http://dgjigvacl6ipj.cloudfront.net/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf
Watch Park Avenue: Money, Power & the American Dream on PBS. See more from Why Poverty?.
I just came across this video from November, a rather intelligent take on the factors that create poverty and make it so difficult to eradicate in the United States. The essence is that the game is rigged. Send me an e-mail.
Author: hankkalet
Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.
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Hey, according to libertarian maniac, John Stossel, don't worry about the poor, no one is starving in the US, everything is peachy and of course our poor are so much better off than the other countries' poor because our poor have flat screen TVs so they can watch scumbags like Stossel who shill for the corporations and the top 1%. It's because of ba****ds like Stossel, Tea Baggers, the GOP, right wingers and Ayn Randites that we don't have true universal health care yet. Quite the opposite, they want to destroy Obamacare which is a rather meek and corporate friendly attempt at almost universal health care but not quite. Libertarianism is a vile cult perpetrated by the financial elites on clueless useful idiots. Libertarianism is great if you are wealthy, a corporation or in the top 1%, it's pure toxic poison for the working class and ordinary folks.
The game is rigged for sure and the rich are winning with the help of a compliant corporate media. If we had a strong union movement, that would help to level the playing field between workers and management. But after 30 plus years of union busting, the unionization rate is down to 11.3% and falling every year. Our biggest private employer, Walmart, is rabidly and aggressively anti-union. The unionization rates for some other advanced countries: Canada about 27%, Germany – almost 20%, Denmark – 75%, Sweden – about 75%, Finland – well above 80% unionized. But the ignorant yahoos in this country parrot the anti-union propaganda of Fox News, CNBC, Walmart, hate wing radio, Limbaugh, Hannity, NJ 101.5, the GOP and assorted right wingers and libertarians. Too many Democrats are silent about unions and are really not helpful to unions. Libertarians really hate poor people and they would like to go back to 1913 or maybe 1813. Things were so much better then (sarcasm alert).