US national debt “matters to women”
Summary of blogpost from Forbes, July 29, 2011
The forbeswomen blog yesterday set out why the US national debt affects women.
Victoria Pynchon says that the three main concerns of the government should be social security, medicare/medicaid and defence.
According to the US National Center for Law and Economic Justice, nearly five million more women lived in poverty in 2009 in the States.
On top of this 32.5% of families headed by a woman were deemed poor, with 14.8% living in abject poverty.
This means that children living in single female-headed families were four times more likely to be poor and six times more likely to live in poverty compared to married family couples.
The $1200 monthly income from social security provides the “barest thread of economic stability” for women and will become even more vital to the people who lost so much in the meltdown of ’08.
Pynchon says the question before Congress is either to tax the people who reaped the benefits of the federal bail outs that privatised much of the public sector or to take from Americans who “paid for the mistakes of the wealthy”.
With regards to Medicare, one in five of all American women rely on this for their health insurance protection making up nearly sixty percent of all recipients.
About 45,000 American deaths in 2009 were associated with lack of medical insurance and Pynchon argues that as the ageing population’s health gets worse the scheme will become more and more vital.
And finally, tax. Pynchon writes that taxing the wealthy “to aid the elderly, the desperately poor, the sick and the disabled, is not really even in the table”.
WVoN comment: It’s a classic case of taxing the poor to support the wealthy. I doubt a Robin Hood will come along to remedy this though.
American women need to fight this, and make their voices heard. But it’s virtually impossible to lobby your government when you’re living below the poverty line focusing on where your next paycheck is coming from.
I guess Americans will have to rely on the already wealthy with the time and inclination to fight their corner.