Homeless and Starving in America
6 June 2009by HRM Deborah
As the statistics came out on Friday, 5 June 2009 of US Unemployment reaching a staggering rate of 9.4%; which is about 1.4% higher then the 1930’s Great Depression and even staggering figure has came foreword of 12.4 million US children are at risk of starvation.
Some of these children are being equated of the countless photograph’s seen twenty years ago of what was occurring in Ethiopia of children so underfed that they where literally skin and bones, with the possible borderline of rickets; with some case's of fly’s embedded in some children’s eyes, as was reported by a children’s aid worker.
While some of these malnourished families are now homeless and some are living in homeless shelters; it is an ever increasing problem of not just single person’s; but whole families finding homeless on the street and the ever increasing tent cities.
While US President Barack Obama had pledged assistance by 2015, for the majority of these improvised American’s this is way to late for so many; especially with the further decrease of the American dollar and the ever rising cost of just basic necessities.
Update:
Climbing Unemployment Continues to Beat US
19 June 2009
The unemployment rate in the West jumped over 10 percent in May.
The Labor Department reported Friday that 48 states and the District of Columbia saw employment conditions deteriorate last month. The fallout from the longest ‘recession’ which the US claims in historical error as being “since World War II,” was the worst in Michigan as automakers cut tens of thousands of jobs. Its unemployment rate rose to 14.1 percent. With California at 11.5 and Nevada came in at 11.3 percent it was recorded; while Eastern states set record high's, like Vermont which claimed to be just bottomed out.
As quoted from Associated Press, “Joblessness is rising as companies lay off workers and turn to other cost-saving measures, such as trimming hours and freezing or slicing wages, to survive the recession. Housing, credit and financial problems — the worst since the 1930s — have sent the economy into a tailspin.”
“Factories, construction companies, retailers and financial companies are among the industries that have slashed the most jobs. U.S. manufacturers have suffered a double whammy: customers in the U.S. have pulled back along with foreign customers, who are dealing with their own economic troubles.”
As to US President Barack Obama’s Health Plan which with the ever increasing unemployment problems, because most American’s where covered by their employer and in some cases due to rising cost; employers in some cases dropping employee health care all together; this makes Obama’s plan a major bust, along with the fact that most American’s can not afford health care on their own; especially the elderly who have been suffering with this problem for years, with the ever increase of prescription cost. Which some elderly American’s have had to either pay for prescriptions and not buy food or buy food and do without needed medicines or health care.
The World Health Organization (WHO), in 2000, ranked the U.S. health care system as the highest in cost and it has continued to skyrocket especially in the last year due to the economic downturn, it goes without saying that the average American with the continuous economic collapse and increase, may have to forgo health care all together; which was also a critical situation in the 1930‘s, where home remedies where being more used to circumvent a doctor’s visit or in extreme only for emergency cases, which many still died over the debate of cost and some doctor‘s ill-efficiency.
As to the old argument that one on a good day in the 1930‘s, such as the instance of an American doing farm labor for a dollar a day with "luck" (because this type of employment was either temporary due to seasonal or not as common as people may think due to some US geographical locations); one need’s to remember a single loaf of bread was five cent’s and most people had to squeeze a little less money for the hope of flour to bake their own bread, because the average American even with the dollar wages could ill-afford the five cent loaf of "store-bought" bread. Which is so similar to the cost of living burdens the average American is facing today.
"Beep, Beep, Get out of the way; you road hog!"Labels: Children, Depression, Employment, Health Care, History, Hungary, Obama, Poll, Poverty, United States
posted by HRM Deborah of Israel and the Messenger of Peace at 1:53 AM
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