“I was already It, whatever It was,” Jack London wrote in 1905, “and by aid of the books I discovered that It was a Socialist.” He continued, in his essay entitled “How I Became a Socialist,” by declaring:

Since that day I have opened many books, but no economic argument, no lucid demonstration of the logic and inevitableness of Socialism affects me as profoundly and convincingly as I was affected on the day when I first saw the walls of the Social Pit rise around me and felt myself slipping down, down, into the shambles at the bottom.[1]

Huge numbers of people fall into the pit of poverty, which can be very difficult to escape. It is certainly not a mere 15% of Americans or thereabouts, as the government’s outdated “poverty line” would have it (the threshold for a single person is $11,500 a year, as if someone making $12,000 isn’t poor). In reality, 48% of Americans live in poverty or near-poverty.[2] This is expected, as 40% of U.S. workers made under $15 an hour in 2015 and 50% of all jobs in the U.S. paid $34,000 annually or less in 2013.[3] Though it varies slightly by state, $34,000 is about $24,000 after taxes, or about $2,000 in take-home pay a month. If you make minimum wage, you earn just over $1,100 a month if working full-time. Meanwhile, the median cost of rent is about $1,000 and climbing.

56% of citizens have less than $1,000 in the bank, and one in three families have no savings at all.[4] Individuals making low wages must spend everything or nearly everything they make on groceries, electricity, water, rent, and gas or bus fare right away. If anything can be saved, it is often wiped out by the typical hurdles of life that better-off people consider mere annoyances, such as broken down cars or doctor’s visits. 77% of Americans say they are living paycheck to paycheck.[5] Millions have negative wealth due to loans, negative equity on homes after the 2008 housing crash, and so on.[6] Even when the economy is doing well, millions remain unemployed.

The work of the poor is often unfulfilling, unpleasant, even humiliating or dangerous. Many work long hours — 65, 70, 75 or more a week — or multiple jobs to make ends meet, seeing their loved ones infrequently. While they work, their children attend inferior schools (school funding is based on property taxes), often experiencing low-quality teachers, crumbling facilities, overcrowded classes, and a lack of books, supplies, and physical and mental healthcare. “I want to be able to go to school and not have to worry about being bitten by mice, being knocked out by the gases, being cold in the rooms,” a Detroit student, Wisdom Morales, said in 2016. Poverty actually damages mental abilities and mental health in children and adults alike.

The life expectancy of the poor is over a decade shorter than the rich, due to worse health.[7] Factors include unhealthy food being most affordable, unhealthy air and environments, stress and depression, smoking, lack of healthcare, and so on. Many low-income people have to live in dilapidated apartments or houses infested with roaches, mice and feces, rot, and mold, sometimes without heating or air conditioning.[8] If you have a month where you can’t pay a utility bill, your water or electricity is immediately cut off. If you can’t pay rent, you are evicted.

Almost 50 million Americans rely on food stamps.[9] Even U.S. soldiers spend tens of millions worth of food stamps each year.[10] 65% of us will use welfare, help we must qualify for, at some point in our lives to get by.[11] There exists a population of 1.5 million households that live on $2 a day—Third World levels—due to unemployment, reduced hours, lack of knowledge concerning welfare programs, etc.[12] Some in these households sell themselves for sex, sell plasma, or sell scrap metal to survive.

Persons with disabilities have no minimum wage protection, and can make under $1 per hour.

Each year, 3.5 million people will experience homelessness at some point (while 18.5 million homes stand empty, waiting for citizens who can afford them). 23% are children; about 10% are veterans; over 40% are disabled; 20-25% suffer from mental illness; most homeless women are domestic abuse victims.[13] The homeless suffer humiliation, from being denied service at businesses due to appearance to cities criminalizing begging, loitering, and sleeping in public places or even private vehicles.[14] Benches and sidewalks are redesigned, at times with spikes, to drive away the homeless looking for rest.[15] When the temperature drops, homeless people die outside.

The percentage of workers over 65 doubled since 1985, partly due to the elderly not having enough money to retire and Social Security payments being too dismal to live on.[16] What kind of society allows its elderly to live in poverty? Or its children? One in four U.S. children are food insecure, meaning missing meals or malnourished with cheap, unhealthy food – ketchup sandwiches, for instance.[17] Anastasia Basil remembered:

I’d come home from high school and there’d be nothing in the fridge but a bottle of red wine vinegar and a head of lettuce. On the counter, there’d be a bag of potatoes and a bottle of olive oil from the Dollar Store. That was dinner, potatoes and lettuce.

