and other body proportions vary individually and with age and sex. Body shape is influenced by the distribution of muscle and fat tissue.
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Pictured Below: Human Physiology.
​
Human Physiology:

Main articles: Outline of physiology and Physiology

Human physiology is the study of how the human body functions. This includes the mechanical, physical, bioelectrical, and biochemical functions of humans in good health, from organs to the cells of which they are composed.

The human body consists of many interacting systems of organs. These interact to maintain homeostasis, keeping the body in a stable state with safe levels of substances such as sugar and oxygen in the blood.

Each system contributes to homeostasis, of itself, other systems, and the entire body. Some combined systems are referred to by joint names. For example, the nervous system and the endocrine system operate together as the neuroendocrine system.

The nervous system receives information from the body, and transmits this to the brain via nerve impulses and neurotransmitters. At the same time, the endocrine system releases hormones, such as to help regulate blood pressure and volume. Together, these systems regulate the internal environment of the body, maintaining blood flow, posture, energy supply, temperature, and acid balance (pH).
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Pictured: Stages of Human Development
Human Development:
Main article: Human development (biology)

Human development is the process of growing to maturity. In biological terms, this entails growth from a one-celled zygote to an adult human being.
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Pictured Below: Human Health and Disease
Health and disease:

​Health is a difficult state to define, but relates to the self-defined perception of an individual and includes physical, mental, social and cultural factors. The absence or deficit of health is illness which includes disease and injury. Diseases cause symptoms felt, seen or perceived by a person, and signs which may be visible on a medical examination.

Illnesses may be from birth (congenital) or arise later in life (acquired). Acquired diseases may be contagious, caused or provoked by lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol use and diet, arise as the result of injury or trauma, or have a number of different mechanisms or provoking factors.

As life expectancy increases, many forms of cancer are becoming more common. Cancer refers to the uncontrolled proliferation of one or more cell types and occurs more commonly in some tissue types than others. Some forms of cancer have strong or known risk factors, whereas others may arise spontaneously.

Depending on the type of cancer, risk factors can include exposure to carcinogens and radiation, excessive alcohol or tobacco intake, age, and hormone imbalances in the body.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for common diseases impacting Mankind by Type of disease/disorder:

Diseases: Disorders See also:
[End of Human Body Topics]








​Discrimination
YouTube Video: Protests in Charlottesville take a violent turn 
(CBS News)
(Violent clashes have broken out between white nationalist protesters and police and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. CBS News justice reporter Paula Reid joins CBSN from the protest.)
Pictured: ​Different forms of Discrimination include (Clockwise from upper left) Age; Race, Religious, and LGBT.
In human social affairs, discrimination is treatment or consideration of, or making a distinction in favor of or against, a person based on the group, class, or category to which the person is perceived to belong rather than on individual attributes.

This includes treatment of an individual or group, based on their actual or perceived membership in a certain group or social category, "in a way that is worse than the way people are usually treated".

It involves the group's initial reaction or interaction going on to influence the individual's actual behavior towards the group leader or the group, restricting members of one group from opportunities or privileges that are available to another group, leading to the exclusion of the individual or entities based on logical or irrational decision making.

Discriminatory traditions, policies, ideas, practices, and laws exist in many countries and institutions in every part of the world, even in ones where discrimination is generally looked down upon. In some places, controversial attempts such as quotas have been used to benefit those believed to be current or past victims of discrimination—but have sometimes been called reverse discrimination.

In the US, a government policy known as affirmative action was instituted to encourage employers and universities to seek out and accept groups such as African Americans and women, who have been subject to discrimination for a long time.

Since the American Civil War the term "discrimination" generally evolved in American English usage as an understanding of prejudicial treatment of an individual based solely on their race, later generalized as membership in a certain socially undesirable group or social category. "Discrimination" derives from Latin, where the verb discrimire means "to separate, to distinguish, to make a distinction".

Moral philosophers have defined discrimination as disadvantageous treatment or consideration. This is a comparative definition. An individual need not be actually harmed in order to be discriminated against. They just need to be treated worse than others for some arbitrary reason. If someone decides to donate to help orphan children, but decides to donate less, say, to black children out of a racist attitude, then they would be acting in a discriminatory way despite the fact that the people they discriminate against actually benefit by receiving a donation.

In addition to this discrimination develops into a source of oppression. It is similar to the action of recognizing someone as 'different' so much that they are treated inhumanly and degraded.

Based on realistic-conflict theory and social-identity theory, Rubin and Hewstone have highlighted a distinction among three types of discrimination:
  1. Realistic competition is driven by self-interest and is aimed at obtaining material resources (e.g., food, territory, customers) for the in-group (e.g., favoring an in-group in order to obtain more resources for its members, including the self).
  2. Social competition is driven by the need for self-esteem and is aimed at achieving a positive social status for the in-group relative to comparable out-groups (e.g., favouring an in-group in order to make it better than an out-group).
  3. Consensual discrimination is driven by the need for accuracy and reflects stable and legitimate intergroup status hierarchies (e.g., favoring a high-status in-group because it is high status).

