sociology quiz 1-9

Stingler

"Economists have not been very outspoken on this type of legislation," Stigler wrote. "It is my thesis that they can and should be outspoken, and singularly agreed" that raising the minimum wage was a bad idea. Stigler believed that if employers had to pay workers more, they'd hire fewer of them, spurring unemployment among people who otherwise would have had bad jobs, but jobs nonetheless. Proved wrong when New Jersey highered minimum wage but didn't have more unemployment

we like it

"Those who are well-heeled don't want to get un-well-heeled," no matter how they came by their coin. Frankly, tax breaks are nice to have if you can get them. "The history of the world, is who gets eaten and who gets to eat. one man's poverty was another man's profit

Natural experiments: universal basic income Stockton CA, new hope program

- A random sample of 125 residents of the city's low-income neighborhoods were selected to receive $500 a month, no strings attached. They took it to the grocery store or used it to pay utility bills and fix up their cars. Less than 1% of purchases were for tobacco or alcohol. - implemented in the mid-1990s in Milwaukee. This initiative gave residents from poor neighborhoods access to affordable health insurance and childcare, while also providing wage supplements to boost their incomes. 5 years after New Hope launched, participants randomly selected into the program had higher incomes and better jobs than those who weren't. were also twice as likely to be married. New Hope is 1 of several programs that have boosted marriage rates, not by offering relationship counseling or organizing workshops initiatives that don't work but by providing couples with enough economic stability to try for a life together

targeted vs universal

- Targeted programs (like food stamps) are reserved for the poorest families. Because they are for marginalized people with specific needs (like hunger), they are cost-efficient and typically successful. But are also divisive, families just above an arbitrary income cutoff are denied help, causing a rift to form between officially poor families and a much larger group of Americans who live above the poverty line without much economic security. Ex: the Affordable Care Act. Some working-class families had to pay upward of $1,000 a month for coverage, while poorer families qualified for free Medicaid - Universal programs, like a universal basic income (UBI), get rid of this baggage. Designed to benefit a large number of people, sometimes irrespective of their standing, less polarizing and considered more politically durable. also much more expensive some popular UBI proposals would cost north of $1 trillion a year and one-size-fits-all design can underserve the neediest families. - broader or bigger targeting. These are simply targeted programs with a higher income threshold, allowing aid to flow not just to the poor, but also to the working and middle class have proven to be popular over the past decades, and difficult for Congress to cancel when political winds shift - targeted universal approach, takes such things into account, acknowledging that for our goal to be met, different groups will need different interventions: some shallow and some deep,

black homeowners

- are denied mortgage more than any other racial group - pay more interest for loans - Black and Hispanic families were 5x more likely to lack a bank account

independent contractors

- aren't part of the real workforce of componies - usually can't work in other locations, get promotions - makes it harder to quit - assume more responsibility on the job they must supply their own car, gas, insurance while also subjecting those workers to heightened supervision - don't get sick days, overtime, vacation time, or worker compensation. Often aren't covered by minimum wage laws or the National Labor Relations Act, which regulates employment conditions, and are ineligible for unemployment insurance.

why have poverty rates not declined

- certain things like phones are cheaper but things like healthcare and housing have become more expensive - "It is much easier in the US to be decently dressed than it is to be decently housed, fed, or doctored - not a result of government just not caring, neoliberalism, much messier than that

unions and economy

- evidence that they play a role in boosting company productivity - The American economy is less productive today than it was in the postwar period when unions were at peak strength. - As workers lost power, their jobs got worse. Unions had kept caps on profits by raising workers' wages and compensation - Upward mobility is no longer the overriding feature of the American experience. - Other countries are doing better because they kept their unions, this is about power

poverty statistics

- more than 38 million people living in the United States cannot afford basic necessities, and more than 108 million get by on $55,000 a year or less, - many stuck in that space between poverty and security. 1/9 adults and 1/8 kids live in poverty in America. - more than 1 million kids in public schools are homeless. - More than 2 million people don't have running water. We are the richest country.

poor families and moving

- not like affluent families do - done usually from eviction or dangerous neighborhood/last resort - many obstacles - often have eviction and conviction records, bad or no credit, and no access to cosigners who appear on paper as safer bets. - nonwhite and those who have children, face discrimination by landlords less discrimination now but it still exists - hard to get a mortgage because banks can make more money elsewhere

democrats vs republicans views

- the idea that raising the minimum wage will create jobs by increasing spending, as workers will have more money in their pockets. - raising the minimum wage will cost jobs, echoing Stigler. - bulk of the evidence suggests that the employment effect of raising the minimum wage is inconsequential.

pay low productivity high

- workers are giving more value to their companies than their pay reflects, and employers are constantly finding new avenues to squeeze their labor force - algorithms powering just-in-time scheduling have allowed bosses to finetune staffing levels to demand, leading to unpredictable hours that cause paychecks to grow and shrink from week to week. - Most large private firms track worker productivity, sometimes docking pay for "idle time," including when employees use the bathroom or consult with clients. - You produce more profit but enjoy less of it, the textbook definition of exploitation

the 1%

1 estimate: simply collecting unpaid federal income taxes from the top 1% of households would bring in $175 billion a year. We could fill the entire poverty gap in the US if the richest among us simply paid the taxes they owe

Decline of unions

13,000 unionized air traffic controllers left their posts after contract negotiations with the Federal Aviation Administration broke down. When workers refused to return to work, President Reagan fired all of them. The public's response was muted, and corporate America learned that it could crush unions with minimal blowback. In 1985, Hormel Foods, of Spam and Dinty Moore beef stew fame, cut worker pay in its Austin, Minnesota, plant from $10.69 to $8.25 an hour and kneecapped the strike that followed by hiring replacements. unions collapsed, and corporate interests made sure they remained weak.Today, only around 1/10 American workers belong to a union, and most of them are firefighters, nurses, cops, and other public sector workers. Almost all private sector employees (94%) are without a union, hiring union-busting firms to tell employees that they could be fired if they vote yes

help not disrupt

A big reason why is we insist on supporting policies that accommodate poverty, not disrupt it. Our largest cash assistance program is Earned Income Tax Credit, which props up corporate profits and depresses wages. Our biggest affordable housing initiative is the Housing Choice Voucher Program, which, by paying a portion of a family's rent, subsidizes private landlords and pushes up costs. They rescue millions of families from a social ill, but do nothing to address its root causes. We don't just need deeper antipoverty investments. We need different ones, policies that refuse to partner with poverty, policies that threaten its very survival. it needs to stay in their pockets If we fail to address the forms of exploitation at the bottom of the market, we risk increasing government spending only to experience another 50 years of sclerosis in the fight against poverty. We need to empower the poor.

