Originally published January 13 2011
Poverty soars as millions of Americans head to food banks
by Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
(NaturalNews) Those who insist the "recession" is over might want to tell that to the nearly 50 million people, and growing, in the U.S. that are now considered to be "food insecure," or unable to provide food for themselves and their families. According to Chaz Valenza, a New Jersey-based writer and small business owner, thousands of Americans that were once considered middle and even upper-middle class are now entering the ranks of the poor and hungry.
For many, job losses and perpetual unemployment landed them in line at the local food bank. But for a surprising many others, inflation and the many sectors of life that are affected by it drove their otherwise stable middle class incomes into the category of poverty. And based on the way it looks, things are only going to get progressively worse for many more Americans if things do not change.
Valenza explains in his article that while America's poverty crisis is nowhere close to various third-world countries where people live on mere cents a day, the trend towards poverty in the U.S. is on the rise in a way that would shock most people. Many folks who work the same amounts or even more than middle class people did just a few decades ago, for instance, are barely making ends meet today. And except for those who are financially independent, even some of the wealthiest among us are only a paycheck or two away from the bread line.
What is the cause of all this? The range of answers to this question surely covers the gamut of human thought and imagination. But the primary reasons, many of which are never spoken of in the mainstream media, are not just perceived shortages of resources. The real reasons for increased poverty include excessive and unjust taxation, a shifting fiat currency controlled by an elite few, and the monopolization of key economic sectors.
The income tax, which some evidence suggests was never even legally ratified as law to begin with (http://www.naturalnews.com/022856_tax_income...), robs hard-working Americans of a significant portion of their earnings every year. And unlike sales and property taxes that at least go to fund local and state projects that benefit citizens, federal income taxes are shoveled directly into the coffers of centralized powers that use it to pay for tyranny like the SWAT teams that raid raw milk dairies, the FDA and FTC that fight supplement companies, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that increasingly violates individual liberties.
Many of the key sectors of the American economy are now monopolized and controlled by a few wealthy elite as well. The oil industry, the medical industry, and now even the food industry, are now almost entirely owned and operated by centralized interests that dictate both the quality and cost of the products.
For oil, this means total reliance on an energy technology infrastructure that is largely owned by a few oil barons who manipulate prices within the fiat currency system (http://www.naturalnews.com/023657_oil_econom...). For medicine, it means a flawed system of drugs and surgery that promotes profits rather than health -- and at the expense of society, both financially and physically (http://www.naturalnews.com/027995_debt_spend...). And for food, it means control by a few multinational biotechnology companies that are manipulating policy to replace sustainable, self-reliant growing methods with the centralized cultivation of patented, genetically-modified (GM) "Frankenfoods" (http://www.naturalnews.com/030863_food_safet...).
There there is the U.S. fiat currency system that, because it is no longer backed by gold, now constitutes a "debt" currency that those in power can manipulate for their own gain. Bank bailouts and the mass printing of "Federal Reserve Notes" degrades the integrity of the dollar and strips the value from people's hard-earned wages. This corrupt money system alone is largely to blame for America's growing poverty because it is a silent inflation method that flies under the radar of many Americans (http://www.naturalnews.com/022662.html).
The povertization of America is a real problem, and it is one that has been slowly escalating for quite a while. But more government intervention in the form of taxes, regulation, and control, is not the answer to the problem. If Americans ever hope to regain their freedom -- which includes the freedom to prosper and not be chained to the slavery of an overtaxing, overburdening central government -- they will have to forcibly decouple themselves from these yokes of slavery that are not only constraining them, but now slowly starving them.
Sources for this story include:
http://www.wordswillnever.com/please-kill-me...
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