Federal investigators: Trump has turned the United States into the "global champion of wealth inequality"

Federal investigators: Trump has turned the United States into the "global champion of wealth inequality" A homeless man is on the streets of Los Angeles. (Comprehensive report on the 15th) United Nations...

(Comprehensive report on the 15th) After a two-week official visit to the United States, Philip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, issued a report severely criticizing the Trump administration and held a press conference on the 15th, condemning President Trump and the Republican Congress for trying to turn the United States into a "world champion of wealth inequality." This is nothing less than a wake-up call at a time when the U.S. Congress is about to pass a tax reform bill that benefits only corporations and the wealthy.

Agence France-Presse reported that Elston said at a press conference in Washington that more than one-eighth of Americans are poor, nearly half of them are "extremely poor", and most of them cannot escape poverty.

Not only did he warn that the tax reform bill that the U.S. Congress is preparing to pass hastily will significantly exacerbate the already huge gap between rich and poor, he even accused Trump and his Republican Party of consciously distorting the American social structure in order to make the United States "the most unequal society in the world."

Elston has recently visited some poor areas of the United States, including homeless camps in California, small towns in the South and hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission assigned Elston to review global poverty. A complete report on the United States will not be released until next spring. Elston raised the key points of the report at a press conference.

He said that poverty and the gap between rich and poor in the United States are the result of years of accumulated policies, but Trump's tax reform, welfare cuts and health care plans will worsen the situation.

Elston said that the U.S. Congress is about to pass a tax reform bill that will benefit corporations and the wealthy, which will create "the single largest increase in the gap between rich and poor."

Republicans in the U.S. Congress said they would cut welfare and health insurance to make up for the financial losses caused by tax cuts. Elston warned that this would destroy the already holed safety net for the poor and "the gap between the rich and the poor will soar."

He said that one of the terrible phenomena of poverty and wealth disparity in the United States is the reappearance of hookworms parasitic in the duodenum. Local governments in the south have not provided clean water and sanitation facilities, and people must pay for them themselves.

He said that statistics show that 14% of Americans live below the poverty line, but there are more people on the edge of poverty. A more realistic figure should be that 20% of Americans are poor.

Elston pointed out that Wal-Mart employees cannot live on their full-time salary and must rely on food stamps issued by the government.

He said that the social mobility rate in the United States ranks last among rich countries, which means that "the American dream is quickly becoming an American phantom." "In today's America, children from poor families have almost no chance of escaping poverty. The voices of the poor have no chance to be heard, and the poor have no chance to influence public policy."