For the last two weeks, Philip Alston, a professor at the New York University School of Law and a United Nations special rapporteur on poverty and human rights, has been on a fact-finding tour of the United States' poorest communities. Alston visited neighborhoods in rural Alabama where raw sewage sits in open trenches and pits. He spent time at a free dental clinic in West Virginia, where he met a 32-year-old whose teeth have all but rotted away. He saw a homeless encampment in Los Angeles where the ratio of toilets to residents is lower than the U.N. mandate for Syrian refugee camps. Today, Alston released a sharply critical preliminary reportsummarizing his findings. American exceptionalism may be alive and well, Alston concludes, but "today's United States has proved itself to be exceptional in far more problematic ways that are shockingly at odds with its immense wealth and its founding commitment to human rights."
When it comes to poverty rates and other measures of deprivation, the U.S. is a stark outlier among other developed countries. Despite its status as one of the world's wealthiest countries, the U.S. has the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world, the worst health outcomes, the highest incarceration rate, the highest youth poverty rate, one of the highest rates of inequality, and one of the lowest rates of voter participation. Eighteen percent of American children in 2016 were living in poverty, with rates in some states as high as 30 percent.
Politicians opposed to expanding the social safety net have leaned heavily on a certain false narrative about poor Americans to justify cuts to welfare and other social programs, according to Alston. "Some politicians and political appointees with whom I spoke were completely sold on the narrative of such scammers sitting on comfortable sofas, watching color TVs, while surfing on their smartphones, all paid for by welfare," he writes. "I wonder how many of these politicians have ever visited poor areas, let alone spoken to those who dwell there. There are anecdotes aplenty, but evidence is nowhere to be seen."
[For more on this story by DWYER GUNN, go to https://psmag.com/economics/sa...-equality-in-america]
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