RevolutionaryMarxist
16th January 2007, 00:57
This is an article that I'm hoping to publish in the next issue of my High School Newspaper. I've already had several friends read it, but I think more professional help would be found here. I told my editor that the article would be on "The Growing Wealth Inequality and Poverty in the US and around the World".
Purpose: Mass Education about the Blighted State of the World and US Contrary to Goverment Propaganda
Points I Need help on:
1.) Grammar
2.) I Don't want it to sound too "Anti-American", because then the patriotic kids automatically turn a blind eye to it.
3.) The Balance between Statistics and Analysis - I want solid proof and lots of information but that is hard with keeping the readability interest to a high. The point of this is readability and mass-education.
4.) Length. This is likely the maximum length My editor would allow, and besides if it were too long then people wouldnt read it anyway.
__________________________________________________ ______________
We all have it very easy here in Guilderland – none of us think about dying at our jobs or school, or landing on the streets without warning. These things though, are a reality for millions of other Americans across the country. Every year over 6,000 innocent and normal people drop dead at their jobs from accidents and injuries, or simple overwork. According to the US Bureau of Labor, every year over 4,000,000 more workers suffer injuries ranging from falling several stories down causing a broken back or neck, to being burnt by chemicals, to having machines tear up their limbs until they have to get an amputation. There is something else that the Department of Labor calls “Multiple Traumatic Injuries” which claims 50,000 workers per year. While they don’t explain what it is, the name gives a clear impression that it probably sucks really bad. Yet we are told all of America is happy, that our workers are safe and well paid, and live happy lives in the Suburbs just like everyone else. I don’t think having your arm cut off is nice at all, but at least now you get to leave work for it. Just 50 years ago, you’d have to come in the next day, or you’d get fired – and with a missing arm, it would likely be very hard to find new employment. An old business motto is “If you don’t come in on Sunday, don’t bother coming in on Monday”. We almost never hear about poverty in the US, but actually 40,000,000 people suffer in poverty, and every year it keeps on growing at triple the rate of population growth. Poverty even exists here in Guilderland, where over a thousand people wallow in it, and right next door in Albany its even worse. Tens of thousands of poor people struggle to simply survive on the streets of Albany, where people stab each other to death just for a few cents. Nearly a fifth of the nation doesn’t even have health-care, which most of us take for granted. If a person without health insurance gets sick and goes to the doctors, they are slapped with a bill that causes them to be hounded by debt-collection agents for the rest of their life. That is why so many more people have gone bankrupt in the past few years. While living standards for everyone else has crashed within the past few years, life for a CEO has just grown even lovelier. In 1995, a CEO made 185 times as much as a normal worker – in 2000 it increased to 525 times the salary of a normal worker. To think this exists while three and a half million people lie homeless on American streets, 1,370,000 of them being children. None of these statistics is made up or biased. In fact, most of them come from the very mouths of the United States Government’s printers.
If you think the true state of America is suprising, we actually have it really nice compared to the rest of the world, where over 3 billion people, from Africa, Asia, South America, and everywhere, suffer in such terrible poverty that they die by the thousands everday. Out of these 3 billion, every day over 30,000 are estimated to die due to malnutrition, overwork, disease, and all sorts of other things that could be prevented so easily. According to the UN Millennium Project, it would take only several billion dollars a year to fix all poverty in the world, but societies money-hogging millionaires say no. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on the Iraqi War, which has caused half a million deaths, while all that money could have instead been used to save millions. According to a study by the UN World Institute of Economic Development, the top 2% of adults in the world own 50% of all of the worlds wealth, while on the opposite end, the bottom 3 billion people own only 1% of the worlds wealth. There are only 700 Billionaires in the world. Out of those, the three richest people in the world are: Bill Gates with 47 Billion dollars, Warren Buffet with 44 Billion, and Lakshmi Mittal with 25 Billion. Together, these three people have more money than the billions of common folk around the world who work hard every single day just to live. You know someone has too much money when a man like Lakshmi Mittal can spend $60,000,000 on his daughters wedding.
