opinion

Reuters recently reported that more than 18 million families are starving in the US. 

The gap between the rich and the poor keeps widening as the days go by.

In the third quarter of the year 2023, 66.6 percent of the whole wealth of America was possessed by those with the highest income accounting for only 10 percent of the US population. In contrast to this, those who earn the lowest income accounting for 50 percent have only 2.6 percent of the wealth. 

An American economist said that a majority of Americans worked hard in 2023, but the rich became richer and people in the poorest stratum of society suffered deep-rooted poverty. Opportunities are kept idle and social fluidity diminishes in American society, which is attributable to the institutional structure that exploits the poor, offers subsidies to the rich and separates social strata.

In the country, state power and assets are in the possession of a handful of privileged classes and they make laws and administer politics to meet their interests. This is why the interests of the privileged classes are prioritized everywhere and “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” is inevitable in the US.

Now the number of vagrants in the US is a record high since the statistics began to be released in 2007. Among them, 40 percent are living in streets, abandoned buildings or other poor places. What is absurd is that they may be given the verdict of guilty on a charge of wandering. 

A majority of American students take out loans for expensive school fees. Many high school graduates in the US think that it is better to work and earn money than to study at college, which requires high school fees. Therefore, most of them give up entering universities and colleges and take up jobs.

The US magazine Time carried an article under the pen name of an individual on its website, which said:

After the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, only capitalists and ruling classes with privileged rights enjoyed the benefits of capitalism. This system put forward speculators and punished honest people. People could not but deplore, saying the “American dream” was shattered. Citizens lost their hope for better living of their own and descendants. That is why “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators could not but express their indignation against the rich that account for only 1 percent of population. 

This is the true colours of the US which styles itself a “rich country”.

As the elementary rights to existence are trampled down and human rights are violated, people give up their hope for the future and opt for murder.

A French legman said in his book written after visiting the US: 

America is the richest country in the world. At the same time, it is the most unequal one. “Misfortune to the poor”—this is the real slogan of the US.