4 ms·
At the risk of being demeaning, this could only be a reply from someone with money who knows no one without it. Go travel around the poorest areas in the US and
by earthscienceman 8y ago
At the risk of being demeaning, this could only be a reply from someone with money who knows no one without it. Go travel around the poorest areas in the US and spend time talking to people, you'll learn really quickly how little access to cell phones or public libraries with WiFi are improving their life.
Sure almost everyone in this country has a computer in their pocket, they also very often have no access to fresh groceries at the same time. The town I grew up in is 60% below the poverty line and the nearest grocery store with fresh produce is a 30 minute drive away. That's over 800 people in one city who eat frozen gas station food on a daily basis. Do you think their wifi access and cable television is a good measure of their quality of life? They've also had to shutdown the local hospital recently. Meaning their already-terrible access to healthcare just got that much worse. Most people there only visit a doctor once every 5 years.
And I can already imagine the replies to this "well, times are changing, they're living in a dying region". Which... while true... doesn't come close to forgiving the systemic problems that put them in this situation. Systemic problems that by no measure had to come to fruition, if we had only had a stronger system of wealth distribution and thus physical and educational support for the people at the bottom of the pile.
Also, for the record, they're actually closing the library in my hometown.
- nilskidoo 8y agoSomething many people may be unaware of, is that one cannot receive food stamps without a physical street address. Meaning that the numbers on food stamps and the numbers of homeless are for the most part 2 separate groups of people. Combined, they easily represent half the population. And I insist that census statisticians constantly downplay homeless stats, for two reasons. Because the real numbers are embarrassing, and because you cannot hit a moving target.
- tlb 8y agoAbout 9% of US households use food stamps at some point in the year [0]. About 0.17% of US people are homeless on a given night [1]. Nowhere near half. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assistance_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assista... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Sta...
- nilskidoo 8y agoAnd by my years in the streets do I insist that such figures are full-on lies, lies told to comfort the masses away from throwing trashcans through shop windows and burning down city hall and the like. Most of said masses don't look away from their screens long enough to see the real picture.
- yyyymmddhhmmss 8y agoThanks for the first sentence. Parent’s question infuriates me. The ignorance is just so real.