Inequality is one of the biggest problems in America, but is rarely mentioned during the campaign. The Guardian travelled to West Virginia to see how residents think poverty plays in the election
In a disused supermarket stacked high with mattresses, wardrobes, clothes, secondhand fridges, toys and even a vinyl copy of the soundtrack from Grease, a former postal worker and a part-time insurance broker are fighting America's dirty little secret: poverty.
Rose Hart and Diane Reineke run Appalachian Outreach, a not-for-profit organisation that seeks to help those "who fall through the cracks" inWest Virginia, both one of the most beautiful and one of the most impoverished states in America.
With limited funds, a handful of volunteers and a van with 194,000 miles on the clock they organise drop-offs for people too poor to buy toothpaste. Last Christmas one of their organisers asked a child what he wanted for Christmas only to be told that he wanted a blanket to keep out of the cold.
"We never finished the war on poverty that was started in the 1960s", said Hart as she describes how the organisation operates in half the counties of West Virginia. In some, the run-down coal towns of the south, median incomes are $16,000, barely a third of the US average. Hart says the real unemployment rate is well above 20%.
Asked how West Virginia has coped with the recession, she replied: "There wasn't much here to start with and it's getting worse."
Poverty and inequality were supposed to big issues in this year's campaign. The growing gulf between rich and poor became a hot issue in 2011 as a result of the Occupy Wall Street protests, and the latest official figures show things getting worse, not better. Of the 34 rich-country members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, only Chile, Mexico and Turkey are more unequal.
But for all president Barack Obama's rhetoric over taxing the 1% or the brief firestorm that followed the disparaging remarks Mitt Romney made about the 47% he claimed "pay no income tax", many feel the plight of America's poor is being ignored.
Martin Gilens, politics professor at Princeton university, said: "Both parties are highly dependent on affluent donors to fund their campaigns. Neither party has seen it as a particularly advantageous issue to push. That's why inequality has pretty much never been an issue either the Democrats or the Republicans has embraced in this country."
The share of national income of the richest 1% more than doubled between 1980 and 2008, from 8% to 18%. They make an average of $1.3m in after-tax income, while the poorest 20% take home $17,700.
Richard Freeman, economics professor at Harvard, said: "It's clearly a problem. Even conservatives would see that if the trend were to continue it would be devastating. Imagine the trend going on for another decade or two. Most people would say that would be dangerous".
Already, the risks to the American economy have become apparent. Stagnating real incomes in the three decades leading up to the financial crash of 2007 left many US citizens increasingly hooked on debt. Robert Frank, economics professor at Cornell university says American corporations have forgotten Henry Ford's insight: workers need to be paid wages high enough for them to buy the goods they are producing.
West Virginia, the US's second poorest state after Mississippi, has always struggled. The coal mining industry has slashed jobs as it has gone high tech, the steel industry is gone and its mountainous terrain presents physical obstacles to doing business. But in this recession it has been hit yet again.
While Romney pledges to cut entitlements, people on a minimum wage of $7.65 an hour struggle to meet even their most basic needs. At the Bread Basket, a drop-off point for Appalachian Outreach in Ritchie County, people line up for food parcels. Grits, dried pasta, tinned food, basic necessities for those whose money runs out at the end of the month.
Annie Owens has been organising the drop-off for 28 years and says now is the worst time she can remember. She has had to restrict the handout to the elderly and disabled in order to cope with the demand, "People put their pride aside and come and get it", she said.
One of those collecting a food parcel, pensioner Barbara Smith, said: "It's important to us. It helps us go from month to month. You have to make up your mind whether it's your medicine or your food".
Asked whether poverty was an issue in the election for America's politicians, Owens was emphatic. "This is not an issue for them. If we tell them this is going on they don't believe us. They think we are hillbillies, that this is our choice, that this is the way we want to live. But often it's not choice, it's not the way people want to live our lives. They forget about the small people."
For some life is getting better. Fracking, the controversial method for producing natural gas, is creating jobs. Pipelines too are being built across the mountainous terrain. There are jobs blowing the tops off mountains for coal. But the majority of these jobs are short term, low paid and benefit free. Once the job is done, there is nothing to fall back on.
Hart worries about the environmental impact of allowing energy firms to rip up West Virginia's stunning landscape. "What do you do for tourism when you blow up a mountain top? People want jobs and there's nothing else," she said.
Freeman, Gilens and Frank said there were policies that could help: full employment, changes to the tax code to make it more progressive; much greater investment in education; reform of campaign financing to break the stranglehold of rich donors.
Obama's healthcare reform apart, there has been little evidence that America's political class is interested in this sort of agenda. Hart said she raised the plight of the people she helps with congressman David McKinley, a West Virginia Republican.
She said his response was to say they should get a job. "He is totally clueless," she said.
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