Barbara Ehrenreich - Rediscovering Poverty

It’s been exactly 50 years since Americans, or at least the non-poor among them, “discovered” poverty, thanks to Michael Harrington’s engaging bookThe Other America. If this discovery now seems a little overstated, like Columbus’s “discovery” of America, it was because the poor, according to Harrington, were so “hidden” and “invisible” that it took a crusading left-wing journalist to ferret them out.  

Harrington’s book jolted a nation that then prided itself on its classlessness and even fretted about the spirit-sapping effects of “too much affluence.” He estimated that one quarter of the population lived in poverty -- inner-city blacks, Appalachian whites, farm workers, and elderly Americans among them. We could no longer boast, as President Nixon had done in his “kitchen debate” with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow just three years earlier, about the splendors of American capitalism.

Read More:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175516/

Feeding The Homeless BANNED In Major Cities All Over America

What would you do if you came across someone on the street who had not had anything to eat for several days? Would you give that person some food? Well, the next time you get that impulse you might want to check if it is still legal to feed the homeless where you live. 

Sadly, feeding the homeless has been banned in major cities all over America. Other cities that have not banned it outright have put so many requirements on those who want to feed the homeless (acquiring expensive permits, taking food preparation courses, etc.) that feeding the homeless has become "out of reach" for most average people. Some cities are doing these things because they are concerned about the "health risks" of the food being distributed by ordinary "do-gooders."  Other cities are passing these laws because they do not want homeless people congregating in city centers where they know that they will be fed. But at a time when poverty and government dependence are soaring to unprecedented levels, is it really a good idea to ban people from helping those who are hurting?

Read More:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Feeding-The-Homeless-BANNE-by-the-web-120324-37.html

David Moberg - Piven: Labor Revival Needs Push From Outside and Below

Frances Fox Piven, the City University of New York sociologist best known for her work on poor people's movements (which led to unwanted attention as the bete noire of right-wing fulminator Glenn Beck), turned her attention last week to an oft-repeated question: "Can American labor recover?" Her short answer might be: Maybe (I hope so), but not on its own, and not without a push from outside.

For more than a century, Piven told an audience primarily of University of Chicago graduate students, most visions of the left revolved in some way around the unions and their power to organize the working class at work and in politics, thereby disciplining capitalists and supporting social democratic gains or the flimsy U.S. "safety net." At its high point after World War II until the 1970s, the unions created a "tacit social compact" with broadly shared benefits.

Read More:

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12875/piven_labor_revival_needs_push_from_outside_and_below/

Greg Kaufmann - Welfare Reform—From Bad to Worse

A stunning report released by the University of Michigan’s National Poverty Center reveals that the number of US households living on less than $2 per person per day—a standard used by the World Bank to measure poverty in developing nations—rose by 130 percent between 1996 and 2011, from 636,000 to 1.46 million. The number of children living in these extreme conditions also doubled, from 1.4 million to 2.8 million.

The reason? In short: welfare reform, 1996—still touted by both parties as a smashing success.

The report concludes that the growth in extreme poverty “has been concentrated among those groups that were most affected by the 1996 welfare reform.” The law created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, replacing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which had guaranteed cash assistance to eligible families since 1935. Prior to welfare reform, 68 of every 100 poor families with children received cash assistance through AFDC. By 2010, just 27 of every 100 poor families received TANF assistance.

Read More:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/166705/week-poverty-welfare-reform-bad-worse

Vincent Guarisco - Poverty In America: From Riches To Rags

Like a pebble dropped in a pond, everything we do affects the people in our lives, and their reactions in turn affect others. The choices we make will have far-reaching consequences. Each of us carries within us the capacity to change the world in small ways for better or worse.

I once read that, "short of genius, a rich man cannot imagine poverty." Perhaps. But these days, wealthy imaginations are not as narrow as they used to be as all walks of life (the rich included) witness the massive poverty increase in the land of plenty. Could it be that, for most Americans (the 99%), the blessed era of fruitful sustainability is coming to a close?

Numbers don't lie. The economic injustice that fuels poverty is very real. And with unemployment soaring, even those lucky enough to have jobs are either working part-time or lumbering through long hard hours for a paltry check that is rarely enough to pay the bills. This is not quality of life. This is not the way it's supposed to be in a civilized society. Along with the physical aspects, chronic depression and loneliness is an ever-present life-degrading condition during hard times, and the numbers are staggering. In fact, with economic absurdities piled upon stress, it makes a strong emotional case that fragile minds now feel like worn-out slaves profoundly living on a huge modern-day plantation. This is especially true with crushing debt burdens, high inflation, job lay-offs and ongoing austerity measures in this full-blown era of psycho-economic "globalization." It doesn't take a mental giant to figure out how the system works and for whom. For details on what to expect here in the U.S., see the tragic mess in Greece. It's not pretty. 

Read More:

http://www.countercurrents.org/guarisco070312.htm

Robert Reich - The American Middle Class Is Becoming Poor, and Mitt Romney Doesn’t Realize It

January’s increase in hiring is good news, but it masks a bigger and more disturbing story – the continuing downward mobility of the American middle class.

Most of the new jobs being created are in the lower-wage sectors of the economy – hospital orderlies and nursing aides, secretaries and temporary workers, retail and restaurant. Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain working only because they’ve agreed to cuts in wages and benefits. Others are settling for jobs that pay less than the jobs they’ve lost. Entry-level manufacturing jobs are paying half what entry-level manufacturing jobs paid six years ago.