The United Nations stance on discrimination includes the statement: "Discriminatory behaviors take many forms, but they all involve some form of exclusion or rejection." International bodies United Nations Human Rights Council work towards helping ending discrimination around the world.

United Nations documents:Important UN documents addressing discrimination include:
  • The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a declaration adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. It states that:" Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status."
  • The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) is a United Nations convention. The Convention commits its members to the elimination of racial discrimination. The convention was adopted and opened for signature by the United Nations General Assembly on 21 December 1965, and entered into force on 4 January 1969.
  • The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is an international treaty adopted in 1979 by the United Nations General Assembly. Described as an international bill of rights for women, it came into force on 3 September 1981.
  • The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is an international human rights instrument treaty of the United Nations. Parties to the Convention are required to promote, protect, and ensure the full enjoyment of human rights by persons with disabilities and ensure that they enjoy full equality under the law. The text was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 13 December 2006, and opened for signature on 30 March 2007. Following ratification by the 20th party, it came into force on 3 May 2008.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Discrimination:
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​
Demographics of the United States, including Historical Racial and Ethnic Demographics along with its Racial Inequality in the United States Pictured below: Comparison of U.S. Population by Race/Ethnicity from 1910-2020
Demographics of the United States:

​The United States had an official resident population of 331,893,745 on July 1, 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 

This figure includes the 50 states and the District of Columbia but excludes the population of five unincorporated U.S. territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands) as well as several minor island possessions.

The United States is the third most populous country in the world. The Census Bureau showed a population increase of 0.12% for the twelve-month period ending in July 2021, below the world average annual rate of 0.9%. The total fertility rate in the United States estimated for 2021 is 1.664 children per woman, which is below the replacement fertility rate of approximately 2.1.

The U.S. population almost quadrupled during the 20th century – at a growth rate of about 1.3% a year – from about 76 million in 1900 to 281 million in 2000. It is estimated to have reached the 200 million mark in 1967, and the 300 million mark on October 17, 2006.

Foreign-born immigration caused the U.S. population to continue its rapid increase, with the foreign-born population doubling from almost 20 million in 1990 to over 45 million in 2015, representing one-third of the population increase. The U.S. population grew by 1.6 million from 2018 to 2019, with 38% of growth from immigration. 

Population growth is fastest among minorities as a whole, and according to the Census Bureau's estimation for 2020, 50% of U.S. children under the age of 18 are members of ethnic minority groups.

As of 2020, white people (including Hispanic whites) numbered 204,277,273 or 61.6% of the population and Non-Latino whites make up 57.8% of the country's population.
Latino Americans accounted for 51.1% of the total national population growth between 2010 and 2020, increasing from 50.5 million in 2010 to 62.1 million in 2020. 

The Hispanic or Latino population increased by 23% between 2010 and 2020, an increase of more than 11.6 million. Immigrants and their U.S.-born descendants are expected to provide most of the U.S. population gains in the decades ahead.

In 2020, it was reported that 51.0% of births were to non-Hispanic white mothers. In 2021, the percentage increased to 51.5%.

​The 12-month ending general fertility rate increased from 56.6 to 57.0 in 2022 Q1 compared to 2021 Q4.

Click on any of the following blue hyperlinks for more about Demographics of the United States: ​___________________________________________________________________________

Historical Racial and Ethnic Demographics of the United States

The racial and ethnic demographics of the United States have changed dramatically throughout its history.

Sources of data:

During the American colonial period, British colonial officials conducted censuses in some of the Thirteen Colonies that included enumerations by race. In addition, tax lists and other reports provided additional data and information about the racial demographics of the Thirteen Colonies during this time period.

People have been enumerated by race in every United States Census since the first one in 1790. Collection of data on race and ethnicity in the United States Census has changed over time, including addition of new enumeration categories and changes in definitions of those categories.

Historical trends:

By 1471, Portuguese navigators hoping to tap the fabled Saharan gold trade had reconnoitered the West African coast as far as the Niger Delta, and traded European commodities for local crafts as well as slaves, the latter which turned out to be highly lucrative.

The black population was non-existent to European regions in 1610, but awareness increased rapidly after 1620 when forced slavery of Africans was implemented building the transatlantic slave trade in the 15th century in colonial areas, Caribbean islands which later became parts of the United States.

By 1490, more than 3,000 slaves a year were transported to Portugal and Spain from Africa. African Americans (Blacks) made up almost one-fifth of the United States population in 1790, but their percentage of the total U.S. population declined in almost every U.S. census until 1930. 

From at least 1790 until the start of World War I, the overwhelming majority (around ninety percent) of African Americans lived in the southern United States. In addition, before 1865, the overwhelming majority of African Americans were slaves. 

The Great Migration throughout the twentieth century (starting from World War I) resulted in more than six million African Americans leaving the Southern U.S. (especially rural areas) and moving to other parts of the United States (especially to urban areas) due to the greater economic/job opportunities, less anti-black violence/lynchings, and a smaller amount of segregation/discrimination there. 

Due to the Great Migration, many large cities outside of the former Confederacy (such as New York City, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland) experienced huge increases in the African American percentage of their total population.

Whites (including Non-Hispanic Whites) have historically made up the overwhelming majority (usually between eighty and ninety percent) of the total United States population. The United States historically had few Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans, especially before the late twentieth century. 

