Gotham’s David Schwartz editorial on the effects of Wal-Mart in the Bayside Brooklyn Patch:
As a small business advocate, I have witnessed worrisome changes in the business arena, but recent poverty projections for the United States, especially when accompanied by past data, are disturbing – particularly because one of the primary driving forces of this trend shows no intention of curbing its carcinogenic market structure.
In fact, it is quietly lobbying for entry in Willets Point and East New York.
While the public awaits the grimly projected 2011 poverty statistics due to be released this fall, The Associated Press asked experts to comment on the issue. If their estimations are correct, roughly 50 years of the War on Poverty could unravel at America’s feet.
According to the surveyed think-tanks, economists and other academics, the poverty level could reach as high as 15.7 percent, but a 0.1 percent increase alone could bring America back to the 1960s. In 2009, the Census Bureau reported the largest number of people living in poverty ever recorded: 43.6 million. Statistics such as these leave individuals like myself wondering how the United States ended up on such a path.
Little did America know that the face of poverty is both ever-changing and currently routed in the low-price promise, the very same promise that Wal-Mart is offering to New York and its developers…
