Poor As F*ck in America

This guy F*ck must really be poor. He is the unofficial benchmark to which all poverty is measured. But how poor is F*ck? Is he homeless? Does he rent or own a place in the city? Is he on food stamps? Does he come from a single parent family?

Now more then ever income inequality (or equality) is at the forefront of an ideological debate between conservatives and liberals. In the US the debate boiled over during the debt crisis, conservatives asking to reduce the deficit entirely of spending cuts, and liberals asking to reduce the deficit with a mix of tax increases on the rich as well as spending cuts. The two battled it out like a pair of Darwinian monkeys in a cage. If only they had that secret formula from “Rise of the Apes” that made them super smart. But movies rarely translate to reality, so the two idiot monkeys exchanged blows, putting a band aid on the original conflict, while embarrassing themselves in the process.

Currently the United States is ranked 126^th in terms of income equality, by far the worst among developed nations. They fall behind countries like Iran, Cote D’Ivoire, Kenya and of course Canada (brap, brap) The top 1 percentile of households took home 23.5 percent of income in 2007, the largest share since 1928. With a work hard, get rich formula deeply embedded in the American psyche, Americans have generally tolerated inequality. On the other end of the poverty spectrum, a staggering 14.3%, or 43.6 million Americans were deemed to be below the poverty level in 2009. Some adjusted estimates put it at 20%. These people are just as poor as F*ck, or more so.

 Does this mean that the success of the American empire is masked by an underbelly of rampant poverty, hardship and discriminatory economic policy? Or is income inequality in America over stated, and do the poor in America live on par with the middle class of other developed nations?

 In the United States of America the poverty threshold for a family of four is US$22,350.  So we finally determined F’ck’s salary, assuming he is living up to his name and has 2 children. This seems like an amount that would leave the majority of people struggling to make ends meet.  So where does F*ck live and how big is his house? There is a 46% chance that he owns his own home. Also, the average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. What does he use for transportation? Three quarters of poor households own a car and 30 percent own two or more cars. I heard F*ck is overweight, is that true? According to the USDA, on a typical day, less than one American in 200 will experience hunger due to a lack of money to buy food. The largest nutrition problem for the poor in the U.S is overnurishment (spell check tells me I made that word up) and obesity issues. It’s starting to seem like F*ck’s life isn’t as bad as I thought. Ok, but those were basic necessities; he probably doesn’t have a TV and listens to his nagging wife and kids all day. That is also false; ninety seven percent of poor households have a color television and over half own two or more color televisions.  So what the F*ck is he complaining about?

Despite all these relative facts and figures something is missing from the equation. F*ck lives in the self proclaimed land of opportunity; the US of A. Capitalism promotes an opitimal and efficient use of resources to reach maximum potential. If this is the case, the United States should be immediately raising the bar to reach that potential, providing economic opportunity to all portions of society. Making relative comparisons of poverty is not adjusted for the maximum potential that the U.S has to provide a comfortable lifestyle for a large majority of it's citizens. Currently, the USA is like the under performing human brain, which only uses 10% of its maximum potential.  A family of four making $22,350 leaves little breathing room, and the land of opportunity eventually becomes the land of despair.  With only 4% of Bachelor Degree grads living in poverty, the correlation between education and poverty levels is undeniable. This is a basic necessity needed to escape the clutches of poverty. However, thepoor of America end up in vicious cycles of limited to no education, and generations of families living to simply make ends meet. 

While the poor in America generally enjoy a standard of living higher then the poor of other nations, the vast wealth in the USA is ample enough to provide more economic opportunity for the poor while continuing to increase the wealth of the middle class. Economic policies should not favour the rich, but at the very least be on par with the poor. The hyper capitalist methodology has led to a portion of the population stuck in it’s own grave of poverty, while the rich continue to poor the dirt on top. For years propaganda machines have convinced the general public that the large income gap is a sign of progress, lower class of America is lazy and there are ample government programs to assist the poor. This is a complete myth, as there is a 2/3 chance that our poor friend F*ck is working almost 2 jobs (1.7 if averaged out). Also the average welfare check for one parent with two children is $478 a month, one of the lowest in the developed world.  Immediately, extremist neo-cons will label attempts to redistribute wealth as an attempt to place USA into a socialist state. Making claims that distributing wealth does not promote personal accountability and encourages the abuse of tax payer money. Recently billionaire Warren Buffet chimed into the debate, and declared that the rich in America has been coddled long enough, and taxes should be raised on the highest earners. The conservative media went as far as labeling the billionaire a socialist. Warren Buffet a socialist? These people really have no idea what the word means. It is akin to saying, “check out that George Clooney guy, banging all those girls, what a queer!”.The US is bound to Capitalism like a baby cub to its mothers teat, but there is definitely an optimal balance that will benefit all portions of society. One that will further exploit the hard work and innovation that the American capitalist market has fostered, while at the same time not leaving behind those stuck in cycles of poverty resulting from discriminatory economic policies.  .

In addition to economic policy, social issues cannot be overlooked. Single parent families are the largest cause of poverty. Among single parent families, 26.6% lived in poverty. A staggering 24.7% of all African Americans live in poverty, with 20% of the black population in U.S on food stamps. The epidemic of single parent families amongst African Americans is a definite cause for concern, with only 30% of African American children being born into a stable married household. These systemic issues should be studied, funded and a cultural change needs to occur in order to help reduce poverty levels resulting from social issues.

The poor in America live relatively better then the majority of the world, but in the self proclaimed land of opportunity the bar should be immediately raised. Taxes on top earners are the lowest in three generations. Yet their complaints about the prospect of an increase to a level that is still awfully low by recent historical standards is remarkable. And for those who ultimately want to escape the sad reality of cyclical poverty in the United States, I say Fuck it, move to Canada.