USA Senator Bernie Sanders and UN rapporteur Philip Alston speak on extreme poverty Alston found in USA
https://www.facebook.com/senatorsanders/videos/10156601273572908/, Around 5 mins.
Ravi: I am willing to view Senator Sanders' comments as politically coloured and so am willing to accept that Republicans may be able to counter his views. But I tend to view the remarks of UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Alston, as being more fact based and less politically motivated. Of course, he also could have got some things wrong and so could be challenged on his views on extreme poverty in the USA by others who present facts that challenge those views and conclusions of Alston. Note that Alston is also a Professor of Law at New York University School of Law.
Having said the above, I find the remarks made by Alston in this video, which I tend to believe to be largely, if not wholly, truthful, to be a source of great sadness. I hope and pray that USA federal and state governments take serious note of the extreme poverty cases in the USA that Alston has highlighted and come up with some solutions.
I also felt it appropriate to transcribe some remarks of both Senator Sanders and Prof. Alston in this video on wealth and income inequality in the USA.
[Around 0:25 in the video]
Senator Sanders: Professor Alston, thank you so much for coming in. You are now, on behalf of the United Nations traveling around the wealthiest country in the history of the world, the United States of America, taking a look at poverty. What are you finding?
Prof. Alston: Well, there are a lot of very big issues here in the United States.
...
[Around 1:25 in the video]
Prof. Alston: I've witnessed a great deal of extreme poverty in the places that I visited.
Sanders: We could understand poverty if we were living in a poor country but we are living in a country which has more income and wealth inequality than any country in the history of the world, where in fact the wealthiest people are doing phenomenally well.
[Ravi: That could be an exaggeration especially when one talks about history of the world. I mean, even as late as 19th century, slavery (in Americas with slaves transported from Africa, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade), and, as late as 20th century, colonial domination and exploitation were ***common*** in significant sized parts of the world! I think slavery, where a human being is bought and sold by other human beings, like human beings buy animals like dogs, cows and horses today is one of the worst, if not the worst, sign of horrific levels of wealth and income inequality in a society. Colonial domination over and exploitation of one country and its people by another country and its people (e.g. India and China being dominated and exploited by colonial powers beginning from around mid 18th century to mid 20th century when both India and China got fully independent from colonial powers' domination and exploitation) was also a very bad sign of wealth and income inequality. We don't have slavery and colonial domination and exploitation in most parts of the world today. So I would take 'the history of the world' part of Senator Sanders' earlier statement with more than a few pinches of salt.]
Alston: All of the studies by organizations like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] all point to the fact that high levels of inequality are economically inefficient, apart from being socially problematic. And if you're really trying to grow an economy, not even getting a fairer distribution, but just economic growth, (it) is undermined by all the distortions introduced by the sort of inequality that we're seeing. One gets the sense that in many parts of the country that the answer to homelessness is basically to lock people up. But of course you can't lock them up for very long, so you let them out again, then you lock them up again.
Sanders: What about the needs of kids? Did you bump into that much?
Alston: The United States is the land of 'equality of opportunity'. Equality of opportunity starts at birth, basically. So if children don't have good natal care, if they don't have good early childhood care, if they don't have decent educational opportunities, there can be no such thing as 'equality of opportunity' later on. And clearly children are very much suffering in a whole range of ways. Programs are quite inadequate. There's no attempt to ensure the sort of medical care which would just enable their brains to develop effectively, in a lot of places.
Sanders: Say a word about health care in general. The United States, of course, remains the only major country on Earth, not to guarantee health care to all people. You know, it's not just the 28 million people who have no health insurance. Many people may have some insurance but it doesn't enable them to get to a doctor when they should. Do you have any observations about the health care system and how it impacts people?
Alston: In virtually every other country I go to, my starting point is that there is a right to health care and the government has an obligation to make sure that there is universal coverage through whatever means that's achieved. That's not the starting point in the United States because the government has so clearly rejected the notion that there is such a right.
Sanders: Poverty is very expensive, among other things, forgetting the human toll. I mean just the financial toll. If young people drop out of high school and end up in jail, it costs us 50 or 60 thousand dollars a year to imprison them. If people do not have primary care they're gonna end up in the emergency room in the hospital at far greater expense than would be the case if we provided general health care for those people. But for a variety of reasons, which we need not get into now, that is the nature of what is going on in our country today. Instead of getting to root causes of the problems, dealing with the needs of the children, dealing with the needs of the sick, we don't, and it becomes very expensive doing it the way we do.
[Sanders continues:] One would have so much hoped that coming to the United States and studying what we do here, that we could be a model for the world. Sadly, that's not the case. I hope the day comes when that will be the case.
