Senate UN Special Rapporteur's report on poverty in the USA

There is also the phenomena of vocally supporting something as long as it does not cost you anything.

 

Sounds like the average Guardian Australia reader, to me.

 

Remember that incisive Ronald Wright quote? "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

 

Here's a link to the PoorPeople'sCampaign twitterfeed. You can watch live footage of activists all across the country demanding action from their state governments. (The anti-militarism protest I participated in last week drew between 150-200 people. It was tremendously moving to hear veterans and clergy speak for the victims of our permanent war.)

https://twitter.com/hashtag/PoorPeo...business-as-usual-in-california-ny-state-cap/

 

I think though so long as the fundamental right to strike is actively denied (as are other economic rights) those protests, whilst good for raising a broad awareness, are likely to be as effective as the Vietnam war protests.

 

The Vietnam War protests were effective, to a substantial degree.

1. They gave the North Vietnamese more impetus to carry on and draw out the fight.
2. They were instrumental in motivating both Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy to primary Lyndon Johnson, driving the latter out of office.
3. They inspired Daniel Ellsberg to copy and leak the Pentagon Papers, which in turn served as a catalyst for Nixon's eventual fall.
4 They prevented Johnson from carrying out more blatant, Korean War-styled atrocities, and Nixon from unleashing his genocidal designs.
5. They helped give rise to the widespread rebellions within the military, leading to an untenable situation for the generals. (Watch the superb documentary, "Sir, No Sir!)

Still, your point is well taken. In my opinion, the first order of business should be to take on the Democrats, forcing the pliable ones into taking liberal positions, expelling the corporatists from power, thereby creating a true progressive, opposition party.

 

Americans really are dupes. We are basically property and are too fat, lazy, stupid and worthless to understand it. This country was founded by wealthy elitists to exploit people and that's what it does. A bad nation formed by bad people is going to be exactly that.

And no, it's not going to change. The people who own this country know exactly how many scraps to give us plebs to keep us docile. That's why we don't strike, that's why we don't raise hell, and that's also why we don't have what First World countries have. And being the idiots that we are, we think we're special. We're special alright.

 

I'm convinced that it's more "I'm poor, but at least I'm not black, and I would rather starve than see money go to lazy black welfare recipients."

"Lazy welfare recipient" has always been code for poor unemployed African Americans. Social welfare for African American men is prison. Keep em out of the labor market. Keep em out of sight. Then complain about lazy welfare (African American) single moms having babies. it's not a perfect system of oppression, but it works, and it's so much better than sharing Ivy League schools and white collar jobs. Emphasis on white. Riots every decade or so is a really small price to pay to keep it all in place.

 

Decriminalize being poor
71.
Punishing and imprisoning the poor is the distinctively American response to
poverty in the twentyfirst century. Workers who cannot pay their debts, those who
cannot afford private probation services, minorities targeted for traffic infractions,
the homeless, the mentally ill, fathers who cannot pay child support and many others
are all locked up. Mass incarceration is used to make social problems temporarily
invisible and to create the mirage of something having been done

Just from an economic pov this is dumb , it costs a lot to keep someone in prison .
Surely more can be done to help out people who have fallen into poverty .

Sure , there's personal responsibility etc. but it can happen to anyone .

 

- I've read the twenty page report, and I do not find anything surprising about it, especially living in the San Francisco Bay Area/Silicon Valley which really highlights some of the issues presented in the report (that hasn't been discussed in this thread), which is automation/The Digital Revolution, high tech jobs, the rising cost of living and thus the shrinking of the middle class. I mean, in parts of the Bay Area/Silicon Valley, a household annual income of $100K for a family of four is considered earning low income. Average cost (not exclusive to a nice neighborhood) of a house in San Francisco is $1.61 million and Silicon Valley around $1 million. So, the Bay Area/Silicon Valley is a microcosm of the U.S. in The Report, as its home to the wealthiest corporations (i.e. Apple, Google, Oracle, et) and yet has the highest homeless per capita rate of any major city in the U.S. Because most of the well paying jobs are within the tech industry, which required a certain level of education and experience.

- The Report is not getting any airtime in the U.S., at least none of the news feeds/channels/media I subscribe to. Why? Because poverty in the U.S. is covered both locally and nationally. Especially with many local elections in held today in the Bay Area and affordable housing and homelessness being an issue for candidates seeking office.

