Poverty in the U.S. and World

The class system that makes up our international population consists of these 5 categories. The condescending wealthy, the pretentious, upper-class rich, the working poor, the welfare poor, and the malnurished poverty stricken. Notice, there is no more middle class. All of those jobs are have been outsourced thanks to the condescending wealthy people. The best way to reform welfare is to have it reward employment . Which would subsidize the working poor instead of paying them not to work. Then, that will bring us one step close to eliminating poverty.
Right now, we are importing all the cheap, mediocre, and unsafe goods manufactured by these Third World countries and using free trade to legitimize the transactions while our government and these major corporations are capitalizing on us and them. Sending the lower paying jobs oversees may help those countries and the global economy as a whole. At the same time, it will increase the amount of people for whom it makes more economical sense in the U.S., to go on welfare or join the unemployment line, instead of working. If we are the consumers, then we need to either demand quality merchandise or stop buying these unsafe and cheaply made products.

It’s similar to the problem of the rising povert y happening in Iraq. The Iraqi government knows that it lacks the economic stabilty, and now, resources to assess the current dilemma. Due to the mentalty, “The Americans will take care of it." The post-war reconstruction and economic progression they are trynig to attain, remains stagnant. Why does it always have to be America that helps the poor worldwide everytime? China and India are growing at 9 percent annually. China's economy is increasing thanks to corporations like Wal-Mart by getting a majority of its cheap goods made there. In addition with a large number of U.S., I.T. and telecom companies(AT&T and Microsoft) sending their technical support phone line jobs and phone sales jobs to India; where the people there work for cheap. India has a population of over a billion people and the U.S. employs about 10% of that. That’s 100,000,000 people. Just imagine what even half that number would do for the American economy and the sprit of the nation as a whole.

Why can't their own governments handle that job? Why don’t their own governments find another country to handle their public services and to donate charity? It comes back to the mentality that America owes the world and it is expected to be the world's welfare office, police dept., insurance agency and emergency rescue service without receiving any compensation back in respect, gratitude, or even money for doing so. But I feel that is probably due to the America’s past transgressions to humanity. For example: Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those are just two obvious reasons why the U.S. government, even now, feels obligated to make an attempt to contribute so much to world aide. If the world wants an American president to handle global poverty, then they should do it the democratic way and elect him as the World President.

John Edwards' presidential candidacy is based on the theme that he is the hero of the poor. When in reality, Edwards is no friend of the poor, and his policies would actually end up making poverty worse. He speaks of the elimination of poverty as a moral ideal, and he portrays himself as the candidate most compassionate and most committed to the ideal.
The working-class American earning a union wage or even on unemployment compensation can hardly be considered poor by world standards. Poor people in America are rich on an international scale. Which is why liberal activists stress redistribution in the United States, but never worldwide. In any global redistribution, even poor Americans would have to contribute so that the really poor people in Asia, Africa, and India would benefit.

The greatest travesty to the effotrs of eliminating world poverty would be restricting free trade. Here is feasibly one of the greatest anti-poverty programs ever constituted. For scores the U.S. has tried to help millions of poverty stricken people in under-devleoped countries through foreign aid. Which inturn worked against them because it didn't reduce dependency while continuously adding to their own national deficit. Then the U.S. tried loans through the International Monetary Fund. Loans proved to be inadequate because the poor countries didn't supply enough of the other countries’ demands. This consequently hindered their ability to pay back the loans and put them further in debt. So they took out new loans so that they could make the interest payments on the old loans.

Now, with free trade, we have millions of people in countries like India, Thailand and China making shoes and shirts and providing services that are highly demanded on the world market today. Hundereds of millions of people who were in dire poverty. have through their own productive labor been raised into the working class. Think of what that means in terms of reducing poverty on a global level. There is no other poverty-reducing measure better than global free trade. It helps the poor man eat and that is the ultimate goal that we are trying accomplish.

By: Rahsheid White