Why America Isn't Number 1.......Right Now

On February 1st of this year, former Massachusetts Governor and GOP Presidential Hopeful Mitt Romney said in an interview, "I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich, they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling". Immediately this statement was taken out of context and there was a backlash that Mitt Romney didn't care about the poor. Allow to me say first that I think Mitt Romney can't be trusted and will say almost anything to win, but this wasn't what he was trying to say. He was trying to appeal to the middle-class voters by stating that they would be the central focus of his administration. However, Mr. Romney, you are wrong. The poor is who we ALL need to be focusing on. Why? I thought you'd never ask.



Mitt Romney seems to think that 90%- 95% of Americans are middle-class and that would mean that 1% are rich and therefore, 4%-9% Americans are poor. This number doesn't seem right to me at all. The Association of the Worlds Developed Economies (OECD) states that about 17.3% of Americans are poor. Well that doesn't sound to bad. But among the 34 top countries in the world, we rank 31. Only above Chile, Israel, and Mexico. The United Kingdom has 11% of it's citizens living in poverty, Germany with 8.9%, and the French with 7.2%.



That isn't even the worst number. Children living in poverty is one of the best indicators of the poor because the poor usually stay poor. In the US, 20.6% (1 in 5) of children are living in poverty. That's compared to countries like Germany who have 16.3%, the UK with 10.1%, and France with 7.6%. This is a horrible number considering that poor students don't do well in school and tend to rely on social programs like Welfare throughout their lives. A study conducted in 1988 on 8th graders shows that even poor kids who test well on the standardized test are least likely to finish college than children who did not test as well but were from financial stable families.

Health Care is another indicator of how our country is as a whole. The infant mortality rate is the number of children who die within the first year of their lives. For every 1000 births in Japan, an average of 2.78 kids infants die within the first year. In the UK, it's right at 4.62. But in the "Greatest Country on Earth", it is a staggering 6.06 deaths. Cuba is even more successful at bearing children then we are with only 5.12 deaths. The infant mortality rate is usually caused by poor health care. Parents have children but do not have access to sufficient health care for the child, and the child doesn't receive the nourishment that they need to grow up healthy (and now they want to make it so you can't even get birth control to prevent going through this?).


And yet an even more disturbing statistic. As I said before, the poor stay poor. Children from poor families in the US are 40% more likely to than others to continue being poor. Compared to 30% in the UK and 25% in Denmark.

So what do we do about it? We cannot take care of the middle-class and the rich when there are so many poor bleeding our tax dollars dry. I don't blame the poor for surviving by any means necessary, but I blame the local, state, and federal government for allowing the US to fall so far from the top.


In order to jump start the poor community, we need to invest serious amounts of money into real world programs that cater specifically to the disadvantaged. I'm talking American Recovery Act dollars! Money needs to be dumped into intercity schools so kids can receive proper education and learn that drugs and crime aren't the only way to get ahead. College tuition costs needs to shrink significantly so that going to college isn't just a great accomplishment, but the status quo for education. Rehabilitation for addicts  and Vocational training for the unemployed needs to be more easily accessible and persistent in poor communities. In fact, we need to renovate ALL poor communities because it is just awful to build a compound unsuitable for animal and lie to a child and say "You can be anything you want to be".


All of this is possible. I believe the President shares similar views that I do, but can't act like he wants do to a stagnant Congress. However, he has made major strides (Health Care, Tuition Cost, Higher Pay for Teachers). America isn't number 1 today, but it doesn't have to be true forever. Unfortunately, if we elect someone this November who doesn't truly understand why America isn't booming, then that dream becomes significantly more vague.

Thanks for reading and please leave feedback.....MLK