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Social Justice Quiz 2008 - Twenty Questions

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8.  World-wide, 1.6 billion people do not have electricity.  2.5 billion people use wood, charcoal or animal dung for cooking.  United Nations Human Development Report 2007/2008, pages 44-45.

 

9.  People in the US lead the world in meat consumption at 42 kg per person per year compared to 1.6 kg in India and 5.9 kg in China.  People in the US consume five times the grain (wheat, rice, rye, barley, etc.) as people in India, three times as much as people in China, and twice as much as people in Europe. “THE BLAME GAME: Who is behind the world food price crisis,” Oakland Institute, July 2008.

 10.  China has 9 cars for every 1000 drivers.  India has 11 cars for every 1000 drivers.  The US has 1114 cars for every 1000 drivers.  Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future (2007).  

11.  The grain needed to fill up a SUV tank with ethanol could feed a hungry person for a year.  Lester Brown, CNN.Money.com, August 16, 2006

 

12.  “According to the figures, the richest 1% reported 22% of the nation's total adjusted gross income in 2006. That is up from 21.2% a year earlier, and is the highest in the 19 years that the IRS has kept strictly comparable figures. The 1988 level was 15.2%. Earlier IRS data show the last year the share of income belonging to the top 1% was at such a high level as it was in 2006 was in 1929, but changes in measuring income make a precise comparison difficult.”  Jesse Drucker, “Richest Americans See Their Income Share Grow,” Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2008, page A3. 

 

13.   754,000 are homeless.  About 338,000 homeless people are not in shelters (live on the streets, in cars, or in abandoned buildings) and 415,000 are in shelters on any given night. 2007 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Annual Homeless Report to Congress, page iii and 23.  The population of San Francisco is about 739,000.

 

14.  HUD reports nearly 1 in 4 people in homeless shelters are children 17 or younger.  Page iv – 2007 HUD Annual Homeless Report to Congress.

 

15.  Over 100,000 veterans are homeless on any given night.  About 18 percent of the adult homeless population is veterans. Page 32, 2007 HUD Homeless Report.    This is about the same population as Green Bay Wisconsin.

 

16.  Ten times.  China’s military budget is $65 billion.  The US military budget is nearly 10 times larger than the second leading military spender.  GlobalSecurity.org

 

17.   The US military budget of $623 billion is larger than the budgets of all the countries in the rest of the world put together.  The total global military budget of the rest of the world is $500 billion.  Russia’s military budget is $50 billion, South Korea’s is $21 billion, and Iran’s is $4.3 billion.  GlobalSecurity.org

 

18.  1268.  At least 1268 people have died along the border of Arizona and Mexico since 2004. The Arizona Daily Star keeps track of the reported deaths along the state border and reports 214 died in 2004, 241 in 2005, 216 in 2006, 237 in 2007, and 116 as of July 31, 2008.  These numbers do not include the deaths along the California or Texas border.  The Border Patrol reported that 400 people died in fiscal 2206-2007, 453 died in 2004-2005, and 494 died in 2004-2005.  Source Associated Press, November 8, 2007.

 

19.  The US is first in gun ownership world-wide with 90 guns for every 100 citizens.   Laura MacInnis, “US most armed country with 90 guns per 100 people.” Reuters, August 28, 2007. 

 

20.  The US jails 751 inmates per 100,000 people, the highest rate in the world.  Russia is second with 627 per 100,000.  England’s rate is 151, Germany is 88, and Japan is 63.  The US has 2.3 million people behind bars, more than any country in the world.  Adam Liptak, “Inmate Count in US Dwarfs Other Nations’” NYT, April 23, 2008. 

 

by Bill Quigley.  Bill is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans.  He can be reached at quigley77@gmail.com

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Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans and Legal Director for the Center for Constitutional Rights.
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