You want abject poverty?

You can talk about the spine of Appalachia, the squalor of some areas of our inner cities, or the disintegration of the rust belt.

None of that, NONE OF THAT, compares to what I've seen in the last two days.

I'm in India, not the touristy, hipster India of Goa or areas of Mumbai, but in Uttar Pradesh where I've witnessed first hand squalor so unimaginable to most Americans it is hard to describe. How hard? Think of living in the following conditions: under an open tarp next to a open sewer ditch, surrounded by animal waste and other filth that fouls your drinking water with a stench so overpowering it permeates your pores. Now think of children playing in that sewer.

This was in a city of more than a million people and it extended from the airport to the edge of the city.

The rural areas were worse, thatched huts and poorly constructed hovels with garbage pits surrounding them and again the children.

And yet in spite of this squalor, everyone I met had an open smile and was pleased to meet me and the team I am traveling with. We Americans often forget that despite our problems we are far better off than 95% of the world and the real hope of this election cannot be confined to our pitiful tales of woe.

It's time to light the torch of John Kennedy again.

(Oh, if anyone wants to start the, "they took our jobs," meme, I suggest you go back to that South Park episode and wallow in your own self-pity. More later.).

:curious:

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You filthy proles better shaddup, or you'll have to live like they have to in India (I am a world traveler, and I know about suffering.)

:puke:

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My ancestors were sharecroppers when they first came to this country. This was in the Jim Crow south. The way the well-heeled plantation owners controlled these hard-scrabble planters was to say, "Look at how bad the black people have it! Behave, or we will treat you like we treat them!"

Your post is much of the same argument.

I think the word I'm looking for is....

nope.

:silly:

I've found myself just slightly off the beaten path on a couple of the usual tourist islands and the images of what I saw have stuck with me just as much as the beautiful beaches. The garbage and tiny huts were a stark contrast to the tourist resorts.

On Edit.... The poor in America would be middle class in many places in Europe (Eastern, southern)let alone the so called growth countries such as India and China.... Americans have no idea and unfortunately that ignorance is as much among us as well as the right.

Don't want to be greedy and hog it all...

:(
rocknation

that I totally spaced called "30 Days." Most of it isn't particularly worth watching, spoiled yuppies thrown into situations they highly resent and whine about for an hour.

However, one episode was a man who worked for 30 days in a call center in India, living with a fellow employee's family and experiencing what life is like over there.

He wasn't a bad guy, at all, and did little whining. The show was packed with tidbits about how call center jobs are prized over there, clean work for educated people, and how they don't understand at all why those jobs should be looked down on here.

There were two very telling segments. One was when he visited the home of one of the janitors, an arrangement of scrap wood and a blue tarp inhabited by 3 generations, gobs of kids around. We wouldn't let a dog die there, yet that family felt lucky to have a steady income and food to eat. The other was a two day riot when a pop star died. The damage was all to corporate buildings including the call center building, the rage of the people against the rich who aren't sharing the wealth with everyone evidenced and the guy living over there picking up on it and not getting his comments cut.

There is equivalent poverty here, but we label it "homelessness" as though it is temporary and correctable if only the homeless will develop a little gumption. However, when I look at India I see a bleak future for us as we sink into the poverty that the rich create when they are allowed to grab everything in sight.

I think we need to kiss "our jobs" goodbye. They're gone forever and if it will lift Indians out of poverty, they're welcome to them. There is plenty of work to do here, work that will provide ample pay. All we have to do is end the concentration of wealth.

"I think we need to kiss "our jobs" goodbye. They're gone forever and if it will lift Indians out of poverty, they're welcome to them. There is plenty of work to do here, work that will provide ample pay. All we have to do is end the concentration of wealth."

The problem is that as soon as their economy reaches a point where people have to be paid more, the corporations will simply pick up the tents and move on. What they do is the same damn thing as colonialism.

The only thing that helps India, is Indian companies manufacturing Indian goods and selling them. American companies paying Indians pennies a day will do damn near nothing for them long term. When the corporations leave town their economy will be worse off than before.

An to the OP - If you keep travelling for a few months you'll stop feeling so bad for the "natives" and start feeling worse for Americans.

See the smiles on their faces? That's what you get when your most valued posession is a family member. Having a lifetime full of memories that involve loved ones instead of TPS reports and the empty struggle for "success" helps too. I've been to about 30 countries and never encountered a people as miserable as Americans. Our priorities are so messed up it's epic.

If those people had clean water and food to eat, they would probably be among the happiest people on the planet. The further you get from the industrialised/westernised zones in any country, the poorer people seem to be, and the happier they are.

Some of the best days of my life were spent squatting in a wooden hut on a dirt floor watching the bugs fly around.

..."he/she who has the most toys when he/she dies, wins," is having a life expectency of 45 and an absurdly high infant/child mortality ratio.

There are a lot of countries that provide better healthcare than what we have here, and the majority of the population live in scrap shacks.

out of their poverty in India. Could it be that only a handful of uber wealthy people India are making any real money out of the scam of outsourcing? Yeah get a well educated Indian to do your call center. He had time to take off and get educated so he would have found a job anyway but look how it's helping the poor.

This scam that our outsourced jobs are helping the country that gets them is nothing but a con for the American masses to swallow so they don't complain to much when they dodge the ever burgeoning homeless in America.

'cause there are people in (fill in the blank third world country) who will do that job for pennies a day.

:sarcasm:

We have people in the USA living in insanely pitiful situations. The only real difference between our pockets of misery, and the vast ocean of misery seen in other places, is that Americans, for all our faults, won't just sit around and let the world's elite turn this whole country into Uttar Pradesh.

Yes, even our extreme poor have it better in most cases. Thanks to unions, and the people that were willing to die for worker rights and economic justice. If we were to quit bitching because other places have it worse then it would not take much time before the elite turn back the clock here too. But if we keep bitching our little hearts out, maybe we can manage to keep the wolves from decimating the US of A - AND - demand they stop decimating the 3rd world.

It is just about as bad as your description of India. People live at the dump with rotting garbage and foul water.
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They are called "The Dump People"


They eat garbage and they find junk to sell or use. They live in shit.


If you go to Otay Mesa on the San Diego side, you can see the horrible poverty - Oh, there is a big metal fence but you can see the hillsides and the poverty. If you want, you can drive there and see it.

What you describe has been described to me before. I am saddened by it. I ask, why isn't the Democratic government of India doing something to help their poor? Get rid of the Caste society.

I am so sorry.
Last thought---
Birth control is not even an option in Mexico. The Pope said it was a sin.