Duane Gran’s log of thoughts

An excellent article in The Guardian puts in stark relief the subculture most overlooked in America:

A shocking 37 million Americans live in poverty. That is 12.7 per cent of the population - the highest percentage in the developed world. They are found from the hills of Kentucky to Detroit’s streets, from the Deep South of Louisiana to the heartland of Oklahoma. Each year since 2001 their number has grown.

I wish I had a solution so compelling by sheer fact that we would rally together to solve this problem, but as the article points out, the problem is systemic — the American zeal for individualism declares victory for the strong and failure for the weak.

In related news, it is with sadness that John Galbraith has passed away. His legacy will remembered, and if possible, rekindled.

He remained optimistic about the ability of government to improve the lot of the less fortunate. “Let there be a coalition of the concerned,” he urged. “The affluent would still be affluent, the comfortable still comfortable, but the poor would be part of the political system.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 30th, 2006 at 1:09 pm and is filed under labor, social science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.