Over the past few days (it happens quite regularly actually) I listened to a couple of news stories that made me reflect upon the role of money in our lives.
The first news story on NPR--I am a longtime listener--was about a small town doctor who said that she was unable to buy whooping cough vaccine for her patients because she couldn't afford the upfront outlay of cash. Being "allergic to debt," as she put it, she decided not to offer the immunizations. Her office is in California, which is experiencing a nasty rash of whooping cough cases that have resulted in deaths of youngsters.
The second story had to do with a rise in the numbers of poor children in Colorado. The story was quick to point out that the data was from 2008 and it was unknown if it had changed favorably or unfavorably since then. The story said that on the upside, we have fewer teen pregnancies and our students fair better than some of their counterparts in other parts of the country. Overall, the report concluded, 18 percent of American children live in poverty. Eighteen percent. In America. This percentage also includes parents and caregivers, which would expand that number even more.
Today I would like to ask you this? When did money become more important than people? Is poverty unsolvable? Will it always be with us? I propose that poverty exists because we allow it to exist. While I applaud soup kitchens, food pantries, Medicaid, WIC, food stamp cards, and non-profits that address poverty and the poor, these are just a band aid, a way of settling for something that the great genius of this world could solve in a heartbeat?
Does it not trouble you that you have no real job security anywhere? That, as our recent economic woes point out, we are all at the mercy of the market and the dollar, or Euro, or Yen, or Ruble, or whatever currency you carry?
Think about it. What kind of world would you like to live in? What would it take? People first? Cost last?
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