Our American War Against the Poor

THE POOR WILL ALWAYS BE among you, said an astute observer of human nature.Although actually, in the modern world, the poor aren't so much "among us", as they are clustered together away from us. In America, only when the working poor are providing menial service to the wealthy and the fabulously wealthy do rich and poor intermingle. The United States is segregated according to economic class. Also, according to race. Fortunately, there are very few all white neighborhoods, but there are many all black neighborhoods. Not only are America's poor isolated and segregated, the truth is, there has always been, and still is, a sort of war being waged against the poor. As if being poor were some sort of crime, or some form of threatening enemy activity, rather than a tragic condition of millions of our outcast friends and neighbors. The late date on which the miminum wage law was enacted, and the sluggishness with which it has been increased throughout the decades is but one aspect of America's war on the war. The resistenace to raising it now is an impressive example of how complicit the American people are in the war. The best explanation of the war on the hard working but poor is "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair. Its a great novel, and it clearly answers the question of whether this war is real. Where are the millions of Americans coming out in support of fast food and Wal Mart workers as they cry out for a living wage? One percent of the people own one third of the national wealth. The Walton family, of Wal Mart fame, is wealthier than the bottom forty percent of the American people. The millions of poor and homeless in America are not universally stupid or lazy. And their answer to their plight is not to build ghettos, prisons, or a low wage service economy.