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ne of the things that struck a young Asian man who recently made his first visit to America is the number of homeless people he came across while walking the streets of Washington DC and New York City.

They are on the sidewalks, in public parks, and at nights camped in sleeping bags close to subway stations. In DC, you’d also find them a few blocks from the White House. Some carrying their home literally “in two carrier bags”, as the 1970s song “Streets of London” about homelessness says.

So visible was homelessness here that it struck the visitor, a guest for two weeks, to the point that he started comparing poverty in Washington with his home town, Jakarta. While being poor (and homeless) in Indonesia and in America may be two completely different things, it is interesting that they have opposite trajectories; poverty in Indonesia, as in most Asian countries, is declining while in the US, as in much of the West, it is rising.

Ten or 20 years ago, any young visitor would have said yes if asked whether he would be interested in working in the US. When his American hosts during a dinner suggested this to our visitor, he said he was happy with his IT job with an American-based company and a girlfriend he plans on marrying next year, both awaiting him back home.

America is not only losing its economic shine, but also its appeal. Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post, prophesized in a 2010 book that America is rapidly becoming a Third World country. The latest poverty figure suggests she may not be far off.

This week, the US Census Bureau announced that the ranks of America’s poor have swollen to a record 46.2 million people.

That’s nearly one in six Americans, a historical record for a country that once prided itself as the land of opportunities. The streets in America are no longer paved with gold, not now, and probably not for the foreseeable future, judging by where the economy is going.

Surprisingly, there was little reaction among the American public at the disclosure of the 2010 poverty figure. Nor did it move Wall Street. Contrast this to the harsh reactions two weeks earlier when the government released the latest jobless figures, which remained stubbornly above 9 percent.

Although not so much politicized by his Republican challengers, for US President Barack Obama this poverty figure does not bode well for his 2012 reelection bid.

Already coming under heavy criticism for the poor US economic performance, the rise in the number of America’s poor is further proof of his failure to change the lot of his people.

His one saving grace may be that his Republican challengers are prescribing even bigger cuts in government spending, including particularly on welfare, which would only plunge more Americans, including senior citizens, into poverty.

The Census Bureau says unemployment benefits, which give workers up to 99 weeks of payments after layoffs, have kept 3.2 million people above the poverty line. Social security kept a further 20.3 million, mostly senior citizens, out of poverty.

In the realms of the 2012 elections, at least Obama can argue that he cared more about helping out the poor and the old than a Republican president would.

With the president sharing power with a Republican-controlled congress, nobody expects any fresh and bold government initiatives to get the economy going, at least not until after the November 2012 presidential elections.

Obama’s US$447 billion job-creation plan unveiled last week may be bold but it came across more as electoral rhetoric since it is unlikely to get very far.

While Obama seeks to boost social spending and raise corporate taxes, Congress is proposing just the opposite; cut back spending and give more tax breaks to the private sector, which they argue, would lead to more investment, jobs and income.

The philosophical difference is so great that an agreement can almost be ruled out that would get the economy moving, one way or another. In the meantime, for most Americans, things aren’t going to get better, and for some, the worse is still to come.

Unlike in some European countries, the US welfare system has not gone fully socialist. As many as 49.9 million Americans have no health insurance, in spite of Obama’s 2010 victory in pushing the Medicare bill through Congress. For many, unemployment benefits will soon run out. As many as six million people are now in the category of long-term unemployed and they are more likely to fall into poverty.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative Republican think-tank, recently published a controversial survey that shows that being poor in America still means having luxuries such as air-conditioned homes, cable TV, and that the average poor child still eats more red meat than the national average.

Direct comparison with Asia’s poor may be tempting but may not be valid. The US definition of poverty line is a family of four earning less than $22,314 a year. That gives (according to my calculation) an average income of $15 a day per person, In Asia, and in most developing countries in the world, poverty is defined as an average daily income of $2, and extreme poverty as $1 a day.

Irrespective of the definitions, being poor, homeless and out of work anywhere in the world hurts the sense of pride and sense of belonging to a society.

This is especially true if the condition is the result of circumstances beyond one’s control. Pretty soon, anyone who is poor for a long time will feel alienated.

The sun indeed doesn’t shine on you, whether you are in the streets of London, Jakarta or Washington.

The writer is a visiting fellow at the East West Center in Washington and is senior editor with The Jakarta Post.