80% of the US Population is at or below the POVERTY line - WHY is this NOT a National Emergency???

[Agnosticsherbet]

8. Because the median net worth of a US Congress person is $6.5 million.

The median net worth of a Senator is $9 million.

And even President Obama's net worth is 11.8 million (2012).

We all grow up with the fantasy of the "American Dream" where any person can get rich just through hard work, which implies that if you aren't rich it is because you don't work hard, which is the great American myth of the lazy poor.

It is not an issue, because Consumerism (our functioning economic system for the masses) mandates that the middle class and the poor go in debt to their eyeballs to buy stuff they don't need simply because it is the automobile of the rich, or the beer of the rich, or the underwear of the rich. If we drive the same automobile, drink the same beer, and wear the same underwear, our ass is rich, or just like rich.

Spend an evening watching television and look at how wealth and social class is used. There are entire towns that have no poor (even sanitation workers are middle class or wealthy). Well over 90% of the poor you see will be on crime dramas and they will be drug addicts, homeless, or criminals. The few that are not are clowns.

Poverty isn't an issue because we indoctrinated from day 1 of our lives to believe we are losers if we are poor. This indoctrination makes any attempt to deal in a constructive way with poverty almost impossible.

President Johnson's Great Society initiative was the last great attempt to deal with this issue.