covid aid

After the Great Recession that began in 2008, families in the bottom half of the income distribution had to wait 10 years before their incomes returned to pre-recession levels. After the COVID-19-induced recession, they waited just 1 1/2 years. Government aid played a major role in recovery. The National Low Income Housing Coalition, and dozens of like-minded organizations across the country, demanded action, and the federal government responded with $46.5 billion in rental assistance. To make sure funds ended up in the right hands, distribution channels had to be created from scratch in every community in America. the expanded Child Tax Credit, had cut the eviction filing rate 1/2 in city after city across the United States. Eviction rates were lower than they had ever been on record.

poverty is loss of liberty

Almost 2 million people in prison, 3.7 million parole. Prison robs people of the primes of their lives. Also feeling that the government is against you and for people who aren't poor. Homeless people can be arrested for being in public.

loss of talent

And consider all the talent, beauty, and brilliance that we squander by requiring that Americans expend so much energy trying to make it day to day. A 2019 study published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics found that children from rich families were 10x as likely to become inventors than children from families in the bottom half of the income distribution. The researchers attributed this gap to environmental factors, not differences in innate abilities, by showing that young children from low-income families who scored high in math, which turns out to be very predictive of inventing something later in life, were still much less likely to become inventors than wealthier children with similar math scores. "there are many 'lost Einsteins' " who would have made enormous contributions had they been allowed to reach their full potential. Poverty reduces people born for better things.

Housing market

As people flocked to cities throughout the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, urban land values soared, and landlords began subdividing their properties to make room for more renters. The Panic of 1837, a financial crisis that led the country into a major depression, encouraged even more partitioning. Cellars, attics, and storage sheds were fashioned into single-room apartments, and renting to poor families proved to be a lucrative enterprise even through the catastrophic downturn. When tenements began appearing in NYC in the mid-1800s, their rent was as much as 30% higher than that of better apartments uptown. This was true even in the poorest slums. people of color were hemmed into ghettos, forced to accept housing options no one else wanted. these districts were written in law and enforced by police. Black people often paid 2x. This still existed in the 1960's

movements and anti poverty

Behind everything done to end poverty, there have been ordinary Americans who have worked to accomplish extraordinary things. Social movements spark ideas, providing the blueprint for reform, Most important, movements apply heat. Ex: the civil rights movement "called upon us to make good the promise of US. And who can say that we would have made the same progress were it not for [their] persistent bravery, and [their] faith in American democracy?" Poverty will be abolished in America only when a mass movement demands it so. Ex: The Poor People's Campaign has elevated the voices of low-income Americans around the country, voices challenging "the lie of scarcity in the midst of abundance" and mobilizing for things like educational equity and reinvestment in public housing. All of us can learn from, support, and join movements led by those who have intimate knowledge of poverty's many slights and humiliations: attending meetings, signing petitions, donating time and money, amplifying social media messages, working the phone banks, adding our voices to public protests, and running supplies to the picket line

How to do this

Change, to abolish poverty. "Find some way in your life to be in relationship with working class and poor people." not charity, where a person of means serves someone in need, but genuine connection, 1 built on mutual respect and understanding, where Americans across the class spectrum join low-income Americans in a political struggle for more dignity and more power. mass movements are composed of of people finding their own way to pitch in Movements need people to march, graphic designers, cooks, marketing professionals, teachers, faith leaders and lawyers. We can all direct our obsessions and talents toward abolishing poverty. We need a lot of people despite their political status. We are not as polarized politically and people think. Most Americans believe the economy is benefitting the rich and harming the poor.

choice and exploitation

Choice is the antidote for exploitation a crucial step toward ending poverty is giving more Americans the power to decide where to work, live, and bank, and when to start a family

Example 2

Disability: Many Americans turn to disability for help, but the government is making it harder to get. In the mid-1990s, 1/2 of disability applications were approved; today, 1/3 are In poor communities, it is common knowledge that you must apply multiple times for disability, as if it's the normal application process, and you'll need an attorney. each year, over a billion dollars of Social Security funds are spent not on getting people disability but on getting people lawyers so that they can get disability.

good parts of the solution

Ending segregation, would require affluent families to give up some things, but what we'd gain in return would be more valuable. give up hoarding opportunity and public safety, but but we'd also give up the shame that haunts us when we participate in the evil business of exclusion and poverty creation. We'd have to give up some comforts and familiarities of life behind the wall and give up the stories we've told ourselves about that place and our role in it, but we'd also be giving up the loneliness and empty materialism that have come to characterize much of upper-class life, allowing ourselves, to reach "for higher dreams, for greater privileges would be neither a utopia nor a land of gray uniformity. Ending poverty wouldn't lead to social collapse, or erase income inequality. There is so much of that in America today that we could make meaningful gains in equality, certainly enough to abolish poverty, and still have miles and miles of separation between the top and bottom.

why it never reached them

Ex: Welfare: Bill Clinton reformed welfare in 1996, replacing old model with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), he transformed the program into a block grant that lets states decide how to distribute the money. causing, states to come up with other ways to spend it. for every dollar of TANF in 2020, poor families received 22 cents. Some went to helping families in other ways, like supporting job training and offsetting childcare costs. Other TANF dollars were dedicated to funding juvenile justice administration, promoting financial literacy, and a wide assortment of other things that had little or no relation to reducing poverty. Between 1999 and 2016, Oklahoma spent over $70 million TANF funds on the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative, providing counseling services and organizing workshops open to everyone in the state Arizona used welfare dollars to pay for abstinence-only sex education. Pennsylvania used TANF funds for anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. States aren't required to spend all of their TANF dollars each year, and many don't, carrying over the unused money into the next year. In 2020, states had almost $6 billion left over.

how we make poor people poor 1

Exploiting them: constrain their choice and power in the labor market, housing market, and financial market, driving down wages while forcing the poor to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. Those of us who are not poor benefit from this. Corporations benefit from worker exploitation. so do consumers who buy cheap goods and services the working poor produce, and those of us directly or indirectly invested in the stock market. Landlords are not the only ones who benefit from housing exploitation; many homeowners do their property values propped up by the effort to make housing scarce and expensive. The banking and payday lending industries profit from the financial exploitation of the poor, but so do those of us with free checking accounts at Bank of America or Wells Fargo, as those accounts are subsidized by billions of dollars in overdraft fees.

roe v wade and poverty

I do know, concretely, that the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and claw back the national right to abortion will have devastating consequences for poor women. We could, of course, ensure that no child in America is born into poverty. We could make sure all women have access to the best contraception and healthcare, helping more pregnancies become intentional and safer. We could provide new mothers with strong supports like paid parental leave and free childcare. Which is all to say, a country as wealthy as ours could put our money where our mouth is when it comes to supporting life. But from the poor, just take and take.

charity

If charity were enough, it would be enough, and this book would be irrelevant. Giving money away is beautiful, yet poverty persists. Rather than throwing money over the wall, let's tear it down.