Other people are falling out of the middle class because they’ve lost their jobs, and many have also lost their homes. Almost one in three families with a mortgage is now underwater, holding their breath against imminent foreclosure.

Read More:

http://robertreich.org/post/17162027435

Robert Hunziker - Third World Capitalism

How did this happen? America, the czar of capitalism, is becoming a third world country!

According to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau report 46.2 million Americans are poor. Of course, the naysaying dissenters claim poor families, as defined in the U.S., include households with adequate food most of the time, a home, a TV, a telephone, and likely a DVD and/or a PC, and a car. Not so bad after all! This is likely very true; however, consider the poverty threshold, as defined by the Census Bureau, for a family with two children in 2010 at $22,113; dissenting naysayers say: So what, over three billion people live on less than $2.50 per day. So, what’s up with this claim that 46.2 million people in America are poor? Are they really poor?

A typical family of four in America spends $664.20 per month on food, assuming they eat on a low-cost plan, according to the USDA statistics; a liberal plan is $1013.80/mo. This means the family has $1,178.55/mo. remaining for everything else like health insurance of $414/mo., which is the nationwide average monthly premium. Thus, the family of four has 764.55 remaining for items like car payments, and the average car payment in America is $475, but since these are the poor, let’s assume it is half this amount for an inferior car or $237.50/mo., and average car insurance according to a national index is $137.91/mo. and median monthly housing costs run about $700 for renters. Adding and subtracting all above= a negative $310.86 per month. Thus, the average family of four has to cut out $310.86/mo. from food, health insurance, transportation, or housing costs in order to break even. No wonder so many Americans do not have health insurance because if they eliminate health insurance, they have $103.14, or $3.44 per day, left over for washing clothes, dental, movies, shopping for clothing or shoes, books, magazines, gasoline, car repairs, emergency expenses and whatever else one desires. They really are poor!

Read More:

HTTP://WWW.COUNTERPUNCH.ORG/2012/02/03/THIRD-WORLD-CAPITALISM/

Siv O'Neall - Hunger Is A ‘Weapon of Mass Destruction’

"Every five seconds, a child under 10 dies of hunger. – Thirty-five million people die each year from hunger or its immediate aftermath. – One billion people are permanently and severely malnourished and the situation is becoming increasingly catastrophic." (Jean Ziegler)

In his latest book “Mass Destruction – the Geopolitics of Hunger”, Jean Ziegler[1] talks about the current state of the world and the neoliberal politics of starvation of the poor, which has led to a crisis situation amounting to calculated murder. What we are witnessing today is the worst hunger crisis in human history is. And it is all because of human greed, colossal mismanagement for profit.

Professor Ziegler deals in detail with the various causes of the current worldwide hunger disaster, which could have been avoided. This crisis is not determined by fate – or, to use Ziegler’s own word – ‘La famine n’est pas une fatalité’. The world could perfectly well provide food for 12 million people, almost the double of the present population of 7 million.

Read More:

http://countercurrents.org/oneall200112.htm

Marsha Coleman-Adebayo - Poverty in America: The Subject Presidential Candidates Would Prefer to Ignore

This week in Johannesburg, South Africa a mother was trampled to death as thousands of young people surged, desperate to register for university, because there are no jobs and studying seems a way of waiting out the recession.

No work makes people desperate. Just the week before a young friend in Boston who graduated last year with a management degree told me he was going back to college because he could not find work, so the hopes of young people there and here are similar. Indeed this recession is making young people poorer than older folk, and as we age and the burden on economies increases from so many gray hairs, they will never experience the prosperity we, their parents, did.

An hour before I read of the South African tragedy I listened to Tavis Smiley and Cornel West on NPR discussing poverty in America; one in two are now poor, 42 percent of American children don’t get adequate nutrition, 41 percent of African American youth can’t find work. Those figures now parallel poverty measures in South Africa.

Read More:

http://blackagendareport.com/content/poverty-america-subject-presidential-candidates-would-prefer-ignore

FEMA sends out 83,000 collection notices

IN A SOCIALIST ECONOMY, ALL HUMAN NEEDS WOULD BE MET BY PLANS DEVELOPED BY THE WORKERS THEMSELVES. EVEN NATURAL DISASTERS WOULD BE ACCOUNTED FOR WITH RECOVERY PLANS TO MINIMIZE HUMAN SUFFERING.

IN THE PROFIT SYSTEM, WHERE INSURANCE COMPANIES AND PROFITEERS RULE, THE STATE AND ITS AGENCIES WORK IN THE INTEREST OF MAXIMIZING PROFIT WITH LITTLE OR NO CONCERN FOR HUMAN MISFORTUNE.

THE FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY—THE AGENCY THAT IS DESIGNATED TO ASSIST PEOPLE IN RECOVERING FROM DISASTER—RECENTLY MAILED OUT 83,000 DEBT COLLECTION NOTICES TO VICTIMS OF HURRICANE KATRINA AND OTHER STORMS THAT TOOK PLACE IN 2005. SEVERAL THOUSAND NOTICES ARE FOR COLLECTION FOR ASSISTANCE RECEIVED DUE TO RECENT FLOODS IN OTHER AREAS.

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HTTP://WWW.PSLWEB.ORG/LIBERATIONNEWS/NEWS/FEMA-SENDS-OUT-83000.HTML