As the effects of what has been known as the financial crisis spills over into the general economies of countries around the world, it is easy to forget that the less well-off are the ones being clobbered and losing out on a variety of levels.
The paradox is that the so-called wealthy country, America, is seeing even greater gaps between the wealthy and the poor - and years of neglect in spending on infrastructure, health-care and general welfare for its citizens now becoming even more evident.
How the less-well off are being overlooked is the subject of Bob Herbert's thoughtful op-ed piece "Crises on Many Fronts" in the NY Times:
"The closer you look at the current economic crisis, the more harrowing it becomes.
The focus in the presidential campaign has been almost entirely on the struggles faced by the middle class — on families worried about their jobs, their mortgages, their retirement accounts and how to pay for college for their kids.
Each nauseating plunge in the Dow heightens their anxiety. Each company that goes under and each government report showing joblessness on the rise intensifies their fear.
No one knows how to quell the uncertainty. And no one is even talking about the poor.
Alan Greenspan, uncharacteristically befuddled, went up to Capitol Hill on Thursday and lamented that some sort of fissure had erupted in his previously impregnable worldview. For Mr. Greenspan (“I still do not understand exactly how it happened”), this is a moment of intellectual anxiety.
But if we are indeed caught up in the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, the ones who will fare the worst are those who already are poor or near-poor. There are millions of them, and yet they remain essentially invisible. A step down for them is a step into destitution."
The paradox is that the so-called wealthy country, America, is seeing even greater gaps between the wealthy and the poor - and years of neglect in spending on infrastructure, health-care and general welfare for its citizens now becoming even more evident.
How the less-well off are being overlooked is the subject of Bob Herbert's thoughtful op-ed piece "Crises on Many Fronts" in the NY Times:
"The closer you look at the current economic crisis, the more harrowing it becomes.
The focus in the presidential campaign has been almost entirely on the struggles faced by the middle class — on families worried about their jobs, their mortgages, their retirement accounts and how to pay for college for their kids.
Each nauseating plunge in the Dow heightens their anxiety. Each company that goes under and each government report showing joblessness on the rise intensifies their fear.
No one knows how to quell the uncertainty. And no one is even talking about the poor.
Alan Greenspan, uncharacteristically befuddled, went up to Capitol Hill on Thursday and lamented that some sort of fissure had erupted in his previously impregnable worldview. For Mr. Greenspan (“I still do not understand exactly how it happened”), this is a moment of intellectual anxiety.
But if we are indeed caught up in the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, the ones who will fare the worst are those who already are poor or near-poor. There are millions of them, and yet they remain essentially invisible. A step down for them is a step into destitution."
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