Poorism? What Is Inequality Coming To?

[marmar]

from OurFuture.org:



Poorism? What Is Inequality Coming To?
By Sally Kohn

March 10th, 2008 - 10:29pm ET


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It says something about the extremities of inequality in our world when rich people are now paying money to take tours of poor people. An article by Eric Weiner in the travel section of the Sunday New York Times highlights the growing business of “poorism” --- taking tour groups to visit the world’s slums and shanty towns for a glimpse at just how bad things really are.

Troubling enough is the irony of tourists paying enough money to a tour guide to traipse through a poor family’s home that, if given to that family instead, might actually help them escape from poverty. One excursion cited in the New York Times article charges $7.50 per person to gawk at the Dharavi slums of Mumbai, India. Worldwide, 3 billion people --- nearly half the world’s population --- live on less than two dollars a day, including almost 80% of Indians and, most assuredly, 100% of people living in the Dharavi slums.

It’s not that rich privileged folks seeing poverty first-hand is a bad thing. It’s vital that everyone from titans of industry to those of us privileged enough to have a home and running water understand the true depths of poverty that exist on our planet, in our own backyards and on the other side of the globe. Yet when, day-to-day, the privileged are so removed from the poor that we need tour guides and travel itineraries in order to actually witness what poverty is, it says something about just how extreme inequality has become.

Consider the recently opened Liberty Hotel in Boston, fashioned by remodeling a former prison. With more than 1 in 100 Americans behind bars, there’s something sick about people paying $319 and up a night for “lockdown” in a prison-turned-luxury-hotel. Can you imagine young African American men --- 1 in 30 of whom are incarcerated, and all of whom face the ever-present threat of incarceration through racial profiling --- finding it “vacation-like” to spend a night in the prison-hotel, even if they could afford it? That those who can afford a $319-a-night hotel room at the Liberty find it novel reveals how insulated they are from the nowhere-near-novel reality of prison in the lives of many, especially poor communities of color.

Then again, maybe I’m being too --- oh, I don’t know --- moral. Perhaps poverty tourism and prison-chic simply reflects pragmatic, economic opportunism. After all, we’ve build a society and an economy in the United States where extreme greed is rewarded and, in fact, reinforced. The resulting poverty and suffering at the bottom is not only accepted but, by growing prison construction and cutting domestic social service programs and foreign aid, sustained. So in the otherwise-collapsing US economy, poverty may be just the growth industry we need! Better yet, we should continue to slash public benefit programs and programs that help the poor, to open up new economic “horizons”. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/poorism-what-inequality-coming

[Orwellian_Ghost]

1. From article

With that in mind, knowing that the chieftans of exploitation are always looking for the next big thing, here are some other “poorism” suggestions:

** Inside an ICE raid --- Be there as armed agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency storm the home of a Mexican-American family at midnight, tear an undocumented immigrant mother away from her citizen children and partner, lock her up in prison and send her back to Mexico to never see her family again

** Waterboarding 101 --- Learn what all the fuss is about when you get waterboarded for hours on end until you finally confess to something and are then detained indefinitely without access to a lawyer or any communication with your family

** Oh no, HMO! --- Watch as a middle class family takes their sick child to the doctor only to learn that their health insurance won’t cover the life-saving medicine their child needs, then in a real nail-biter, watch as both parents take second jobs and wonder: Will it be enough?

** Human Wrongs Around the World --- Travel on a secret CIA extradition flight with stops in Pakistan, Columbia and all the countries where your tax dollars are funding dictatorships and human rights abuses.

...

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/poorism-what-inequality-coming

K&R

[flashl]

2. K&R nt

[Warpy]

3. I still can't wrap my mind around the Charles Street Jail

becoming a luxury hotel, even though I've seen the pictures. For those who have never been to Boston, that jail is a foreboding Victorian structure that just screamed "PRISON! PUNISHMENT! ABANDON ALL HOPE!" and I can't imagine summoning the self abuse it must take to stay there.

Perhaps when hookers are legalized and regulated, it can have a second life as Madam Whatever's Dungeon for Very Bad Boys. Hotel? Not in this lifetime.

[lonestarnot]

4. What have we become?

:cry:

[El Pinko]

5. And when they come home, they can use that extreme poverty as an excuse not to help US poor.

"See, poor folks in America have COLOR TVs! MICROWAVE OVENS! Access to MAC & CHEESE! They live in trailers and flats with indoor plumbing! We don't need to help the poor in the US, they're already richer than the middle class in most countries!"


Never mind that the middle class and poor in most European countries have surpassed Americans in terms of savings and economic well-being long ago...