(no subject)

[velvetpage]

This is so depressing, and so NOT surprising.

When generational poverty is well into its third century; when education is seen as something the rich, white folks get; when that education pointedly excludes such basic health information as sex ed, including birth control and how to protect from STDs; when bureaucrats see medicaid as a series of caseloads to be reduced, rather than as communities of people who know of no other way to live; when people pull out "personal responsibility" as an excuse for cutting people off of the only health care they have any possible access to, without offering any help to replace that health care or get the kind of job that would provide it; is it any wonder that babies are dying needlessly, in much higher numbers than they should be in what is, theoretically, the richest nation on the planet?

Comments

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

I think we(my fellow countryfolk) need to puncture the idea that we are the richest nation in the world. If you clipped off the rest of the country, the Northeast and the West Coast would definitely qualify. But the South? Egads... I don't think it's so much the political situation down there as the simple lack of economic activity. That's one of the prime motivators for pork in the Federal Budget. It's the only way politicians can bring money down into their districts. Shortsighted, but they're operating in crisis.

And, anyway, it's not like the West Coast can claim to be any promised land either. They've probably got one of the widest gaps between haves and have nots with the cost of living hurting anyone who is not rich. California in particular has problems in finding money for social programs due to Proposition 13. We've got a lot of wealth in the states, but it's concentrated in only a few hands and the anti-tax initiatives that went through other states have hurt anyone who has to rely on public infrastructure.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Even if you get rid of that notion, you're still left with a country that is fairly well-off by pretty much every objective measure - and yet, the infant mortality rate is climbing instead of falling.

[purplkat.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to bet that if you were to somehow average the incomes of every single person in the US, we'd be in the top 5, even if we weren't the richest, and that's even with the declining value of the dollar against the pound.

The problem is that all of that income is in the hands of a very, very few greedy people. Everyone else is either doing well, but in a society that expects you to live beyond your means so that no amount of money can ever be enough, or else is struggling to get by. The rich didn't get that way by giving all of their money away, and everyone else thinks they don't have enough money to spare any more for more taxes to fund programs for the poor, regardless of whether this is actually true.

I'm getting to the point where nothing surprises me anymore. Every article I read about another way in which the world, and especially this country, is going to hell just makes me shrug because whatever it is, it's not unexpected.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

No, it isn't any wonder. I don't know if it's Americans in particular, or humans in general, but foresight is not our specialty.

American baby boomers may have to delay retirement because they weren't saving enough? No surprise to anybody who paid any attention to the personal debt figures in the late 1980s and all through the 1990s.

The military presence in Iraq is overstraining America's armed forces? Only a surprise to people that didn't know that the military failed to meet its recruiting target in 1999. (And I think it fell short once or twice in the five years before that.)

The housing crunch coming from people defaulting on sub-prime loans? Only a surprise to people like me, who didn't realize how many sub-prime loans were being made.

Yet people are surprised by these things. Still more people either don't care, or feel powerless to act. I do what I can - but I don't know how to fix things, and sometimes I don't even know what to do that won't make matters worse.

[paka.livejournal.com]

The American southeast is a mess. And what really kills me is that the demographic with the biggest chance to make a change (based on numbers, income, and being the "right" ethnicity) is just so easily duped into promoting the same system which dicks over so many people.