Children in East Baltimore.
Credit: Patrick Semansk/AP
On June 1, Phillip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, released a report on the United States. It outlined his searing critique of the Trump administration’s policies, arguing that they are deepening entrenched inequality and increasing misery.
Alston painted a grim picture of the country’s current circumstances and its likely trajectory, not only for those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder but for American society itself.
The report presents a withering appraisal of American exceptionalism. As Alston observes, “the United States is alone among developed countries in insisting that, while human rights are of fundamental importance, they do not include rights that guard against dying of hunger, dying from a lack of access to healthcare or growing up in a context of total deprivation.”
The high rates of child and youth poverty are particularly alarming, since they “perpetuate the intergenerational transmission of poverty very effectively, and ensure that the American dream is rapidly becoming the American illusion”.
While people outside […]
A friend suggested to me last night that perhaps things look so bad to me actually not because our world and way of life is actually declining badly, but it appears that way due to aging, that elderly people always tend to think that things are in decline.
I pointed out that despite my “aging” things REALLY ARE getting bad. Frighteningly bad. The patterns of collapse that we are in are real and very alarming.
I agree we may be on the precipice of losing our democratic way of government. It steadily unravels right before our eyes.
Those of us with eyes to see it.
I agree, Giles. It is really BAD! Take here in Canada with Ontario’s recent election of a right wing populist group calling themselves PC’s, or progressive conservatives. That’s an ole oxymoron. 🙂 They take a majority of seats in the provincial legislature, which allow them carte blanche for the next 4 years, receiving only 40% of the 58% who voted. We still call this democracy. hahaha
Please accept an apology from one American to the world and especially to my Canadian neighbors. This is truly an awful president and government and it gets worse each and everyday.
Giles I am 68 and have been an observer of life for some time. I talk to intelligent well traveled people–things are getting worse with Mother Earth increasing pressure on the human species to change or die.
Humans are experiencing worldwide tensions and fears are increasing causing many of our herd to seek authoritarian safety. Look around Italy, Poland, Hungary, UK and on and on. Now all that is needed is a turn of the economic cycle then what?