Going Without

Many Americans are reducing their credit card debt, paying on time, cutting back on household spending and saving money and I heard that businesses are irritated by this. I know that businesses thrive when people are irresponsible. There are plenty of folks gambling and filing for bankruptcy. And, it makes me mad when I hear a Republican accuse people of buying Frappuccinos instead of health insurance when they can’t afford food. 

Because of today’s economy approximately 15% of the population (more than 40 million Americans, that’s 1 in 7) is on food stamps and childhood poverty increased in 38 states in the last decade. In 2009, per Feeding America, 1 in 5 children (14.7 million) lived in households (many with working parents that can’t get food stamps) that relied on emergency food services like food pantries, shelters, kitchens and free food markets that rescue food from restaurants and farms. Feeding America is now saying that 1 in 6 Americans, 1 in 4 children wake up not knowing if they’ll have the food they need; 17 million children are food insecure. ABC’s Dr. Besser says that poverty, food insecurity and obesity go hand in hand because nutritious food costs more and if you don’t have a lot of dollars you’re going to be spending it on high calorie low nutritious food.

According to AARP, 1 in 11 people over the age of 50 are at risk of hunger (up 79% since 2001). Some are making too much from unemployment or disability to get food stamps but not enough to pay their bills. A couple of other things that irk me are: people, businesses and the government acting like those on Social Security are rich when most are struggling to get by and many businesses giving freebies to the rich that can afford it and not our soldiers, homeless or poor; this kissing up needs to stop. Everyone should take a lesson from restaurants that give senior discounts.

I think it’s time that businesses, the government and our best and brightest stop being irresponsible. Infrastructure projects are to help get us back on our feet yet state governments are sabotaging the effort. US law requires major infrastructure projects to buy American if the cost difference is reasonable. However, NY with a $400 million bridge renovation, CA with a $7.2 billion new bridge and Alaska with a $190 million bridge project all contracted the work with the Chinese. CA’s Department of Transportation turned down federal money and said there is a shortage of welders in American companies. The American firms said they would’ve done the job for less and on time. I’d like to know if these states notified the American businesses of what was needed to compete prior to signing contracts and if they were given an opportunity to rebid the jobs. These actions cost thousands of American jobs, lost consumer money needed to boost our economy and supported a non-democracy rule. The Chinese government owns the businesses and pays their workers little. Over and over again we hear ‘we cannot compete with the Chinese’. With businesses and state governments stabbing us in the back it’s no wonder that China has grown to become the second largest economy in the world while our businesses go bankrupt.