Food? I don’t hear humming of ‘America the Beautiful’

There certainly seems to be a lot of optimism about the direction of the country these days.

The economy appears to be booming, the unemployment rate is at 3.8 percent — the lowest it has been in nearly 20 years — tax cuts have put extra cash in people’s pockets and the bells are ringing green on Wall Street as arrows point up across all indexes.

The Trump administration and its followers are pumping their fists in the air and patting themselves on the back as they see what they call America becoming great again as campaign promises are kept.

There does seem to be reason for plenty of optimism — but then again, I am not hungry.

Every Saturday on my way to work, I board the Coastal Link bus in Bridgeport that passes by the food pantry at the Bethel Memorial Deliverance Church on State Street.

And as I pass, I am always disturbed that these are not the huddled masses of lore getting a fresh start and a helping hand to a new life, but Americans trying to survive.

The same food lines appear in cities and towns across Connecticut and throughout the United States, where poverty and hunger have become the landscape of the American dream.

But none of this is news to my readers and not what this column is about.

I am struck by the similarities between 2018 and 1929 — the year the Great Depression began — and how little America has achieved in reducing hunger and poverty. When the Great Depression roared in during the last year of the ’20s, unemployment was at 3.2 percent and people were so enthused by the direction of the country, they poured money into the stock market, opened businesses and took out lines of credit. But all that glitters is not gold. By 1932, unemployment had skyrocketed to 23.6 percent, with unemployment running more than 50 percent among blacks. More than 2 million people were homeless.

And prior to the Great Depression, whose images are the posters for poverty and hunger, more than 60 percent of the country lived in poverty.

Sound familiar? I guess so, because not much has changed.

According to the United Way ALICE Project, nearly 43 percent of households in the United States can’t afford the basics: housing, food, child care, health care, transportation and a cellphone.

The figure includes 16.1 million households living in poverty, as well as 34.7 million families that the United Way has dubbed ALICE — Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.

The only difference I see between then and now is that

America and Connecticut have social service programs — but hunger and poverty remain the same. In 1960, about 10 percent of the state’s population lived in poverty.

That holds true today, with nearly 350,000 residents out of 3.59 million in Connecticut living below the poverty line.

And for them, it’s about to get worse.

The ALICE report came out before Ben Carson, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — and the only black in America who is an immigrant, I might add — rode into town, promising to deliver more misery for low-income people by demanding they pay another 20 percent for rent in governmentsubsidized housing.

How is that possible in a city like New Haven, where 57 percent of residents have a median income of about $37,000 annually?

To put it simply, America has come to expect a large portion of its people to go to work — and then stand in a line for bread and social services for help with rent and utilities.

In 2017, 42.6 million Americans were getting food stamps; and in 2018, people are still standing in line for food.

And if you’re paying attention to what’s going on in the world, you know water might be next.

It is getting worse, and that just can’t be by mistake in a country with vast resources.

And party politics and their alleged principles have nothing to do with it: Since Abraham Lincoln ran and won the White House as a Republican, there have been 18 Republicans and 14 Democrats sworn-in as president.

So, I think after nearly 250 years, the reality of America and poverty is pretty clear: For many people, they will be born poor, they will live poor and they will die poor in a country where a torch lights the way as a symbol to a better life.

But the bells are ringing green on Wall Street.

Tell that to the people standing in line in Bridgeport and other towns and cities for food. I don’t think they’re humming “America the Beautiful.”