--- end part transcript of video remarks ----
[I thank USA Senator Bernie Sanders and Prof. Philip Alston, and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above transcript of their conversation from the above mentioned video, on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]
Ravi: I am willing to view Senator Sanders' comments as politically coloured and so am willing to accept that Republicans may be able to counter his views. But I tend to view the remarks of UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Alston, as being more fact based and less politically motivated. Of course, he also could have got some things wrong and so could be challenged on his views on extreme poverty in the USA by others who present facts that challenge those views and conclusions of Alston. Note that Alston is also a Professor of Law at New York University School of Law.
Having said the above, I find the remarks made by Alston in this video, which I tend to believe to be largely, if not wholly, truthful, to be a source of great sadness. I hope and pray that USA federal and state governments take serious note of the extreme poverty cases in the USA that Alston has highlighted and come up with some solutions.
I also felt it appropriate to transcribe some remarks of both Senator Sanders and Prof. Alston in this video on wealth and income inequality in the USA.
[Around 0:25 in the video]
Senator Sanders: Professor Alston, thank you so much for coming in. You are now, on behalf of the United Nations traveling around the wealthiest country in the history of the world, the United States of America, taking a look at poverty. What are you finding?
Prof. Alston: Well, there are a lot of very big issues here in the United States.
...
[Around 1:25 in the video]
Prof. Alston: I've witnessed a great deal of extreme poverty in the places that I visited.
Sanders: We could understand poverty if we were living in a poor country but we are living in a country which has more income and wealth inequality than any country in the history of the world, where in fact the wealthiest people are doing phenomenally well.
[Ravi: That could be an exaggeration especially when one talks about history of the world. I mean, even as late as 19th century, slavery (in Americas with slaves transported from Africa, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_slave_trade), and, as late as 20th century, colonial domination and exploitation were ***common*** in significant sized parts of the world! I think slavery, where a human being is bought and sold by other human beings, like human beings buy animals like dogs, cows and horses today is one of the worst, if not the worst, sign of horrific levels of wealth and income inequality in a society. Colonial domination over and exploitation of one country and its people by another country and its people (e.g. India and China being dominated and exploited by colonial powers beginning from around mid 18th century to mid 20th century when both India and China got fully independent from colonial powers' domination and exploitation) was also a very bad sign of wealth and income inequality. We don't have slavery and colonial domination and exploitation in most parts of the world today. So I would take 'the history of the world' part of Senator Sanders' earlier statement with more than a few pinches of salt.]
Alston: All of the studies by organizations like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] all point to the fact that high levels of inequality are economically inefficient, apart from being socially problematic. And if you're really trying to grow an economy, not even getting a fairer distribution, but just economic growth, (it) is undermined by all the distortions introduced by the sort of inequality that we're seeing. One gets the sense that in many parts of the country that the answer to homelessness is basically to lock people up. But of course you can't lock them up for very long, so you let them out again, then you lock them up again.
Sanders: What about the needs of kids? Did you bump into that much?
Alston: The United States is the land of 'equality of opportunity'. Equality of opportunity starts at birth, basically. So if children don't have good natal care, if they don't have good early childhood care, if they don't have decent educational opportunities, there can be no such thing as 'equality of opportunity' later on. And clearly children are very much suffering in a whole range of ways. Programs are quite inadequate. There's no attempt to ensure the sort of medical care which would just enable their brains to develop effectively, in a lot of places.
Sanders: Say a word about health care in general. The United States, of course, remains the only major country on Earth, not to guarantee health care to all people. You know, it's not just the 28 million people who have no health insurance. Many people may have some insurance but it doesn't enable them to get to a doctor when they should. Do you have any observations about the health care system and how it impacts people?
Alston: In virtually every other country I go to, my starting point is that there is a right to health care and the government has an obligation to make sure that there is universal coverage through whatever means that's achieved. That's not the starting point in the United States because the government has so clearly rejected the notion that there is such a right.
Sanders: Poverty is very expensive, among other things, forgetting the human toll. I mean just the financial toll. If young people drop out of high school and end up in jail, it costs us 50 or 60 thousand dollars a year to imprison them. If people do not have primary care they're gonna end up in the emergency room in the hospital at far greater expense than would be the case if we provided general health care for those people. But for a variety of reasons, which we need not get into now, that is the nature of what is going on in our country today. Instead of getting to root causes of the problems, dealing with the needs of the children, dealing with the needs of the sick, we don't, and it becomes very expensive doing it the way we do.
[Sanders continues:] One would have so much hoped that coming to the United States and studying what we do here, that we could be a model for the world. Sadly, that's not the case. I hope the day comes when that will be the case.
--- end part transcript of video remarks ----
[I thank USA Senator Bernie Sanders and Prof. Philip Alston, and have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above transcript of their conversation from the above mentioned video, on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]
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