*The American March to Inequality* Why UN Alston Report Alarms Trump Plutocrats
It is no surprise that flacks for the plutocrats in charge of the US like Nikki Haley are squawking about the report on American poverty just issued by UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston. It throws loads of light on how unequal a society America is, how it is marching rapidly toward even greater, Third World levels of inequality, and how peculiar the US is, as a land of rapacious robber barons and 40 million completely marginalized poor...
Big social statistics are hard to envision. That in a country like the US, with some 320 million people and an $18 trillion annual gross domestic product, the social statistics could be rapidly changing is also hard to fathom.
They are changing, the UN says, decidedly for the worse for tens of millions of people.
*The GOP tax massacre of earlier this year will transfer over time trillions of new dollars to the already obscenely wealthy, and result in diminished government services and a much smaller safety net for the rest of us. It was a tax cut, almost all of the benefits of which, went to one-tenth of one percent of the population. It will make them even richer, adding billions to their billions, and make the rest of us poorer. This is a structural change in US society with massive implications.
*Already, the top 0.1% holds as much of the country’s wealth as the bottom 90% (i.e. almost everyone reading these words).
Alston writes:
*US infant mortality rates in 2013 were the highest in the developed world.
*Americans can expect to live shorter and sicker lives, compared to people living in any other rich democracy, and the “health gap” between the U.S. and its peer countries continues to grow.
*U.S. inequality levels are far higher than those in most European countries.
*Neglected tropical diseases, including Zika, are increasingly common in the USA. It has been estimated that 12 million Americans live with a neglected parasitic infection. A 2017 report documents the prevalence of hookworm in Lowndes County, Alabama.
*The US has the highest prevalence of obesity in the developed world.
*In terms of access to water and sanitation the US ranks 36th in the world.
*America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, ahead of Turkmenistan, El Salvador, Cuba, Thailand and the Russian Federation. Its rate is nearly 5 times the OECD average.
*The youth poverty rate in the United States is the highest across the OECD with one quarter of youth living in poverty compared to less than 14% across the OECD.
The UN report violates the basic tenet of the propaganda of our robber barons, which is that things are getting better. They are getting worse, and dramatically so. One reason Nikki Haley, current US ambassador to a UN she doesn’t believe in, and the former governor of South Carolina, is in such high dudgeon about the UN report is that she exemplifies everything wrong with America. She ran a state with one of the lowest life expectancies in the US and one of the highest infant mortality rates. Continued..
Read More, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/06/23/american-march-inequality-why-un-alston-report-alarms-trump-plutocrats
*I wrote about all this just a few years ago: Average household net worth of whites: $110,000. Average household net worth of African-Americans: $5000.
= new reply since forum marked as read
or simply leave the UN as a nation. That will set them straight.
Americans born into poverty are more likely than ever before to stay that way, according to a United Nations report on poverty and inequality in the US. "The United States, one of the world's richest nations and the "land of opportunity," is fast becoming a champion of inequality," the report concluded. The Trump administration has slammed the UN report arguing the organization should instead focus on poverty in the third world...
More than 5 million Americans live in third world conditions also known as "absolute poverty," according to the report. While the issue is not new, the problem is becoming more dire under the Trump administration according to the UN. It found Trump's policies seem "deliberately designed to remove the basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship."
"Contempt for the poor in US drives cruel policies," Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights told CNN. "The Trump administration has brought in massive tax breaks for corporations and the very wealthy, while orchestrating a systematic assault on the welfare system," he said. "The strategy seems to be tailor-made to maximize inequality and to plunge millions of working Americans, and those unable to work, into penury.
Forty-six million Americans depend on food banks, which is 30% above 2007 levels, according to Feeding America. "Even people who are working full time can't afford a decent living. They do need food stamps. They do need the sort of assistance that government can provide, but instead what we see is a constant cut back in all of those benefits by this administration," Alston said. Read more: http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/un-report-americas-poor-becoming-more-destitute-under-trump/ar-AAyZXYP?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=HPCOMMDHP15
*UN REPORT ON HUMAN RIGHTS* Statement on Visit to the USA, by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights,
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22533
- A homeless encampment made of tents and tarps lines the Santa Ana riverbed near Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California, January 25, 2018. People living along the riverbed recently learned they must pack their bags and move on, or risk arrest, but alternative housing options are limited. Urban development network CityNet says it has helped some 200 people get out of the street since July -- but the steady stream of new homeless people is relentless. "Faced with camp evacuation, California homeless live in fear."
- UN Rapporteur Philip Alston (L) visits the Los Angeles 'Skid Row' area with poverty and homelessness.
In early December, United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston landed in Los Angeles, the first stop in his tour of extreme poverty in the United States.
Over the next two weeks, Alston also visited Alabama, Georgia, Puerto Rico, West Virginia, and Washington, D.C. In his report, Alston said he witnessed homeless people who are “barely surviving on Skid Row in Los Angeles”; heard about thousands of people saddled with “unpayable debt” after receiving minor infraction notices; met people who lost their teeth because they did not have access to dental care; and saw sewage-filled yards in states that “don’t consider sanitation facilities to be their responsibility.”
Alston also reported on the extraordinary efforts by municipal officials determined to help the poorest 20 percent of their communities; a church in San Francisco that offers services to the homeless seven days a week; and a community health initiative in Charleston, West Virginia, that offers medical services to 21,000 patients...
- The mobile dental program for West Virginia Health Right’s free clinic. Photo courtesy of U.N. Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights.
- "UN Report: US Has the Wealth To End Homelessness But Chooses Not To," March 7, 2017.
https://www.streetsensemedia.org/article/united-nations-usa-poverty-human-rights-homeless-camp-health-inequality/#.Wy-xyK8UfI
- "U.N.'s Poverty Monitor Says U.S. Is 'like the kid who takes his football and goes home," LA Times, June 22, 2018.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-un-human-rights-report-20180622-story.html
- https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142091568
