In the 1960s, more than a third of seniors lived in poverty. Federal programs like Medicare to help the elderly, the situation improved significantly. But last year, the poverty rate for those 65 or older increased, even as it sank for everyone else.
In the years following World War II, American and European food scientists hoped to feed the world with common pond scum supplemented with plastics. But it wasn’t just the unpleasant flavor that killed the algae craze.
With the past half-century’s experience, it’s become harder to deny that suffering arises not from nature’s deficit but humanity’s failure—our failure to reverse the tightening concentration of wealth and the decline of democracies around the world.
Nancy Krieger, Christian Testa, Pamela D. Waterman and Jarvis T. Chen
New York Daily News
Healing the dual miseries of COVID-19 and economic insecurity requires relief sufficient to ensure that all individuals, their families and their loved ones can live through this pandemic. The time to go big is now.
U.N. study finds growing numbers of Americans are living in the most impoverished circumstances. The growth of extreme poverty in the land of plenty is an indicator that we shouldn't be talking about how to slash spending on social programs, but how to expand services and better meet the needs of the vulnerable among us. One and a half million American households live in extreme poverty today, nearly twice as many as 20 years ago.
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