America’s Greatest Shame: Child Poverty Rises and Food Stamps Cut While Billionaires Boom

Billionaires are becoming wealthier as America slowly recovers from economic recession, but why does rate of childhood poverty in the country rise? Well, there are a couple facts that led to the high poverty rate in America, explains Les Leopold, the author of the article. Firstly, banks and firms are dolling out billions of bonuses while 99% of the population suffer with almost no wage increase. Secondly, Washington tried to “help” children in hunger by cutting 4 billion dollars of food stamps each year. “When times get tough, you’ve got to suck it up and take more from the poor,” Leopold describes ironically.

Nevertheless, I think the situation behind the scenes is much more complicated. Leopold is passively hinting that the rich should donate charity to the poor so that the economy would be more balanced. But this movement is unethical itself because it forms a big tradeoff between fairness and efficiency. Moreover, one cannot simply say that the rich do not deserve what they have without even recognizing the effort behind their cash.

I am not speaking of doing nothing, but it would be difficult to come up with a solution to create a win-win situation when the problem gets too big.