Extreme poverty and consumerism

Did you know that the richest 25 people in the U.S. hold a trillion in wealth?  That is more than the bottom 56% of the American population (or roughly 180 million people).

In December a special reporter from the United Nations to the U.S. released his preliminary report about extreme poverty in the U.S. - it's not good. 40 Million American citizens live in extreme poverty and approximately half a million of those are homeless.  Despite being the richest country on Earth and despite spending more per person on healthcare, the US has the highest infant mortality rate in the developed world.  Despite calling ourselves the "land of the free" we have the highest incarceration rate in the world - and we use that population as slave labor to do public and private sector jobs that should provide a living wage to families (such as fighting fires in CA).

Americans should be outraged.  There should be mass protests and demands for equity.  We should demand that prison labor be outlawed.  Inmate labor forces wages down, takes away good jobs for Americans in need and provides a corrupt incentive to continue to incarcerate poor people for addiction and other petty crime.  Let's be real - it is the working class and poor who suffer imprisonment at disproportionate rates.  We certainly don't see while-collar folks being locked up and forced to fight fires after, say, causing the Great Recession...though I imagine I am not alone in wishing that were the case.  And, if you are lucky enough to belong to a family who can hire an attorney it is likely you can escape significant punishment - even if you have victimized others -  though it is unimaginable how someone who is poor or a minority would receive the same treatment.

But we are not outraged - the answer to everything is commerce.  "Go shopping," the advertisements tell us.  Shopping will make you happy, fulfilled, popular, and distracted - and isn't that what we crave above all things - distraction from all this negative stuff?  We are a nation in denial.  We have neither the will nor the inclination to be informed or to take action.  Instead we shop.  We accumulate.  We spend money making millionaires and billionaires richer.  We act against our own interests in pretty much every way we can.

How many conversations do we have to have about the shit we buy?  I can't feign interest.  I've done it and it is shallow and leaves much to be desired.  Stuff is a means to an end.  The end should be human relationships, our shared experiences, our cultural understandings, and our personal growth.  Shopping to shop is a disease of a culture that values stuff over people, money over quality of life, and reveres and supports millionaires over our own families.  We've got to wake the F up and evaluate our priorities.