UN: US inequality reaching a dangerous level due to Trump's 'cruel' measures

[FiveGoodMen]

Source: The Guardian

Donald Trump is deliberately forcing millions of Americans into financial ruin, cruelly depriving them of food and other basic protections while lavishing vast riches on the super-wealthy, the United Nations monitor on poverty has warned.

Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur who acts as a watchdog on extreme poverty around the world, has issued a withering critique of the state of America today. Trump is steering the country towards a “dramatic change of direction” that is rewarding the rich and punishing the poor by blocking access even to the most meager necessities.

“This is a systematic attack on America’s welfare program that is undermining the social safety net for those who can’t cope on their own. Once you start removing any sense of government commitment, you quickly move into cruelty,” Alston told the Guardian.

Millions of Americans already struggling to make ends meet faced “ruination”, he warned. “If food stamps and access to Medicaid are removed, and housing subsidies cut, then the effect on people living on the margins will be drastic.”


Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jun/01/us-inequality-donald-trump-cruel-measures-un

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Finally, the UN recognizes USA as being an enemy of the human race.

[UpInArms]

2. And shitler has a big helping hand from all of the

Repiglicans

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. Tax the rich. Income & Wealth Inequality really bad & growing. Must be fixed.

If it is not properly fixed amicably it will be fixed by some kind of revolution, possibly violent. There are so many ways to fix it properly and amicably.

[FiveGoodMen]

4. Couldn't agree more!

[erronis]

7. I think the rich/powerful believe they can hide behind gated communities and mercenaries

For a while, that might be the case. However the tactics they are pursuing are going to render the planet very inhospitable to them and their spawn.

Think about the air and water quality. Yes, they can decide to put huge bubbles over their homes, golf courses, agriculture/animal harvesting fields and massive filtration units - perhaps powered by fossil fuels spewing their exhausts into the outside atmosphere.

I can't see this artificial environment lasting more than a few decades and less than 2-3 generations of "perfect" children. The mercenaries will need to have places to live within the bubble also. They may be of "lower class" than the self-appointed lords. Resentments and other realistic entanglements will make that bubble become an interesting experiment in survival, disease, death, and decay. I hope someone outside can record the process for future generations.

[TeamPooka]

22. I must admit I live in a gated community but mercenaries are not part of the HOA fee

[erronis]

23. And I know several friends/relatives that do so too. I'm not sure where "security" and

Control/exclusion intersect. The guards at the gates of the communities that I know of are paid contractors. Hopefully very competent and non-judgmental.

Actually, I would not trust most of the inhabitants of the communities I'm thinking about to have a life-and-death decision with someone trying to enter the facility (one is 90 with opinion and firearm experience.)

[NBachers]

5. Why do Republicans despise the United States of America?

[Quemado]

11. Maybe "despise" isn't the word

Instead of despise, I think it’s a case of the wealthy believe taxation is theft. But if they take from the poor, that is OK.

[SammyWinstonJack]

18. My non rich republican neighbor said to me, how can the rich

take from the poor, they don't have anything.

[NewJeffCT]

6. trying to kill off as many potential Democratic voters as possible

It looks like to me

[Quemado]

8. We are on our way to being a third world country

nt

[harun]

19. Shortest path to cheaper labor

[RobinA]

9. Well, Look

I hate Trump with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns, about this inequality started waaaayyy before he came along.

[FiveGoodMen]

14. Yeah, but that recent tax bill makes things WAY worse

[erronis]

10. And attacks on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid are coming along right behind

I'm not sure whether this is just to cut the US budget as repuglicans have frequently cited (except DoD, Intel, pork-barrel), or if it is to punish those that aren't part of the dumpian world.

More likely it is on direction from external influences. No need to cite the putines, kochs, mercers, etc. here. Plutocrats, oligarchs, thieves, liars, crooks, ...

[demmiblue]

12. K&R

[cstanleytech]

13. Its what he meant by MAGA.

[IronLionZion]

15. He's just taking us back to robber barons and servant labor

you know, when America was great 100 years ago.

[paleotn]

16. Let them eat cake....

We all know how that one ended. Not terribly good for the rich and those in power.

[FiveGoodMen]

17. I would LOVE to see a repeat!

[Uncle Joe]

20. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread FiveGoodMen

[TeamPooka]

21. and that's how you get 'The French Revolution."

[appalachiablue]

24. Not to be omitted,

[Bayard]

27. Mr. Andrea Mitchell said this?

OMG! How does she live with that man?

[Oneironaut]

29. That's probably one of the dumbest statements I've ever heard.

Corporations make a product. They buy them sometimes, but the vast majority of products are bought by the public. Less purchasing power for the public means less inventory moving off the shelves. This cuts into corporations’ revenue, meaning they can’t hire as many workers. This leads to more dependency on the government.

More jobs and job security are a symptom of a healthy economy. You can’t have a healthy economy with job scarcity - that’s utter nonsense. That’s like removing all the product from the shelves of your store and saying, “this will increase our profit exponentially!”

Small businesses run American society. Without them, we would look like Somalia. The “fuck the working class, we’ve got ours!” attitude is utter nonsense that reeks of entitlement and cluelessness. Anyone with common sense knows that. I bet the person who said this knows too - they just wanted to be an asshole to show off to the raving “temporarily embarrassed millionaires” that eat this garbage up.

[appalachiablue]

30. The excerpt is based on what Noam Chomsky later wrote in an article

about Greenspan's remarks in a long winded, 1997 speech to Congress referencing 'greater worker insecurity' (paragraphs 4,5,6). Chomsky's take was circulated and efforts were then made to explain the comments by the Fed, an Ayn Rand, free market champion as being solely in terms of increasing 'information technology.' The point of the meme is worthwhile regardless.

1997 Fed Speech
https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/hh/1997/february/testimony.htm

Agree with you that workers who are well compensated benefit all, companies, the economy, society and people. Libertarian ideology is absurd, unfeasible and selfish, and has grown to dangerous levels in the US and elsewhere in the last 20-30 years IMO.

[ck4829]

25. Kick

[Sunlei]

26. said 5/31/18 "3 people in USA own more wealth than bottom HALF of American people"

"3 people in our country own more wealth than the bottom 1/2 of the American people. and I know you share with me your deep concern about that level of income and wealth inequality"
B. Sanders 5/31/18

[Bayard]

28. We are becoming a banana republic

Glad to see the UN is blaming tRump, and not America.

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. Kick (nt)

[IronLionZion]

32. They rise up by stepping on the heads of others

and desperately want a return to the era of robber barons and a servant class of desperately poor Americans.