Yet another scandal is exploding on the Internet. The administration of free encyclopedia Wikipedia removed an article by a Russian researcher, devoted to assessing the loss of US citizens as a result of the Great Depression of 1932-33. Outraged bloggers began mass distribution of articles in the Russian segment of the popular blogging service Livejournal. The material led to heated debates, while the so-called historical flash mob continues.
Russian researcher Boris Borisov touched a really hot topic in his material on the estimated number of victims of the American Great Depression, which in turn, apparently caused a very strong reaction among Wikipedia moderators as well as heightened activity coming from Russian-speaking bloggers. Based on the analysis of statistical data in the article called “The American Holodomor“, Borisov estimated the number of victims of the financial crisis in the US as more than 7 million people and was the first researcher to directly compare the incident in the US in 1932-33 to the 1932-33 Holodomor in the USSR.
“If US statistics are true, in the ten years from 1931 to 1940, the US lost in terms of population growth dynamics as much as 8,553,000 people; moreover, the population statistics increase to twice what they were the year before, on the turn of 1930 / 31, then fall and freeze at this level for exactly ten years … There is no explanation found in this enormous, hundreds of pages long text of “Statistical Abstract of the United States” prepared by the US Department of commerce,” says B. Borisov. “Few people know … about five million American farmers (about a million families) at exactly the same time driven away by the banks because of the land debts, but not backed up by the US government with the land, nor work, nor social assistance, nor pension – nothing whatsoever,” the author continues.
Of course, different opinions may arise over these words. It is unlikely that Washington will agree with these allegations, presenting their own point of view, as always confirmed by the “official statistics.” However, the official version, under orders from the White House, could be tossed around to fit the situation for Washington, and always provide the one that is “needed today.”
And therefore we will not wait for this rigged information from Washington and just look at it ourselves and see what is happening today in the US, not according to the official answers, controlled by the White House, but to the reports of the US media.
For example, recently, the US news site AlterNet has published excerpts from a new report dedicated to the social and economic problems of the 22 American cities. The Conference of Mayors of the cities in the US [independent organization representing the interests of the localities with more than 30 thousand residents] presented its new report, “Hunger and homelessness,” which contains information about living in different parts of America for the period from September 1 of 2014 to August 31 of 2015. In particular, the report highlights that the lack of affordable housing is a problem that continues to worsen across the country, which is the main reason that American families with children are becoming homeless. Then follow poverty, hunger, unemployment and low-paying jobs.
In the 50% of studied cities, the mayors said that they expected a “moderate” increase in homelessness next year. In 65% of the cities, the authorities forecast a “moderate” increase in requests for emergency food aid in the next 12 months. According to Financial Times, now one in five American adults lives on the edge of poverty and hunger is their daily condition. Since the global financial crisis, the ranks of Americans with the lowest incomes in the country were joined by 5.7 million people.
Many of the poor or those at the near-poverty level have become that despite “the US economic recovery.” More than 45% of them, or 2.5 million adults, have been among those with the lowest incomes since 2011, i.e. after the recession supposedly ended. Today, thecategory of families with the lowest income includes 48.9 million Americans. According to the US Census Bureau, between 2009 and 2012 more than a third of the country underwent a period of poverty for two or more months and basically were starving.
As a number of US media outlets report, today the US Congress should be filled with guilt and shame for the huge difference in the welfare of Americans, as half of American people live right on the line of poverty and hunger. After all, the data published by US media speak of increasing rates of poverty in the United States, and in the last 12 months the trend has continued to deteriorate. That is why a number of American observers stress out that the US Congress should be ashamed, it is guilty of the huge disparity in the wealth of the citizens of the country, which turns the United States into a third world state.
The real deepening of poverty and social misery in the United States after the economic crash of 2008 are also suggested by the reportof The Century Foundation: “The architecture of segregation: social unrest, the concentration of poverty and public policy”. It argues that the number of Americans living in areas of extreme poverty (where more than 40% of the population are below the federal poverty line) has nearly doubled since 2000, rising from 7.2 million to 13.8 million people. The poverty level deepened in the US with the Wall Street crash in October 2008, though this fact isstrongly suppressed by the official press preferring to talk about “economic recovery.”
Poverty began to be more extreme in almost every major American city; it is especially growing in urban areas with a population from 250 thousand up to 1 million people. 1.5 million American households and 3 million children are in a situation of economic despair and hunger. The number of super-poor Americans living on less than $ 2 a day has doubled since 1996. A recent book $ 2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, written by Kathryn J. Edin in collaboration with H. Luke Shaefer, examines the state of the US citizens faced with this extreme poverty. According to the authors, the number of super-poor Americans living on $ 2 a day or less, has doubled since 1996, putting Americans in such a desperate economic situation and on the brink of outright starvation.
The American media state that one in seven Americans is not able to feed themselves. Human Rights website Wallethub analyzed 150 most populous cities in the United States to identify those having the greatest number of citizens in need; such indicators were used such as the lack of food security, the level of homelessness and child poverty. Not surprisingly, many disastrous cities from the list are located in the South of the United States with its historically high level of poverty.
The Raw Story compares rich and poor neighborhoods in New York City and calls it a city of extreme inequality. According to the study, poverty kills: poor New Yorkers live 11 years less than “big shots” do from Wall Street.
The Economic Collapse Blog suggests that increase in poverty in the US has gone out of control.
So, reading US media publications, it appears that “the richest country on the planet” has a huge amount of suffering people, systematically starving, hanging between life and death, and the situation is getting worse every year.
However, American Government only remembers the plight of their people when elections come round, and all the rest of the time they spend the state budget and taxpayers’ money on the initiation of new military interventions, the establishment of new military bases in the Baltic States and other European and Asian countries, satisfying the appetites of only the military-industrial complex —which, in the White House opinion, must not be allowed to starve.
As for its own citizens, there is a theory (developed with the active participation of the White House) of the “golden billion,” referring to the only people who should live prosperously on the planet, while the rest of population are disregarded by the current authorities and a license for their starvation was issued a long time ago. Therein lies the secret of “American democracy.”
Vladimir Platov, an expert on the Middle East, exclusivelly for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
