"Subsidized Housing" - Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Atlanta, GA, US
Showing posts with label urban. Show all posts
Showing posts with label urban. Show all posts
Monday, December 26, 2016
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
A real nation would not let this happen
A great opinion piece from last year when election campaign in Canada was all the noise (& news) in the media.
We Canadians like to think that we are all one nation & we care for each other. Non-Canadians come to visit Canada & see the urban, down-town real estate developments & enjoy the urban amenities, & consider Canada a great place to be. Canadian cities are regularly rated to be great place to live & work by international organizations.
But all that happens because nobody takes a peek behind the curtain to see how Canadian Aboriginals are faring on the forgotten reserves & even in the urban areas. Nobody, including politicians, wants to hear / see their plight. That's the same case everywhere around the world. Be it Aboriginals of US or Australia, or even poorest of the poor people, forgotten in the back country, of countries on African, Asian, & European continents.
Although, blaming the developing countries for forgetting the poorest of the poor might not be justifiable, since their urban (so-called, "middle-class") populations also struggle to make ends meet, but it is inexcusable when developed countries put millions, if not billions, in the outstretched hands of the rich suburbanites because they are a few dollars short for their new home renovations, new electronics, vacation trips, night life shenanigans etc.
The author is correct to say that although we think we are one nation; be it Canadians in Canada, Americans in America, Australians in Australia, Pakistanis in Pakistan, Indians in India, South Africans in South Africa & so on & so forth, when it comes down to our selfish interests, it is me against everyone else. We always want more. We always have less. Why?
Because we forget to look at people who are below us in our society. Perhaps, then, we can satisfy our constant hunger for more. We forget that, as a democratic nation, it is the responsibility of the general populace to reject the latest handout in the elections & annual budgets, & compel our politicians to take care of the least unfortunate & needy among us. After taking care of the humanity on the national level, all of us, as humans, are obligated to tell our politicians & international organizations to take care of the least unfortunate among us on an international level. Heck, a lot of animals (wolves & lots of grazing animals, for instance) take care of the whole herd, instead of taking care of their own little family. Are we humans worse than animals?
Michael Moore, the documentary film maker, said in one of his documentaries (if I may recall correctly, it was on the American healthcare system) that a nation is judged by how it takes care of the sick, old & needy.
Perhaps, we are eligible to call ourselves humans, only when, we take care of the whole humanity; be it in our own backyards, on our streets, in our cities, in our provinces / states, in our countries, on our continents, & in the world.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If it’s a typical eight weeks in Canada, then 1,425 Aboriginal kids dropped out of school, a rate three times the national average. Since the campaign began, 45 Aboriginal children died in infancy; they would have lived longer if they’d been born in Sri Lanka. As Canadian politicians bickered on the evening news, 1,074 Aboriginal children & 6,265 Aboriginal women were sexually assaulted. Since the writ dropped, 33,534 Aboriginals were violently victimized. Another 182 committed suicide, roughly eight times the national rate. And, if the last two months were anything like the last decade, 11 were murdered, at a rate almost seven times higher than the national average.
...
Politicians are pushing each other out of the way as they scramble to give the hard-pressed suburban middle class the help they need. Meanwhile, other Canadians living on reserves & in the inner city are disappearing, assaulting & killing each other & themselves, at a rate typically only seen in countries that have been torn apart by war.
...
The party leaders build their campaigns on ... isolated, focused announcements. Small promises for small men & women, them & us—because this strategy only works if we respond. And we do.
We respond because we are nothing more than a collection of special interest groups. We are dairy farmers or oil workers, urban or rural, francophone or anglophone, Manitobans or Nova Scotians. But we are not a people, not a nation, not really. If we were, we would not be able to ignore each other, ignore other Canadians, the way we ignore the Aboriginal community. We would not allow our politicians to reduce us to Pavlovian demographics, salivating at the sight of a specially crafted handout. We would be unleashing a full-throated cry of anger & dismay, that so many fellow Canadians are growing up alone & lost, that so many of us are living in abject poverty & then dying miserably.
We would shout down every stump speech about the “struggling” middle class & demand more for the least fortunate among us. We would scream in frustration as yet another young Aboriginal is found hanging, unnamed & unmourned.
But we don’t. We just stand there, heads down, hands out.
I don’t know who to be more ashamed of, our politicians or us.
We Canadians like to think that we are all one nation & we care for each other. Non-Canadians come to visit Canada & see the urban, down-town real estate developments & enjoy the urban amenities, & consider Canada a great place to be. Canadian cities are regularly rated to be great place to live & work by international organizations.
But all that happens because nobody takes a peek behind the curtain to see how Canadian Aboriginals are faring on the forgotten reserves & even in the urban areas. Nobody, including politicians, wants to hear / see their plight. That's the same case everywhere around the world. Be it Aboriginals of US or Australia, or even poorest of the poor people, forgotten in the back country, of countries on African, Asian, & European continents.
