Donald Trump’s Poverty Denial
A fight over a report from the United Nations on the American poor further reveals the administration’s aversion toward welfare and public-assistance programs.
Let the Trump administration tell it, and there are virtually no people living in extreme poverty in the United States. In a recent rebuke to a United Nations report on American poverty, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley’s office stated that a recent study of Americans making less than $4 a day “implies that there are only approximately 250,000 persons in ‘extreme poverty’ circumstances.” Their estimate served to underscore the administration’s main objection to the report. In the richest country to ever exist, why study poverty at all?
, UN special rapporteur Philip G. Alston outlined his reasons. “The United States is a land of stark contrasts,” Alston wrote. “Its immense wealth and expertise stand in shocking contrast with
