American Poor

Friday, September 26, 2008

I do have my essay topic in mind, but I do not want to spoil it on this blog. Therefore, I will write about the topic that didn’t make the cut.

One personal event I was contemplating writing about was living below the poverty level. I was going to talk about how my family was considered poor because we were below the poverty level, but I never felt the way I grew up should be described as poor. Some poor people in the U.S. describe poverty here like it’s the worst situation one could be in. I was going to talk about how the poor of the United States got it good compared to the poor of other places like South Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa. Compared to the poor in those areas we are the wealthy, and we have way more opportunities than other poor people across the world. If you are poor in the U.S. they should not describe your situation with the word poverty. They should call it something like “resource-challenged” or “American poor”; those would be better ways to describe it. If you have a house with running water and electricity, you will be considered wealthy in many poor countries across the globe. Many poor people in the United States have running water and electricity. By international standards the majority of the people in the United States are wealthy.

My main thesis: some poor people need to be happy with what they got, and do not fret too much about being poor in the United States; it’s not the end of the world. Our culture can make people feel less than a person because of what they don’t have. The rich and the wealthy are the most admired and have the most desirable lives. The poor are ultimately looked down upon. This culture of ours can restrict many poor from seeing that most of us have a pretty good situation. This also feeds in to many of our social problems like crime and depression. Most crimes in the United States are committed by people who are trying to get more money: robbery, burglary, racketeering, drug dealing, murder, money laundering, and fraud; all committed for the almighty dollar. If a society looks down upon you because of what you do not have, it can make one feel depressed. One may turn to drugs to ease this depression, or may decide to cause harm to others because of their depression (domestic violence, aggravated assault, child abuse, murder, etc). If more people were content with their economic situation in the United States, crime and depression would be significantly lower; but many people let the culture push them to the brink. Everyone is competing against everyone to make the most money, but the truth is everyone cannot be “El Hefe” (The Boss). Only a few can actually be wealthy, and this drives the unruly competition of monetary gain in the United States. Our culture encourages people to employ illegal means for monetary gain because it puts a lot of emphasis on making money, and does not put hardly any emphasis on making that money the legal way. If the only thing one cares about is making money, they are sure to ignore any negative externalities that they can create.