The crisis of poverty in America is one of the great moral and economic issues facing our country. It is very rarely talked about in the mainstream media. It gets even less attention in Congress. Why should people care? Many poor people don't vote. They certainly don't make large campaign contributions, and they don't have powerful lobbyists representing their interests.
Here's why we all should care. There are 46 million Americans -- about one in six -- living below the poverty line. That's the largest number on record, according to a new report released Tuesday by the Census Bureau. About 49.9 million Americans lacked health insurance, the report also said. That number has soared by 13.3 million since 2000.
Moreover, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has both the highest overall poverty rate and the highest childhood poverty rate of any major industrialized country on earth. This comes at a time when the U.S. also has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth with the top 1 percent earning more than the bottom 50 percent.
According to the latest figures from the OECD, 21.6 percent of American children live in poverty. This compares to 3.7 percent in Denmark, 5 percent in Finland, 5.5 percent in Norway 6.9 percent in Slovenia, 7 percent in Sweden, 7.2 percent Hungary, 8.3 percent in Germany, 8.8 percent in the Czech Republic, 9.3 percent in France, 9.4 percent in Switzerland. I suppose we can take some comfort in that our numbers are not quite as bad as Turkey (23.5 percent), Chile (24 percent) and Mexico (25.8 percent).
When we talk about poverty in America, we think about people who may be living in substandard and overcrowded homes or may be homeless. We think about people who live with food insecurity, who may not know how they are going to feed themselves or their kids tomorrow. We think about people who, in cold states like Vermont, may not have enough money to purchase the fuel they need to keep warm in the winter. We think about people who cannot afford health insurance or access to medical care. We think about people who cannot afford an automobile or transportation, and can't get to their job or the grocery store. We think about senior citizens who may have to make a choice between buying the prescription drugs he or she needs, or purchasing an adequate supply of food.
I want to focus on an enormously important point. And that is that poverty in America today leads not only to anxiety, unhappiness, discomfort and a lack of material goods. It leads to death. Poverty in America today is a death sentence for tens and tens of thousands of our people which is why the high childhood poverty rate in our country is such an outrage.
Some facts
• At a time when we are seeing major medical breakthroughs in cancer and other terrible diseases for the people who can afford those treatments, the reality is that life expectancy for low-income women has declined over the past 20 years in 313 counties in our country. In other words, in some areas of America, women are now dying at a younger age than they used to.
• In America today, people in the highest income group level, the top 20 percent, live, on average, at least 6.5 years longer than those in the lowest income group. Let me repeat that. If you are poor in America you will live 6.5 years less than if you are wealthy or upper-middle class.
• In America today, adult men and women who have graduated from college can expect to live at least 5 years longer than people who have not finished high school.
• In America today tens of thousands of our fellow citizens die unnecessarily because they cannot get the medical care they need. According to Reuters (September 17, 2009), nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and cannot get good care. Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday."
• In 2009, the infant mortality rate for African American infants was twice that of white infants.
I recite these facts because I believe that as bad as the current situation is with regard to poverty, it will likely get worse in the immediate future. As a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior of Wall Street we are now in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the 1930s. Millions of workers have lost their jobs and have slipped out of the middle class and into poverty. Poverty is increasing.
Further, despite the reality that our deficit problem has been caused by the recession and declining revenue, two unpaid for wars and tax breaks for the wealthy, there are some in Congress who wish to decimate the existing safety net which provides a modicum of security for the elderly, the sick, the children and lower income people. Despite an increase in poverty, some of these people would like to cut or end Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, home heating assistance, nutrition programs and help for the disabled and the homeless.
To the degree that they are successful, there is no question in my mind that many more thousands of men, women and children will die.
From a moral perspective, it is not acceptable that we allow so much unnecessary suffering and preventable death to continue. From an economic perspective and as we try to fight our way out of this terrible recession, it makes no sense that we push to the fringe so many people who could be of such great help to us.
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Remember, it was Churchill who once said: There are three types of lies. There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. You seem to be falling for the thrid type of lie, aren't you?
We are lucky he is on our side.
