Below are remarks by Philip Alston, U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, reported by Common Dreams on 19 December 2017
Among the things he noted are:
U.S. inequality levels are far higher than those in most European countries;
U.S. infant mortality rates in 2013 were the highest in the developed world;
America has the highest incarceration rate in the world;
In terms of access to water and sanitation the US ranks 36th in the world.
Alston said the US is out of line with the developed world and insists its human rights “do not include rights that guard against dying of hunger, dying for a lack of access to affordable healthcare, or growing up in a context of total deprivation.”
Alston spoke with politicians and political appointees. Some of them, he said, clung to “caricatured narratives” of who the wealthy and poor are—narratives that falsely portray the rich as industrious, and the poor as lazy people who merely need to pull themselves up by the bootstraps in order to make it.
“I wonder how many of these politicians have ever visited poor areas, let alone spoken to those who dwell there,” he stated.
Census Bureau data he cited say more than one in eight Americans –40 million people–live in poverty; Alston said that figure appears to be by design; “…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. With political will, it could be eliminated.”
What can we do to change this? I am contacting my senators, who may or more likely may not do anything about it. What else can we do?