It comes as no surprise that poverty in the U.S. is on the upswing, but some of the statistical representations of this fact are quite staggering.
A report delivered today to Congress by Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Senate Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging starkly poses the question:
Is Poverty a Death Sentence?
As explained in the report, the brutal answer seems quite possibly to be “yes;” especially if you happen to be poor and female.
Some salient facts gleaned from the report:
. 46-million Americans, roughly one in six, live in poverty
. 49.9-million Americans lack health insurance, up 13.3 million since 2000. Last night, we learned that many in the Tea Party believe those folks should simply be allowed to die from treatable disease and injury.
. The U.S. can boast the highest overall poverty rate of any major industrialized nation; not surprisingly, it also has the highest childhood poverty rate.
. 21.6 percent of American children (that’s more than one-in-five) live in poverty. Compare that to Denmark, where the number is 3.7 percent.
. Those Americans in the top twenty percent of income-earners live, on average, six-and-a-half years longer than those in the lowest income group.
. Life-expectancy for low-income women has actually declined over the past twenty years in 313 counties of the U.S.
Senator Sanders concludes that the very institutions enabling the rich to occupy that privileged high plane of health and longevity in America, share the blame and therefore, the responsibility, for undermining the health and longevity of its population as a whole:
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.
Regardless of how much the poor are despised by Tea Party Republicans, by virtue of sheer numbers, their plight cannot be ignored except at ultimate peril to the entire nation.
I would like to provide a perspective based both on my years working in politics and my graduate training as a theologian.
First, with my political hat on, here is a finding that absolutely blows that hat away: According to the AP, “The median – or midpoint – household income was $49,445, down 2.3 percent from 2009.” Now, this is not average income. Median means that half of the households, which includes all income earners, are above the midpoint and half are below. The fact that the median is dropping means that, as a whole, we are getting poorer. Also, keep in mind that, in many areas, median household income was dropping before 2009; therefore, this is a continuation of a trend. Here in Essex, one of our four census tracts showed an estimated 10% decline in median household income between 2005 and 2009!!!!
Secondly, wearing my theological hat (heavens: not a mitre), I appreciate and agree with what Chris Hedges has written: Namely, “the traditional beacons of the liberal class – the universities, media, church, labor unions, and arts – have sacrificed themselves completely to the dominance of corporate greed and unbounded capitalism.” Wendell Berry has written: “The organized church makes peace with a destructive economy and divorces itself from economic issues because it is economically compelled to do so.” Eduardo Galeano wrote in the Gospel of Solentiname, regarding priests who supported Somoza and the capitalist oppression in Nicaragua, “They were on the inside, as Tomas says, that is, on the side of power and the status quo. And Christ says woe unto us if we choose to be on the inside.”
So, where does this leave me? Inside or out? Posting on a blog is a simple, cost-free gesture. As the statistics Sue references dramatically underscore, it is time for me to decide what tangibly and significantly to do.
(By the way, I did not mind Sue’s Credo, non credo; it was analogous to the Hebrew Testament’s tradition of lamentation, particularly in the Psalms. I also, like Sue, do not believe in that God!)
You can’t do much to improve income/poverty numbers at the end point of a debt-based money system, which is where we are. Everything gets squeezed to make the ever increasing interest payments. It won’t be long before it sucks up what’s left of the food stamp program.
Come to the Pavilion Auditorium in Montpelier tomorrow night at 7:30 and hear Joe Bongiovanni explain how the debt-based monetary system is a hidden tax on the people, and how this could be remedied by implementation of Dennis Kucinich’s monetary reform bill, HR 6550.
…the Corporate Reich, The Rich, and the Republicans
will go after those one or two steps up the ladder. And that will include Tea Party folks. The more you love the Rich, the more they will take, cause, shit, they know they are so well loved.
Who is going to be our first Trillionaire? Who needs people when you’ve got all the money? Hell, with all the money the Rich can make people.