America increasingly looks like a developing nation as 30% of Americans rapidly approach poverty, or are already there

Yeah... My ancestors were slaves who built this country. If I had a choice Africa would be my mother land.

Turtle Island would be mine.

...and then you can starve.

I did not say kick them out of America that is what I am assuming you are talking about. I am saying that if they were not taken into the percentage at all it would be lower. Also, even if they were all to get kicked out of America that would open more job opportunities and less poor as a whole.

Once again I am not a racist or against people flooding into this country to do better for themselves.

hehe, hell yea!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i totally agree with you!

any chance you can post a picture? I'd love to see your creation.

give me a few hours, I will post a pic..

i totally agree with you. the issue i have in my own struggle with myself and my heart is that we have failed our own. we can go elsewhere to help others (or hurt others) but we cannot help ourselves. every nation is full of people with free will and huge power. many do not realize this. we are the most sickening of the bunch because so many are complacent yes. But does it make it any better when you think of what that means? If our children are growing up in a country that has let itself slide as low as it has how much further will it go and who will it take down as well?

living on the streets in America would surely beat living in a small shack in haiti, i'm sure. Our poverty doesn't compare to the world's poverty.

There is very real and widespread suffering in the U.S. Hunger and food insecurity. Homelessness and housing insecurity. Joblessness and job insecurity. At the same time, here in the Northern Rockies and Northern Plains states, there are thousands of jobs that are going unfilled. Not many of them are particularly GOOD jobs...but they are jobs. In the 1930s, people would take a car that most would not even feel safe driving ten miles...and drive it across the country...or hitchhike and walk where necessary, just to chase a RUMOR of a not-so-great job.

But the people that I find frustrating are the ones who blame the federal government for all our current problems...and then wait for the federal government to fix their employment situation or impoverishment. Yeah, I am successful now as I push 50...but I worked at a lot of really, really shitty jobs on the way up. I once spent two months pulling staples out of documents eight hours a day for minimum wage so they could be microfilmed by someone else...it was the only job I could find during a bad recession in my home state. I did the best I could and in a couple of weeks, I got a 10-cent an hour raise and was made Head Staple Puller...my job was to make sure the other five of us and I made it through our quota of boxes of documents by the end of each shift. Yippee. Six weeks later, I used the reference from that job to get a job changing oil all day at one of those 10-minute oil change places...for a dollar over minimum wage. Took two showers a day and STILL smelled like grease and oil all the time...kind of embarrassing when you are 23 and trying to impress a date...

Nothing will ever change the fact that you have to take whatever you can get, work your ass off, and keep looking for something better. I realize sometimes there just isn't anything. But I get entry level people in their teens and twenties coming in all the time with comments like..."I am really looking forward to working here but by the way I can't work on Thursdays and I refuse to do work that is beneath my abilities" or "When do I get a company car?"...and I am not at all kidding...

well cz to be honest the expectations of the youth, (mine as well) was to be higher than our parents/grandparents. I can tell you the general idea was go to college, get a degree and you'll have a job. You have to remember our grandparents lived in a generation that sent their kids to school and so on, so the older generation might have not understood that the number of capable educated people would saturate a field as more went to school. They just pumped the stay in school slogan while having us take college prep courses, and some loose job training stuff in high-school. Yes I'm sure Socrates would've loved his concepts of education for the young to be degraded into glorified "job training". Anyway we expected a standard of living for the most part to be better than people in the great depression. None of us had ever been a prospector and with a generation of tech savvy kids none of us wanted to think of such a horrid existence of just surviving. To speak for myself my father moved to the states in the 70's with a degree in engineering and found a job literally "off the boat" in a week after arriving making a great salary before he started his masters program in new york. Not to compare apples to oranges but how could even I not just think if I just go to college then I will find a job in minutes knowing what I know. Of course as reality hits we eventually grow out of these things with a certain amount of cynicism.

I remember my sisters graduation from uni, she studied psychology and I was sitting there watching her class of grads. It was in the hundreds, I mean in just one graduating class with hundreds of kids who are all entering the job market to practice psychology? I can't say I know the number, but this type of thing apparently is common with this field of study all across the country. Simply put even if there were enough psych related jobs for those kids to fill, by sheer volume they'd be paid significantly less than their parents, again thats if there's enough jobs. After a year of looking for a job My sister now lives in Italy and works in fashion, a job she got through her friend. I think of course there's a ton of retail jobs, construction jobs, but for most of us we went to school to not have to resort to manual labor. In my eyes we will in some ways come resemble cuba, a country full of educated doctors who drive cabs for a living.

