Campbell
Gold Member
- Aug 20, 2015
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America’s War on the Poor
The poorest of the poor in the United States aren’t just the least wealthy people in this country; they are also some of the poorest people in the entire world. Even though the United States is one of the richest countries in the world, the bottom 1% of our citizens make about the same amount of money as the poor in Haiti, Mozambique and Ethiopia. The difference is that in poorer counties, people can often live on this amount of money. The poorest citizens of the United States don’t just face the social stigma of having to be below Western standards of living — they also can’t afford to feed their families.
If you think the divide between the rich and the poor is growing, you’re right. The incomes of the neediest Americans have risen only minimally during the past two decades. The same amount of people that lived on $15,000 a year or less in 1989 live on that salary today. However, the number of people that make over $200,000 a year has risen by over 60 percent.
The Failure of the Trickle-Down Effect
One of the reasons wages for the poor have only risen marginally in the past several years is our failure to accommodate those in poverty when coming out of a recession. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and similarly-minded politicians spoke of the so-called “trickle-down effect.” What they meant by this was that if you simply took care of the rich, their wealth would trickle down to the lower classes. However, the increasing divide between our rich and poor is proof that this hasn’t worked.
The poorest of the poor in the United States aren’t just the least wealthy people in this country; they are also some of the poorest people in the entire world. Even though the United States is one of the richest countries in the world, the bottom 1% of our citizens make about the same amount of money as the poor in Haiti, Mozambique and Ethiopia. The difference is that in poorer counties, people can often live on this amount of money. The poorest citizens of the United States don’t just face the social stigma of having to be below Western standards of living — they also can’t afford to feed their families.
If you think the divide between the rich and the poor is growing, you’re right. The incomes of the neediest Americans have risen only minimally during the past two decades. The same amount of people that lived on $15,000 a year or less in 1989 live on that salary today. However, the number of people that make over $200,000 a year has risen by over 60 percent.
The Failure of the Trickle-Down Effect
One of the reasons wages for the poor have only risen marginally in the past several years is our failure to accommodate those in poverty when coming out of a recession. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan and similarly-minded politicians spoke of the so-called “trickle-down effect.” What they meant by this was that if you simply took care of the rich, their wealth would trickle down to the lower classes. However, the increasing divide between our rich and poor is proof that this hasn’t worked.