The historical answer to your question is that, yes, poverty can be a death sentence. Large numbers of poor have died for poverty, and today continue to, for poverty, in swelling and ebbing continuous rotations. They die for various reasons arising from poverty, exposure (inadequate, shelter), starvation (insufficient or inadequate nutrition), squalor (inadequate sanitation), diseases (preventable, resultant, epidemic, healthcare being unavailable or unaffordable) etc.
Epidemic death is an interesting poverty-result, because, while usually beginning killing he poor, epidemics usually spread to the well-off and wealthy, too, killing large numbers of rich as well as poor.
In this epidemics join the other answer to the question you did not ask: Is poverty a license to kill? The answer to this question that history gives is a resounding Yes. The French Revolution and the Soviet Bolshevik Revolution provide examples of poverty providing license to kill.
In United States history Shays' Rebellion occurred months before the Constitution Convention, and instigated the Convention. It erupted when Massachusetts' wealthy (including John Hancock) use "legal means" to make farmers tenants. The Constitution Framers recognized Shays' Rebellion justified, recognizing that "liberty requires periodic watering with blood". A result was one of the Constitutional nation's first laws requiring householder to keep arms and ammunition, to next time not have to march weaponless against hired mercenaries to liberate arms from armories to protect their rights and properties.
Is wearing purple to work the sign of a new hire?
Will your boss can you for bringing a sack lunch to work?
Is workplace gossip toxic? And on and on. The offenders know who I am talking about. I mean really lets get creative with headlines people.
"Is wearing purple to work the sign of a new hire?"
No, purple is associated to royalty, and from that, aristocracy, and so, in the American Workplace, Management. Hence, wearing purple to work is a sign of association to, or with, management. The association could be promotion to management, or could indicate management-worship, from cringing and calf-eyes to boot-licking and, ahem, kissing.
Will your boss can you for bringing a sack lunch to work?
It depends: If you bring a healthy and nourishing solid-foods lunch in a sack, no. If you bring sack for lunch, however, or malmsy, or sherry, port, or modern 'coolers', 'hard' lemonade, etc. however, you will do better to bring it as "medicine", in small, refillable apothecary bottles, instead of as "lunch"
Is workplace gossip toxic?
It can be. Or it can be old-hat, or old news, ancient history, etc. The really good stuff is. So what have you got? And where did you get it? How do they know?
Either way we DO have an obligation as a society to ensure that they don't starve and don't freeze to death and have a place to live and have an education.
"the fact of the matter is no one really cares about the poor".
Exactly WHO are you referring to ???
Shame on you, and your opinion !
I think you are too smart of a man not to know that poverty is a black hole from which there is no return...Maybe in years gone by some could catch a lucky break, but now the game is rigged totally, and all those holes of chance that the occasional person could escape thru are closed and sealed off tight...if you have weath you are either born into, or you’re a politician (sorry, no offense) which I am sure from your own first hand observations are well to aware of... as Christ Rock so beautifully pointed out once, when we are talking about wealth, we are not talking about some athletic that makes some money, but the guy that writes his check…that is wealth…
So you were saying…
There is no doubt that these disadvantaged people become an increasingly expensive burden to society as we decrease support for early correction. As the world becomes ever more crowded and complex, this problem will exacerbate to a point of extreme conflict.
Here, as in all of their 'laissez faire', do nothing policies of elitism, Republicans are wrong. Ignoring a problem, or isolating to another locale is not the answer. Disease, neglect, and poverty will always come back to bite society as a whole in very hurtful ways.
The basic GOP philosophy of 'Got Ours Puck-u' sounds good, but doesn't fly in the real world.
The Republicans don't want women to have birth control and then whine about "welfare states". Can't have it both ways, losers.
None of us are perfect, and none of us can completely isolate ourselves from the impact of the negative points on the statistical curve of reality. The point is that we need to deal with the negative norms in a productive and constructive way in order to maintain our humanity and our ability to maintain strong, healthy societies.
The Democratic answer is to be proactive in the management of society as a whole. The Republican way is to surgically remove any problem humans from their sight and their corner of reality, at the expense and peril of everyone else. This itself is a failed philosophy. People, even down trodden people, will always rally the energy to tear down that which represses them............not to mention the fact that it takes a healthy society to produce a Republican with the means to buy his or her own isolation. No man is an island.