Word: underclass
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...growers and distributors, though, the situation is different entirely. They form the linemen of a vast American underclass of crime and poverty. Their entire lives are, by and large, extralegal. They do not donate to politicians and they do not vote. Their trade demands that they shed their citizenry, that they give up the privileges and protections of society for them and their families. The law does not demur to strip away their freedom, and they fill up the ranks of inmates in wild overproportion—over 55 percent of the federal prison population is incarcerated for drug offenses...
...President Fernandez presides over a country that is laudable for its advances in trade and tourism, its partnership with America and the improvements it has made for its own citizens. But President Fernandez also presides over a country that maintains a “permanent underclass,” confined to subhuman living conditions, unobtainable rights, and indentured servitude...
...extent, this discomfort is misplaced. The armed services are more socially diverse today than during Vietnam or even Gulf War I - even including several children of national politicians. The discomfort also may be misguided: if the military has, by historical accident, turned into an important path out of the underclass and into bourgeois society, used disproportionately by African-Americans, is that necessarily a bad thing? (Especially when the lifetime risk of dying on the job may be no higher in the military than in other dangerous careers like coal mining...
...prevented from helping. Around the same time the Burmese discovered a treasure trove of natural gas, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, sitting offshore. The net result? A Burmese regime that can easily withstand Western sanctions, an economy still closely tied to official power and patronage, and a growing underclass facing greater hardship than ever before. Millions of poor people from rural areas are on the move, in search of work and food, including across the border into Thailand. Many are now in desperate need of basic life-saving assistance, and yet per capita international aid to Burma (less than...
...That's the real trouble: no one has. From its endangered pension system to its emerging young underclass, Japan faces existential challenges, but you wouldn't know that from the tone of the campaigns. Real debates-such as whether to raise the consumption tax to reduce public debt-are postponed until after the election, while the media feeds on the latest political scandal. "It's like the campaign is happening on another planet," says Akihiko Matsutani, a pension expert with GRIPS. "These discussions need to take place...