​Most Asian Americans historically lived in the western United States. The Hispanic and Asian population of the United States has rapidly increased in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the African American percentage of the U.S. population is slowly increasing as well since reaching a low point of less than ten percent in 1930.

​Historical data for all races and for Hispanic origin (1610–2020):

The United States Census enumerated Whites and Blacks since 1790, Asians and Native Americans since 1860 (though all Native Americans in the U.S. were not enumerated until 1890), "some other race" since 1950, and "two or more races" since 2000. 

Mexicans were counted as White from 1790 to 1930, unless of apparent non-European extraction. Hispanics (as well as the Non-Hispanic White population) were enumerated since 1940 (with the exception of 1950 and 1960), but some estimates for the Hispanic (and Non-Hispanic White) population were made for certain years before 1940 (as well as for 1950 and 1960).

​Historical trends:

By 1471, Portuguese navigators hoping to tap the fabled Saharan gold trade had reconnoitered the West African coast as far as the Niger Delta, and traded European commodities for local crafts as well as slaves, the latter which turned out to be highly lucrative.

The black population was non-existent to European regions in 1610, but awareness increased rapidly after 1620 when forced slavery of Africans was implemented building the transatlantic slave trade in the 15th century in colonial areas, Caribbean islands which later became parts of the United States.

By 1490, more than 3,000 slaves a year were transported to Portugal and Spain from Africa African Americans (Blacks) made up almost one-fifth of the United States population in 1790, but their percentage of the total U.S. population declined in almost every U.S. census until 1930. 

From at least 1790 until the start of World War I, the overwhelming majority (around ninety percent) of African Americans lived in the southern United States. In addition, before 1865, the overwhelming majority of African Americans were slaves. 

The Great Migration throughout the twentieth century (starting from World War I) resulted in more than six million African Americans leaving the Southern U.S. (especially rural areas) and moving to other parts of the United States (especially to urban areas) due to the greater economic/job opportunities, less anti-black violence/lynchings, and a smaller amount of segregation/discrimination there. 

Due to the Great Migration, many large cities outside of the former Confederacy (such as New York City, Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland) experienced huge increases in the African American percentage of their total population.

Whites (including Non-Hispanic Whites) have historically made up the overwhelming majority (usually between eighty and ninety percent) of the total United States population. The United States historically had few Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans, especially before the late twentieth century. Most Asian Americans historically lived in the western United States. 

The Hispanic and Asian population of the United States has rapidly increased in the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the African American percentage of the U.S. population is slowly increasing as well since reaching a low point of less than ten percent in 1930.

Click on the blue hyperlinks below for additional content and supporting graphics: ___________________________________________________________________________

​Racial inequality in the United States

Pictured below:  Median Household Income  (courtesy of CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8457703)
Racial inequality in the United States identifies the social inequality and advantages and disparities that affect different races within the United States. These can also be seen as a result of historic oppression, inequality of inheritance, or racism and prejudice, especially against minority groups.

There are vast differences in wealth across racial groups in the United States. The wealth gap between Caucasian and African-American families nearly tripled from $85,000 in 1984 to $236,500 in 2009. There are many causes, including years of home ownership, household income, unemployment, education, and inheritance.

Under slavery in the United States, African Americans were treated as property. After the American Civil War, Black sharecroppers became trapped in debt. African Americans were rarely able to homestead. The Freedman's Bank failed, losing many Black assets.

Exclusions from Social Security disproportionately affected African Americans. Savings were spent for retirement instead of handed down as inheritance. African Americans are less likely to receive inheritance and more likely to aid poor family members.

The Federal Housing Authority and Veteran's Administration shut out African Americans by giving loans to suburbs instead of central cities. Housing segregation caused unequal living standards and poverty. Public education greatly relies on local property taxes, with racial inequality between white affluent suburbs and poor minorities in inner-cities.

Criminal records lead to employment and income struggles. Inability to make bail and quality counsel are factors. Racial segregation and racial profiling lead to differences between races.

​Definitions:

In social science, racial inequality is typically defined as "imbalances in the distribution of power, economic resources, and opportunities." Racial inequalities have manifested in American society in ways ranging from racial disparities in wealth, poverty rates, bankruptcy, housing patterns, educational opportunities, unemployment rates, and incarceration rates.

Current racial inequalities in the U.S. have their roots in over 300 years of cultural, economic, physical, legal, and political discrimination based on race.

Racial wealth gap:

A study by the Brandeis University Institute on Assets and Social Policy which followed the same sets of families for 25 years found that there are vast differences in wealth across racial groups in the United States.

The wealth gap between Caucasian and African American families studied nearly tripled, from $85,000 in 1984 to $236,500 in 2009. The study concluded that factors contributing to the inequality included years of home ownership (27%), household income (20%), education (5%), and familial financial support and/or inheritance (5%). 

In an analysis of the American Opportunity Accounts Act, a bill to introduce Baby Bonds, Morningstar reported that by 2019 white families had more than seven times the wealth of the average Black family, according to the Survey of Consumer Finances.

