75%

I just read a statistic that shocked me. I was so surprised I had to do a goog to confirm it, I just absolutely could not believe it was true.

75% of Americans will spend at least one year living below the poverty line.

Did you know that??? I am still a little speechless. Theoretically, although I’m not sure I believe it, we are the wealthiest country in the world. I just got back from Seoul and Tokyo and I can tell you for sure that we are nowhere near the most technologically advanced country in the world. We are laughably behind. We are most certainly not the healthiest or most generous country in the world, nor are we anywhere close to the happiest. And as you know because I never stop saying it, we’re the only country that doesn’t make sure that our people have the most basic thing in the world to even begin to attain all of the things they need to be healthy and happy- an ID. But… I guess we’re the wealthiest?

And yet three quarters of us spend at least a year below the poverty line- the poverty line that is already comically unrealistic. Really???

It may be wildly confusing to understand what our national priorities are or why we are so different from every other country. It’s like airports. Other countries do airports so well. Amsterdam. Oslo. Seoul. Istanbul. Singapore. There are some truly fantastic airports in the world. And then you look at ours. Even the new ones are… meh. It’s like no one who designs American airports has ever actually used one, or been to one anywhere else in the world.

The absolutely epic failure of our government has led to one truly great thing though- a nation of people who regularly decide “fine, we’ll just do it ourselves”. From Freedom Schools to Space X (Elon is the absolute worst but we wouldn’t have a space program today without white men with too much money) we have all decided to pick up the slack. It’s why Spread The Vote + Project ID exists. Politicians regularly joke that we should be a government agency. Which… yes, we should. But Americans are never satisfied with sitting back and waiting for the government to do something. We’d all be in real trouble if we did. For better or worse, we roll up our sleeves and get to work. This is a country that works in spite of the powers that be.

Do I wish that we had fiber optic cable running through our cities like Seoul has had since the 90s? Yes. Do I dream of the day when we have universal health care and awesome 4D billboards? Obviously. Am I going to stop working every single day for a future in which all 26 million American adults without ID finally have that little piece of plastic in their pockets? Absolutely not.

75%. 26 Million. So many big, scary numbers in this country. But no number is so big that we can’t handle it, and we don’t scare easily.

Kat