In the wealthiest nation on earth, children of the poor go to school with extremely painful rotting or impacted teeth.[18] Education activist Jonathon Kozol, in Savage Inequalities, wrote of the slums of East St. Louis:

As in New York City’s poorest neighborhoods, dental problems also plague the children here. Although dental problems don’t command the instant fears associated with low birth weight, fetal death or cholera, they do have the consequence of wearing down the stamina of children and defeating their ambitions. Bleeding gums, impacted teeth and rotting teeth are routine matters for the children I have interviewed in the South Bronx. Children get used to feeling constant pain. They go to sleep with it. They go to school with it.

Sometimes their teachers are alarmed and try to get them to a clinic. But it’s all so slow and heavily encumbered with red tape and waiting lists and missing, lost or canceled welfare cards, that dental care is often long delayed. Children live for months with pain that grown-ups would find unendurable. The gradual attrition of accepted pain erodes their energy and aspiration. I have seen children in New York with teeth that look like brownish, broken sticks. I have also seen teen-agers who were missing half their teeth. But, to me, most shocking is to see a child with an abscess that has been inflamed for weeks and that he has simply lived with and accepts as part of the routine of life. Many teachers in the urban schools have seen this. It is almost commonplace.

With low wages and no health insurance, seeing the dentist is a luxury.

Among advanced democracies, the U.S. has the highest rates of poverty, and is among the highest for infant mortality, among the lowest for life expectancy, living standards for the poorest among us, and wages (see A People’s History of Poverty in America, Pimpare).

“As for the unfortunates, the sick, and ailing, and old, and maimed, I must confess I hardly thought of them at all [early on],” London wrote. “My joyous individualism was dominated by the orthodox bourgeois ethics.” But he experienced economic hardship personally, and travelled throughout America and Canada listening to people “all wrenched and distorted and twisted out of shape by toil and hardship and accident, and cast adrift by their masters like so many old horses.” He continued:

And as I listened my brain began to work. The woman of the streets and the man of the gutter drew very close to me. I saw the picture of the Social Pit as vividly as though it were a concrete thing, and at the bottom of the Pit I saw them, myself above them, not far, and hanging on to the slippery wall by main strength and sweat… Just as I had been an individualist without knowing it, I was now a Socialist without knowing it… I had been reborn…

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Notes

[1] “How I Became a Socialist,” Jack London

[2] Half of U.S. Poor or Low-Income, CBS

[3] http://www.thenation.com/article/almost-half-of-all-american-workers-make-less-than-15-an-hour/; http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/opinion/sunday/why-cant-we-end-poverty-in-america.html?_r=4&pagewanted=all

[4] http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2016/01/06/63-of-americans-dont-have-enough-savings-to-cover-a-500-emergency/#2715e4857a0b19717426dde1

[5] http://socialistappeal.org/news-analysis/editorials/1112-qis-capitalism-dyingq.html

[6] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-01/new-york-fed-study-finds-15-of-u-s-households-have-no-wealth

[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/13/health/disparity-in-life-spans-of-the-rich-and-the-poor-is-growing.html

[8] http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article76429037.html

[9] http://socialistappeal.org/news-analysis/editorials/1112-qis-capitalism-dyingq.html

[10] http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37259-us-soldiers-are-relying-on-millions-of-dollars-in-food-stamps-to-survive

[11] A People’s History of Poverty in America, Pimpare

[12] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-surging-ranks-of-americas-ultrapoor/

[13] https://gsgriffin.com/2016/12/08/u-s-canadian-city-governments-ending-homelessness-by-offering-jobs/

[14] http://www.frontsteps.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/DiscriminationReport20141.pdf; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-quigley/ten-facts-about-homelessn_b_5977946.html

[15] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/how-cities-use-design-to-drive-homeless-people-away/373067/

[16] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/retirement/2017/05/10/punching-past-65-older-worker-rate-highest-since-1962/101447336/

[17] http://abcnews.go.com/US/hunger_at_home/hunger-home-american-children-malnourished/story?id=14367230; https://thinkprogress.org/ketchup-sandwiches-and-other-things-stupid-poor-people-eat-41617483b497/

[18] http://www.cpr.org/news/story/tooth-decay-silent-epidemic-especially-poor-kids-colo; Savage Inequalities, Jonathon Kozol

While citizens should have the freedom to homeschool their children, in the same way they should be free to choose private schools over public schools, that does not mean there are no disadvantages to such a choice, to individuals and society at large.

