For every cut and past article you put up spouting "statistics", another cut and paste opposite view can be presented.
It is a chart my friend that proves you wrong now admit it or put up your cut and paste article to prove it wrong or shut up.
BTW that was taken from the University of Michigan which I bet you will now cause it of being a liberal (Communist is what you want to say but then you would reveal your Mccarthyist position) institution.
Here is a real cut and paste job from the same site.
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/salas.356/usa_vs._world
USA vs. The World
The USA has a poverty rate that is embarrassing compared to other rich nations throughout the world (Berliner, 2005). If you look at the chart above you can see this. Compared to all the other "rich nations" the childhood poverty rate in the USA is much higher, only Mexico is higher than the US and honestly, who other than UNICEF considers Mexico to be a rich country? How can we be the only superpower left on Earth and have the second highest childhood poverty rate among other rich nations (the highest if we do not count Mexico)? When I look at this chart I am embarrassed and ashamed of this country. The funny thing is that throughout the 90s we actually have been improving on our childhood poverty rate, by nearly 2.5%, so the poverty rate represented by the chart is the poverty rate after years of improvement (Berliner, 2005).
War on Poverty
In 1964 during his state of the union address, President Johnson declared his War on Poverty. Since then, an estimated $7 trillion has been spent on this war. The US has spent all this money to fight poverty and has not shown any great improvements (Felkins, 2001). How is it possible to spend $7 trillion on poverty and not show any improvement? The irony here is that people are considered poor due to lack of money, yet $7 trillion is used to fight poverty and still, many of these people still lack financial resources.
A look at third world countries
National leaders from many countries understand that poverty needs to be eliminated and is a key to educational reform especially in third world countries. In many of these countries, less than 75% of students even reach grade five due to poverty and the poor quality of education. These countries have overcrowded classrooms, poor facilities, poorly trained teachers, and even lack the necessary textbooks. Studies have shown that in these countries more than a third of children have very poor reading skills even after years of schooling. (Guttman, 2005)
It is funny that in describing the educational system in third world countries I am saying many of the same things I would say when describing the education of poor children in the US. I am sure the conditions are much more drastic in the third world countries but it is still very sad that there is even a comparision.
Why not take suggestions?
The United Kingdom vowed to improve their poverty situation and actually did it (UNICEF, 2005). If you look at the chart above they are not the greatest when it comes to their childhood poverty rate but at least they are improving and have a much less rate than the United States. I do not want to go into economic policies of other nations here but if they can do it, why can't we? Would it really be difficult to look at why other countries do not have the enormous rate of poverty that we have in the United States? Are our policy makers to stubborn to take suggestions from other countries? I can understand that we are a different country and what other countries are doing may not be the best solution for the United States, but something has to be done. The only way to know is to try. We can just take a look and see what might work for us and what probably will not, we can go from there. We are already the worst, where do we have to go but up?