Race,

My grandparents were blue collar workers and farmer/ranchers who scrimped and saved to send their kids to college, too. My father was an architect (though he took off when I was 8 -- another story for another time). My grandparents and parents wanted a better life for my sister and me, and we went to college to obtain that better life...

But that didn't/doesn't let us off the hook from having to pay dues on the way up. In my experience very, very few college graduates offer much of value until they marry their educations with practical experience in the field anyway.

But it took me seven years to finish my four-year undergraduate degree and four years to finish my three-year law degree simply because even with a scholarship and loans there just wasn't enough money for me to help support my family back home and pay for my rent, utilities, books, etc. without taking a year here and there to work and save.

I fully understand your desire to do better than your parents...it is the expectation that you will do so just by dint of going to college that perplexes me. In my view, college is just part of a much larger picture. You still have to do whatever it takes to pay for that education and feed, clothe and house yourself while you obtain that education. Then once you graduate the REAL work begins. How DO you distinguish yourself among so many graduates...and while yes, the graduating classes are much larger now...they were pretty big 30, 40, 50 year ago, too -- especially the huge classes that resulted from the GI bills after WWII, Korea and Vietnam and the enormous baby boom classes (of which mine was one).

For example, I wouldn't let a lawyer one year out of law school draft a simple will for me, let alone engage in complex litigation, negotiation of complex contracts, etc. They have minds chock full of law...but very few of them actually know how to DO anything useful until they have been out in the field for at least a year or two (and some much longer than that). I suspect many/most fields are the same.

I expect a newly minted law grad to come to the firm and do excellent work 60 hours a week for three or four years and THEN come to me and tell me that he or she would like to alter their schedules a little here and there. Three or four MORE years like that, and we can start talking profit sharing. If they feel they are entitled to better than that merely because they graduated from law school? Well...there are 25 people lined up behind them who would LOVE to have their jobs...and that is not by any means a new phenomenon...

Thanks for posting that. I am currently a first year law student, and while I have 2 1/2 years until I graduate, I was wondering what employer’s expectations are for freshly minted law students. That being said, I am not overly optimistic about the future. I know I am not entitled to anything, but I am just hoping I will find a job so I will be able to afford my $1,000+ monthly payments toward my student loans for the next fifteen years.

Yes, I recall my first year of law school quite clearly...even if I can no longer find my car keys in the morning. I graduated from law school in 1991 and will make my final student loan payment in 2011. My daughter will start college in 2012. There is an amusing irony there. Mildly amusing.

I guess I find it hard to believe that starting out in the practice of law is all that different starting out in most other careers. During the first few years, you have to prove that you are not just capable of learning what is referred to as "black-letter law" and passing law school exams that use hypothetical fact patterns. You have to prove that you can help real-world people resolve their real-world legal issues. You ALSO (and perhaps even more importantly) have to show that you can show up to work on time, that you are reliable, that you can work as a professional on your own without someone holding your hand (after the first six months, anyway), that you have the honesty and integrity to not make off with client or firm funds. Heck, those are many of the same qualities I asked of waiters and bartenders when I used to manage restaurants before going to law school.

If you are a person of good character and are willing to work hard, the work you will be able to do generally becomes more and more interesting, and you will be able to increasingly steer your practice toward the areas that interest you most. For example, I enjoy business, law and governmental affairs. So for most of my career, I have been a CEO and general counsel in our state capitol. I like that variety of practicing law roughly a third of the time, doing business deals and managing business operations a third of the time and trying to affect governmental policy a third of the time. But I had to pay some serious dues before somebody offered me the chance to run a company and represent their interests before a legislative committee.

so what part of california are you talking about? just wondering.

I understand what you're saying, but also think about how much of it is a pretty bandage covering an ugly festering truth. Most of the everything anyone seems to have is through credit debt, loans with insane interest rates, or being paid for with money whose 'value' is plummeting...or in the case of many of my designer duds and car that still works thankfully, is simply leftover from better times but unable to be maintained. At least I know I'll always have that education I'm still paying for, but even that is turning out to be a losing investment.

