23% of American children live in poverty.
23 percent poverty for children. That frightens and saddens me.
I wonder why this issue is largely ignored by Romney and Obama:
"The issues aren't just with public benefits. We have some deep problems in the economy," said Peter Edelman, director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.
He pointed to the recent recession but also longer-term changes in the economy such as globalization, automation, outsourcing, immigration, and less unionization that have pushed median household income lower. Even after strong economic growth in the 1990s, poverty never fell below a 1973 low of 11.1 percent. That low point came after President Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty, launched in 1964, created Medicaid, Medicare and other social welfare programs.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-poverty-on-track-to-reach-highest-level-since-the-1960s-2012-7
The 23% of children living in poverty number came up a few days ago as a root cause of why many U.S. children aren't testing well: http://pandawhale.com/convo/3577/invitation-to-a-dialogue-an-excess-of-testing-nytimescom
Today, one out of every seven Americans is on food stamps and one out of every four American children is on food stamps.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/29/us/29foodstamps.html?_r=1
Poor people must not vote; all everyone talks about is "middle-class." And from what I've learned, middle and upper class folks don't want to be reminded of issues like race relations, gender issues or, poverty issues and the like. Easier to pretend the problems don't exist.
Poor people do not vote.
They don't have time. They spend all their time surviving.
George Carlin once hypothesized that poor people exist so that the wealthy can scare the middle class into working harder.
I can see that. The middle class is afraid of being poor.
And we should be. Poverty sucks.
But there is hope. Sometimes, people can rise from the darkness. I've seen the poorest of the poor. Those who have none; many don't, but just as many -- if not more -- still cling to hope, joy, and love.
Maybe they can't get off work to one on Tuesdays?
Oh and Carlin is right; in many other countries they don't bother to have a middle class.
Yes, they cannot afford the time off from work to vote.
That's how bad it is for the people in poverty in our own country.
In other countries, the people in poverty have limited shelter, food, and water, so it's all relative.
In any case, there are a lot more people in poverty in the world than there are wealthy people.
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