what about the wall

If localities refused to end exclusionary zoning, Congress could cut their funding. whenever an exclusionary town or neighborhood receives federal dollars to repair sidewalks, update sewer systems, or build a public park, low-income taxpayers fund improvements where they are rejected. Congress could end this by denying federal money to jurisdictions with this zoning. Those who wish to remain behind walls shouldn't get help from us. people who follow zoning politics tend to be richer, older, and whiter than the community and are typically homeowners. This voting bloc loudly and overwhelmingly opposes affordable housing, and new construction, contributing to the rental crisis. 19th century Americans were only observers of politics until the town proposed to run a road through their property. Then they started showing up at public forums. Defenders of the status quo, this pro-segregationist propertied class, have shown themselves to be willing to defend the wall. Their efforts have paid off by delaying and killing proposals to build more housing, as local civil servants tend to respond to the voices they hear. We need new voices in the room. like middle- and high-school students eager to welcome more young people into their classrooms, and it would be particularly powerful to hear from families planning on moving into proposed affordable housing developments. We need to rise from our seats and tell our local officials: This community's long-standing tradition of segregation stops with me. I refuse to deny other children opportunities my children enjoy by living here.

immigration and poverty

If newcomers remain poor, increasing immigration can push up the poverty rate. If this were happening, states that experienced the largest influx of immigrants should have seen their poverty rates climb but this isn't true immigrants have some of the highest rates of economic mobility in the country. the long-term impact of immigration on wages is quite small, and its impact on employment is even smaller. immigrants most threatened by new arrivals are older arrivals. They could rely on welfare But the poorest immigrants are undocumented, which makes them ineligible for many federal programs, including food stamps, non-emergency Medicaid, and Social Security.

people leaving

If we lowered our walls and made it possible for poor families to move to high-opportunity neighborhoods, some would and some wouldn't. Poor neighborhoods, are not just that. They are the wellspring for family and familiarity, community and love, not to mention home to some of the best food in the nation. Black neighborhoods and ethnic enclaves can serve as a refuge for nonwhite Americans who work and study in predominately white institutions. I'm making an argument in favor of more neighborhood choice to ensure that the zip code where a child is born does not predetermine the story of her life never heard of an affordable housing development in an affluent community that had a difficult time filling up. Quite the opposite. When the wealthy township of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, opened applications for 29 affordable apartments in 2021, 9,309 people applied

jobs and explotation

In 2020, 1.1 million workers earned at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, a wage mandate that hasn't changed in over a decade. Most states still allow restaurant and other service workers to be paid a subminimum wage, which is $2.13 an hour at the federal level, forcing nearly 5 million workers to survive on tips. After emancipation, restaurant owners hired formerly enslaved Black workers for free. They had to rely on customers' charity.) This is indefensible. Congress should raise the minimum wage and make sure all workers get it, ending subminimum pay. It should ensure that workers will never again have to fight to earn a living. At least 80 countries with minimum wage standards mandate that officials revisit them every year or so, but not us. The US should require periodic (and humane) reviews of the minimum wage should also follow the lead of more than 100 countries that empower the central government or an official (Ex: secretary of labor) to raise the minimum wage after consulting with businesses and worker organizations or, allow minimum wages to be set through collective bargaining agreements between workers and employers. Allowing basic pay to increase in a timely fashion, not whenever Congress got to it The best way to address labor exploitation is to promote worker empowerment Unions do that. attempting to restore unions to their former glory would be foolish

how much to end poverty

In 2020, the gap separating everyone in America below the poverty line and the poverty line itself amounted to $177 billion. nailing down the cost of ensuring that every American enjoys a decent level of economic security would take a lot more calculating We could ensure that every person in America had a safer and more affordable place to live, could put a real dent in ending homelessness in America, could end hunger, could provide every child with a fairer shot at security and success, could make headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair. Crime rates and eviction rates would plummet. Neighborhoods would stabilize and come alive. Schools could focus more on education instead of dedicating so many resources to triaging the deep needs of their students.

rich americans

In past eras, the rich used to flaunt their wealth, including by showing their indifference to work. The American aristocracy of today seem to prefer complaining to one another and working nonstop. wish for the freedom to withdraw from the wider community and sequester ourselves in a more exclusive one, pulling further and further away from the poor until the world they inhabit becomes unrecognizable to us

Montomery county maryland

In the early aughts, the housing authority randomly assigned families to different public housing units, some were located in affluent neighborhoods with affluent schools. while, the county made serious investments in its poorest schools, dedicating money to pay for things like smaller class sizes and teacher training. This presented researchers with a chance to determine whether poor students fared better in low-poverty schools or in high-poverty schools with more resources. The results were striking. Students from poor families who attended low-poverty schools significantly outperformed those who attended high-poverty schools with "state-of-the-art educational interventions." Even when we expand the budgets of poor schools beyond those of rich ones, it does not make those schools anything close to equal a child's environment matters. We know it does, which is why many of us expend so much energy and treasure fortifying our own schools and neighborhoods, hoarding promise and security that come with them

taxes for the rich

Income inequality has endowed rich families with more political power, which they have used to campaign for lower taxes, which in turn boosts their economic and political power more, locking in an undemocratic and unjust cycle. We need to interrupt that cycle, by increasing the top marginal tax rate and the corporate tax rate the effective tax rate for poor, working-class, and middle-class Americans has increased, while it has decreased for the top 10% of income earners, and particularly for the richest among us Some claim that such proposals would be bad for the economy by causing less innovation and entrepreneurship. But no serious social scientist believes that the economy slows down when we reasonably increase taxes on the rich or on multinational corporations. There were go-getters in past decades, when top tax rates were much higher, while in recent years productivity has declined like taxes on wealthy individuals and companies.

evviornmental vs poverty justice

It pits economic justice against climate justice. When lawmakers have tried to curb pollution and traffic gridlock through congestion pricing, for instance, charging vehicles a fee if they enter busy urban neighborhoods during peak hours, critics shot down the proposal by claiming it would hit low-income workers in transit deserts the hardest. this is true. But it doesn't have to be not that these tradeoffs aren't pertinent but they aren't inescapable. They are products of fabricated scarcity. Scarcity pits issue against issue, neighbor against neighbor.

end of poverty

It would mean a whole different existence, more safety and health, fairness and security. lives directed not by the scramble of survival but passions and aspirations. being able to breathe. would mean an opening up of the nation, full embrace of the poor into the Union and its benefit. wouldn't solve all problems. But since it's a catalyst and cause of lots of social ills, finally cutting the cancer out would lead to enormous improvements in many aspects of life. would bring a net gain in broad prosperity. we can ascend to incredible heights and amass great fortunes, but poverty surrounds us. It's in the paper, our commute to work, in public parks, dragging us down, making even those secure in their money diminished and depressed. You'd go to bed at night worrying less about being victimized by crime, a country that shares its wealth is a safer country. You'd check the news in the morning, and the top stories of the day wouldn't be a spike in evictions, hours-long lines at the food bank or the latest exploitative escapade of some corporation. You'd walk out your door and feel lighter, more secure, you wouldn't see sprawling tent encampments or the exhausted faces of the working poor commuting to work. You wouldn't be one of them, as we'd all go to work earning a living wage. You'd go out to a restaurant or spend the night in a hotel, knowing that they would be well compensated. Local and national elections would command higher rates of civic participation and voting. whoever you are, you'd know that a sudden change in fortune wouldn't tip your family into destitution.

