any polity around the planet will be joined by professor richard wolfe and r t correspondent on your part bill looks at a recent united nations report on poverty in the united states and some reactions at home and abroad plus the c.e.o. of straw market work world which looks at the wealthiest and poorest nations around the world and r.t. correspondent trinny charges goes to fisher island florida of the wealthiest zip code in the u.s. for a special report part of it from which i got bus r.t. correspondent dan cohen looks at the war on work at the border areas in the nation including right here in the nation's capital the belly of the beast washington d.c. all that straight ahead but first let's get to a few has what we seek to bring a global perspective to the issues we cover here at boom bust so to get a real grasp on the problem of inequality we begin with a report from the library of the british house of commons which is analogous to the library of congress here in the u.s. on what our world will look like in twenty thirty if trends continue the report finds that the richest one percent of humanity is on track to control sixty four

percent of the planet's capital and wealth by two thousand and thirty up from the current fifty percent and measured in dollars that one percent will increase their huge holdings from the current hundred forty trillion dollars to three hundred five trillion dollars the labor party's m.p. lam byrne who requested the survey told the u.k. guardian that absent major reforms global policy makers are quote risking a new explosion instability corruption and poverty on the other side of the proverbial coin a nov twenty seventeen report from credit suisse found that people on the bottom fifty percent of the income scale on less than one percent of global wealth got that fifty percent of lower income folks on less than one percent o.-m. g. . turning back to the us for more granular view of the problem the pew research center noted late last year that the so-called great recession of two

thousand and seven to two thousand and nine further exacerbated inequality by race gender and income as one of most trusted analyst of demographics polling and policy in the united states using figures from the federal reserve they found that among americans poor and middle class the gap between white households wealth and black and hispanic households increased in the wake of the great recession and twenty sixteen white households in these brackets had four times the wealth of comparable african-american families and three times the wealth of hispanic households interestingly pew did find that among lower income household white families lost more wealth than their african-american and hispanic peers. reports about the poor are unfortunately not a new thing over the years we've seen a steady flow of papers studies and reports about the growing poverty united states

and what seemed to many people some obscene numbers separating the rich and the poor the haves and have nots as we say with all this information and data being delivered revealing the staggering level of poverty in the country we may need some help to break it all down and put it into the proper perspective and in that regard we are fortunate and honored to have just such a person joining us now is a presser economics of merit to the university of massachusetts and her father richard will professor we're very pleased to have you join us again thank you bob glad to be here so let's start with a benchmark i mean you teach classes and look at these sorts of things all the time as an income inequality always existed in the u.s. . the answer simply is yes it has our economic system and there's no nice way to say this our economic system capitalism is at least as efficient in reproducing poverty as it is in reproducing wealth it has tried over and over

again to say that it is confronting the problem of poverty but if it's true that it did so it failed to solve the problem because here we are three hundred years into our history and we're still confronted with serious amounts of poverty and serious degrees of extreme poverty as the u.n. and others have been documented right up to this moment well there's another report out to professor it may go along with that but i want to get your take on it it's a united way the nonprofit organization they have a project called alice it's that action acronym but it's geared toward trying to quantify and describe the number of u.s. households that are are struggling financially and the result of that work indicates that more than fifty one million homes and there are actual people least one person in these homes cannot afford basic necessities like food aus and transportation and we have a total of about three hundred twenty five million people in the state so what do

you make of the report and do you think that figure is accurate. there's no question that it's accurate it's been reinforced and validated by other comparable studies what's remarkable about the united way documents is that it gets away from formal statistics of the government to really look at what a family's situation is it's not just do you have enough food this evening on the table but can you rely on next week and next month when your children go to school knowing that there's food that they'll be heat in the house when they come on to do their homework in other words are the basic qualities of life secure and adequate or not and for them to have discovered with no axe to grind that somewhere between a third and a half of the american people aren't secure in the most basic way is the most profound criticism of our economic system that i could imagine it's really

disconcerting and we you know that's why i said there we're asking the question how they're not just homes are real people that live live there and you know bring it to a personal level we often hear about people and politicians tell these stories sometimes about how difficult the decisions are between choosing between you only have a certain amount of money in your paycheck between health care and housing or health care and food to eat and you know those are tough choices that all folks that are financially strapped have to make but when we consider the basic necessities like those things i was in food health care etc which of these has become so privily expensive for some that they're just increasingly inaccessible i think the key culprit among several is housing. the problem with housing is we allow that in this country to be a private profit making enterprise and to put it as simply as i know how the money

