Why Poverty is a Weapon of Mass Destruction

In the United States, the official poverty rate for 2012 stood at 15 percent based on the national poverty line which is equivalent to around $16 per person per day. Of the 46.5 million Americans living in poverty, 20.4 million live under half the poverty line. This begs the question of just how poor America’s poorest people are.

Using an alternative dataset from the one employed for the official U.S. poverty measure, Shaefer and Edin show that millions of Americans live on less than $2 a day—a threshold commonly used to measure poverty in the developing world. Depending on the exact definitions used, they find that up to 5 percent of American households with children are shown to fall under this parsimonious poverty line.

These numbers are intended to shock—and they succeed. The United States is known for having higher inequality and a less generous social safety net than many affluent countries in Europe, but the acute deprivations that flow from this are less understood. A crude comparison of Shaefer and Edin’s estimates with the World Bank’s official $2 a day poverty estimates for developing economies would place the United States level with or behind a large set of countries, including Russia (0.1 percent), the West Bank and Gaza (0.3 percent), Jordan (1.6 percent), Albania (1.7 percent), urban Argentina (1.9 percent), urban China (3.5 percent), and Thailand (4.1 percent). Many of these countries are recipients of American foreign aid. However, methodologies for measuring poverty differ wildly both within and across countries, so such comparisons and their interpretation demand extreme care.

When we take a closer look at poverty in America, we must understand that poverty is greatest among the most vulnerable of the population. Looking at Mississippi, which is ranked 51st, meaning even Puerto Rico ranks above it, the overall poverty rate is a staggering 24.2%! That is 1 in four who live in poverty! However, it gets worse when you drill down further into the numbers. The child poverty rate is 34.7%, which is one of every three children in Mississippi living in poverty. This clearly demonstrates the third world nature of the scope of the poverty in the US. The poverty rate for people with disabilities is also deplorable at 30.4%.

poverty in america

You can explore where your state stands in detail at http://www.povertyusa.org/the-state-of-poverty/poverty-map-state/#. What you discover may surprise you and what is apparent is that children and people with disabilities are most adversely affected by poverty.





Here, from the UNICEF report, is the chart of relative child poverty rates (the grey countries are marked separately because they could not provide data for all other indices and are thus not included in the final rankings):



And finally, when you compare the poverty rate among children in the US and compare it to what we think are the poorest nations in Africa, we would rank worse than some countries that would surprise you.africa poverty

 Does this appall you? Does this make you understand the real danger to the America ideal and standing in the world? We should be outraged that we have allowed our leaders to drain our treasures, take the fruits of our labor and fritter them away on wars, and war machines. Without meaning to be too harsh, we are directly responsible for this deplorable state of affairs by our apathetic attitude toward politics. We must understand the raping of America is on-going and if we don’t soon stand up to these political hacks and corporate cronies soon, there will be no one capable of standing because of poverty, hunger, and ignorance. Those ads on TV showing the starving children of the world that pull on your heart strings may have your grand kids photos featured. This is the canary in the mine for the real collapse of America and it already died! Let’s get pissed!


Author: redhawk500


2 thoughts on “Why Poverty is a Weapon of Mass Destruction”

  1. it’s a pandemic .. i wrote a poem inspired by your byline .. saw it on my phone .. i wonder if any on your staff have ever gone a day without food ..warm clothes .. i am just as bad .. u see .. i like this post ..

  2. Leslie. We have not actually experienced hunger as we have seen it in the many places we have visited in the world. We do however give of our time serving the hungry through various charities. What strikes us most is the number of children we feed and then watch them walk back to their home, which is a van or car. How can we say we live in a “developed country” when so many have so little.

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