how to get more people to use food stamps

One intervention tripled the rate of elderly people enrolled in food stamps by providing information about the program and offering sign-up assistance. Elderly households received a letter informing them they could apply for food stamps along with a number to call. Those who dialed the number were connected to a benefits specialist who helped callers fill out the application and collect the necessary documentation. this nothing-to-it intervention tripled enrollment. Another initiative significantly increased the number of workers who claimed the Earned Income Tax Credit just by sending out mailers, reducing the amount of text on the application, and using a more readable font. helped bring millions of more dollars to low-income working families.

housing market today

Poor Americans continue to be crippled by the high cost of housing. Rent has more than doubled over the past two decades, rising much faster than renters' incomes Argued that this because There's not enough housing supply, and too much demand. Government regulation and zoning restrictions have made building more expensive, and these costs are passed on to renters. Landlords must charge more to earn a decent rate of return. We need more housing; no one can deny that. But rents have jumped even in cities with plenty of apartments to go around. has to do with the fact that poor people and especially poor Black families don't have much choice when it comes to where they live. So landlords can and do overcharge them.

low wage and housing exploitation

Poor families looking for a safe, affordable place to live in America usually have but 1 choice: to rent from private landlords and pay at least 1/2 their income. if those families could choose between renting an apartment within reach on the private market, moving into public housing, owning their own home, or joining a housing cooperative collectively owned and managed by the tenants themselves. they would, have some leverage and market power, and wouldn't have to settle for run-down, overpriced apartments.

nothing is being done

Poor renters in the future will pay for this, and the Democratic Party, blamed for having a "messaging problem" when the matter is that liberals have a despondency problem: fluent in the language of grievance and bumbling in the language of repair We risk giving in to despair, perhaps the most exculpating of all emotions, and submitting to cynicism, perhaps the most conservative of all belief systems. This can suffocate meaningful action, and it certainly doesn't inspire others to join the cause

people vs people history

Since the nation's founding, the story of class politics in America has been a story of white worker against Black, native vs newcomer. Racism started the rise of a multiracial mass labor movement, which could have brought sweeping economic reforms including the establishment of a Labor Party like the kind adopted in nineteenth-century France and Britain. racism spoiled the creation of integrated communities and schools, ghettoizing poverty, and urban Black poverty in particular, aggravating and intensifying its miseries sociologist Oliver Cromwell Cox once speculated that without capitalism "the world might never have experienced race prejudice. Let's call it the scarcity diversion.

unemployement and assistance

States that had cut unemployment benefits did not experience job growth. they experienced a decline in consumer spending since the cuts left citizens with less money, which slowed local economies. Early converts to capitalism saw poor aid not merely as a burden or bad policy but as an existential threat, something that could end the reliance of workers on owners. The idea is to protect one kind of dependency, the worker on the company, by debasing another, that of citizens on the state. a story that has been handed down from one generation to the next: that our medicine (aid to the poor) is poison. The message has been received. Most young mothers on welfare stop relying on it within 2 years of starting the program. Most of those mothers returned to welfare sometime down the road, leaning on it for limited periods when between jobs or after divorce.

Benifiters

Stock owners benefit from low wages It's tempting to picture them as a group of men in pinstriped suits and power ties, gathered in some high-rise Manhattan boardroom. Over 1/2 of U.S. households are vested in the stock market (though it should be said that the richest 10% of families own over 80% of the total value of all stocks) Consumers benefit from worker exploitation. We can, summon rides and groceries and Chinese takeout all at cut rates. When we purchase a plane ticket, we are shown the carbon emissions for the flight, not if the flight attendants are unionized. We reward companies that run antiracist marketing campaigns without recognizing how these campaigns can distract from those companies' abysmal labor practices,

welfare and child poverty

Swift government action didn't just prevent economic disaster; it helped to cut child poverty by more than half. this was a major cause for celebration: After years of inaction, the US had finally made a major dent in the poverty rate. many people weren't celebrating. A vocal subset of Americans seemed troubled that the government was doing so much to help its people. they blamed the souped-up unemployment checks for the nation's sluggish economic recovery.

war on poverty

The War on Poverty and the Great Society created a bundle of domestic programs including the Food Stamp Act, made food aid permanent; the Economic Opportunity Act, created Job Corps and Head Start; and the Social Security Amendments of 1965, founded Medicare and Medicaid and expanded Social Security benefits. Nearly 200 pieces of legislation were signed into law in Johnson's first 5 years in office, a breathtaking level of activity. And the result? 10 years after the first of these programs were rolled out in 1964, the share of Americans living in poverty was 1/2 what it was in 1960.

poverty and reproductive rights

The birth control pill showed us that women's economic empowerment was tied to their reproductive empowerment. After the pill became widely available in the late 1960s, women's college enrollment and employment rates shot up, allowing them to gain more independence from men. Today as then, women with access to effective contraception go to school longer and participate in the job market at higher rates than women who don't. They have children later in life and have fewer. Yet the most reliable contraception remains out of reach for many poor women, and most of their pregnancies are unintended, meaning that the mother would have preferred getting pregnant later or not at al

problem discovered by Leo Tolstoy

The problem, he ultimately decided, was himself and his fellow affluents, who lived idle lives. "I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means—except by getting off his back.

poverty statistic

There are millions of Americans," Deaton wrote, "suffering, through material poverty and poor health, as bad or worse than that of the people in Africa or Asia

poverty and wealth

There is so much poverty in this land not in spite of our wealth but because of it. it's not about them. It's about us. "It is really so simple," Tolstoy wrote. "If I want to aid the poor I ought not to make them poor.

ordinary people = cause issues

To live and strive in modern America is to participate in morally fraught systems. If a family's entire financial livelihood depends on the value of its home, it's not hard to understand why they would oppose anything that could lower its property values, like a proposal to develop an affordable housing complex in the neighborhood. If an aging couple's nest egg depends on how the stock market performs, it's not hard to see why that couple would support legislation designed to yield higher returns, even if that means shortchanging workers. Social ills segregation, exploitation can be motivated by bigotry and selfishness and by good intentions, such as protecting our children. These arrangements create what the postwar sociologist C. Wright Mills called "structural immorality" and what the political scientist Jamila Michener more recently labeled exploitation "on a societal level." the advantages of the rich often come at the expense of the poor. But that arrangement is not inevitable or permanent. It was made by human hands and can be unmade. We can fashion a new society, starting with our own lives. Where we decide to work and live, what we buy, how we vote, and where we put our energies as citizens all have consequences for poor families. Becoming a poverty abolitionist, then, entails conducting an audit of our lives, personalizing poverty by examining all the ways we are connected to the problem and to the solution.