There are some 2 million homeschooled children in the United States today, roughly 3% of students. Parents cite several reasons for homeschooling their children, including the desire to provide “religious and moral instruction,” a “concern about the school environment,” and “dissatisfaction with the academic instruction” at schools. A 2009 Department of Education report revealed 83% of homeschool parents held providing religious instruction as one of their reasons for partaking in this practice, which is largely unregulated — you can teach kids anything, or nothing at all. Almost 70% of homeschool families are white. This is mostly still the white, conservative Christian movement it was when it launched in the 1980s, though it is becoming more diverse: there are more minority families now, more people choosing this route not because of religion but because of factors like racism in schools or the sad state of many poorly-funded city districts. However, the words of President Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council still categorize the phenomenon:

As a homeschooling parent myself, I understand the desire to give children an environment that affirms traditional values. The government has eliminated God from the classroom and too often replaced Him with an anti-life, anti-family curriculum that misses life’s deepest meaning.

Again, parents have the right to think this way and keep their children at home. But the central disadvantage of homeschooling lies in its very purpose. The true danger isn’t that kids will be isolated or socially inept; a few may, but most homeschool children participate in sports, organizations, and other social outlets (though it’s not as extensive as being among peers 8 hours a day or having instant access to a broad array of free clubs, societies, and teams). Children being homeschooled against their will is problematic, as it can breed resentment against parents, but that is not universal either. The real problem is that children are primarily exposed to a single worldview. And of course that is the whole point. The point is to limit knowledge (of science, sex, gays, atheism, and so on) and enforce an extremely narrow perspective — the opposite of education.

We should want our children to learn many different things from many different people. We should seek a wider base of knowledge and perspective. Consider how many teachers one has in a public K-12 education: perhaps 50-60. Each of these teachers has his or her own worldview and life experience and learning, job history, travels, religion, political beliefs, ethnicity, sexual orientation, economic background — and, importantly, degree in education or other academic field. No reasonable person would suggest one or two parents, no matter how well-educated, could provide the depth of knowledge that 60 people with specialized degrees and experience could in chemistry, mathematics, the arts, history, English, and everything else. There is a reason that we see multiple teachers daily from 5th or 6th grade up, rather than just one: covering all subjects in any advanced fashion is a task no one person should have or could possibly be qualified for. And different viewpoints, of course, helps students think deeper and grow more tolerant of others.

This is not to say homeschool education can’t be successful — homeschool students often excel in college and have strong ACT/SAT scores before that, as any child receiving one-on-one, individualized instruction should — but an education will not be as complete or well-rounded if coming from a single person with a single worldview. I write from personal experience. Knowledge will be lacking or denounced, and diverse perspectives unknown. If parents don’t want to teach a subject, for any reason — perhaps they don’t know Spanish or understand calculus, or think sex ed is the devil’s work — they can skip it entirely. And what a shame that homeschooled students have nearly no chance of learning about the world from a Muslim or Marxist, no chance of seeing things from different angles and thinking critically. To me it’s a shame, to others it’s the point. Instead, students get a parent, which at best means instruction from someone less qualified than those collective dozens with actual degrees across all subjects, and at worst outright lies about the world (anti-evolution, anti-climate change) or intolerance toward certain people (homosexuals, trans Americans). One can easily experience high SAT scores alongside many skipped subjects and a blindness to other points of view.

One might make a similar point about the social value of having more extensive interaction with diverse students. Instead of primary interaction with siblings or other homeschooled children who hold the same religious, conservative ideas, wouldn’t it better prepare students for a diverse world, and help them think critically from multiple viewpoints, if they interacted daily with Hindus, atheists, and African Americans? This is not to say homeschooled students don’t meet and befriend such kids at scouts, ballet, or football, but public school classrooms provide much longer, broader interactions, in an academic environment. There is value in that.

We value the integration and interaction of public schooling over homeschooling for the same reason we value integration and interaction over racially segregated classrooms. As I write in my book:

Integration is our hope because it is only through interaction that we come to know the Other. Separation and isolation is a breeding ground for misunderstanding, misjudgment, fear, and hostility. Interaction is diminishing arrogance and eradicating hatred at every moment. White soldiers of the Civil War forsook prejudice and assisted their black comrades to relocate when the cannons finally quieted because they had served with and befriended those men of color. Religious fundamentalists come to accept homosexuals when they find themselves sitting next to each other and conversing. Young students’ fear of special needs children fades away the longer they share a classroom. Integration serves a moral and social purpose.