- I do not instinctively feel it's unfair for the UN to single out the US in a public fashion. It's done internally as well, and a numerous amount of material and data was provided by U.S. organizations and officials. Thus, no surprise by the Report of the Special Rapporteur on the extreme poverty and human rights on his mission to the United States of America, ("The Report"). It should be noted The Report was written by the American Professor Philip Alston, so it's not some non-American that is bringing these issue to light for the the rest of the world to see.

- So, The Report offers its own remedies at the Federal Level, which are:
1. Decriminalize being poor.
2. Acknowledge the plight of the middle class
3. Acknowledge the damaging consequences of extreme inequality
4. Recognize a right to health care
5. Get real about taxes

Point 1, is a more local/State issue than a Federal issue, as The Report cites a 2015 report of Ferguson, Missouri for administrating fines and penalties on the poor for revenue. And The Report notes the city of Los Angeles arresting 14,000 homeless persons in 2016, which is also a local government issue. And I agree with the report that more funding should go to aiding the homeless instead of punishing them as it states "a cheaper and more humane option is to provide proper social protection and facilitate the return to the workforce of those who are able. In the United States, it poverty that needs to be arrested, not the poor simply for being poor." And course, that reminds me of the lyrics from Tupac, "Instead of war on poverty, they got a war on drugs so the police can bother me," from the song "Changes."

Point 2, is not only an issue for government to answer, but also the private sector/corporations with the advancement of automation and the Digital revolution. Acknowledging is a first step, but not a real solution. The solution is figuring out how to increase the middle class and provide affordable housing and healthcare in this digital age of automation.

Point 3. Acknowledgement of the damaging consequences of extreme inequality is a very small step. The Report notes, that "In both Europe and the United States, the richest 1 percent earned around 10 per cent of national income in 1980. By 2017 that had risen slightly in Europe to 12 percent, but massively in the United States, to 20 percent," providing evidence to the old adage, "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer." It's alarming to say the least as it does pose a threat to democracy and the health of the middle class.

Point 4. Recognize a right to health care is a Federal issue. But it seems to be a misnomer that there isn't any kind of healthcare safety net for those that are uninsured or low income. The are government funded health care centers across the country, the problem is they are in very high demand and poorly refunded the services are very much lacking and do not provide long term healthcare (i.e. medications, rehab therapy, surgery, access to the best doctors and facilities).

Point 5. Getting real about taxes. This is probably the most helpful tool in solving the right to healthcare, affordable housing, and hunger. However, it will probably never happen in my life time. One, the shrinking middle class will most likely never vote for higher taxes, especially anything close to a tax rate of 30%-40% to fund universal healthcare and social programs to help those in poverty. Two, the super rich individuals and corporations will find ways to avoid paying taxes, by using existing legal loop holes (offshore accounts), creating legal loop holes, influencing policy/policy makers or moving residence and employment outside the U.S. Trump has yet to reveal his income taxes to the people, to do so would be evidence of the rich and wealthy finding ways of not paying their fair share. On another note, if it's not automation, it's taxes and labor costs that causes a certain jobs to be moved outside the U.S.

To that last statement in bold, I'll provide this quote:
-Josué de Castro

I find it shameful and embarrassing that the right to food is not something guarantee in the United States, especially when a trillion or more dollars goes into defense spending annually. I've donated much of my personal time to local food banks to help feed the poor, and the workers have told me they can buy and feed the impoverish for pennies on the dollar; meaning it doesn't cost much to feed the poor. Far less that a trillion dollars annually. The U.S has a spending habit or spending more on defense and in protecting foreign interest, rather than address social and human rights at home.

I would agree that there many politicians that don't truly understand poverty, and only see caricatured narratives. But, that's not exclusive to politicians, but the most of the middle class, in that they're too concerned with the own finances and stability. Meaning, like politicians, how many middle class Americans have visited poor areas, let let alone spoken to those who dwell there. And I think that's part of the problem; most of the people that could solve the problem of poverty, don't really understand it because they really haven't experienced it. This includes myself. I don't know what it's like to not have a home to go to, or spend days of not having anything to eat. I don't know what it is like to be uneducated, unclean, unable or earn unlivable wages. Again, I'm reminded of Tupac's lyrics:

I see no changes wake up in the morning and I ask myself
Is life worth living should I blast myself?
I'm tired of bein' poor and even worse I'm black
My stomach hurts so I'm lookin' for a purse to snatch
Cops give a damn about a negro
Pull the trigger kill a ***** he's a hero
Give the crack to the kids who the hell cares
One less hungry mouth on the welfare​

But, I feel a start to combating the issue is providing basic human needs as The Report suggests; arrest hunger and declare a war on poverty.