Although, blaming the developing countries for forgetting the poorest of the poor might not be justifiable, since their urban (so-called, "middle-class") populations also struggle to make ends meet, but it is inexcusable when developed countries put millions, if not billions, in the outstretched hands of the rich suburbanites because they are a few dollars short for their new home renovations, new electronics, vacation trips, night life shenanigans etc.
The author is correct to say that although we think we are one nation; be it Canadians in Canada, Americans in America, Australians in Australia, Pakistanis in Pakistan, Indians in India, South Africans in South Africa & so on & so forth, when it comes down to our selfish interests, it is me against everyone else. We always want more. We always have less. Why?
Because we forget to look at people who are below us in our society. Perhaps, then, we can satisfy our constant hunger for more. We forget that, as a democratic nation, it is the responsibility of the general populace to reject the latest handout in the elections & annual budgets, & compel our politicians to take care of the least unfortunate & needy among us. After taking care of the humanity on the national level, all of us, as humans, are obligated to tell our politicians & international organizations to take care of the least unfortunate among us on an international level. Heck, a lot of animals (wolves & lots of grazing animals, for instance) take care of the whole herd, instead of taking care of their own little family. Are we humans worse than animals?
Michael Moore, the documentary film maker, said in one of his documentaries (if I may recall correctly, it was on the American healthcare system) that a nation is judged by how it takes care of the sick, old & needy.
Perhaps, we are eligible to call ourselves humans, only when, we take care of the whole humanity; be it in our own backyards, on our streets, in our cities, in our provinces / states, in our countries, on our continents, & in the world.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If it’s a typical eight weeks in Canada, then 1,425 Aboriginal kids dropped out of school, a rate three times the national average. Since the campaign began, 45 Aboriginal children died in infancy; they would have lived longer if they’d been born in Sri Lanka. As Canadian politicians bickered on the evening news, 1,074 Aboriginal children & 6,265 Aboriginal women were sexually assaulted. Since the writ dropped, 33,534 Aboriginals were violently victimized. Another 182 committed suicide, roughly eight times the national rate. And, if the last two months were anything like the last decade, 11 were murdered, at a rate almost seven times higher than the national average.
...
Politicians are pushing each other out of the way as they scramble to give the hard-pressed suburban middle class the help they need. Meanwhile, other Canadians living on reserves & in the inner city are disappearing, assaulting & killing each other & themselves, at a rate typically only seen in countries that have been torn apart by war.
...
The party leaders build their campaigns on ... isolated, focused announcements. Small promises for small men & women, them & us—because this strategy only works if we respond. And we do.
We respond because we are nothing more than a collection of special interest groups. We are dairy farmers or oil workers, urban or rural, francophone or anglophone, Manitobans or Nova Scotians. But we are not a people, not a nation, not really. If we were, we would not be able to ignore each other, ignore other Canadians, the way we ignore the Aboriginal community. We would not allow our politicians to reduce us to Pavlovian demographics, salivating at the sight of a specially crafted handout. We would be unleashing a full-throated cry of anger & dismay, that so many fellow Canadians are growing up alone & lost, that so many of us are living in abject poverty & then dying miserably.
We would shout down every stump speech about the “struggling” middle class & demand more for the least fortunate among us. We would scream in frustration as yet another young Aboriginal is found hanging, unnamed & unmourned.
But we don’t. We just stand there, heads down, hands out.
I don’t know who to be more ashamed of, our politicians or us.
Friday, May 8, 2015
How America's big cities are becoming more unequal
Thanks to interests-based economy, rich keeps getting richer & poor keeps getting poorer. The wealth of the rich keeps increasing because their mountain of money earns money while the poor are dimed & nickled on their wages, & whatever they are left with, they need to service debts, leaving them with nothing much to save, if at all.
Another problem is the constant increase in greed. Greed is an animal which never feels satisfied & always needs more. Rich keeps hoarding money to increase their wealth, but what's the point of hoarding all that money.
A great movie from 2011, "In Time," explored this phenomenon, in a fictional setting, where people stop aging at 25 but are engineered to live only one more year. However, more time can always be bought. So, the poor masses work & then spend their money to buy more time & the rich have amassed so much time that they could live forever.
We can easily replace "Time" in the movie with "Money", & we realize that it is the story of our world. Poor spend whatever they earn on basic needs, so they can live. While, rich have so much money that they don't even know how much money they actually have. There's a saying that if you can count your money, then you are not rich.
The developed world is falling back in the age of kings & peasants. The extremely rich elite (Kings) have their own world, while the general public (peasants) work their whole life away & still have nothing to show for all that work.
That's why, Islam:
1. Forbade Interest. It only widens the gap between rich & poor in the society.
2. Ordered to give alms. One of the 5 pillars of Islam to give 2.5% of the annual net income to the poor.
3. Encouraged to give charity: Give charity to poor as much as you can.
4. Consider this world as merely a hotel, where you are living for a finite period. There's no eternal life on this planet.
5. Never hoard money. Money will all be left here in this world for your descendants to squabble over. In the end, a little hole in the dirt is the eternal home of every human being on this planet.
6. The more you hoard money to increase your wealth, the more you buy assets for yourself (expensive cars, clothes, jewelry, furniture, houses etc), the more you will be questioned on the Judgement Day for what you actually accomplished in your life with all those assets. Did you actually do anything for others?
