POVERTY, AMERICA'S INDUSTRY

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          This project focuses on a court system, a component of the poverty industry, ostensibly concerned with providing an opportunity for abused and neglected children, mostly poor, white and black, to become productive citizens. In the end the goal achieved is a system serving not the children but those sustaining their lives through a continuation of a system operating as part of the poverty industry. 

          Where the children and their families are after going through this system nobody really knows. However, it is a question demanding an answer the best we can to make sense out of this system, thus the attempt is made here. 

            Following is a description of a court system located in a major city on the East Coast of the United States in which hundreds of public and private agencies, and citizens, dedicated and otherwise, are doing the best they can, for the most part, to address issues of abused and neglected children and their families. 

             The extent and size of this system are described measured by the number of agencies, public and private, people involved, number of employees and jobs created, directly and indirectly, and funds, mostly public, expended.

             Having defined this court system, the size of the workforce and jobs created by this system, directly and indirectly, and the funds expended, a clear idea of the extent of the endeavor, an endeavor measured, not in millions of dollars, but in billions, appears.

           The focus then turns to the number of children and families having gone through this system with an analysis attempting to determine where these children and families are today, followed by an analysis of the current number of children and families in this system. 

           The defenders of this system speak of advancing the cause of the children when in fact unknowingly, some knowingly, they are advancing the cause of the enrichment of themselves and an expanding Gross National Product (GNP), enhancing an industry as big of a component of the economy as the steel industry, the oil industry, technology, the munition industry and the like. 

            Having defined the number of people profiting from this system, the size of spending undertaken, the percentage of the GNP it represents, and knowing where the children, having gone through this system, are today, a cost benefit analysis is utilized indicating the extent of the efficiency and usefulness of this system. 

           In the end we see a system doing what it does best, creating jobs, nothing more, in the millions with costs measured in the billions of dollars becoming a significant portion of the Gross National Product (GNP), right up there with the steel industry, oil industry, technology industry, the munition industry and the like, providing for the comfortable, at the expense of poor children and their working families used as fodder for the enrichment of people living well beyond the children of poverty.    

           Leaving the children behind this does, having no one to stand up for them, awaiting for a Moses to lead them to a better world. 

           As the steel industry, the oil industry, the tech industry, the munition industry and the like work to maintain prosperity and grow the GNP, the poverty industry is right there with these industries working to maintain prosperity and grow the GNP, keeping people poor in a state of poorness to benefit the economy, to keep the economy strong no different than an economy made strong by a system of slavery, worker abuse and neglect. 

            A consequence, this is that no one desires. Well, almost no one.

           An economy dependent upon the poor perpetuates itself, just as an economy dependent on oil, technology, steel, munitions and the like, perpetuates itself. A system making profits on the backs of the poor keeps them poor, being good for business. 

          A later chapter will address how this can be changed defining a system achieving the stated purpose of the poverty industry, that is “providing an opportunity for our children to become productive citizens”. The model developed in these pages can be used as a model nationally in all industries throughout the United States.