what can we do

To the greatest extent possible, we should withdraw our support from corporations that exploit their workers. This requires doing our homework, looking into a company's track record. Increasingly, we are considering the environmental impact of their purchases. We should consider their poverty impact, too. Consumer activism recognizes that every purchase is an ethical choice. For poverty abolitionists, that means refusing to erase the people behind the products and endorsing companies that support their workforces. If a company has a record of tax evasion, union busting, and low pay, it is an exploitative company Not everyone has much of a choice about where to shop, especially those cutting coupons and keeping a tight rein on our budgets, but those who do should avoid giving exploitative companies money. We shouldn't be their customers or shareholders. Consumer activism brought us cheap goods and services borne on the backs of others and can help reverse this trend, punishing poverty-creating companies and sending a message that we will no longer support their exploitative ways. Banking and shopping in ways that express solidarity with the poor could mean we pay more. And by acknowledging those costs, we acknowledge our complicity. When we cheat and rob one another, we lose part of ourselves, too. Doing the right thing is often a highly inconvenient, time-consuming, even costly process,

denying women abortions

Turnaway Study, conducted by a team of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. The study followed roughly 1,000 women who had attempted to receive abortions at clinics across the country. Researchers compared women who were able to have abortions because they sought care just before the gestational deadline (typically 10 weeks to the end of the second trimester, depending on the state) to those who were turned away because their pregnancy had advanced just beyond the deadline. those forced to give birth were more likely to live below the poverty line 4 years later. The 2 groups of women were on similar paths at the time they got pregnant, but access to abortion caused their lives to diverge. Months and even years after receiving that consequential yes or no during their ultrasounds, women turned away at abortion clinics were less likely to hold down full-time jobs, less likely to be able to afford necessities, and more likely to be trapped in abusive relationships. Their children suffered, too. Many women who received abortions went on to have children later. When researchers compared those children to children born after women were denied abortions, they found that children in the latter group were far more likely to grow up poor.

looking closely at our institutions

We can audit our alma maters or current universities, for example. Are they providing enough support to first-generation students? Are they fairly compensating their adjunct faculty, landscapers, and support staff? Are they responsible for gentrifying low-income neighborhoods? Are their endowments bankrolling exploitative corporations? We can evaluate our workplaces and industries, asking if they are in the business of exploiting their workers. do their occupational licenses establish unnecessary entry barriers—in the form of hours of training and costly exams that protect those with jobs but harm those trying to break in? we might ask banks: Are they charging exorbitantly high fees for overdrawing accounts? Are they bankrolling the payday loan industry? If so, might it be better to take our money elsewhere? Wherever we stand, we can leverage the specific influence we have in our congregations and military units and companies and school boards to instigate change

consumtion

We like healthy returns, smart products, low prices and raise a fuss when they creep up. Fast and cheap that's how we prefer to consume in America. But somebody has to pay, and that somebody is the rag-and-bone American worker

segrigation

We used to gossip about poor families on the other side of the tracks. Now we talk about those in the next county. We remain very separate and unequal. But this corruption of opportunity can end with us. Black students who benefitted from court-ordered integration were less likely to experience poverty as adults. while, white children whose schools desegregated remained on track:

high pay benifits

When poor workers receive a pay raise, their health improves. Studies have found that when minimum wages go up, rates of child neglect, underage alcohol consumption smoking, and teen births go down. 1 study found that up to 5,500 premature deaths that occurred in NYC from 2008-2012 could have been prevented if the city's minimum wage had been $15 an hour during then, instead of $7. lets people quit A higher minimum wage is an antidepressant, sleep aid and stress reliever. Get a better job. Stop having children. Make smarter financial decisions. In truth, it's the other way around: Economic security leads to better choices.

benefits of bragging about change

When poverty abolitionists shop and invest based on their commitments to human dignity and material well-being, they should brag, crafting an aesthetics and lifestyle around those decisions. There is considerable evidence that it's easier to change norms than beliefs. "You're wrong" is less influential than "Yeah, we're not really doing that anymore." You might worry about climate change but install solar panels only after your neighbors do. You might acknowledge the impact of fast fashion but change your shopping habits only after your classmates do. We hold many ethical beliefs, but we tend to act on them when we receive a social push. If enough of us took responsibility for this problem in our personal lives, and began mobilizing our workplaces, faith communities and schools to do the same, a commitment to poverty abolition would spread, sparking a national moral reckoning and pressuring the most exploitative actors and agencies to divest. I would love to see companies market their antipoverty policies collective bargaining agreements, a commitment to paying a living wage— just as they have promoted their commitment to climate justice and sustainability. Snapple has announced that its bottles are composed of 100% recycled plastic. I'd also like the company to tell us if they are union made. Most Americans approve of labor unions; so why not market them? It's now common for local businesses to hang trans rights flags or black lives matter signs in their store windows. How about starting wages?

why class segregation is bad

When the affluent and poor live disparate lives, any institution or program on where only poor rely becomes vulnerable. It's easy to support closing a public school that your kid doesn't attend or to approve aggressive policing tactics when you know it won't be your nephew who gets patted down. But when families across the class spectrum send their children to the same schools, picnic in the same parks, and walk the same streets, those families are equally invested in those schools, parks, and streets. Segregation poisons our minds and souls. When affluents live, work, play, and worship mainly alongside fellow affluents, they can grow insular, forgetting the poor It brings out the worst in us, feeding our prejudices and spreading moral decay Engaging with one another in integrated communities allows us to recognize our blind spots, de-siloing our lives and causing families well above the poverty line to become bothered by problems that affect those below it I'd count poverty among the great problems. Integration means we all have skin in the game. not only disrupts poverty; on a spiritual level, but can foster empathy and solidarity. This is why opposing segregation is vital to poverty abolitionism

labor market

When the economy delivered for the average worker, and those near the bottom of the pay scale, antipoverty programs were cures. Today, the labor market has turned those programs into dialysis, a treatment designed to make poverty less lethal, not disappear. Meanwhile, the housing market now takes many of the gains workers make. After wages rose in 2021, following worker shortages, rents rose too, and soon people were back where they started or worse. It's an old pattern. Since 1985, rent prices have exceeded income gains by 32%

Exploitation

When we are underpaid relative to the value of what we produce, we experience labor exploitation. And when we are overcharged relative to the value of something we purchase, we experience consumer exploitation. Our economic freedom is limited when we don't have resources at our disposal. When we don't own property or can't access credit, we become dependent on people who can, which invites exploitation

false scarcity

allow elites to hoard resource like money or land. then pretend the arrangement is natural, unavoidable or ignore it next, attempt to address social problems caused by resource hoarding only with the scarce resources left. So instead of making the rich pay all their taxes, for instance, design a welfare state around the paltry budget you are left with when they don't. Fourth, fail. to drive down the poverty rate, to build more affordable housing. Fifth, claim this is the best we can do. Preface your comments with, "In a world of scarce resources" Blame government programs, capitalism, the other political party, immigrants, anyone except those who deserve it. "Gaslighting" a shift in vision and in policy design, means recognizing that this country has a profusion of resources enough land and capital to go around and pretending otherwise is a farce. Why do we continue to accept scarcity, treating it as the central organizing principle of our economics, policymaking, city planning, and personal ethics?

