Check
out this Associated Press video of Jimmy Carter speaking. Very
insightful comments. Media across the world has picked up his comments.
Rosalyn Carter's comment at the end in the video is even more
insightful:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/news-video/video-carter-middle-class-today-resembles-pasts-poor/article14739090/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/08/jimmy-carter-middle-class/2941391/
OAKLAND, California (AP) — Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday
that the income gap in the United States has increased to the point
where members of the middle class resemble the Americans who lived in
poverty when he occupied the White House.
Carter offered his
assessment of the nation's economic challenges Monday at a Habitat for
Humanity construction site in Oakland — the first of five cities he and
wife Rosalynn plan to visit this week to commemorate their three-decade
alliance with the international nonprofit that promotes and builds
affordable housing.
The recent economic downturn revealed that
families living in even comparatively well-off, but expensive regions
like the San Francisco Bay Area are economically insecure, Carter said.
"Even in one of the wealthiest parts of the world there is a great deal
of foreclosures and now a great deal of people who are fortunate to own
their own houses owe more on them than the houses are worth in the
present market, and that's all changed in the last eight years," Carter
said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Taking a break
from framing windows at a new 12-unit town house development in a
section of East Oakland where Habitat already has built or repaired 115
homes, the 89-year-old former Democratic president said the federal
government is investing less in affordable housing at a time of greater
need.
"The disparity between rich people and poor people in
America has increased dramatically since when we started," he said. "The
middle class has become more like poor people than they were 30 years
ago. So I don't think it's getting any better."
Years of tax
breaks for the wealthy, a minimum wage untethered from the inflation
rate and electoral districts drawn to maximize political polarization
have reduced the quality of life for all but a small fraction of
Americans and imperiled the nation's standing as "a real superpower," he
said.
"The richest people in America would be better off if
everybody lived in a decent home and had a chance to pay for it, and if
everyone had enough income even if they had a daily job to be good
buyers for the products that are produced," said Carter, looking relaxed
in a baseball cap, blue jeans and white sneakers.
Habitat for
Humanity was founded in Georgia, the home state of the Carters. They
first joined a Habitat for Humanity work site in 1984 in New York and
have spent a week every year working on construction sites in the U.S.
and abroad.