Treatment of poor is barbaric

Two hundred years from now, our descendants will look back on us as barbarians for the way which we treat the poor.

At a time of enormous abundance, where food is literally rotting on the shelves, we allow 1 in 6 Americans to go hungry just because they don't have the means or the will to work.

Due to the rise in automation, we will all be out of work before the turn of the next century. And yet production in the United States will have steadily increased, as it has since the early 1900s, all while employment opportunities have steadily fallen.

What is the precedent that we wish to set for our children and our fellow citizens - that human life is only valuable if you can swim upstream faster than the other fish? That's not human, that's animal barbarism.

I think SNAP is inferior to a universal basic income, but it is nonetheless better than nothing.

Chance Lacina

Iowa City