Playing the Numbers Game

50% - Amount of produce thrown away in the U.S. every year.

8% - Greenhouse emissions accounted for by global food waste --more than the output of the entire European Union.

$1,600 - Amount the average family of four in the U.S. spends each year on food they end up throwing out.

$940B - Estimated annual cost of food waste globally. (Source: The Nation, October 30, 2017.)

50 - Average daily number of workers nationwide who are sexually assaulted on the job, according to the Department of Justice.

80% - Proportion of women farm workers in California's Central Valley who experienced sexual harassment on the job, according to a 2010 survey.

14,900  - Estimated number of sexual assaults in the military in 2016, according to the Pentagon; only 6,172 of these assaults were reported. (Source: The Nation, November 13, 2017.)

32% - Number of college men who said they would "force a woman into sexual intercourse" if they were assured there would be no consequences.

60% - Number of rapes and sexual assaults against inmates that are committed by prison staff.

200K - Number of untested rape kits across the country.

19K - Number of rape kits that remain untested in Texas -- among the highest in the country. (Source: The Nation, November 20/27, 2017.)

400 - Average number of plastic bags used each year by a person living in California before the state voted in 2016 to ban single-use bags.

8M - Tons of plastic that enter the ocean each year; 60 to 80 percent of all marine litter is plastic.

2050 - Year when there will be more plastic than fish in the earth's oceans, if current trends continue.

85% - Amount by which plastic-bag use has decreased in England after it required all stores to levy a 5-pence-per-bag charge starting in 2015. (Source: The Nation, December 18/25, 2017.)

$68.1 billion - The cost this year of the mortgage-interest deduction.

72.6% - Benefits going to the richest one-fifth.

1.2% - Benefits going to the poorest two-fifths.

1 in 4 - families who qualify for rental assistance actually receive it. (Source: The Nation, December  18/25, 2017.)

ADDENDUMS:
*The ridiculously low minimum wage is the reason that the restaurant industry, with 14 million workers, remains the lowest-paying sector of the U.S. economy despite being one of the fastest-growing. Moreover, more than two-thirds of tipped workers are women. (Source: Saru Jayaraman, "The Other NRA," The Nation, November 13, 2017.)

 *A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that only 20 of the 700 proposals introduced in Congress since 1999 have come up for a vote.

*A Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows that 60% will blame the Trump administration and congressional Republicans for future problems with the Affordable Care Act. 73% of Republicans would blame the Obama administration and congressional Democrats.

*The World Inequality Lab has found that from 1980 to 2014 in the U.S., the post-tax growth of income percentile was 4% for the bottom 4%; 40% for the middle; 113% for the top 10%; 194% for the top 1%; 423% for the top 0.01%; and 616% for the top 0.001%.