I don't think we should be painting U.S. as a Uganda or anything. We still are blessed in many ways, but one can look at the recent stories here on Current and see that some not so pretty repercussions of poverty like violence, disease, inadequate education, etc. are encroaching on most of our "lovely" places to live.

I am guessing he lives in Beverly hills.

ya my first thought was the 90210 area code. come to where i live, i watch thousands put up tents and tend to their cardboard mansions each night. not all are drug addicts and too many are children. just because you think you live in some sort of utopia doesn't make it true. if you open your eyes wide enough even you will see someone starving.

Exactly red, I was just about to mention skidrow.

Exactly! At least we have access to clean water!

@ Nephwrack:

Spent my first few years in Yorba Linda. Then some more years in Laguna Niguel. Spent most of my life in Irvine. Now currently in Isla Vista, near Goleta, although technically in Santa Barbara.

@ lilysol:

I can only speak for myself and my family, neither of whom have ever been in debt. Our home was payed for in full—no mortgage. All cars, although rarely bought, were payed for in full. As a university student, I'm not taking any student loans. Don't even own a credit card; nor do I ever plan on getting one.

I personally feel absolutely zero threat of violence, disease, or inadequate education. I've never feared for my life at the hands of another individual; my health will at worst succumb to fatigue or a headache; and I don't really see how anyone with access to the Internet—or, alternatively, a library or a community college—can fear inadequate education.

@ redvelvet1278:

No, not 90210—just 92604. I've never seen any tents or cardboard mansions. It's funny how you think you can tell me how awful where I live must be, simply by extrapolating from your own regional local conditions. Compared to most of the rest of the world, this *is* a utopia. No, it's not perfect, and yes, there are some impoverished people, but even *they* aren't outright dying like they would if they were in a third world nation, and their numbers are few anyway.

calm come to los angeles.
Now as for southern california... well I'm moving back to new york city for a reason. Lets just say there's still some liberal thinking in the city.
I don't think there's enough time to list the problems california has and incredible poverty the state has, ohh and don't get me started on the infrastructure either, its almost third world...

Ummm, I'm a resident of California and I see this EVERYWHERE, just drive down a street and you'll see at least 12 houses for sale or have been taken back by the banks. I see more and more people riding the bus because they can't afford a car. I've seen an influx of homeless in my town and surrounding town. LA is even worse and yes you can even see bums in Beverly Hills as well. So before you say you don't see anything how about go outside and look around.

"So before you say you don't see anything how about go outside and look around."

Are you seriously telling me that YOU know my home city more than I do? How absolutely full of yourself do you have to be to try to tell someone that HIS perception of the city he's lived in for nearly TWO decades is incorrect, but that YOURS—despite you having never even been there—is correct?

Fucking Christ—get over yourself. Is it really that hard to believe that in a country as utterly massive as the United States, there are some areas where life is actually quite PLEASANT? And NICE?

What a revolting idea, I know! Certainly life cannot have shades of gray!?! BLACK and WHITE! BLACK and WHITE! ABSOLUTES FTW!!!!

Idiot.

I'll be heading to wall street brother

Oddly enough, this is not apparent to everyone. Especially to those within the beltway establishment, who craft policy to benefit bitter, waste of life, old fogies that no longer have anything worthwhile to contribute to society.

I know and this is the problem. I watched Rachel Maddow on Letterman last night talking about how Obama quietly has made a lot of achievements and she cheered that he saved us from a depression with the bailout and stimulus.

But who did he save exactly? The many millions foreclosed on and continued foreclosed upon? No. How about those who can't find jobs? No. (Oh they got unemployment extensions. Whoopee! $250 a week to remain barely alive) How about those who have given up on finding jobs? No. They aren't even counted as being unemployed anymore.

So who did it save?
1. Wall Street mega bucks corporations
2. Politicians who live off Wall Street mega bucks corporations
3. Rachel Maddow
4. David Letterman

Yeah, anyone who was already rich doesn't have to worry too much about losing even more of their investments, while the rest of us are fading away in a depression unnoticed by the corporate media that only serves the rich.

These people need a wake up call.

We need more people in the streets like you see in France or England. Masses of people, hundreds of thousands of people to scare the living shit out of these rich pompous assholes.

lol.I love 3. 4. on that list. He is always on their shows giving them ratings.