SoylentNews

-- OriginalOwner_ [tinyurl.com] writes:

Common Dreams reports [commondreams.org]

Philip Alston is the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. He traveled to the United States last December to some of our most destitute communities such as Skid Row in L.A., poor African American areas in [...] Alabama, impoverished coal communities in West Virginia, and to Puerto Rico. He issued his report [undocs.org][1] on June 1, 2018. It should be front page news.

The report is a terrible indictment of our country and of the Trump Administration. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize winning economist told The Guardian [theguardian.com] "This administration inherited a bad situation with inequality in the U.S. and is now fanning the flames and worsening the situation. What is so disturbing is that Trump, rather than taking measures to ameliorate the problem, is taking measures to aggravate it." The U.S. has one in four of the world's billionaires. But we also have 40 million citizens who live in poverty. Five million live in the absolute deprivation we usually associate with the developing world. Four in ten Americans are so broke that they could not cover an emergency expense of $400 without selling something or borrowing.

The symptoms of the devastating inequality here include Americans now living shorter and sicker lives than citizens of other rich democracies. Life expectancy is down two years in a row. Tropical diseases are on the rise. Our incarceration rate remains the highest in the world (yes, we are exceptional!). Voter registration levels are among the lowest in industrialized countries: 64% of our citizens are registered (fewer vote) compared to 91% in Canada and the UK and 99% in Japan.

[...]Instead of the corporate media basically ignoring the UN report, there should be screaming headlines. This report is a wakeup call. Now we need mass and vocal support for policies such as a Federal job guarantee (locally administered), free healthcare and education for all and help for former prisoners to reintegrate back into society.

CounterPunch puts it this way:

We're the Wealthiest Country on Earth, But Over 40 Percent of Us Live in or Near Poverty [counterpunch.org]

164 countries have ratified [the UN Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights] [wikipedia.org], but [USA] won't.

[...]Citing figures from the Centers for Disease Control, the Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] declared our infant mortality rate "a national embarrassment", noting that it's higher "than any of the other 27 wealthy countries".

That's painful enough. But they went on: "Despite health care spending levels that are significantly higher [oecd.org][2] than any other country in the world, a baby born in the U.S. is less likely to see his first birthday than one born in Hungary, Poland, or Slovakia. Or in Belarus. Or in Cuba [cia.gov], for that matter."

[1] Broken, poorly designed page IME. A direct link to the *.DOC file would have been more useful. A non-proprietary format for the report would have been even more intelligent.
[2] Page construction is garbage [w3.org]. (No scroll bars in my presentation and my scrollwheel is disabled by default. No doubt, "aspx" is a significant indicator of why.)

Original Submission