The public school classroom provides the most direct interaction of diverse students, encouraging acceptance and understanding. The primary reason to reject homeschooling is the primary reason to support public schooling.

Public schooling is a precious creation. Our tax dollars should provide equally and adequately funded schools that are free and open to the public, contingent only on geographic location. Geographic location is not perfect, as our living arrangements and thus our schools are still very much divided by race and class, but it provides the best opportunity for students to learn with and from others of all political persuasions, religions, sexual orientations, races, income levels, and more. Interaction and integration will breed peace and understanding, as it always does. That is what I want my tax dollars to build and what I think students need to experience, not private, corporate-controlled, or home education. There are still many other challenges, such as eliminating high-stakes testing or expanding democratic control of standards, but public education is worth preserving if we desire a more tolerant society.

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Ben Carson said in September 2015, “I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation,” suspicious of any faith that is “inconsistent with the values and principles of America.” These words exploded in his face, plunging his presidential campaign into a firestorm of criticism from liberals and conservatives alike.

He quickly amended his comments, explaining that he meant he couldn’t support a Muslim candidate who hadn’t “renounced the central [tenet] of Islam: Sharia Law,” under which “homosexuals–men and women alike–must be killed. Women must be subservient. And people following other religions must be killed.” But he acknowledged “that there are many peaceful Muslims who do not adhere to these beliefs” he could support if they repudiated these edicts.

The plot thickened on October 3, when, after the nonprofit Council on American-Islamic Relations called for him to pull out of the presidential race, Carson sought revenge by pushing the I.R.S. to rescind the nonprofit’s tax-exempt status, claiming it violated rules about interfering in a campaign.

Come on, Ben. Your position can be dismissed as absurd the moment you remember that to be an ethical person, you must hold yourself to the same standards you hold others. You must give others the freedom you desire for yourself. The Golden Rule, some call it, a simple idea that is found in virtually all major world religions.

In Christianity, it’s found in the book of Matthew: “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” In Islam, it’s in the Hadith: “Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others what you wish for yourself.” Far older than either of these are the words of Confucius, who said in the Analects, “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.”

If one were to suggest a Christian shouldn’t be president, or a black man shouldn’t be president, Carson would call this what it is: bigotry, hatred, ignorance. It’s amazing a black man is saying something like this. How long ago was it that whites could openly say a black man shouldn’t be president?

And if Christians, most of whom don’t take these laws seriously anymore, do not have to publicly renounce the Old Testament before getting Ben Carson’s support, why should Muslims who don’t take the Koran’s nastiest laws seriously have to?

The fact that extremist Islam is a much greater threat to humanity today makes no difference in terms of ethics. If more Muslims take primitive laws seriously than do Christians, the Golden Rule remains unchanged. Were Christian oppression and terror a greater threat, and Islam the main religion in the United States, peaceful Christians would still wish to run for office without fear of a witch hunt, of Islamic politicians trying to weed out Christian candidates like Ben Carson who have yet to condemn the Old Testament.

Also, one wonders if Carson would approve of a Muslim candidate fighting to see a Christian nonprofit taxed because the nonprofit called for the candidate’s withdraw after anti-Christian remarks.

Simple role reversal is not difficult. Neither is a cursory examination of U.S. laws specifically designed to protect people from the kind of discrimination Carson envisions.

When asked if he thought Islam was compatible with the Constitution, Carson said, “No.” True, edicts about killing non-believers and homosexuals and such would violate Constitutional law, but so would any requirement of religious confession or renunciation. Article VI of the Constitution notes, using several absolutes, that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office.” True, Carson was simply speaking of who he would personally support, not explicitly calling for such an official test. Yet if one can recognize when someone else’s views do not reflect the spirit, and letter, of the Constitution, one should just as easily be able to recognize when one’s own views make the same mistake.

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Edward Snowden wants to come home.

The former National Security Agency analyst says he has volunteered “many times” to cut a deal with the U.S. government that would allow him to return to the U.S. from Russia in exchange for a reduced prison sentence. “So far, they’ve said they won’t torture me,” Snowden said, “but we haven’t gotten much further than that.”

Snowden faces up to 30 years in prison for exposing details of the NSA’s massive domestic spying program two years ago. The intelligence files he leaked to the press revealed the government was keeping records of nearly 2 billion phone calls, text messages, and emails every day. The Patriot Act of 2001 opened the door to this sort of program.

