by Amela Piric

Created on: May 07, 2009   Last Updated: September 07, 2011

Each and every day more of our neighbors, cousins, and friends are losing their homes to foreclosures.  While in the past, poverty used to be restricted to the elderly and low-income families only, today we have a whole army of unemployed youth that is forced to return to their parents' nest being unable to find the job on the market.  It is not that our youth does not possess the necessary skills and/or qualifications for the job market but the jobs have already been eaten up on trees by former generations.  Even those lucky to have their jobs are having to scrimp by and save for an emergency fund just in case they loose their job overnight due to economic recession.

Our poverty is relative compared to other countries especially the third world countries. Yet, our society has never been as impoverished as now since the time of Great Depression.  Many have lost their jobs and homes and are now living on the margins of our society.  Unemployment rates reached their peak.  Our standard of living decreased due to high levels of indebtedness.  There are a lot of people who are struggling to bring home the bacon due to ever rising prices of food and gas.  We seem to be living on and spending money that we have not even received through our paycheck yet. We have witnessed the demise of our middle class as our society perpetuates now more than ever a broad separation of the classes as the gap between wealthy and poor seems to be growing at an alarming rate.

Yet, helping big corporations while neglecting a regular man struggling hard to bring the bread on the table for his family is not the answer to the growing poverty levels in America. In fact, printing more money may decrease the value of our dollar and thus further increase our inflation rates. To counter the rising levels of poverty in our society, we should turn towards production of food. We should find ways to help small business owners and entrepreneurs stay in business instead of closing up their shops because they are unable to compete with the larger corporations. Recall that the American dream was set up by helping entrepreneurs to stay in business by giving them loans with small interest rates in order to support business growth. The answer to our growing poverty levels is to go back to our old fashioned style banking with low interest rates for starting small businesses.

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