Extreme Poverty in USA Increased 26% under Bush

Andrew Gumbel writes about the widening poverty gap:

The number of Americans living in severe poverty has expanded dramatically under the Bush administration, with nearly 16 million people now living on an individual income of less than $5,000 (Ł2,500) a year or a family income of less than $10,000, according to an analysis of 2005 official census data.

The analysis, by the McClatchy group of newspapers, showed that the number of people living in extreme poverty had grown by 26 per cent since 2000. Poverty as a whole has worsened, too, but the number of severe poor is growing 56 per cent faster than the overall segment of the population characterised as poor – about 37 million people in all according to the census data. That represents more than 10 per cent of the US population, which recently surpassed the 300 million mark.

The widening of the income gap between haves and have-nots is nothing new in America – it has been going on steadily since the late 1970s. What is new, though, is the rapid increase in numbers at the bottom of the socio-economic pile. The numbers of severely poor have increased faster than any other segment of the population.

Read entire article by Andrew Gumbel.

This is the same trend that came after Reagan came in power. I wonder why the Christian right empowers such Republicans with their large voting base, when it results in more hungry children. Perhaps, these Christians could look up to someone like Jesus, a man who taught people to put down the stones, end the violence, and help the poor, sick, and hungry.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a Democrat or a so-called “liberal”. I want nothing to do with their tax & spend agenda, which only seems to inflate and empower the corrupt government and worsen our problems.

We need to take matters into our own hands, and find non-governmental ways to end the problems facing us, our community, and the world, such as hunger and poverty.

No poverty in Africa by 2015?

In a recent GNA feature, Hannah Asomaning says:

Imagine a world where there is no poverty, there is basic education for everybody, respect for human rights, equal rights and opportunities for men and women and all the goodies one can wish for.

There would be no crime, pain, hunger and anguish as seen in some parts of the world today. It would really be a pleasant place to live in.

The United Nations perhaps imagined these when it came up with the Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015.

Almost half-way through the timeframe, we are unfortunately nowhere near the envisioned results[…]

Africans need to be effectively involved and concerned about their own development by working hard to ensure that poverty eradication is achieved. There must also be promotion and respect for human rights and change of attitudes towards achieving the MDGs by 2015.

Read entire GNA feature by Hannah Asomaning.

How can Western countries, such as the United States, help so-called third-world countries eliminate poverty and hunger? These Western countries have yet to eliminate it on their own soil! For example, 14 million children in the United States live in food insecure households. 1 in 8 United States citizens are officially poor, and many middle-class Americans struggle daily and live in debt.

To end poverty and hunger, all of us, the whole world, have to organize and do it for ourselves.

Killed by Poverty in a World of Plenty

Elizabeth Schulte writes about people being killed in a world of plenty:

EVERY MINUTE of every day, 13 children die around the world of hunger and malnutrition. That’s the finding of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). Its latest report shows that 18,000 children die each day–or 750 each hour–of malnutrition and its related diseases.

According to WFP, 850 million people are hungry or malnourished around the world on any given day. That is one in six of the world’s population–or more than the combined population of the U.S., Russia, Japan, Germany, Britain and France. Half of the world’s hungry are children.

In the world’s wealthiest country, the United States, nearly 16 million people are living in deep or severe poverty, according to an analysis of 2005 census figures by the McClatchy Newspapers. That’s more than the total population of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco.

What’s so striking about this study is how many people had fallen into even deeper poverty than before. Today, 43 percent of the 37 million poor people in the U.S. have plunged into deep poverty–the highest rate since at least 1975.

[…]

Meanwhile, the U.S. government plans to spend at least $650 billion this year on the military.

If this starve-the-poor-to-feed-Corporate-America policy continues, the future is a grim one for working America.

Read entire article by Elizabeth Schulte.

I find it odd to call the United States wealthy.

Why judge a nation by how we treat its highest citizens? Since the rich usually control the government, doesn’t their well-being most often correlate with the amount of corruption?

I say, judge a nation by how it treats its lowest citizens – the poor, the sick, the wrongfully imprisoned. From this perspective, I do NOT see the socially unequal United States, with its high rising poverty rates, as wealthy.

I am not a religous person, but still I agree with the Christian message that says, “Inasmuch as ye have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it to me.” (Matthew 24:40)

Poverty’s True Face

Jesse Jackson recently wrote an article in which he says America has a poor excuse for poverty. He writes:

We glimpsed misery in America during Katrina, as the poor were stranded in the storm. But those shocking pictures were misleading. America has a growing poverty problem, but it doesn’t look like New Orleans.

Most poor people are not black or brown. Most poor people are white. They are disproportionately young, female and single. Most of them are not on welfare. They work every day that they can — but they still cannot lift their families out of poverty.

An analysis of 2005 census figures by Tony Pugh for McClatchy Newspapers revealed almost 16 million Americans living in “deep or severe poverty,” with the percentage of the poor living in severe poverty reaching a 32-year high. Our rich are getting richer and our poor, poorer.

Read entire article by Jesse Jackson.

I highly recommend reading the entire article.

Jesse Jackson points out a serious misconception. Many people think of poor people as minorities, criminals, or the unemployed. I think that the corporate-owned media portrays this falsehood, because it makes people less upset about poverty and hunger. Sadly, if we look at the true of face of poverty, we see a young, tired, and overworked single mother, who will probably never have the opportunity escape the rat race.

What do you think?

Hunger Forums Post Contest – Win $40

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Homelessness: A Solvable Problem

A recent America Magazine editorial addresses homelessness:

While most people think of homelessness in terms of single men, roughly a third of the homeless population is made up of families, many of them headed by single parents. Families represent an especially vulnerable segment of the homeless population because of the presence of children. Advocates for the homeless point out that the disruption in the lives of children from living in shelters can lead to such health problems as respiratory and intestinal infections, along with psychological trauma. Their overall health status is far worse than that of children in homes. The trauma can be exacerbated when family members must separate upon entering shelters, with fathers and older male children often sent to shelters for men. Hardest of all is the fact that because of “lack of resources,” 86 percent of families may be turned away. Little wonder that families have resorted to sleeping in cars, under bridges or in wooded areas.

Adding to the struggles of homeless people is a strong sentiment against them. This has led to municipal ordinances that punish homeless people primarily because they have no stable housing. Aimed at banishing them from public places, statutes of this kind prohibit begging, lying down, sitting or “loitering.” Las Vegas offers an example. In July 2006 it passed an ordinance that makes sharing food with destitute or homeless people in public places a crime. Violation of the statute can be punishable by up to six months in jail. Nevada’s A.C.L.U. has filed a federal suit against Las Vegas, claiming that the ordinance violates the constitutional right to free assembly and free speech.

Homelessness is a solvable national problem, but the needed resources have not been forthcoming from the federal government.

Read entire America Magazine editorial.

Nobody has an obligation to help homeless people, but for the government to make laws that outlaw helping them seems absurdly atrocious. Regardless of these laws, let’s put an end to homelessness, a preventable problem.

Passive indignation cannot suffice. We must actively work to get homes for the poor innocent children who suffer on the brutal streets of America. These children cannot grow into healthy, happy, self-sufficient adults if they grow up in such devastating conditions. We all benefit by helping put an end to this preventable problem.

What do you think?