Minnesota addressing trend of black people moving into white areas

brochure: white families, asked and answered some basic questions about what Black families wanted, the same things white families did: equal opportunity, good home. In response to a question about why segregation persists, it says "many whites object Black neighbors because they are unsure of their social position." There is serious sociological insight here. When the ground feels unsteady, we hunker down and protect our own, becoming less willing to see what we have and more apt to see what we could lose. social-psychological evidence confirms that when we feel resources are scarce or could be when we sense that our or our racial groups status is slipping, we ignore our commitments to equal opportunity. If you survey the American public, you learn that most want less poverty and inequality, in principle. But when you ask about specific policies to accomplish those ends, we begin to equivocate, especially those policies could cost our families somehow. "The white American bars a Black family from his neighborhood is violating his own American,"

making america anti poverty

could take many forms. We could significantly expand the Child Tax Credit to poor, working-class, and middle-class families, a program that functions like guaranteed income to households with kids. We could finally confront the affordable housing crisis, which has devastated the poor and dashed the hopes of countless young people shut out of homeownership, by investing in new construction and public housing. We could make deeper investments in public education and childcare and transportation infrastructure.

why are we scarred

evidence is clear: We can integrate communities without depressing property values, compromising school quality, or harming affluent children. So are so many unsure? We have been taught this fear. institutions have socialized us to scarcity, created fake resource shortages and then normalized them residents of affluent neighborhoods have been successful at blocking the construction of new housing in their communities, developers have turned their sights on down-market neighborhoods, where they meet resistance, from struggling renters fretting about gentrification. this dynamic has repeated itself across the US, the debate about the affordable housing crisis and fostering inclusive communities has turned into a debate about gentrification, pitting low-income families who have stable housing against low-income families who don't. notice how contrived and weird it is, our range of action has been limited by rich homeowners essentially redlining communities How many times have we all heard legislators, academics and pundits say "In a world of scarce resources," as if it were self-obvious, natural instead of something created Western democracies each raised tax revenues equal to at least 38% of their GDPs, while the US' total revenues languished at 25% Instead of catching up to other nations, we have given government benefits to affluent families and not prosecuted tax dodgers. then cry poor when someone proposes a way to spur economic mobility or end hunger.

poverty is shame

feeling degraded in the welfare office, erasure from media, the condition your living area is in, needing to avoid public places, parks, beaches, shopping districts, knowing they weren't built for you changes how you think and prevents you from realizing your full potential. shrinks the mental energy you can dedicate to decisions, forcing you to focus on the latest stressor overdue gas bill, lost job at the expense of other things

502 direct loan program

has moved over 2 million families into their own homes. These loans, fully guaranteed and serviced by the USDA, come with low interest rates and, for very poor families, cover the entire cost of the mortgage, nullifying the need for a down payment. Families can also apply for low-interest loans or grants to help with repairs. In 2021, the average 502 Direct Loan was for $187,181 but cost the government only $10,370 in total, chump change for such a durable intervention. Expanding this program into urban communities would provide even more low- and moderate-income families with homes of their own.

statistics about how much landlords make

in poor neighborhoods about $300 a month per apartment unit after regular expenses are deducted from rent. Landlords in middle-class neighborhoods take home $225 and landlords in rich neighborhoods take home $250 perhaps down-market landlords incur large maintenance costs because their buildings are older, and perhaps they regularly lose money on account of missed payments and high vacancy rates. Those landlords might adjust to these realities by increasing rent. After deducting all expenses both routine (water bill, taxes, insurance) and irregular (installation of a new toilet, three months of vacancy) we still found that apartments in poor neighborhoods generated roughly $100 a month in profit, while those in rich neighborhoods generated only $50 a month. their regular expenses (especially mortgages and property tax bills) are considerably lower than those in more affluent neighborhoods, but their rent is only slightly lower. some use housing as their main income meaning they try to get as much as possible by raising rent.

poverty and exploitation

incorporating marginalized people into housing and financial schemes through bad deals when they are denied good ones. The exclusion of poor people from traditional banking and credit systems has forced them to find alternative ways to cash checks and secure loans, which has led to normalization of their exploitation There are two 1 for the poor and 1 for the rest of us just as there are two housing markets and labor markets. The duality of American life can make it difficult for some of us who benefit from the current arrangement to remember that the poor are exploited laborers, consumers, and borrowers, precisely because we are not. well-fed Americans can be perplexed by the poor, disappointed in them, believing that they accept stupidly bad deals on impulse or because they don't know any better Poverty isn't simply the condition of not having enough money. It's the condition of not having enough choice and being taken advantage of because of that. When minimum wage is increased landlords also increase rent.

Poverty

is connected to every problem we as a society care about crime, health, education, housing

The architect of the Official Poverty Measure

lack of income that could cover the basics, if nothing is more basic than food, you could calculate poverty with two pieces of information: the cost of food per year and the share of a family's budget dedicated to it. Orshansky determined that bare-bones food expenditures accounted for roughly 1/3 of an American family's budget.

low wage and discrimination

low wages "could be viewed as occupational hazards." there is no difference between substandard wages and workers being exposed to asbestos or harmful chemicals. If companies can't place employees in unnecessary danger or degrade them via discrimination or harassment, why can they pay those workers dangerous and degrading wages?

what can we do 1

make sure low-income Americans get connected to the aid for they qualify. We used to believe that welfare avoidance came down to stigma, that people weren't signing up for food stamps or claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit because they found the experience too shaming. research has started to chip away at this theory. It turns out that take-up rates of means-tested programs like food stamps are similar to those of some more universal (and less stigmatized) social insurance programs, like unemployment. And when the government switched from issuing food stamps to issuing them through discreet Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) cards that looked like any other debit card, there wasn't a uptick in applications. Speaking of food stamps, in Oregon virtually everyone who is eligible for the program enrolls in it. But in California 1/3 of residents who qualify for food stamps don't use them. evidence indicates that low-income Americans are not taking full advantage of government programs because: We've made it hard and confusing. People often don't know about aid designated for them or are burdened by the application process. to increase enrollment in social programs, the most successful behavioral adjustments have been those that simply raised awareness and cut through red tape and hassle

Ending poverty requires

new policies and renewed political movements. also that we, in our own way, become poverty abolitionists unwinding ourselves from our neighbors' deprivation and refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor

those who have amassed the most power and capital bear the most responsibility for America's vast poverty:

political elites who have utterly failed low-income Americans over the past half century; corporate bosses who have spent and schemed to prioritize profits over people; lobbyists blocking the will of the American people with their self-serving interests; property owners who have exiled the poor from entire cities and fueled the affordable housing crisis. Acknowledging this is crucial and deliciously absolving, directing our attention upward and distracting us from all the ways (many unintentional) we contribute to the problem. poverty in America is not simply the result of actions taken by Congress and corporate boards but the millions of decisions we make each day when going about our business.

how to fix this

rebalancing our social safety net; empower the poor by reining in exploitation; and invest in broad prosperity by turning away from segregation. That's how we end poverty in America. Things would change, and sometimes that change would be uncomfortable or even painful for all of us. It would be dishonest to say otherwise. There are costs to the status quo, terrible ones, and there would be costs to weaning ourselves off our addiction to poverty and segregation. There would be political costs: vitriolic backlash by homeowners and parents who view integration as a menace. There would be challenges for schools that didn't have to think much about providing free lunch or counseling students through trauma. Neighborhoods insulated from anything close to poverty might have to install a bus stop, boost social services or find a way to deal with public disorder. At first, everyone would encounter more friction in their daily life: more slights, missteps, and awkward moments of misunderstanding that arise when not everyone in your community has gone to college, the ballet or St. Barts.