Despite the fact that some Americans labeled Snowden a “traitor,” a massive public uproar against the government spurred by Snowden’s revelations pushed President Obama to terminate the spying program in June 2015.

Yet the charges against Snowden remain, charges filed under the old Espionage Act, used in World War I to throw critics of the war in prison.

The U.S. is willing to cut a deal with Snowden, but it remains to be seen what sort of reduced sentence the government will accept.

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Ask most Americans what they know about China and the response would probably be fairly simple: “Biggest population…run by a Communist Party…the Great Wall…China creates products we use…we owe them a ton of money.”

But as China appears in more and more newspaper headlines, there is a new interest in learning more about the growing superpower across the Pacific. If you’re one of those wanting to study deeper, here are 9 incredible facts about our Chinese friends to get you started.

1. CHINA WAS THE MOST ADVANCED SOCIETY FOR ALMOST ALL OF HUMAN HISTORY.

Chinese emperors ruled over more people than the Roman Empire, and constructed a larger road system as well, according to historian Chris Harman (A People’s History of the World). Building the Great Wall was a feat unparalleled in the ancient world, a structure at least 6,000 miles long, possibly 13,000 miles at its prime…that’s half the circumference of the Earth!

The Chinese were the first to invent iron in early 5th century B.C., then steel during the Northern Wei Dynasty (A.D. 386-557), modern paper during the Western Han Dynasty (202 B.C.-A.D. 9), the mechanical clock and moveable-type printing during the Tang Dynasty (618-907), the compass during the Song Dynasty (960-1279), and gunpowder in the 9th century. They were the first society to use gunpowder-based weapons.

2. FAMOUS CHINESE EXPLORERS PUT EUROPEAN EXPLORERS TO SHAME.

True, in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, to cross the Atlantic and make it to Asia. His first journey was with three ships and fewer than 90 men. But Zheng He set sail to explore the Pacific in 1405 with 62 ships and 27,800 men. Over several voyages, he explored the waters of Southeast Asia, India, east Africa, the Persian Gulf, and made it all the way to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Zheng He came from a Muslim family.

3. CHINA ONLY HAS ABOUT 7 MORE YEARS AS THE WORLD’S MOST POPULOUS NATION.

China currently has a population of 1.4 billion, yet since the 1951 the population growth rate fell from 2.8% to 0.6% today. India, which currently has 1.3 billion people, is estimated to pass China in population in 2022.

4. CHINA’S ECONOMY WILL SURPASS THE U.S. ECONOMY AS THE LARGEST IN THE WORLD IN 11 YEARS.

China already has the largest economy in terms of purchasing power (it has more people spending more money than the U.S. does, adjusting for currency value and cost of living). But by 2026, Chinese productive output will surpass that of the U.S. as well.

5. ISLAM IS THE MOST POPULAR RELIGION AMONG YOUNG PEOPLE IN CHINA.

According to research at Renmin University in Beijing, Islam has the largest proportion of followers (22.4%) under 30 than any other religion. Currently, China has some 23 million Muslims, more than some nations in the Middle East.

6. CHINA HAS HIGHWAYS THAT ARE 50 LANES ACROSS. 50!

And yet traffic jams are still a problem. On Wednesday, October 7, 2015, thousands of cars were delayed for hours on the G4 Beijing-Hong-Kong-Macau Expressway. Drivers were forced to merge from 50 lanes down to 20. Still not as bad as a traffic jam in 2010, which lasted 11 days and stretched back 60 miles.

7. AN ESTIMATED 1.6 MILLION CHINESE DIE EACH YEAR FROM POLLUTED AIR.

That’s about 4,400 people a day. As pollution from Chinese industry and energy use poisons and clouds their cities, China serves as an example of what will happen globally if carbon dioxide emissions go unchecked.

8. CHINA BUILDS MASSIVE CITIES WHERE NO ONE LIVES.

China constructs huge “ghost cities,” to meet the needs and interests of construction companies and keep their economy surging, but also to prepare for the 300 million Chinese expected to move from rural areas into cities by 2030.

9. YET CHINA HAS SOME OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPES ON EARTH.

Not only is the northern slope of Mount Everest in China, and the Great Wall and Forbidden City as stunning as they are famous, this massive nation is home to many incredible lesser-known landscapes, such as the Yangshou region.

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