Poverty Is A Problem We've Chosen Not To Resolve

No "great" country allows a segment of its population to live like animals because its Conservative politicians don't care enough to help them

Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid, it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings.

• Nelson Mandela

This story is about a sandwich shop in Phoenix, AZ, but it could be about downtown Portland, OR, where I work part-time, or numerous other American cities. Until the past few years, Americans have done a passable job of dealing with the poverty among us by pretending that it doesn’t exist.

While pretending that the poor and homeless don’t exist may have seemed a decent “solution” in the short term, it was never going to be successful over the long haul. We all knew it, but we didn't want to acknowledge it. That would’ve meant recognizing the need to spend billions to deal with a problem created for us by Ronald Reagan 40 years ago.