​Wealth can be defined as "the total value of things families own minus their debts." In contrast, income can be defined as, "earnings from work, interest and dividends, pensions, and transfer payments." 

Wealth is an important factor in determining the quality of both individual and family life chances because it can be used as a tool to secure a desired quality of life or class status and enables individuals who possess it to pass their class status to their children. Family inheritance, which is passed down from generation to generation, helps with wealth accumulation. Wealth can also serve as a safety net against fluctuations in income and poverty.

There is a large gap between the wealth of minority households and white households within the United States. The Pew Research Center's analysis of 2009 government data says the median wealth of white households is 20 times that of Black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households. In 2009 the typical Black household had $5,677 in wealth, the typical Hispanic had $6,325, and the typical white household had $113,149.

Furthermore, 35% of African American and 31% of Hispanic households had zero or negative net worth in 2009 compared to 15% of white households. While in 2005 median Asian household wealth was greater than white households at $168,103, by 2009 that changed when their net worth fell 54% to $78,066, partially due to the arrival of new Asian immigrants since 2004; not including newly arrived immigrants, Asian net wealth only dropped 31%. As shown on "EURweb – Electronic Urban Report" 

According to the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, of the 14 million Black households, only 5% have more than $350,000 in net worth while nearly 30% of white families have more than this amount. Less than 1% of Black families have over a million in net assets. while nearly 10% of white households, totaling over 8 million families have more than 1.3 million in net worth. According to the Federal Reserve of Cleveland the wealth gap between white and Black Americans has remained roughly the same since 1962, when the average white family had seven times the wealth of the average Black family.

Lusardi states that African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to face means-tested programs that discourage asset possession due to higher poverty rates. One-fourth of African Americans and Hispanics approach retirement with less than $1,000 net worth (without considering pensions and Social Security).

Lower financial literacy is correlated with poor savings and adjustment behavior. Education is a strong predictor for wealth. One-fourth of African Americans and Hispanics that have less than a high school education have no wealth, but even with increased education, large differences in wealth remain.

Conley believes that the cause of Black-White wealth inequality may be related to economic circumstances and poverty because the economic disadvantages of African Americans can be effective in harming efforts to accumulate wealth. 

However, there is a five times greater chance of downward mobility from the top quartile to the bottom quartile for African Americans than there is for white Americans; correspondingly, African Americans rise to the top quartile from the bottom quartile at half the rate of white Americans.

Bowles and Gintis conclude from this information that successful African Americans do not transfer the factors for their success as effectively as white Americans do. Other factors to consider in the recent widening of the minority wealth gap are the subprime mortgage crisis and financial crisis of 2007–2008.

The Pew Research Center found that plummeting house values were the main cause of the wealth change from 2005 to 2009. Hispanics were hit the hardest by the housing market meltdown possibly because a disproportionate share of Hispanics live in California, Florida, Nevada, and Arizona, which are among the states with the steepest declines in housing values. 

From 2005 to 2009 Hispanic homeowners' home equity declined by Half, from $99,983 to $49,145, with the homeownership rate decreasing by 4% to 47%. A 2015 Measure of America study commissioned by the ACLU on the long-term consequences of discriminatory lending practices found that the financial crisis will likely widen the Black-white wealth gap for the next generation.

The racial wealth gap essentially is composed of a private wealth management industry maintaining Whiteness to act as a barrier to prevent those of color from equal financial development. This disparity has been debated, but never disputed due to its "very real" implications it has on African Americans. Data has shown that "among racial and ethnic groups, African Americans had the highest poverty rate at 27.4%”.

History:

Before the 1808 abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, most Africans were forced to the United States as enslaved people, depriving them of all property, and in some cases family. In order to prevent rebellion or escape, the slave codes in some states banned education of slaves, especially teaching a slave to read or write. 

Redistribution of land from white owners to the people formerly forced to work it was attempted under the forty acres and a mule policy of Union General William Tecumseh Sherman. This was reversed by President Andrew Johnson, a Southern Democrat who also opposed political rights for African Americans and protections against white violence in the South. 

Slavery continued in the border states until ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in December 1865.

The Freedmen's Bureau was created as part of the War Department by President Abraham Lincoln to provide shelter and supplies to freed slaves. It was supported by the Republican Congress over the veto of Andrew Johnson, but was soon de-funded and abandoned by a Democrat-controlled Congress in 1872.

While free African-Americans owned around $50 million by 1860, farm tenancy and sharecropping replaced slavery after the American Civil War because newly freed African American farmers did not own land or supplies and had to depend on the White Americans who rented the land and supplies out to them. At the same time, southern Blacks were trapped in debt and denied banking services while White citizens were given low interest loans to set up farms in the Midwest and Western United States.

White homesteaders were able to go West and obtain unclaimed land through government grants, while the land grants and rights of African Americans were rarely enforced.
After the Civil War the Freedman's Bank helped to foster wealth accumulation for African Americans.

However, it failed in 1874, partially because of suspicious high-risk loans to White banks and the Panic of 1873. This lowered the support African Americans had to open businesses and acquire wealth. In addition, after the bank failed, taking the assets of many African Americans with it, many African Americans did not trust banks. There was also the threat of lynching to any African American who achieved success.