Again, I believe job availability is not only a political issue, but a social, corporate and digital revolution issue as the "decline in demand for low-skilled labour" will continue in the U.S. as corporations will always seek to increase revenue and lower costs through automation productivity and a smaller payroll. The most costs corporations have are employees (wages, benefits, taxes). And solving this problem is not as simply as employing more governmental regulations and taxes, as most corporations would take those jobs outside the U.S. It's a really complex issue, which I don't think the government will be able to resolved. And if anyone has the answer to providing jobs with wages that can meet or exceed the cost of living, would be in line for a Noble Prize.

The author of The Report only provides conclusions and recommendations at the end, knowing that's all that he could provide; that there no quick and easy solutions, but rather must start with acknowledgement.

 

Thanks for the well considered reply, @Sith_Sensei__Prime - I agree with a lot of your points. However, you said decriminalising the poor is less of a Federal issue - wouldn't, though, as a counter point to that we have to consider that the lack of economic rights as enshrined and fundamental human rights in US is part of the problem and needs to be addressed? If we turn back to my sworn enemy, Jefferson, we see that mistranslation of Hume's natural rights from ensuring people are born with equal rights under the law to the dumbed-down "all people are created equal", which now I think about it feels like part of the reason the "poor are indolent grifters" comes from. It certainly makes J-Rod's ideology make sense - "we all are born equal, with the same opportunities, but not everyone realises those because they're lazy."

I mean, don't you need a Federal response in order to change attitudes?

 

@Ender Sai , I feel you already know the answer, which is the people can't wait for a Federal response in the United States; especially with the current administration. However, people can change government locally more rapidly. Meaning, it's easier to fight City Hall than the White House or either houses of congress. Moreover, the alleged crimes committed by the poor are that of local laws, which really don't cite or arrest people for being poor but rather use other laws related loitering, illegal squatting, public intoxication, etc., whereby the local authorities apply selective enforcement. Meaning, local police will tend to selectively enforce those laws on the poor (more than anyone else). There's really no way the Federal government can enact any laws or regulations on preventing "selective enforcement" against the poor on every state and city. It has to administered at the local level, IMO.

Take smoking of marijuana for example, up until recently it's been a Federal law that prohibited the smoking marijuana. However, people openly and freely smoked marijuana in the Bay Area near and around police officers because of "selective enforcement" as noted in this video by a reporter from Texas reporting outside the San Francisco baseball stadium from 2010.

 

No I know what the answer likely is; I was more asking what it should be. But you are quite right, I'm not disagreeing with your points in any way.

 

Well, I do agree that the US government should take the lead and adopt a right to food as part of the human right laws at the very minimum, because it's the right thing to do.

 

Very fair points, but isn't the Rapporteur making the same point as you by saying essentially continued poverty is a political choice by those who govern?

 

So why would people not abandon this structure in droves then?

 

Our country is more defined by what divides us than what unites us. This is a country that has no business being a country and never did.

 

I've begun to think that we need a new kind of federalism, that it would be the best and most meaningful form of change without a constitutional amendment (politically impossible) or revolution/secession (revolution is not happening and more likely to favor conservatives, and secession is not happening).

I brought it up once before, but for just one example: healthcare. Have the federal government create a State-by-State Opt-In (or opt-out) for single-payer healthcare, only paid for by the taxpayers of the states who opt to have the benefits of it. All the states who opt for it will pool their resources together, so smaller yet progressive states can afford it too. If it's successful, more states will opt-in over time (and red states who stay opposed shouldn't care if it doesn't concern their taxes). Then perhaps spread the model to other policy areas too.

The ideal would actually be to become more unitary, in my opinion, but that can't happen without an amendment. And I doubt Congress would ever allow, say, New England and the West Coast states to peacefully secede and join Canada or something like that. So a new form of federalism seems the best option to finally break the gridlock. I'd like to see a ton of other amendments too, from abolishing the Electoral College to Public Campaign Financing to Instant Runoff Voting and more, but it's not politically possible now... a new incarnation of federalism is possible.

 

There certainly needs to be something along those lines. My wish is for the whole thing to fall apart but that's not likely.

 

Don't you just end up with the same asymmetric information risk you had under Obamacare, albeit from state to state?

Also, there's a question of fundamental human rights you're not questioning which means @Lord Vivec's meme is even more on point.

There's an inherent human right not to die because you're denied basic medical care that the US can't simply abrogate because "exceptionalism I mean erm um erm federalism!" Well, no, it can and does; it ought not.