Let’s write on the assumption that, following the previous posts of this category, I have my yearned superpower and am able to use it to its full extent.
Kid Flash is property of DC. This art is property of m-lin
Like the old proverb says, “Charity begins at home”. So, in the same way, before actually wanting to fix hunger in other parts of the world, I should focus on the place I am, the country that is currently giving me a home. United States.
Now, many of you might say: “But America’s got nothing to worry about!”, or “Why help the rich more?”. Despite popular belief in third world countries, despite what show-offs who emigrate back to their home country might bring or say about the US, life is not easy here. One doesn’t just come to work on whatever and get a load of cash for it. If you’re one of those people who believe America is the “country of opportunities”, learn that one must work hard to attain such opportunities.
But let’s get back on track. To give a few numbers, about 630,000 people in this country are homeless. That means they have no home and have to sleep on shelters… if they’re lucky. If not, they are forced to sleep wherever they can. I’ve met homeless people in Miami who have had to sleep in parks because they had nowhere else to go. And that would mean sleeping with temperatures of up to 95-100 degrees Fahrenheit on summer, and less than 60 on Winter. That may be nothing compared to temperatures in New York and Colorado, but being used to warm temperatures here, a Floridian doesn’t cope so well with such weather.
Let’s focus on the unemployment. As of October 2013, unemployment rate in the United States is 7.3 %. A little bit more than seven people for every one hundred Americans has no job. Now, the US has about 317,000,000 inhabitants as of January 2014. So, 7.3 percent of 317,000,000 is unemployed:
317,000,000 x 0.073 = 23,141,000
Currently, there are twenty three million, one hundred and forty one thousand people who have no job. Wait a sec, what was the total number of homeless people? Around six hundred and thirty thousand. That means, under the worst case scenario, six hundred and thirty thousand people are both homeless and have no job. Six hundred and thirty thousand people are completely at the mercy of other’s kindness to even be able to survive!
Now, think about this in a harsher way: I was born in Peru, in 1990. And back then, Peru’s population was of about 21,764,515 inhabitants, less than US’s actual unemployment rate and homeless number of people. Imagine being born in a country where EVERYBODY is poor. I’m not saying I grew up like that… although we weren’t so good back then (a month after I was born, inflation rate was at 397% ! Sometimes you had to weigh your options, whether to buy one roll of bread, or take the bus back home; or if you asked for soup at the restaurant, you’d wish for it to come cold, or else if it came hot by the time it was cold enough to eat the price doubled). But consider that the whole population of the unemployed and the homeless is big enough to encompass a country on its own! And that goes without mentioning those who have a home but because of mortgages and foreclosures are about to lose them, or those who have a job but barely make minimum wage.
Not everybody is honest. Among such a number, several people take advantage of government help, so many of them are living off the system. The government should carefully scrutinize who deserves help and who doesn’t, because clearly, while some people abuse the help they receive, others don’t get enough.
This, of course, gets worse, when we realize: This account is made on statistics. Not every person is one hundred percent accurately accounted for in this. And even worse, I’m pretty sure this account doesn’t even try to involve the ever growing undocumented immigrant population here. And I say undocumented, because it’s the nicest term to refer to such a person. What with name callings like, “illegals” or even “aliens”…!!
The Alien Queen. I’m sure we immigrants don’t look like this right?
I have been raised in Catholicism. But even if I was raised to believe in pastafarianism, I’d have to side with what Pope Francis has been saying:
“The world’s wealthy have a precise responsibility towards others, particularly those who are most frail, weak, and vulnerable” (an excerpt from Yahoo! Finance)
I’m sure if you’re rich you might per chance feel tempted to stop reading, and I’m sure atheists would do the same. But this message of a Christian leader is void of any religious meaning, nor is it meant to show greed towards the assets of the wealthy.
How much money would a rich person make? Take this list, starting with Bill Gates and finishing with Nicholas Woodman. Gates makes about $3,710,000,000 a year. Woodman made about $521,000,000 in 2012. Would it really be an inconvenience for any of these 386 “dudes” to dedicate 1 million to the poor?
And this doesn’t have to mean they would give the money to them, that’s like stopping to give them alms (it would amount to $ 16.68 for each of the 23,141,000). The real solution is in employing that money into investigating newer technologies to generate new, or more jobs, like, for example, trying to find out a way for solar energy to be more efficient and obtainable… or (maybe going a little cartoon-crazy) trying to figure out how it could be possible to purify ocean water for safe consumption.
If I was ever blessed with such super powers, I would make sure to employ my super speed to helping to these causes. Heck, if the term applies here, I would definitely attempt to speed up the process of expanding on technologies that would enable us all to be working, to be useful, and to make sure everyone benefits and becomes sustainable through these advances.
The world has known the United States to be a country of Union, it’s even in the name! But that cannot be more wrong today…
A picture from couponshirt.com
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Green Dream 
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