Poverty is instability

rent has gone up while wages have gone down, eviction is common, long-term employment has declined America has welcomed the rise of bad jobs, bottom of the market jobs offering low pay, no benefits, and few guarantees.

what can we do: segregation

replace exclusionary zoning policies with inclusionary ordinances, tearing down our walls and using the rubble to build bridges. There are 2 parts. first to get rid of all the devious legal minutiae developed to keep low-income families out of high opportunity neighborhoods, rules that make it illegal to build multifamily apartment complexes or smaller, more affordable homes. We can't claim that our communities are antiracist or antipoverty if they uphold exclusionary zoning our politer, quieter means of promoting segregation. the second part is necessary: inclusionary zoning mandates. not just the absence of exclusionary ordinances but the proactive, insistent opposite mandating that new developments set aside a percent of their units for low-income families The weaker version is voluntary, providing developers with incentives if they include affordable housing in their blueprints, usually in the form of tax relief or a "density bonus" allowing them to build more.

Taxes

rich people are taxed more but for less of their overall income than poor people are most countries file taxes for people to make it easier

Delaware Contraceptive Access Now (Delaware CAN)

set out to ensure that women of childbearing age could obtain the birth control method that best fit their needs. The approach was deceptively simple. When women saw a nurse or doctor, they were asked, in addition to the usual screening questions, "Do you want to get pregnant in the next year?" When women said no, health practitioners were enlisted to make sure they got the birth control of their choice before leaving. Women came for annual checkups and left with IUDs or pills or nothing, if that was their preference. The intervention worked. One evaluation credited the program for bringing about a 24% decline in unintended pregnancies among low-income and uninsured women between 2014 and 2017. When Delaware's healthcare workers made multiple kinds of birth control available to women, regardless of their income or insurance status, the women took them. This approach could, and should, be replicated nationwide, providing all women with more power when, how, and with whom to start a family

we should

significantly deepen our collective investment in economic stability and basic dignity, promoting "a right to a decent existence to some minimum standard of nutrition, healthcare, and essentials of life," to quote the economist Arthur Okun. "Starvation and dignity do not mix well."

Poverty and the family

some believe that single parents are a cause of poverty in America. then, why isn't it a major cause in other counties? A study of 18 rich democracies found that single mothers outside the US were not poorer than the general population. We could invest in programs to help single parents balance work and family life, like paid family leave, affordable childcare, and universal pre-K. but we've privatized daycare and summer programming, effectively reserving these modern-day necessities for the affluent. making it impossible for many single parents to go back to school or work full-time. less marriage because it is seen as a luxury, and status symbol of financial stability prison makes this worse by taking parents mainly men of color from their families welfare policies are also anti-family, given less if they live with family

birth control past

states coerced women on probation into accepting long-acting contraceptives and even subjected some women to forced sterilization and unnecessary hysterectomies the so-called Mississippi appendectomy. These vile practices disproportionately denied poor and Black women the right to have children. Today, we are limiting low-income women's ability to have children when they want to, because top-shelf contraception is hard to come by. "Women should be able to access best-in-class contraceptive care as a primary, not a specialty,"

solutions for low wage and housing exploitation

strengthen commitment to the housing programs we already have. Public housing provides affordable homes to millions of Americans, but is so underfunded relative to the need that the wait time to get into one of these units is often counted in decades. The high demand should tell us that affordable housing is a life changer, and families are desperate for it. Children who grow up in subsidized housing are healthier, have lower exposure to lead poisoning, and do better in school than their peers living unassisted in the private rental market. As adults, they have lower rates of incarceration and higher incomes than their peers. Public housing works for the lucky minority of poor families who benefit from it Families typically pay more as renters than as homeowners. The problem is that banks have little interest in financing affordable homes. Paving the way for more renters to become homeowners would drastically lower housing costs and provide a means of building wealth. This is a step toward repairing historical injustices that excluded Black Americans from homeownership like redlining Banks generally avoid issuing small-dollar mortgages, not because they're risky they have the same delinquency rates as larger mortgages but they're less profitable. both directly and by increasing funding to civic-minded land banks, is another way to fight exploitation in the rental market

who benifits

the biggest beneficiaries of federal aid are affluent families. To benefit from employer-sponsored health insurance, you need a good job, one that requires a college degree. To benefit from the mortgage interest deduction, you need to afford a home, and those who can afford the biggest mortgages reap the biggest deductions. To benefit from a 529 plan, you need to be able to squirrel away cash for your children's college costs, and the more you save, the bigger your tax break, which is why this subsidy is almost exclusively used by the well-off

where would this money come from

the cheaters. The IRS now estimates that the United States loses more than $1 trillion a year in unpaid taxes, most of it owing to tax avoidance by multinational corporations and wealthy families. Congress hasn't given the agency the resources it needs to hunt down tax criminals, leaving the IRS outgunned and outmatched companies are doing all they can to avoid paying what they owe. Wealthy families, have found new ways to weasel out of paying taxes. Studies have shown that most Americans pay 90% of the taxes they owe, but the ultra-rich pay only 75%. When corporations hide profits in tax havens, and rich families stash valuable assets in offshore accounts, forcing everyone else to pay for their greed. Congress should crack down on such corruption, writing the IRS a blank check to go after tax cheats, and it should pass legislation mandating that corporations pay a minimum tax on their profits say, 25 % no matter what country they're registered in.

commoning

the creation of homes that are collectively owned and controlled by residents. a long tradition of this in urban America. Between late 1979 and late 1980, led primarily by Black women created 17 cooperatives in the nation's capital, comprising 1,000 units, buying run-down properties and sprucing them up themselves. A popular version of this model involves residents purchasing co-op shares and paying low monthly fees to cover the building's upkeep

recieving welfare

the problem isn't welfare dependency but welfare avoidance. Only 1/4 of families who qualify for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families apply for it. Less than half (48%) of elderly Americans who qualify for food stamps sign up to receive them. 1/5 parents eligible for government health insurance (in the form of Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program) don't enroll, just as 1/5 workers who qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit don't claim it. At the height of the Great Recession, 1/10 Americans was out of work, but only 1/3 drew unemployment. a subfield of behavioral science has emerged with the goal of boosting what policy wonks call "take-up rates" for social programs.

