Here is how the Census defines income when defining poverty: "The official poverty definition uses money income before taxes and does not include capital gains or noncash benefits (such as public housing, Medicaid, and food stamps)."
census.gov
Poor people in America get a lot of public assistance. Public housing, food stamps, Medicaid are the big ones. If you have a Medicaid card you pay zero for medical care. Yes, we do have free health care in the US, have had it for decades. It's just not universal. Well, actually it sort of is universal, if you go to a hospital emergency room, they have to treat you for free. Which is why hospital emergency rooms are so dreadful.
Yes, there are food banks. I bring food to food banks regularly, and the people who are picking up the food are well nourished, as only the American poor seem to be. Never saw so many fat people in my life, and I am not thin, myself. America has a lot of food but what poor people eat in America bears little resemblance to actual food. I shop at Asian markets, usually Korean, I see that immigrants from all over the world eat real food, real vegetables, meat, fruit. Poor Americans eat fast food.
I would attribute the race to the bottom in the US happening, as it is happening all over the world, by a series of very bad choices. Women making babies out of wedlock with men who won't support them, nor even have much to do with the products of said encounters. Said women dropping out of school and becoming almost unemployable. Said babies growing up without learning any worthwhile employment skills, nor what it means to deny immediate gratification, which is what it takes to get out of the lower class into the middle class and stay there.
There is no mystery involved. Some of the rich are ready, willing and able to prey on the poor, but the poor don't have to cooperate with them.
Contrary to what Klaser said, life does NOT suck. It is a precious gift, but if you were born in the shit you may not realize that there are ways out. The ones I do not understand are the ones who know that there are ways out but pretend like they don't. If a woman does not want to have babies out of wedlock with thugs, does not want to live in thug culture, she has a choice. If a mother wants to feed her children real food, make them go to school, make them do their homework, these are her choices. I blame the mothers, not the fathers, because the mothers are the ones who make the choices. The fathers are like dust in the wind, here long enough to squirt some sperm and then gone. |
