6/22/18
Atlanta, Georgia - Americans born into poverty are more likely than ever before to stay that way, according to a United Nations report on poverty and inequality in the US. "The United States, one of the world's richest nations and the "land of opportunity," is fast becoming a champion of inequality," the report concluded. US Ambassador to the UN Nicki Haley said, "It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America." Haley's comment was in response to a letter from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and 18 other politicians calling on the US to "take action to reduce shameful levels of poverty across the country." Philip Alston, a New York University law and human rights professor, led a UN study traveling across US. The group went to Puerto Rico and Washington DC -- and Alabama, California, Georgia, West Virginia were among the states they also visited. "Most Americans don't care about it. They have bought the line peddled by conservative groups that poor people deserve what they are getting," Alston, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights told CNN. The report notes that the US has highest child mortality rate of 20 rich countries (OPEC comparison). It also has among the highest child poverty rates in the developed world at 21%. It also considered obesity rates, income inequality and incarceration rates.
More than 5 million Americans live in third world conditions also known as "absolute poverty," according to the report. In Lowndes County, Alabama, the report found residents lacked basic sewage systems. Unable to afford a septic tank some people constructed their own homemade sewerage lines using PVC piping. The UN study also found 19 out of 55 people tested in Alabama had hookworm. It's a disease typically found in developing countries, one that was thought to have been eradicated in the US in the 1980s. While the issue is not new, the problem is becoming more dire under the Trump administration according to the UN. It found Trump's policies seem "deliberately designed to remove the basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic health care into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship." "Contempt for the poor in US drives cruel policies," Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights told CNN.
"The Trump administration has brought in massive tax breaks for corporations and the very wealthy, while orchestrating a systematic assault on the welfare system," he said. "The strategy seems to be tailor-made to maximize inequality and to plunge millions of working Americans, and those unable to work, into penury.