The world isn’t “ok” when every 1 out of 2 people can barely find food to eat.Workers work all day, making barely enough in these countries to live till the next, with their only joy being to come home to their shack and forget about the world for a few hours while they sleep, while business executives spend their whole day scheming at their desk in their office buildings on how to make even more money. What’s the point of making even more billions when you already have so much? It’s simple greed. No worker enjoys making shirts or carrying boxes all day…this torment only ends when the worker finally slumps over and dies. Anyone remember the haunting sign above Auschwitz’s Gates? “Arbeit Macht Frei!” – “Work shall Free you!”. No matter how much one of those billionaires “deserve” their money, no one should be allowed to cause such death and destruction among the worlds poor and innocent, which constitute the mass majority of humanity. Why should millionaires be allowed to live in mansions, dine on imported wines, and swim in their indoor pools all day in places such as Lagos, Nigeria, while across the river workers live in one-story cardboard houses! A worker from Nigeria describes the settings – “They live in one-room apartments, unfit for human beings. The roofs leak, so during the day, there is intense heat and at night the cold comes in. The floors are not cemented but are just soil. When it rains the houses are flooded out and the workers have to leave until they dry out. The impression upon entering these districts is one of entering a war zone with row upon row of crumbling houses… There is no water, no proper sanitation. Sewage spills down the roads… There is no such thing as a "bathroom”…There are no medical facilities in these districts, no hospitals or clinics… These are all high-density areas. Possibly, more than five million people live in them…”
Recently though that has changed – the millionaires on the other side of the town ordered the houses to be bulldozed so the view would be nicer. What happened to the people living there? That was an ‘unforeseen consequence’.
We scream so much at wars and murder crimes, which we rightly declare to be wrong, but we ignore the real and greatest killer. Ignore this if you want – it doesn’t change the truth; that thousands of people are dying everyday due to the psychotic greed of a few selfish people. My purpose here isn’t to insult America, but to shed light on information about the suffering of the American People and billions of people all around the world in hopes that someday all this can change, to where true liberty and justice exists.
Purpose: Mass Education about the Blighted State of the World and US Contrary to Goverment Propaganda
Points I Need help on:
1.) Grammar
2.) I Don't want it to sound too "Anti-American", because then the patriotic kids automatically turn a blind eye to it.
3.) The Balance between Statistics and Analysis - I want solid proof and lots of information but that is hard with keeping the readability interest to a high. The point of this is readability and mass-education.
4.) Length. This is likely the maximum length My editor would allow, and besides if it were too long then people wouldnt read it anyway.
__________________________________________________ ______________
We all have it very easy here in Guilderland – none of us think about dying at our jobs or school, or landing on the streets without warning. These things though, are a reality for millions of other Americans across the country. Every year over 6,000 innocent and normal people drop dead at their jobs from accidents and injuries, or simple overwork. According to the US Bureau of Labor, every year over 4,000,000 more workers suffer injuries ranging from falling several stories down causing a broken back or neck, to being burnt by chemicals, to having machines tear up their limbs until they have to get an amputation. There is something else that the Department of Labor calls “Multiple Traumatic Injuries” which claims 50,000 workers per year. While they don’t explain what it is, the name gives a clear impression that it probably sucks really bad. Yet we are told all of America is happy, that our workers are safe and well paid, and live happy lives in the Suburbs just like everyone else. I don’t think having your arm cut off is nice at all, but at least now you get to leave work for it. Just 50 years ago, you’d have to come in the next day, or you’d get fired – and with a missing arm, it would likely be very hard to find new employment. An old business motto is “If you don’t come in on Sunday, don’t bother coming in on Monday”. We almost never hear about poverty in the US, but actually 40,000,000 people suffer in poverty, and every year it keeps on growing at triple the rate of population growth. Poverty even exists here in Guilderland, where over a thousand people wallow in it, and right next door in Albany its even worse. Tens of thousands of poor people struggle to simply survive on the streets of Albany, where people stab each other to death just for a few cents. Nearly a fifth of the nation doesn’t even have health-care, which most of us take for granted. If a person without health insurance gets sick and goes to the doctors, they are slapped with a bill that causes them to be hounded by debt-collection agents for the rest of their life. That is why so many more people have gone bankrupt in the past few years. While living standards for everyone else has crashed within the past few years, life for a CEO has just grown even lovelier. In 1995, a CEO made 185 times as much as a normal worker – in 2000 it increased to 525 times the salary of a normal worker. To think this exists while three and a half million people lie homeless on American streets, 1,370,000 of them being children. None of these statistics is made up or biased. In fact, most of them come from the very mouths of the United States Government’s printers.