In addition, when Social Security was first created during the Great Depression, it exempted agricultural and domestic workers, which disproportionately affected African Americans and Hispanics. Consequently, the savings of retired or disabled African Americans was spent during old age instead of handed down and households had to support poor elderly family members.

The Homeowner's Loan Corporation that helped homeowners during the Great Depression gave African American neighborhoods the lowest rating, ensuring that they defaulted at greater rates than White Americans. The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) and Veteran's Administration (VA) shut out African Americans by giving loans to suburbs instead of central cities after they were first founded.

Inheritance and parental financial assistance:

Bowman states that "in the United States, the most significant aspect of multigenerational wealth distribution comes in the forms of gifts and inheritances." However, the multigenerational absence of wealth and asset attainment for African Americans makes it almost impossible for them to make significant contributions of wealth to the next generation. 

Data shows that financial inheritances could account for 10 to 20 percent of the difference between African American and White American household wealth.

Using the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) of 1992 Avery and Rendall estimated that only around one-tenth of African Americans reported receiving inheritances or substantial inter vivo transfers ($5,000 or more) compared to one-third of white Americans.

In addition, the 1989 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) reported that the mean and median values of those money transfers were significantly higher for white American households: the mean was $148,578 households compared to $85,598 for African American households and the median was $58,839 to $42,478.

The large differences in wealth in the parent-generations were a dominant factor in prediction the differences between African American and white American prospective inheritances. Avery and Rendall used 1989 SCF data to discover that the mean value in 2002 of white Americans' inheritances was 5.46 times that of African Americans', compared to 3.65 that of current wealth. White Americans received a mean of $28,177 that accounted for 20.7% of their mean wealth while African Americans received a mean of $5,165 that accounted for 13.9% of their mean current wealth.

Non-inherited wealth was more equally distributed than inherited wealth.

Avery and Rendall found that family attributes favored white Americans when it came to factor influencing the amount of inheritances. African Americans were 7.3% less likely to have live parents, 24.5% more likely to have three or more siblings, and 30.6% less likely to be married or cohabiting (meaning there are two people who could gain inheritances to contribute to the household) 

Keister discovered that large family size has a negative effect on wealth accumulation. These negative effects are worse for the poor and African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to be poor and have large families. More children also decrease the amount of gifts parents can give and the inheritance they leave behind for the children.

Angel's research into inheritance showed that older Mexican American parents may give less financial assistance to their children than non-Hispanic White Americans because of their relatively high fertility rate so children have to compete for the available money. There are studies that indicate that elderly Hispanic parents of all backgrounds live with their adult children due to poverty and would choose to do otherwise, even if they had the resources to do so.

African American and Latino families are less likely to financially aid adult children than non-Hispanic white families.

Income effects:
See also: Racial wage gap in the United States

The racial wealth gap is visible in terms of dollar-for-dollar wage and wealth comparisons. For example, middle-class Blacks earn seventy cents for every dollar earned by similar middle-class whites. 

Race can be seen as the "strongest predictor" of one's wealth.

Krivo and Kaufman found that information supporting the fact that increases in income does not affect wealth as much for minorities as it does for white Americans. For example, a $10,000 increase in income for white Americans increases their home equity $17,770 while the same increase only increases the home equities for Asians by $9,500, Hispanics by $15,150, and African Americans by $15,900.

Financial decisions:

Investments:

Conley states that differences between African American and white American wealth begin because people with higher asset levels can take advantage of riskier investment instruments with higher rates of returns. Unstable income flows may lead to "cashing in" of assets or accumulation of debt over time, even if the time-averaged streams of income and savings are the same.

African Americans may be less likely to invest in the stock market because they have a smaller parental head-start and safety net.

Chong, Phillips and Phillips state that African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians invest less heavily in stocks than white Americans. Hispanics and in some ways African Americans accumulate wealth slower than white Americans because of preference for near-term saving, favoring liquidity and low investment risk at the expense of higher yielding assets.

These preferences may be due to low financial literacy leading to a lack of demand for investment services. According to Lusardi, even though the stock market increased in value in the 1990s, only 6-7% of African Americans and Hispanics held stocks, so they did not benefit as much from the value increase.

Use of financial services:
See also: Criticism of credit scoring systems in the United States

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 2009 found that 7.7% of United States households are unbanked. Minorities are more likely than white Americans to not have a banking account. 3.5% of Asians, 3.3% of white Americans, 21.7% of African Americans and 19.3% of Hispanics and 15.6% of remaining racial/ethnic categories do not have banking accounts.

Lusardi's research revealed that education increases one's chances of having a banking account. A full high school education increases the chance of having a checking account by 15% compared to only an elementary education; having a parent with a high school education rather than only an elementary education increases one's chances of having a checking account by 2.8%.

This difference in education level may explain the large proportion of "unbanked" Hispanics. The 2002 National Longitudinal Survey found that while only 3% of white Americans and 4% of African Americans had only an elementary education, close to 20% of Hispanics did and 43% of Hispanics had less than a high school education.

Ibarra and Rodriguez believe that another factor that influences the Hispanic use of banking accounts is credit. Latinos are also more likely than white Americans or African Americans to have no or a thin credit history: 22% of Latinos have no credit score in comparison to 4% of white Americans and 3% of African Americans.

