Essentially poverty has already been eliminated in the US. Some people have more than others but people beg on the streets for drug money not food money. What we consider to be "poor" most countries of the world view as middle class.
Maybe there is a correlation between aggressive panhandling and lead exposure.
I read some article on poverty a while back and it said something about the majority of what is considered impoverished in the USA, had a TV and refrigerator in their homes.
- 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. In 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
- 92 percent of poor households have a microwave.
- Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
- Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite TV.
- Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and 70 percent have a VCR.
- Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers.
- More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
- 43 percent have Internet access.
- One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.
- One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo.
https://www.heritage.org/poverty-an...erty-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about
There are people that live rough and then there are people that live rough. This country definitely has some serious poverty, but the difference is, the people here would not survive overseas or even south of the border.
I'm surprised the panhandlers down in Raleigh-Durham haven't organized yet and have union representation. They live in a patch of woods by every interstate intersection and rotate to the intersection in shifts... must have been the lead.