What Does a Person Deserve?
By LYNETTE ABEL

 In recent months, there have been more and more articles documenting the shameful, growing existence of hunger across our nation, and the dependence of families on soup kitchens and food pantries.
      As a native of Syracuse and a fellow human being, I was deeply affected to read online in the Herald-Journal of Jan. 8, the article "Need for Food Is Up In CNY and Nationwide," by Frank Brieaddy.  He reports that "the demand for food has grown in a way never imagined by the people who launched pantry operations two decades ago."
      It is an outrage, and a national disgrace, that an American man, Arthur Johnson--who stands for many others--after a lifetime of hard work and no longer being able to work "has nothing but a bare apartment--not a stick of furniture, not even a stove or refrigerator," and has to search out food in an area pantry, where the amount he receives is regulated.
      I respect the persons working to have food gets to the people who need it, but a person should not have to endure indignities in order to secure basic human rights to which every person is entitled.
     In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948 by the United Nations, and signed by the U.S., Article 25 states: "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care."
      I want Central New Yorkers and people throughout our nation to know what Eli Siegel, economist, historian, and founder of the education Aesthetic Realism, explained: The only reason there is hunger and poverty in our country is because of contempt for people that is at the basis of our American economy, the profit system.
      He defined contempt as "the addition to self through the lessening of something else."  In our unjust economy, the profits made from the work of some people—many paid as little as possible—go into the pockets of others--owners and stockholders, who did not earn them.
     That is why certain people are extraordinarily wealthy and others who work two or three jobs don't make enough money to afford even the most basic human needs.  Said Siegel: "Only contempt could permit a man to make money from the work of another--as man has done these hundreds of years."  That is why some families have to agonize between feeding their children breakfast or skipping it so they will be able to pay their rent. 
      "While any child needs something he hasn't got," Siegel stated, "the profit system is a failure."  It is rather clear that an economy that is truly successful has to benefit all of the American people.
      In the international journal, The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, the Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism, Ellen Reiss, with logic and passionate feeling, describes the accurate, just relation of our abundant American earth to its citizens:

Lynette Abel is a freelance writer, and a Consultations Coordinator at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation.