Editor,
This is a brief response to a column by Olivier Simon written last semester about the U.S. population topping 300 million. Not everyone in the U.S. can afford to live a lavish lifestyle today, as this column generalized.
According to a recent "Oprah" episode that included Maria Shriver and other reporters, there are 37 million Americans that live below the poverty line. This number represents about 12 percent of the total U.S. population. This staggering statistic, if true, eventually translates into a large unemployment rate.
Why should the rest of us, who live above minimum wage, care about these people? Well, these people use welfare and food stamps to survive, and these funds are extracted out of the taxpayers' pockets. All these people represent a potential work force, but the rest of us are paying the tab in order for them to survive.
One solution to poverty is to use the effective method of microcredit, a concept developed by Muhammad Yunus. Yunus is a Bangladeshi economist and Nobel Peace Prize winner who has helped many millions of people worldwide get out of poverty. Microcredit is an idea about lending small sums of money to impoverished people who are turned away by banks, so they can start their own businesses.
In this land of financial prosperity, poverty should not be such a huge problem.
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Gerardo Saenz
UNM student
