The system hasn't supported kids, either. A UNICEF study places the U.S. 26th out of 29 OECD countries in the overall well-being of its children.
Water and Food: Life-giving seeds and drinking water have been increasingly treated as products to be bought and sold.
Yet in a brazen show of hypocrisy, major corporations have ignored all the problems they've caused, choosing instead to cut their taxes in half despite doubling their profits, to hold 60% of its cash offshore, to eliminate workers rather than create jobs, and to reduce the pay of their remaining employees.
An Apple executive explained: "We don't have an obligation to solve America's problems."
Calling Themselves "Multinationals": No Allegiance to Anyone Big business has found its Utopia, a world in which millions of people are willing to work for a fraction of U.S. salaries.
Poverty levels haven't changed much in 30 years, with almost half of humanity, up to three billion people, living on less than $2.50 a day. A quarter of the world's children - over 170 million kids under age five - are growing up stunted because of malnutrition.
The World Bank estimates the total cost for a successful attack on malnutrition would be approximately $10.3 to $11.8 billion annually. Apple alone underpaid its 2012 taxes by $11 billion, based on a 35% rate.
Some of our largest multinational companies hold top positions on the federal contractor misconduct list, which recognizes corporate environmental, ethics, and labor violations. Oil spills are common. Underdeveloped countries like Nigeria have been ravaged by oil production. Big firms are buying up farmland in more than 60 developing countries.
Most perversely, multinationals are working hard to pass trade agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would actually dismantle environmental protections.
Absurd as it once seemed, a 1991 quote from the World Bank's Larry Summers now comes back to haunt us: "Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)?...I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted."
And as big business makes its way around the world like a modern-day Attila the Hun, pillaging and despoiling, it has the U.S. military covering its back with 900 overseas bases in 130 nations.
If one of the countries kicks up a fuss, the corporations can just move on to the next one.
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