Preventing Starvation By Filling Backpacks

 family-in-car

Any amount of income above these amounts listed below translates to one’s family presumably not being in poverty in the USA. So no or very few government benefits accrue for those involved in low income status if above the federal impoverishment guidelines. To put it all in a realistic perspective, let’s look at the monthly cost for a one room apartment in Worcester, a city close to where I live:

Studio Apartments

from $450.00/mo

One room with a bathroom in the mix is above five thousand dollars a year in cost. It may or may not have a kitchenette attached to the room.

Can one quite fit his or her family into one small room with a bathroom included? No? Then let’s go upscale for a one bedroom apartment in the town next to mine:

1 BR / 1 BA In Shrewsbury 01545! It’s $1100 per month or $13,300 per year.

Now let’s tabulate wage into the mix: “Massachusetts Minimum Wage is $11.00 effective January 1, 2017 … Federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, effective July 24, 2009 …” — From Massachusetts Law about Minimum Wage – Mass.Gov

Meanwhile a family will get no or usually only surreptitious help, as mentioned, unless under the amount posed by these fixed tight national guidelines:

Federal Poverty Guidelines | Families USA

2016 Federal Poverty Guidelines

Household size
2                             $16,020
3                             $20,160
4                             $24,300
5                             $28,440

Do our government workers coming up with these unrealistic, fantasy tabulations even understand that these are unmanageably low numbers given the price of home heating, household insurance, medical insurance, prescription costs, food, electricity, car insurance and car gas, assorted taxes, water bills, electricity and so on? Let’s, too, add in the costs of clothing as children in one’s family outgrow their current outfits, along with the price for school supplies.

How can oneself and a family live in such a standard of lacks? How ridiculous a consideration!

So a nightmare ensues for many families across the USA except that you can’t wake up from the bad dream. It’s daily reality instead for them, not a night-dream that one can shake off when the light of day dawns and dispels the horror!

Shame on our overall fairly wealthy USA society! How dare we collectively let such a pathetic condition exist! Such an insurmountable demise for those involved in such paucity as they barely scrape by in housing alone! No wonder that so many families wind up living in cars or tents despite the cold, snow, rain, etc.

No food at home (if you even have a home)? Oh well — suck it up! That’s the view that my own sister faced.

My sister, a former elementary school teacher, used to get so alarmed when school breaks, vacations from school, would happen. So she and her friends would pay for and collect hundreds of dollars of food with money out of their own pockets to provide it. Then my sister would secretly tuck the food into backpacks carried home by financially poor school children for which some only got one solid meal a day – the lunch served at school.

She and her friends wanted to ensure that starvation didn’t exist during vacations — a time not fun one iota for these destitute children as their bellies hurt. Is vacation time from school a happy time for these kids?

Hardly! They dreaded school vacations. It would give some of the children panic attacks in advance.

Why, though, should my sister and her friends have to take up the brunt of our societal deficits to feed young children? More centrally, why should these children suffer when their parent often work eighteen hours a day apiece with a two parent family income?

Where is fairness and justice in this overall scenario? If you can picture something outside of my view of this deplorable situation, I’m glad for you!

Meanwhile I’m in this orientation: How dare we let this situation happen! How outrageous, infuriating and thoroughly unacceptable, especially since I do not want my sister to suffer on account on the sufferings of others, who comprise of little children, whose backpacks she started stuffing a week in advance of school vacations!

Simply wrong! Totally wrong!

It was disturbing to learn that my sister chased down as many as she could of all of the poor children at her school to, during her lunch break, stuff their school backpacks with food starting a week in advance of vacations. It was vexing and intolerable to watch her suffering for their own suffering!

How dare she and they be put in such a broken condition! It’s a sick disgusting level of lack in care in our society exhibited in the mix.

Meanwhile, it’s my sister involved and I’m fiercely protective of her. So why should she and her friends, who she induced to follow her pattern, have to help pay for these disadvantaged children to eat during school vacations? Outrageously a pitiful condition and I do not want her, my sister, to feel pain for these children. Ditto for her friends! Ditto for the kids!

Personally I don’t want any of them to face trouble. So how dare there be a system in place that forces my kindly sister and her friends to feed children when they can’t have their one meal a day at school? How intolerable a state of affairs when pantries are bare at home through no fault of their parents!

How dare a broken social system be prevalent — one that financially and emotionally compromises my sister and her friends, along with the starving kids, especially in the overall wealthy USA. Disgusting – no – way worse than disgusting since the level of wrong is so absolutely and intolerably wrong!

Let’s get real. It’s hard for even one person to live on $28,440 in the USA, let alone a family of five.

It’s unrealistic in the extreme. Such stupidity is shown in the process of accepting this amount as a federal standard, along with utter negligence towards others, those less fortunate than are my sister and her pals!

So thank goodness that Venezuela’s government stepped up to help. How could these impoverished Americans, hard working members of society, do basically all right else wise?

Many desperately require  JOE-4-OIL | Citizens Energy. (Sign up for the provision if you need it in the USA!)

Yeah – one of the Kennedy offspring, Joe Kennedy, stepped up, along with a largely socialist nation — one contemptible to the USA. It’s because this South American government kicked out the international oil companies, paid them off and directed towards using surplus money from oil in their lands to serve society in general rather than provide profits for the gargantuan oil companies, themselves.

How infuriating to many members of our government here in the USA! How infuriating for the oil companies! Venezuela is greatly hated on account since the country cut money to serve the upper echelon of society via profits to instead serve lower members of society in their own land … and ours.

Yet, what a travesty it is that families have to rely on such foreign derived charity to stay warm. What a travesty it is that their children starve if not for good Samaritans like my sister and her friends, wanting no praise and awards, quietly try to help!

I’m sorry if I seem disturbed and vituperative. However, the whole arrangement described here is not right. Why should families, my sister and her friends have anguish over school vacations? Why should a largely socialist nation, Venezuela, have to keep these families warm? … Shame on the USA and its unrealistic poverty standards! What a total disgrace for us all!

Sally Dugman is a writer in MA., USA.

 

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