| rauniyar |
Posted
on 23-Apr-04 06:17 AM
Hi all,
just happend to come across this article from my hard-drive archives. I believe, quite a few of you must have read this before. If so pardon me!
I am just making a point here to say that few of us are gettin into "khukhura fight" on politics and stuff without contributing anything meaningful to the readers. Here is the rub, in the class room professors' like questions and challenges but they should be constructive, hai na ra?
Uhi Rajeev,
CT, Amrika
Rich Nation, Poor People
Nuru Lama Sherpa
If it is any solace to us, economic poverty may be pervasive in the developing countries (by definition) but it is not exclusive to our part of the world. The Hollywood-enhanced portrayal of America with wide boulevards and well-tended neighborhoods conveniently ignores its rough fringes. The land of plenty too is jotted with pockets of deprivation. Ghetto enclaves in the backdrop of soaring city skylines is another side of America - botched landscape that is in fact home to many of its poorest.
To be fair, hardly any American dies of hunger or malnutrition as in the poor countries but having to jostle three jobs to make ends meet or surviving on food stamps is also far from a life of comfort. US official statistics claim that 32.9 million Americans, roughly twelve-percent of the population, were living below the poverty threshold in 2001. Computationally, for a family of four, annual income of $17,960 is considered to be the poverty threshold income, a number clearly many times higher than the income of an average Nepali family. However, the cost of living is also equally higher in the US. For poor Americans, the cost of American prosperity has been the high cost itself. For example, in a country where healthcare costs are prohibitively expensive, a staggering 40 million Americans have no health insurance.
Jonathan Kozol, in his 1992 book, "Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools" provided a poignant expose' of American public schools, especially in big cities such as New York and Washington DC, with their ramshackle buildings, lack of teachers and teaching materials, not to mention the high rates of dropouts and failures. A decade later and the story is much the same. Public education in the US is primarily financed through local property taxes. Poor communities naturally have low property value and hence inadequate tax revenue to support quality public education. With little federal government aid to bridge the gap, the poor are deprived of good schooling and in turn the foundation for a better future.
Make no mistake. On average, Americans live a much more prosperous life than their counterparts around the world. Standing undisputed as the supreme global economic and military powerhouse, it today can brandish imperial-sounding motivations for war, heedless of world opinion at large. However, in the path to ascendancy, many of its fellow citizens, given poor education and skill-level, have been left behind from the very beginning. While inequality could somehow be justified within the capitalistic framework, such a policy of initial exclusion begs the question of justice, especially in the Rawlsian sense of justice as fairness.
Ironically, affluence has made the poor a minority in America, without strong voice in the nation’s politics. Elections are funded by donations from big corporations and the affluent. Once elected, it is payback time. Notice how President Bush is pushing for a large tax cut whose benefit will mostly accrue to the rich establishment even when the once hoped for budget surplus is no more. In May 2002 a new farm bill was approved, offering $190 billion to American farmers. Not only will a disproportionate amount of that money end up in the hands of rich American farmers, by depressing farm prices worldwide, American farm subsidies will also make it harder for poor countries to export their agricultural products.
Not to be overly cynical, the Bush government should be commended for setting up the $5billion Millennium Challenge Account to combat global poverty. Third world poverty is both extreme in degree and numbers, and warrants increased international attention. But, helping poor countries is also a matter of strategic consideration for the rich - to build political alliances, export Western institutional preferences, and open trade markets. However, before preaching abroad, American policymakers might as well focus on the poor at home. Instead of tax cuts, farm subsidies and untaxed dividends that favor the rich, more resources could be deployed to re-build poor American communities, starting with the public education system.
We mostly receive a glamorized version of America from news media or through our contacts with the bubbly American tourists who come from the educated middle and high-income brackets. Poor Americans who are busy trying to get-by everyday have neither the economic wherewithal nor the elevated adventurism to visit faraway exoticas like Nepal. What is true is that, like people, nations try to project their best image. America is no exception. The burden is on us to see through the glitz and try understanding the real whole.
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