The “American Dream” is exactly that—a fantasy.
The census information is in and calculated, and even the dismal picture
painted by the corporate media is deceivingly inaccurate.
The official numbers show poverty in 2010 was at
the highest level since recording of the data started 52 years ago. In 2010,
15.1 percent of the population, or 46.2 million people, in the U.S. lived in
poverty, up from 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million, in 2009. According to census
estimates, tax credits are the only thing that kept 5.4 million families out of
poverty, and 3.2 million people stayed above the poverty line thanks to
unemployment insurance.
More than one in three young families with
children, or 37 percent, were living in poverty last year. This was the reality
for more than 16 million children.
Unsurprisingly, Black and Latino communities
experienced the highest levels of poverty in this American Nightmare, at 27.4
and 26.6 percent, respectively. In the richest country on the planet, 38.2
percent of Black children and 35 percent of Latino children were impoverished.
This trend did not start with the current
economic depression, as the number of people in poverty has risen every year
since 2000. While these numbers are infuriating in and of
themselves—considering this government spends $330 million every day on the
Afghan war—there are other things for which these numbers do not account:
- By
the U.S. government’s ludicrous standard, a family of four with an annual
income of $22,351 or more is not in poverty; - The
census does not take into account the cost of living in a particular city when
calculating the value of the poverty threshold; - In a
country where 700,000 people are homeless at any given time, that population is
not included in the census poverty statistics.
In any propaganda piece put forward by the
corporate media, there will perhaps be a listing of all of these numbers.
However, they will rarely if ever make the connections needed to put the
numbers in perspective.
Try finding an article on these recent statistics
by any major news outlet that mentions the 6 million families that have been
foreclosed on or are in process of foreclosure. Try finding a news clip on MSNBC
that makes the connection between the 60.4 million families who lived at or
below 125 percent of the poverty threshold—$27,937 for a family of 4—and the
more than $2 billion in military contracts that General Electric alone was
granted from January of this year to the present.
Last year GE made $14.2 billion in profits. Not
only did the giant monopoly pay no taxes, it was given a tax credit of $3.2
billion. Last year, about 45,000 people in the U.S. died from lack of adequate
health care.
Poverty cannot be defined by income alone.
Poverty is caused by a system that locks up Black and Latino youth at
terrifying rates, cuts funding for child care and adult day centers, and
drastically underfunds public education at the same time that it spends $4
trillion on wars. That system is capitalism.
We need a new kind of American Dream, where
everyone has the right to health care, housing and education; while the
military and prison systems are dismantled. A collective struggle for such a
dream is beginning but can only become a reality once capitalism is smashed and the construction of a socialist society begins.
