Why Does Congress Think It's OK for Working Americans to Go Hungry?

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/11/10


Capital Area Food Bank serving the Washington DC metro area (Photo: Capital Area Food Bank)

The Dow closed the week at a record high. And all those billionaires? They're barely even an exclusive club anymore, what with 442 in the U.S. in 2012 and almost a thousand more than that globally, a jump of 200 in a single year, Forbes data shows.

So why is it OK for working Americans to go hungry? Why in the midst such affluence for the wealthy do we, as a nation, simply turn our back on those struggling, even when they are lucky enough to land a job and work for a living?

To me, it is the shrug with which most Americans seem to greet such questions today that offers the most alarming evidence we live in a broken and declining society. Sure, each month we wait with anticipation for the job growth and unemployment data. Today public radio was abuzz with excitement at the better-than-anticipated numbers for new job creation in October.

I'm all for success; we need a whole lot more. But why do we barely notice the figures about failure -- not the failure of individuals, but the failure of a society to take care of its children, its disabled, its old people? The failure of that society -- our society -- to even acknowledge it's wrong to let people starve in the midst of affluence.

[valerief]

1. Because hungry people aren't people who matter to them. Hungry people

don't give them money.

[Laelth]

2. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[Brigid]

4. They want us all to be poor, desperate, and hungry.

We're much easier to control that way.

[Jamaal510]

5. Because most of said people voted for the other side

and not for them.

[spanone]

6. because they live the good life, for life, and could give a shit about working americans....