Not taking other variables into account, Chong, Phillips, and Phillips survey of zip codes found that minority neighborhoods don't have the same access to financial planning services as white neighborhoods. There is also client segregation by investable assets. More than 80% of financial advisors prefer that clients have at least $100,000 in investable assets and more than 50% have a minimum asset requirement of $500,000 or above.

Because of this, financial planning is possibly beyond the reach of those with low income, which comprises a large portion of African Americans and Hispanics. Fear of discrimination is another possible factor. Minorities may be distrustful of banks and lack of trust was commonly reported as why minorities, people with low education, and the poor chose not to have banking accounts. 

Evidence suggests that women of color are disproportionately likely to plan on using informal borrowing as their sole strategy for coping with an emergency expense, potentially due to lack of access to formal banking services.

Aid to family members:

Though African Americans who attend college get a similar boost in income to white peers, they tend not to have a similar increase in wealth, largely because they spend more money helping poor family members, including older relatives who in white families are instead more likely to help younger kin.

Health care:
Main article: Race and health in the United States

Black Americans face consistently worse health outcomes than white, Asian, and Hispanic Americans. Black women are 2½ times more likely to die of maternal causes than white women and this rate increases to 3 times when compared to Hispanic Americans. 

The infant mortality rate for Black Americans is 11 per 1,000 births which is higher than the US average of 5.7. 

There exist gaps in life expectancy between races with Black and Native Americans having the lowest life expectancies. The gap between Black and white Americans on average is four years; however, there is great variation between states and even on smaller levels. For example, in Wisconsin this gap is six years, and in Washington, D.C., this gap is more than ten years.

African American women have the highest rate of obesity or being overweight in the US and non-Hispanic Blacks are 1.3 times more likely to be obese than non-Hispanic Whites.

Poverty:

There are large differences in poverty rates across racial groups. In 2009, the poverty rate across the nation was 9.9%. This data illustrates that Hispanics and Blacks experience disproportionately high percentages of poverty in comparison to non-Hispanics whites and Asians.

In discussing poverty, it is important to distinguish between episodic poverty and chronic poverty.

Episodic poverty:

The U.S. Census Bureau defines episodic poverty as living in poverty for less than 36 consecutive months. From the period between 2004 and 2006 the episodic poverty rate was 22.6% for non-Hispanic whites, 44.5% for Blacks, and 45.8% for Hispanics. Blacks and Hispanics experience rates of episodic poverty that are nearly double the rates of non-Hispanic whites.

Chronic poverty:

The U.S. Census Bureau defines chronic poverty as living in poverty for 36 or more consecutive months. From the period between 2004 and 2006 the chronic poverty rate was 1.4% for non-Hispanic whites, 4.5% for Hispanics, and 8.4% for Blacks. Hispanics and Blacks experience much higher rates of chronic poverty when compared to non-Hispanic whites.

Length of poverty spell:

The U.S. Census Bureau defines length of poverty spell as the number of months spent in poverty. The median length of poverty spells was 4 months for non-Hispanic whites, 5.9 months for Blacks, and 6.2 months for Hispanics. The length of time spent in poverty varies by race. Non-Hispanic whites experience the shortest length of poverty spells when compared to Blacks and Hispanics.

Housing segregation:
Main article: Housing segregation in the United States

Housing segregation in the United States is the practice of denying African American or other minority groups equal access to housing through the process of misinformation, denial of realty and financing services, and racial steering. 

Housing policy in the United States has influenced housing segregation trends throughout history. Key legislation includes the National Housing Act of 1934, the GI Bill, and the Fair Housing Act. Factors such as socioeconomic status, spatial assimilation, and immigration contribute to perpetuating housing segregation. 

The effects of housing segregation include relocation, unequal living standards, and poverty. However, there have been initiatives to combat housing segregation, such as the Section 8 housing program.

Racial residential segregation doubled from 1880 to 1940. Southern urban areas were the most segregated. Segregation was highly correlated with lynchings of African Americans. Segregation adversely affected both black and white homeownership rates, as well as caused higher crime rates. Areas with housing segregation had worse health outcomes for both whites and Blacks. 

Residential segregation accounts for a substantial share of the Black-white gap in birth weight. Segregation reduced upward economic mobility.

White communities are more likely to have strict land use regulations (and whites are more likely to support those regulations). Strict land use regulations are an important driver of housing segregation along racial lines in the United States.

Education:
In the United States, funding for public education relies greatly on local property taxes. Local property tax revenues may vary between different neighborhoods and school districts. This variance of property tax revenues amongst neighborhoods and school districts leads to inequality in education. This inequality manifests in the form of available school financial resources which provide educational opportunities, facilities, and programs to students. 

For every student enrolled, the average nonwhite school district receives $2,226 less than a white school district.

Returning to the concept of residential segregation, it is known that affluence and poverty have become both highly segregated and concentrated in relation to race and location. 

Residential segregation and poverty concentration is most markedly seen in the comparison between urban and suburban populations in which suburbs consist of majority white populations and inner cities consist of majority minority populations. 

