Homeless Veterans, An American Outrage

MOST AMERICANS WILL TELL YOU that as they go about their busy daily lives, they never see a homeless person. More likely, when they see homeless people, they don't recognize them as such. Homeless people often greatly resemble people who simply do not give a care about dressing properly. Its always been questionable exactly how many homeless people there are in the United States. Whether the estimate is high or low, it is in the millions. Then comes the question of why. Most homeless people are neither lazy nor stupid. None of the homeless veterans are, else they wouldn't be veterans. Releasing institutionalized mentally ill patients in the nineteen eighties during the social darwinistic Reagan years has been cited as a cause of increased homelessness. Another possible contributing factor is the general reduction in the standard of living of most of the population. Ravi Batra, an economist at Southern Methodist University, in his book "The Pooring of America", blames the reduction of U.S. import tariffs for gutting American industry and sending millions of Americans below the poverty line. Between 1970 and 2000, the average import tariff in the U.S. fell from thirty one percent down to seven percent in the movement to create global free trade. Global free trade benefits domestic corporations and consumers, but it doesn't do much to create or maintain good jobs for the working class. Then comes the truly shocking news: there are currently, it is estimated, sixty thousand homeless veterans living on the streets of America. People who served, mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, now unable to find a career back home, unable to readjust to life back home after unspeakably stressful experiences abroad. This, needless to say, is a national outrage. Any homelessness in a nation so wealthy is a national outrage. Post Traumatic Stree Disorder is Common among veterans returning from our modern wars, which make everyone miserable while they last, and no one content when they are finally, if ever, over.