...........Did you know 37 Million Americans live in poverty?............
Well now it's 2012....and people are already talking about the election. Let me ask
you something do you really think that whoever is elected in 2012 will change much of anything for the 37 million people living in poverty in America, or the 59 million who have no health insurance, or the 45 million who are on food stamps, or the 60 million who have no paid sick leave, in sharp contrast to the European Union, where these things don't exist. Isn't the only way to effectuate positive change is if we all stick together to elect better progressive politicians and to be prepared to recall them if they don't do the job we elected them to do.
As an American expat who holds an MBA degree living in the European Union, this diary brings an international perspective to bear of the sort that the plutocracy owned American commercial for profit media tends to largely ignore, as it doesn't want to bite the hand that feeds it. This diary contains an embedded Youtube video in the public sphere, which portrays the stark reality that America's traditional poor and nouveau poor find themselves in, which to the extent that it exists in America, exists in no other major industrialized nation on earth. This diary and its contents reflect that sobering reality and therefore comes with this caveat. If you read this diary you may no longer be able to be indifferent to the plight of America's #OWS who stand up for the American working class dream.
America has a wholly inequitable distribution of wealth wherein 80% of the population only has access to 7% of America's money interests. This has led to medieval medical being performed that America's uninsured population is exposed to, wherein modern medical services are withheld (due to an inability to pay) to a large extent to the 59 million uninsured Americans. According to a recent Harvard Study this causes the unnecessary deaths of 45,000 Americans annually. The United States of America is the only major industrialized country in the world where all residents don't have access to medical care as a basic human right.
Did you know 37 Million Americans live in poverty?
What are the effects of 37 Million Americans living in poverty?
Ask yourself why does the United States of America rate right at the bottom of this chart? Is that by accident or is it by design? Ask yourself also who in America profits from the reality depicted in this chart? Why is it that this reality doesn't exist in any of the other countries listed in this chart?
More about why there are 37 Million Americans living in poverty!
How is it that America has the least generous jobless benefit system of any of the major industrialized nations listed in the OECD chart below? Who profits from that? How is it exactly that this has come about, was it by accident or was it by design?
Incidentally did you know that in countries like Great Britain and Germany jobless benefits never run out. That is to say the German Hartz IV system provides a permanent package of cash benefits to unemployed people and their families, which include medical insurance. Essentially in Britain jobless benefits also don't run out and the jobless and their families are likewise medically insured. In fact all countries in the European Union provide medical insurance or medical benefit access packages to the unemployed and their families as a human right, did you know that? If you didn't why are you reading about this for the first time perhaps in your life on a Daily Kos diary? Why isn't the plutocrat owned media telling you about this? Why?
quote from the British Telegraph newspaper:
America: the least generous unemployment system in the world
"This is the carrot-and-stick method of galvanising your population: work hard and you can make millions; don’t work and you’re in real trouble. If you were after some evidence of how the US has managed to enshrine hard-working values in its citizens, this chart is probably a good place to start"
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/...
Now obviously France has an extremely strong social safety net wherein as a human right the type of benefits to include medical care from cradle to grave that unions in America have to fight and win are provided by the French state by right of law to all residents. So France can get away with a lower rate of unionization. In America however as the US government's official policy is to make the rich richer, which has created a posture wherein 80% of the population has access to 7% of America's money interests. What we are left with is a social safety net in America which as its centerpiece holds all of the deleterious effects of grinding poverty and human depravation, which are anathema to the rest of the civilized world. This international badge of shame however is no obstacle for the American robber baron capitalist pigs, because pigs have no shame!
When America's unions are prevented from protecting the American working class, this leads to unbridled exploitation of labor, who do not own the means of production. This is protected for the rich by the state, and as such all that the great American working class has to sell as they only able to participate in 7% of America's monied interests is their labor. When through artificially low rates of unionization the American working class is unable to fully participate in the wealth that they themselves have created through their own hard work, this then creates a posture of untold human misery, suffering, fear and exploitation of the American worker, that is to say of the very people who built America and rebuild it every single day.
One big reason that there are 37 Million Amerians living in poverty is the
low rate of unionization in America!
The cult of the rugged American individualist is dead. It died in the '08 market crash, when they stole your pension and put your mortgages underwater and tried to drown your kids in student loan debt. The current life line is organize and unionize in support of the American working class dream. Brothers and sisters please unite in this Amerian union fight.
Urban Ministries of Durham created is a short but effective exercise to underline the reality in that video.
by Egalitare on Mon Jan 02, 2012 at 12:05:44 PM CET
http://playspent.org
Dominic Rushe - guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 December 2011
Meet the new 1%: healthcare CEOs replace bankers as America's best paid
No bankers in top 10 of America's best-paid executives, but those in charge of healthcare and drugs firms are in the money
Joel Gemunder, CEO Omnicare, had a total pay package in 2010 worth $98m.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...
"Harvard Medical Study Links Lack of Insurance to 45,000 U.S. Deaths a Year:"
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/...
What's happened to the humanity of the American people of caring, of respecting and of honoring the fallen, that is to say those who couldn't hang on anymore in the GOP led class warfare against the great American working class. Just as in any war here too there are casualties. Aren't these people and their families Americans too. Though there are no monuments built to their memories, yet we the #OWS say Let us remember our fallen whose sacrifice in the class war by themselves and their families are to be paid with a debt of grateful remembrance.
AMERICA REMEMBERS YOU!
To win in America all we have to do is to care about each other & stick together!
If we are looking for change we must look to the Occupy movement to provide that
peaceful nonviolent approach to change in helping to elect better progressive politicians to public office. The Occupy movement and the American unions are the last great hope of the American working class dream!!
While we can all be proud Americans, surely we don't have to be proud of the broken American social safety net. There we should, must and can do better!
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(I invite you to please join or follow us at the Class Warfare group here at the Daily Kos.)