1. Restoring the Village (Cont.)

     JESUS:

It is hard to comprehend that a single man-made himself $5.5 billion last year in commissions when so many hardworking villagers lost their jobs and their homes. The money was a reward for doing nothing except churning one portfolio against others, through their computer-generated derivatives, manipulating villagers’ hard-earned savings, their harvests through commodity futures, raising the cost of food, basic necessities, and transportation and creating artificial wealth that could not be sustained. The whole economy of the world has collapsed causing even more hardship to the 99%, especially the poor and very poor, who now can’t afford the basic food to feed their children.

How can one man alone make $5.5 billion for himself while 16 million American children are homeless and living in their cars, if they even have a car, or on the cold and harsh streets?⁽¹⁾

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IGNORING AMERICA'S POOR - With 46 million people living in poverty, why are the presidential candidates so quiet on issues affecting the poor? The US Census Bureau has set the poverty threshold for a four-person household at about $23,000. Its latest figures show that in 2011, 46.2 million people, or 15 per cent, live in poverty. Nearly half of them live in 'extreme poverty' with an income below 50 per cent of the poverty threshold. And tens of millions more are at risk, as median incomes continue to decline.
 -- Last year the Census Bureau estimated that an additional 51 million people are near the poverty line, with incomes less than 50 per cent above the threshold.
 -- The UN says the child poverty rate is the second highest in the developed world, following Romania with 21.9 per cent of the nation's children under 18 living in poverty.
 -- Minorities are also disproportionately impacted, with 27.6 per cent of African Americans and 25.3 per cent of Hispanics living in poverty. In contrast, only 9.8 per cent of non-Hispanic whites live in poverty.
 -- According to Gallup: 50 percent of those below the poverty threshold are Independents, 32 per cent are Democrats and 15 per cent are Republicans. (Read more)