Perhaps, that's why, doing things for others makes a human much more happier & feel satisfied, whereas, increasing wealth never fills that inner hole, because, as I said above, greed is a blackhole.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The gap between the rich & poor in big cities in the US is widening, according to a new report.
Atlanta is the most unequal city with the wealthy taking home nearly 20 times more than low-income households, data from the Brookings Institution revealed.
The analysis compared 2013 census data for the top 5% of earners with the bottom 20% to work out the difference in wages.
Nationwide the rich took home around 9.3 times more money - approximately $200,234 in comparison to $21,433.
But in big cities it was up to 11.6 times more with top earners pocketing $221,700 & lower income households only taking home $19,143.
The data showed the average wage for top earners in Atlanta was $288,159 - nearly $274,000 more than the bottom fifth's earnings.
The income gap was also large in San Francisco, Boston & Miami, with San Francisco boasting the highest earnings for the wealthy at $423,171. Rich households in Washington were the only others to top $300,000.
The nation's most equal city is Virginia Beach, where the rich only take home around 6 times more.
Colorado Springs, Mesa & Oklahoma City are also fairly equal.
In total 31 of the 50 largest cities had lower incomes in 2013 than they did in 2007 before the recession.
But only one city - Albuquerque, New Mexico - saw incomes for the wealthy decline between 2012 & 2013.
The report was released amid discussions about minimum wage increases.
President Obama called on Congress to raise the federal minimum wage, which has been at $7.25 since July 2009, to $10.10 in his State of the Union address last year.
Many states - such as Washington, Massachusetts & Florida - have already put increases in place with more promised in the next two years.
But the report concluded: 'These findings confirm that income inequality remains a salient issue in many big cities today.
Another problem is the constant increase in greed. Greed is an animal which never feels satisfied & always needs more. Rich keeps hoarding money to increase their wealth, but what's the point of hoarding all that money.
A great movie from 2011, "In Time," explored this phenomenon, in a fictional setting, where people stop aging at 25 but are engineered to live only one more year. However, more time can always be bought. So, the poor masses work & then spend their money to buy more time & the rich have amassed so much time that they could live forever.
We can easily replace "Time" in the movie with "Money", & we realize that it is the story of our world. Poor spend whatever they earn on basic needs, so they can live. While, rich have so much money that they don't even know how much money they actually have. There's a saying that if you can count your money, then you are not rich.
The developed world is falling back in the age of kings & peasants. The extremely rich elite (Kings) have their own world, while the general public (peasants) work their whole life away & still have nothing to show for all that work.
That's why, Islam:
1. Forbade Interest. It only widens the gap between rich & poor in the society.
2. Ordered to give alms. One of the 5 pillars of Islam to give 2.5% of the annual net income to the poor.
3. Encouraged to give charity: Give charity to poor as much as you can.
4. Consider this world as merely a hotel, where you are living for a finite period. There's no eternal life on this planet.
5. Never hoard money. Money will all be left here in this world for your descendants to squabble over. In the end, a little hole in the dirt is the eternal home of every human being on this planet.
6. The more you hoard money to increase your wealth, the more you buy assets for yourself (expensive cars, clothes, jewelry, furniture, houses etc), the more you will be questioned on the Judgement Day for what you actually accomplished in your life with all those assets. Did you actually do anything for others?
Perhaps, that's why, doing things for others makes a human much more happier & feel satisfied, whereas, increasing wealth never fills that inner hole, because, as I said above, greed is a blackhole.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The gap between the rich & poor in big cities in the US is widening, according to a new report.
Atlanta is the most unequal city with the wealthy taking home nearly 20 times more than low-income households, data from the Brookings Institution revealed.
The analysis compared 2013 census data for the top 5% of earners with the bottom 20% to work out the difference in wages.
Nationwide the rich took home around 9.3 times more money - approximately $200,234 in comparison to $21,433.
But in big cities it was up to 11.6 times more with top earners pocketing $221,700 & lower income households only taking home $19,143.
The data showed the average wage for top earners in Atlanta was $288,159 - nearly $274,000 more than the bottom fifth's earnings.
The income gap was also large in San Francisco, Boston & Miami, with San Francisco boasting the highest earnings for the wealthy at $423,171. Rich households in Washington were the only others to top $300,000.
The nation's most equal city is Virginia Beach, where the rich only take home around 6 times more.
Colorado Springs, Mesa & Oklahoma City are also fairly equal.
In total 31 of the 50 largest cities had lower incomes in 2013 than they did in 2007 before the recession.
But only one city - Albuquerque, New Mexico - saw incomes for the wealthy decline between 2012 & 2013.
The report was released amid discussions about minimum wage increases.
President Obama called on Congress to raise the federal minimum wage, which has been at $7.25 since July 2009, to $10.10 in his State of the Union address last year.
Many states - such as Washington, Massachusetts & Florida - have already put increases in place with more promised in the next two years.
But the report concluded: 'These findings confirm that income inequality remains a salient issue in many big cities today.
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