We the people do not deserve to live in poverty.
I still believe in the message Thomas Jefferson delivered in the Constitution:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
These wise and historic words have a new significance today than they did when he first penned them. It is difficult to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness when you are suffering from crushing poverty. We have more than 1.5 million households living in extreme poverty in the US. That is nearly twice as many as there were 20 years ago. The current rise in civil discord, crime, and hostility is directly connected to the growing poverty issue. For a deeper understanding of the issue of poverty in the US, read the recent UN report excerpted below. Consider this absurdity. “While funding for the IRS to audit wealthy taxpayers has been reduced, efforts to identify welfare fraud are being greatly intensified. The United States now has probably the lowest degree of social mobility among all the rich countries[1].” Our elected officials recognize the need to collect more taxes to pay for the government’s many programs and services. They should support a bipartisan tax bill that results in more money for the poor and more taxes for the rich, not the current approach that more aggressively taxes the poor and middle class while giving tax breaks to the wealthy.
We ought to all work together to support people, programs, and ideas that benefit the many at the cost to a few, not the current situation where the efforts of the many are providing huge profits to the few — aka the top 1%. Be angry with the 1% who suck the wealth out of the economy instead of paying a living wage, while millions of children go to bed hungry every night because their parents, who both are working two jobs, can’t pay their bills. That’s real, and it’s happening every day. Meanwhile, we are spending trillions of dollars fighting terrorists who have only a small actual impact on our lives. Largely because of poverty, thousands of Americans are killed every year in this country, not by terrorists, but by their frustrated and angry fellow citizens. If we must fight a war, let’s fight poverty in America.
Let’s start by dispelling the myth that poor people are responsible for our poverty issues. The most frightening and discouraging statement in doing the research for our book comes from an OXFAM report. Oxfam is a global organization that fights inequality to end poverty and injustice. For more details about the connections between income inequality and extreme poverty, read the OXFAM report on poverty titled, “AN ECONOMY FOR THE 1%: How privilege and power in the economy drive extreme inequality and how this problem can be stopped.”
Poor people do not choose to be poor. The poor do not get to make that choice. “But at the end of the day, particularly in a rich country like the USA, the persistence of extreme poverty is a political choice made by those in power.”[2]
Stop and think about that OXFAM report statement. Many of the millions of Americans living in poverty are not there because of anything they did or choices they made. They are poor because the people in power callously chose policies that fueled more poverty. Consider Congressional bills to reduce Social Security, Welfare, Healthcare, and other social safety net programs while at the same time giving tax breaks to the top 1%. Poverty is the visible and all-encompassing symptom of the problem; but politics motivated by greed is the cause — and our democratic system is the potential solution. The only conceivable silver lining to this cloud is that those in power can also decide to eliminate poverty, and as voters, the 99% have the means to decide who has that power.
There are countless books and studies of the destructive, crushing, physical, and emotional impact of poverty on its victims. We acknowledge this phenomenon while taking the conversation to another level. Poverty hurts more than people. Poverty hurts our country. It fuels most of the great ills that have been getting worse. Eliminating poverty is more than a humanity issue. It’s also a democracy issue. Poverty is the root cause of many of society’s major issues like crime, racism, disease, anti-immigration, terrorism, abortion, unwanted pregnancy, poor education, and divorce. If everyone ’s basic needs (e.g., physical and emotional safety and security) were met, most of these issues would be minor annoyances, not major problems. We can’t fix any of them if we don’t fix poverty first.
Over 2,000 years ago Aristotle wrote, “POVERTY is the parent of crime.”
It still is!
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/12/21/572043850/u-n-investigator-on-extreme-poverty-issues-a-grim-report-on-the-u-s?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=2051
[2] https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/bp210-economy-one-percent-tax-havens-180116-en_0.pdf