to be made the profits to be made in building housing is building housing for the one percent the luxury apartments the luxury mansions the luxury condos and all the rest and that's where the money goes meaning that the mass housing for the mass of people isn't growing and so what happens is there's a scarcity not in the sense that we couldn't produce the housing but that we don't in a private profit driven economy with the result that the rents are going crazy and we believe in general that a family should never spend more than twenty to thirty percent of its income on housing because if it goes above that it starts eating into the minimal levels of everything else education transportation health care and so on and we have a reality in america that if you look at what's happened to housing particularly rental housing it has driven people into that precarious state that the united way

discovered so much is being spent for housing that they literally cannot provide the basics in the case of a third to a half of our households of what's needed in a modern society like ours professor just got a little bit of time but let me ask you do you see any signs of hope for reversing this trend wage and income inequality. well as your report from the london. you know documentary library there shows no the trends we are stuck with now are trends that do not give us hope they are trends in which this is them works to make the rich richer and everybody else a spectator of their wealth and that's why many of us are realizing we really have to change the system if we're going to deal with one of its worst outcomes which is this level of poverty after hundreds of years of seeing that it's

a problem that needs to be solved i want to keep an eye on it we appreciate folks like you speaking out will try to do our part here a boom bust professor richard walter resurrected nomics america's university of massachusetts amherst we're in your debt sir thanks kindly for your time thank you . and we mention the united nations report with the perfessor the report looks at poverty in the united states r.t. correspondent on your heart bill looks not only at the report but at some of the reactions surrounding its recent release. for fifteen days in december two thousand and seventeen professor philip alston the un special rapporteur tor on extreme poverty and human rights traveled to the united states in order to quote evaluate and report to the human rights council on the extent to which the government's policies and programs aimed at addressing extreme poverty are consistent with its human rights obligations his findings paint

a dire picture of life in the us the report states that a staggering forty million americans live in poverty eighteen point five million in extreme poverty and a whopping five point three million americans toil under third world conditions characterized as absolute poverty of the thirty five member states in the organization for economic cooperation and development the report finds the united states has the highest youth unemployment rate and highest infant mortality rate among comparable countries the us also has one of the lowest voter registration levels in the o.e.c.d. the report reads quote its citizens live shorter and sicker lives compared to those living in all other ridged democracies are radical tropical diseases are increasingly prevalent and it has the world's highest incarceration rate and the highest obesity levels in the developed world professor alston's conclusions have drawn a harsh response from members of the trumpet ministration us ambassador to the un

nikki haley wrote in a letter to senator bernie sanders of vermont quote it is patently ridiculous for the united nations to examine poverty in america the special repertoire wasted the un's time and resources deflecting attention from the world's worst human rights abusers and hostessing instead on the wealthiest and freest country in the world and haley may have a point about the united states being one of the wealthiest countries in the world it just so happens that the vast majority of the nation's wealth is hoarded by an ever shrinking elite in march of this year for example amazon c.e.o. jeff bezos amassed an estimate. a net worth of one hundred twenty seven billion dollars and that amount is equal to the combined wealth of the two point three million poorest americans and november two thousand and seventeen a report by the institute for policy studies found the three richest americans bezos bill gates and warren buffett were worth two hundred forty eight billion dollars combined that number is equal to the wealth of one hundred sixty million

americans who make up the bottom half of the country's population when measured in dollars following the reports released senator sanders in one thousand other members of congress sent a letter to the trumpet ministration urging him to address the growing poverty rates the letter says trump's one point five billion dollars in tax cut signed into law last year quote overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy and worsened inequality and while many headlines concerning the report emphasized the trunk administration's role in exacerbating poverty professor alston makes this important note successive administrations including the current one have determinately rejected the idea that economic and social rights are full fledged human rights meaning if you're poor in the united states your government has never seen you as a priority in washington on your part will r.t. .

time now for a super fast break but stay cold because when we get back the c.e.o. of straw mark our friend you'll report which tells us about the wealthiest nations not including the u.s. and the poorest nations around the globe plus r.t. correspondent trinity trados goes the picture of island florida for a special report on the wealthiest zip code and on the other end of the spectrum market correspondent dan i want to look at the more on fortunate and analyzes poverty united states notably even here in the gilded capital that it came right here will be back in one. her and going. to. coach. coming.

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