According to Barnhouse-Walters (2001), the concentration of poor minority populations in inner-cities and the concentration of affluent white populations in the suburbs, "is the main mechanism by which racial inequality in educational resources is reproduced."

In August 2020, the US Justice Department argued that Yale University discriminated against Asian candidates on the basis of their race, a charge the university denied.

Unemployment rates:

In 2016, the unemployment rate was 3.8% for Asians, 4.6% for non-Hispanic whites, 6.1% for Hispanics, and 9.0% for Blacks, all over the age of 16. In terms of unemployment, it can be seen that there are two-tiers: relatively low unemployment for Asians and whites, relatively high unemployment for Hispanics and Blacks.

Potential explanations:

Several theories have been offered to explain the large racial gap in unemployment rates:

Segregation and job decentralization: 

This theory argues that the effects of racial segregation pushed Blacks and Hispanics into the central city during a time period in which jobs and opportunities moved to the suburbs.

This led to geographic separation between minorities and job opportunities which was compounded by struggles to commute to jobs in the suburbs due to lack of means of transportation. This ultimately led to high unemployment rates among minorities.

White gains:

This theory argues that the reason minority disadvantage exists is because the majority group is able to benefit from it. For example, in terms of the labor force, each job not taken by a Black person could be job that gets occupied by a white person. This theory is based on the view that the white population has the most to gain from the discrimination of minority groups.

In areas where there are large minority groups, this view predicts high levels of discrimination to occur for the reason that white populations stand to gain the most in those situations.

Job skill differentials:

This theory argues that the unemployment disparity can be attributed to lower rates of academic success among minority groups (especially Black Americans) leading to a lack of skills necessary for entering the modern work force. The author remains unclear why Black Americans have low academic success.

Other explanations:

It is politically incorrect to assume that racial inequality is caused by differences in skills or preferences. The lack of open discussion leads to ethnic groups being treated equally. This means that diverse groups receive the same offers which have different advantages for different groups, which further increases inequality.

Crime rates and incarceration
Main articles: 
In 2008, the prison population under federal and state correctional jurisdiction was over 1,610,446 prisoners. Of these prisoners, 20% were Hispanic (compared to 16.3% of the U.S. population that is Hispanic), 34% were white (compared to 63.7% of the U.S. population that is white), and 38% were Black (compared to 12.6% of the U.S. population that is Black).

Additionally, Black males were imprisoned at a rate 6.5 times higher than that of their white male counterparts. According to a 2012 study by the U.S. Census Bureau, "over half the inmates incarcerated in our nation's jails is either Black or Hispanic." 

According to a report by the National Council of La Raza, research obstacles undermine the census of Latinos in prison, and "Latinos in the criminal justice system are seriously undercounted. The true extent of the overrepresentation of Latinos in the system probably is significantly greater than researchers have been able to document.

Consequences of a criminal record:

After being released from prison, the consequences of having a criminal record are immense. Over 40 percent who are released will return to prison within the next few years. Those with criminal records who do not return to prison face significant struggles to find quality employment and income outcomes compared to those who do not have criminal records.

Those racially disparate employment consequences can arise from other forms of carceral contact, too, and they can have spillover effects on local communities. At the county level, for example, jail rather than prison incarceration has been found to significantly diminish local labor markets in areas with relatively high proportions of Black residents. 

Potential causes of a Criminal Record:

Poverty:

A potential cause of such disproportionately high incarceration rates for Black Americans is that Black Americans are disproportionately poor. Conviction is a crucial part of the process that leads to either guilt or innocence. There are two important factors that play a role in this part of the process: the ability to make bail and the ability to access high-quality legal counsel.

Due to the fact that both of these important factors cost money, it is unlikely that poor Black Americans are able to afford them and benefit from them. Sentencing is another crucial part of the process that determines how long individuals will remain incarcerated.

Several sociological studies have found that poor offenders receive longer sentences for violent crimes and crimes involving drug use, unemployed offenders are more likely to be incarcerated than their employed counterparts, and then even with similar crimes and criminal records minorities were imprisoned more often than whites.

Racial profiling:

Racial profiling is defined as "any police-initiated action that relies on the race, ethnicity, or national origin, rather than the behavior of an individual or information that leads the police to a particular individual who has been identified as being, or having been, engaged in criminal activity." 

Another potential cause for the disproportionately high incarceration rates of Blacks and Hispanics is that racial profiling occurs at higher rates for Blacks and Hispanics. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva states that racial profiling can perhaps explain the over representation of Blacks and Hispanics in U.S. prisons. 

According to Michael L. Birzer, professor of criminal justice at Wichita State University and director of its School of Community Affairs, "racial minorities, particularly African Americans, have had a long and troubled history of disparate treatment by United States Criminal Justice Authorities."

Racial segregation:

"Racial residential segregation is a fundamental cause of racial disparities in health". Racial segregation can result in decreased opportunities for minority groups in income, education, etc. While there are laws against racial segregation, study conducted by D. R. Williams and C. Collins focuses primarily on the impacts of racial segregation, which leads to differences between races.