Ex: New Jersey

the state leading the way is New Jersey. Nearly every suburban jurisdiction in the state has affordable housing. Because in a series of landmark decisions, their Supreme Court prohibited exclusionary zoning and required all municipalities to provide their "fair share" of affordable housing, being calculated by the demographics of each town studies have found that when affordable housing blends into the surrounding community, and is well managed and distributed instead of being clustered it has no effect on property values. In the years since New Jersey began economically integrating its communities more aggressively than any other state, its property values have remained among the highest in the nation, and it ranks 1st in public education

the goal

to end the exploitation of the poor but the means are many. We should empower American workers and expand housing access. also ensure fair access to capital. Banks should stop robbing the poor and near-poor of billions of dollars each year, ending exorbitant overdraft fees when someone overdraws their account, banks could simply freeze the transaction or clear a check with insufficient funds, providing customers a short-term loan with a low interest rate, say, 1% a day. The federal government could regulate bank fees, as in the UK and Israel, where overdraft fees are less than a tenth of what they are here payday loan stores should publish the average cost of different loans. To stop financial exploitation, we need to expand, not limit, low-income Americans' access to credit. Some have suggested that the government get involved by having the U.S. Postal Service or the Federal Reserve issue small-dollar loans. Others have argued that we should revise government regulations to entice commercial banks to pitch in. Whatever our approach, solutions should offer low-income Americans more choice, a way to end their reliance on predatory lending institutions that can get away with robbery because they are the only option

Poverty is pain

untreated medical issues, unsafe working and living conditions, and violence or witnessing violence

Our walls have to go

we act as modern-day segregationists when we mobilize to block an affordable housing complex in our neighborhood we colonize the future when we reserve spaces for our children while denying other children a fair shot moving poor families to high-opportunity neighborhoods, without doing anything to increase their incomes, improves their lives tremendously. Even if they remain below the poverty line, they become less "poor" their exposure to crime drops, their mental health improves, and their children flourish in school. Studies have found that each year a poor child spends in a high-opportunity neighborhood increases their income in adulthood so much so that younger siblings experience bigger gains than their older brothers and sisters because of the additional years spent in a safer and more prosperous place. even the most ambitious antipoverty proposals in wide circulation today, like a universal basic income, often leave segregation untouched.

how we make poor people poor 3

we create prosperous and exclusive communities. And in doing so, we create neighborhoods with concentrated riches and with concentrated despair the externality of stockpiled opportunity. Wealth traps breed poverty traps. The concentration of affluence breeds more affluence, and the concentration of poverty, more poverty. To be poor is miserable, but to be poor and surrounded by poverty on all sides is a much deeper cut. to be rich and surrounded by riches on all sides is a level of privilege of another order. We need not be debt collectors or private prison wardens to play a role in producing poverty in America. We need only to vote yes on policies that lead to private opulence and public squalor and, with that opulence, build a life behind a wall that we tend and maintain. We may plaster our wall with Gadsden flags or rainbow flags, all lives matter signs or black lives matter signs. The wall remains the wall, indifferent to our decorations

good policies

we need to embrace policies that foster goodwill and be suspicious of those that cause resentment. Will the policy unite people struggling with economic insecurity, those below the poverty line and those above it? Will it drive down poverty and promote economic opportunity? A policy that checks both of these boxes deserves serious consideration. We should go big: No more nudges, no more underfunding an initiative and then asking why it didn't work. not calling for redistribution. calling for the rich to pay their taxes and for a rebalancing of our social safety net. a return to a time when America made bigger investments in the general welfare.

how we make poor people poor 2

we prioritize the subsidization of affluence over the alleviation of poverty. The United States could effectively end poverty in America tomorrow without increasing the deficit if it cracked down on corporations and families who cheat on their taxes, reallocating the newfound revenue to those in need of it. Instead, we let the rich slide and give the most to those who have plenty already, creating a welfare state that favors the upper class. And then our elected officials have the audacity the shamelessness, to fabricate stories about poor people's dependency on government aid and shoot down proposals to reduce poverty because they would cost too much. Glancing at the price tag of some program that would cut child poverty in 1/2 or all Americans access to a doctor, they suck their teeth and ask, "But how can we afford it?" How can we afford it? What a selfish, dishonest question, as if the answer wasn't staring us in the face. We could afford it if we allowed the IRS to do its job. if the well-off among us took less from the government. if we designed our welfare state to expand opportunity and not guard fortunes.

more ways

what is maddening about this debate is not how difficult fair-tax implementation would be but how easy it is to find enough money to defeat poverty by closing nonsensical tax loopholes. If you don't like the changes suggested, 20 smaller reforms, or 50 tinier ones, or 100. We could raise $25 billion by winding down the mortgage interest deduction, which disproportionately benefits high-income families and does nothing to promote homeownership. We could find $64.7 billion by increasing the maximum taxable amount of earnings for Social Security so that high and low income workers are taxed at the same rate. We could scratch out another $37.3 billion if we treated capital gains and dividends for wealthy Americans the same way we treat income for tax purposes We just have to stop spending so much on the rich. This, is what it truly means to be fiscally responsible.

Poverty and loans

when the loan is due, you still are broke. So you ask for an extension, which will cost. If you took out a 2 week $400 loan with a $60 fee ($15 per $100), the loan officer might allow an extension if you pay the $60 fee when the original loan comes due. Then he will issue another fee, say for an additional $60. you are charged $120 for borrowing $400, and that's if you ask for only 1 extension The average borrower stays indebt for 5 months, paying $520 in fees to borrow $375.

unions and race

white man's refuge. During the postwar years, most white women didn't work outside home, while many Black women couldn't afford not to. They tended to labor in caretaking roles as cooks, nurses and housekeepers without any resembling of union representation. For Black men, organized labor remained hostile. In the 1930s, many unions outwardly discriminated against Black workers or segregated them into Jim Crow painful stagflation crisis of the 1970s, when economic growth slowed but inflation did not. Unions harmed themselves through self-defeating racism and were weakened by a changing economy.

Sectoral bargaining

would impact 10s of millions of Americans who haven't benefitted from a union, just as it has improved the lives of workers in Europe and Latin America for example, sector-by-sector collective bargaining established a countrywide minimum monthly wage of €1,500 in 2017. would even the playing field, between workers and bosses, and between companies within the same sector that wouldn't be locked into a race to the bottom, incentivized to shortchange their workforce to gain a competitive edge. the companies would be forced to compete over the quality of the goods and services offered. Maybe we'd reap the benefits of all that economic productivity we were promised Clean Slate for Worker Power, champions plenty of other solutions, too, including mandating that corporate boards have significant worker representation and levying heavy penalties on companies that thwart organizing efforts. These are not anti-capitalist; they are anti-exploitation,