US fast becoming a 'champion of inequality': UN expert

Says entrenched poverty would be made even worse by the proposed tax reform package

GENEVA: A UN expert on Monday warned that the United States, one of the world's richest nations, was fast becoming a "champion of inequality".

In a statement issued Monday after a two-week fact-finding mission to the United States, the UN expert said entrenched poverty would be made even worse by the proposed tax reform package.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, said in his statement that "the American Dream is rapidly becoming the American Illusion".

"There is no other developed country where so many voters are disenfranchised and where so few poor voters even care to go to the polls, and where ordinary voters ultimately have so little impact on political outcomes," he said.

"There are no other developed countries in which so many citizens are behind bars," the UN independent human rights expert added.

The UN Special Rapporteur cited the the most recent official statistics from the US Census Bureau in September 2017 which indicated that more than 40 million people -- more than one in eight Americans -- were living in poverty.



Almost half of those, or 18.5 million, were living in deep poverty, with reported family income below half of the poverty threshold.

Alston said the poor were assumed to come from ethnic minority groups, but noted that in reality there were eight million more white people than African-Americans living in poverty.

"The face of poverty in America is not only black or Hispanic, but also white, Asian and many other colors," he said.

The Special Rapporteur expressed the fear that proposed changes in the direction of US tax and welfare policies could have devastating consequences for the poorest 20 percent of Americans.

"The proposed tax reform package stakes out America's bid to become the most unequal society in the world," Alston said. "It will greatly increase the already high levels of wealth and income inequality between the richest one percent and the poorest 50 percent of Americans".

The UN expert's final report on his US visit will be available in the spring of 2018 and will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in June 2018.