Police brutality:
Main article: Police brutality in the United States

Significant racial discrepancies have been reported in the United States involving police brutality. Police brutality in the United States is defined as "the unwarranted or excessive and often illegal use of force against civilians by U.S. police officers." It can come in the form of murder, assault, mayhem, or torture, as well as less physical means of violence including general harassment, verbal abuse, and intimidation. it has been argued that the origins of racial inequality by way of police brutality in America date to colonial times when slavery was legal and widespread.

Due to fear of slave revolts, whites began to organize groups of vigilantes who would use force to keep slaves from rebelling against their owners or escaping. In 1929, the Illinois crime survey reported that although African Americans only made-up five percent of Illinois's population, they consisted of 30 percent of victims of police killings.

During the civil rights era, the existence of the racial disparities surrounding police brutality became more discussed. During peaceful protests for civil rights, some police would use tactics such as police dogs or fire hoses to control the protesters. In 1991, video footage was released of cab driver Rodney King being hit over 50 times by multiple police with their batons. The police were later acquitted for their actions which resulted in the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Allegations of police brutality continue to plague American police. An alleged example of police brutality includes Philando Castile, a 32-year-old Black male who was pulled over for a broken taillight. After being told by officer Yanez, to take out his license and insurance, Castile told the officer he had a firearm and that he was reaching into his pocket to get his wallet. Seconds later he was shot and killed by Yanez, who claimed he believed Castile was pulling his gun out. 

Yanez was charged with manslaughter and acquitted at trial.

Black Americans are 2–3 times more likely to be killed in a police shooting than white Americans are killed and are more likely to be unarmed. A study done by Joshua Correll at the University of Chicago shows what is called "The police officers dilemma", by setting up a video game in which police are given scenarios involving both Black and white men holding either a gun or non-threatening objects such as cellphones.

The study found that armed Black men were shot more frequently than armed white men and were also shot more quickly. The police would also sometimes mistakenly shoot the unarmed Black targets, while neglecting to shoot the armed white targets. Militarized police units are more often deployed in Black neighborhoods even after adjusting for crime rates.

A 2020 study by Cody Ross et et al. concluded that there was evidence of bias in police shootings of unarmed Blacks and that even when using crime as a benchmark "there is strong and statistically reliable evidence of anti-Black racial disparities in the killing of unarmed Americans by police". 

A 2019 study by Cesario et al. published in Social Psychological and Personality Science found that after adjusting for crime, there was "no systematic evidence of anti-Black disparities in fatal shootings, fatal shootings of unarmed citizens, or fatal shootings involving misidentification of harmless objects. 

A study by Harvard economist Roland Fryer found that for officer-involved shootings there were no racial disparities "in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account". 

According to data from the Chicago Police Department police used more force against Black people than any other race despite the fact that they were less likely to resist arrest than whites. Around 20% of the population of Minneapolis is Black but they are subjected to nearly 60% of total police use of force.

Color-blind racism:

It is hypothesized by some scholars, such as Michelle Alexander, that in the post-Civil Rights era, the United States has now switched to a new form of racism known as color blind racism. Color-blind racism refers to "contemporary racial inequality as the outcome of nonracial dynamics."

The types of practices that take place under color blind racism are "subtle, institutional, and apparently nonracial." These practices are not racially overt in nature such as racism under slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow laws. Instead, color blind racism flourishes on the idea that race is no longer an issue in this country and that there are non-racial explanations for the state of inequality in the U.S.

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva writes that there are four frames of color-blind racism that support this view:
  1. Abstract liberalism uses ideas associated with political liberalism. This frame is based in liberal ideas such as equal opportunity, individualism, and choice. It uses these ideas as a basis to explain inequality.
  2. Naturalization explains racial inequality as a cause of natural occurrences. It claims that segregation is not the result of racial dynamics. Instead it is the result of the naturally occurring phenomena of individuals choosing likeness as their preference.
  3. Cultural racism explains racial inequality through culture. Under this frame, racial inequalities are described as the result of stereotypical behavior of minorities. Stereotypical behavior includes qualities such as laziness and teenage pregnancy.
  4. Minimization of racism attempts to minimize the factor of race as a major influence in affecting the life chances of minorities. It writes off instances and situations that could be perceived as discrimination to be hypersensitivity to the topic of race.

Natural disasters:
Main article: Environmental racism in the United States

When a disaster strikes—be it a hurricane, tornado, or fire—some people are inherently more prepared than others. "While all members of populations are affected by disasters, research findings show that racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to evacuate and more affected by disasters" than their Caucasian counterparts. 

"During Hurricane Katrina, the large number of people seeking safety in designated shelters were disproportionately Black. In addition, the mortality rate for Blacks was 1.7 to 4 times higher than that of whites for all people ≥ 18." 

After Hurricane Katrina, many African Americans felt abandoned by the United States Government. 66% of African Americans "said that 'the government's response to [Katrina] would have been faster if most of the victims had been white.'" For a disproportionate share of the impoverished in New Orleans, many had, and continue to have, a difficult time preparing for storms.

Factors such as, "cultural ignorance, ethnic insensitivity, racial isolation and racial bias in housing, information dissemination, and relief assistance" all greatly contribute to the disparities in disaster preparedness.

See also:
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