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The face of widespread poverty......in the richest country in the world?

Take a deep breath as you read about the plight of some 50 million Americans in relation to such basics as the ability to feed themselves.    Then reflect on the fact that this is supposed to be the richest nation in the world, a country which spends - and squanders - billions of dollars on the military and also plows money in directions which are questionable or not materially essential.    Think sending billions of dollars to Israel (one of the wealthier countries in the world) - in order to capture the Jewish vote in the USA - and further billions in supporting corrupt regimes and dictators a la the former Egyptian president Mubarak.

"For nearly 50 million Americans living in poverty – the highest in more than half a century – getting a meal on the table isn’t easy. One-in-seven now receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (better known as food stamps) but that barely covers the necessities, especially when assistance runs thin at the end of the month. By then, foods like peanut butter and pasta become a main course for those on assistance, half of whom are children.

Some have been chronically poor, but many are the newcomers to federal food assistance — recent veterans, college graduates, once middle-class families in suburbia, and farm workers, who never imagined they would learn what hunger felt like."

Go here to read the accounts of those suffering.


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