If you think the true state of America is suprising, we actually have it really nice compared to the rest of the world, where over 3 billion people, from Africa, Asia, South America, and everywhere, suffer in such terrible poverty that they die by the thousands everday. Out of these 3 billion, every day over 30,000 are estimated to die due to malnutrition, overwork, disease, and all sorts of other things that could be prevented so easily. According to the UN Millennium Project, it would take only several billion dollars a year to fix all poverty in the world, but societies money-hogging millionaires say no. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on the Iraqi War, which has caused half a million deaths, while all that money could have instead been used to save millions. According to a study by the UN World Institute of Economic Development, the top 2% of adults in the world own 50% of all of the worlds wealth, while on the opposite end, the bottom 3 billion people own only 1% of the worlds wealth. There are only 700 Billionaires in the world. Out of those, the three richest people in the world are: Bill Gates with 47 Billion dollars, Warren Buffet with 44 Billion, and Lakshmi Mittal with 25 Billion. Together, these three people have more money than the billions of common folk around the world who work hard every single day just to live. You know someone has too much money when a man like Lakshmi Mittal can spend $60,000,000 on his daughters wedding.
The world isn’t “ok” when every 1 out of 2 people can barely find food to eat.Workers work all day, making barely enough in these countries to live till the next, with their only joy being to come home to their shack and forget about the world for a few hours while they sleep, while business executives spend their whole day scheming at their desk in their office buildings on how to make even more money. What’s the point of making even more billions when you already have so much? It’s simple greed. No worker enjoys making shirts or carrying boxes all day…this torment only ends when the worker finally slumps over and dies. Anyone remember the haunting sign above Auschwitz’s Gates? “Arbeit Macht Frei!” – “Work shall Free you!”. No matter how much one of those billionaires “deserve” their money, no one should be allowed to cause such death and destruction among the worlds poor and innocent, which constitute the mass majority of humanity. Why should millionaires be allowed to live in mansions, dine on imported wines, and swim in their indoor pools all day in places such as Lagos, Nigeria, while across the river workers live in one-story cardboard houses! A worker from Nigeria describes the settings – “They live in one-room apartments, unfit for human beings. The roofs leak, so during the day, there is intense heat and at night the cold comes in. The floors are not cemented but are just soil. When it rains the houses are flooded out and the workers have to leave until they dry out. The impression upon entering these districts is one of entering a war zone with row upon row of crumbling houses… There is no water, no proper sanitation. Sewage spills down the roads… There is no such thing as a "bathroom”…There are no medical facilities in these districts, no hospitals or clinics… These are all high-density areas. Possibly, more than five million people live in them…”
Recently though that has changed – the millionaires on the other side of the town ordered the houses to be bulldozed so the view would be nicer. What happened to the people living there? That was an ‘unforeseen consequence’.
We scream so much at wars and murder crimes, which we rightly declare to be wrong, but we ignore the real and greatest killer. Ignore this if you want – it doesn’t change the truth; that thousands of people are dying everyday due to the psychotic greed of a few selfish people. My purpose here isn’t to insult America, but to shed light on information about the suffering of the American People and billions of people all around the world in hopes that someday all this can change, to where true liberty and justice exists.