As reported by census.gov, “In 2019, the poverty rate for the United States was 10.5%,” and further we are told that the black poverty rate reached a historic low of 18.8% in 2019. The fact that 10.5% of the peoples that live in the United States as measured by the poverty definition so defined by the government, are classified as being impoverished, in this the richest nation, the world has ever known, should be seen as the great shame that it really is. The additional fact that the black poverty rate, reached a historic low of 18.8% indicates that our eyes do not deceive us, to wit, that blacks clearly are impoverished at unacceptably high numbers and that this is the way it has been in America, seemingly forever.
Perhaps, this war on poverty so initiated by that government in 1964, could be seen as a whole lot better than simply doing nothing; then again, perhaps it should be seen for what it is, an abysmal failure, that has not eradicated poverty, that has not defeated poverty, and that sure the heck hasn’t done what so needs to be done to create and to sustain the infrastructure so needed to effectively eliminate poverty. Clearly, with as many words and promises so made in regards to addressing the systemic issues in regards to that poverty it would seem that nobody at the top echelons of government actually knows how to fight a war to win; because poverty is still alive and very much relevant to those millions upon millions of Americans that suffer the ill effects of lives that are often hopeless, and frequently lacking in fair opportunity.
While there isn’t anything inherently wrong with a capitalistic society, of money making and the lusting for profits; there is something seriously wrong when that government behaves in a manner in which it will not take responsibility in recognizing that the more unequal a society is in regards to its wealth, to its opportunity, to its infrastructure, and to its justice, that this will only result in a nation in which poverty cannot and will not be eliminated, because inequality of all stripes, begets poverty.
The money needed to eliminate poverty clearly exists in America, and the structure to thereby eliminate that poverty, could be created in America, but has not been. Those that declaim that progress has been made are typically also those that are not suffering from the ill effects of that poverty; so that those that promise that poverty will be eliminated, given enough time, and given enough resources, don’t seem to understand that commitments not truly fulfilled, are commitments that are hollow The bottom line is that the United States should be the industry leader in the lack of poverty, so of; and the truth of the matter is that America has failed its people, and most importantly, has failed their most vulnerable of its people.
The time for talk has long passed and the time for action is right now, so that we are currently at that point of which America is at the crossroads, of which, it has the easiest of decisions to make -- as to whether to provide for those that have everything, even more; or to provide something of material substance to those that have nothing but empty hopes.