“37 million poor hidden in the land of plenty”

Great but upsetting article in The Observer about America’s poverty problem—you know, those 37 million lazy and useless bodies piled up at the bottom of the social Darwinist heap where they belong. Or desperate people with few job options trying to eke out a living at yesteryear’s wages, whose backs form the bottom step for the modern day robber barons as they ascend the Stairway to Hog Heaven. Tomato tomahto.

A shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per cent of the population - the highest percentage in the developed world…

Under President George W Bush an extra 5.4 million have slipped below the poverty line. Yet they are not a story of the unemployed or the destitute. Most have jobs. Many have two…

Even families with two working parents are often one slice of bad luck - a medical bill or factory closure - away from disaster. The minimum wage of $5.15 (£2.95) an hour has not risen since 1997 and, adjusted for inflation, is at its lowest since 1956. The gap between the haves and the have-nots looms wider than ever. Faced with rising poverty rates, Bush's trillion-dollar federal budget recently raised massive amounts of defence spending for the war in Iraq and slashed billions from welfare programmes…

During the 2004 election the only politician to address poverty directly was John Edwards, whose campaign theme was 'Two Americas'. He was derided by Republicans for doing down the country and - after John Kerry picked him as his Democratic running mate - the rhetoric softened in the heat of the campaign.

But, in fact, Edwards was right. While 45.8 million Americans lack any health insurance, the top 20 per cent of earners take over half the national income. At the same time the bottom 20 per cent took home just 3.4 per cent…

In America, to be poor is a stigma. In a country which celebrates individuality and the goal of giving everyone an equal opportunity to make it big, those in poverty are often blamed for their own situation. Experience on the ground does little to bear that out. When people are working two jobs at a time and still failing to earn enough to feed their families, it seems impossible to call them lazy or selfish. There seems to be a failure in the system, not the poor themselves.

More than 1 in 10 Americans now live below the poverty line. It’s a woefully inadequate understatement to say this is unacceptable. I honestly cannot begin to comprehend how George Bush can sleep at night, no less go on his whirlwind tours before hand-picked asskissers to wax poetic about how stunningly brilliant everything is. This is further evidence there is no god. If there were, Bush would have choked on his words after the Almighty, disgusted by the president’s bombastic avarice in the face of such strife among his own people, turned those words into a pretzel.

Of course, many of these struggling Americans probably voted for George Bush, getting their news, if they get any at all, from newspapers and newscasts insistent on promulgating the inconceivable fallacy that Bush is a good man who cares about the hoi polloi. That is, if they managed to get a day off from their shitpay jobs to vote in the first place.