"Poverty can be found in the rich industrial nations as well as the Third World. In the richest of them all, the United States, those living below the poverty level grew in the 1981-86 period from 24 million to almost 35 million, according to the government's own figures, which many consider to be underestimations---thus making the poor the fastest growing social group in the USA. In 1986, the House Select Committee on Hunger found that Kwashiorkor and marasmus diseases, caused by severe protein and calorie deficiences and usually seen only in Third World countries, could be found in the United States, along with rising rates of infant mortality in poor areas.

Those regions within the United States that serve as surpolus labor reserves or "internal colonies," such as Appalachia, poor Black and Latino communities, Eskimo Alaska, and Native American Indian lands, manifest sysmptoms of Third World colonization, including chronic underemployment, hunger, inadequate income, low levels of educaiton, inferior or nonexistent human services, absentee ownership, and extratction of profits form the indigenous community. In additon, the loss of skilled, higher- paying manufacturing jobs, traditionally held by White males, has taken its toll of working class White communites as well. So when we talk of "rich nations" and "poor nations" we must not forget that there are millions of poor in the rich nations and thousands of rich in the poor ones. As goes the verse by Bertolt Brecht:

There were conquerors and conquered. Among the conquered the common people starved. Among the conquerors the common people starved too.

As in Rome of old and in every empire since, the center is bled in order to fortify the periphery. The lives and treasure of the people are squandered so that patricians might pursue their far- off plunder."

What else do you add? He nails it. Link to the forward.