Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur who serves as a kind of watchdog on extreme poverty around the world, today issued a critique of the current state of American society. According to him, President Trump is leading the country in a dramatic turnaround, rewarding the rich and punishing the poor by blocking access to even the most basic services. This is a systematic attack on America\’s welfare programs for those unable to provide for themselves. Once the government begins to lose its sense of resolve, it will soon turn cruel. Millions of Americans are struggling to make ends meet. The elimination of food and medical assistance programs while housing subsidies are cut will have a dramatic impact on those living on the edge. When asked to define the term, Mr. Alston replied. Severe food shortages and little or no access to health care.” Alston literally sounded the alarm in the final report of the study on extreme poverty in the United States, which was released on Friday. At the same time, the report will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva at the end of June. His findings are based on a December tour of some of the poorest communities in the United States, from Skid Row in Los Angeles to poor African-American neighborhoods in Alabama to coal-mining areas in West Virginia to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.
The report is one of the worst assessments of the Trump administration in its 16 months in the White House. The report is likely to spark debate across the global political spectrum about how the United States is moving at breakneck speed toward ever greater social inequality. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said it is crucial that international observers focus on the impact of Trump\’s actions. The Trump administration has inherited high inequality from its predecessors and is making the situation even worse.
