Kayla Johnson's post - February 13, 2016

What evidence does Abramsky use to support his ideas?

The evidence that I found Abramsky using to support his ideas are statistics and personal testimonies. The Federal Census Bureau is one reference that I have seen a number of times to support the information provided. He also references other books about poverty, income, and the economy that line up with his content. This is probably the best way to relate credible information to the public. If this was simply a book about his thoughts and opinions on poverty, I would not give it much credit. However, he has statistics, resources, and confounding information from a variety of sources. In addition to that, he includes personal stories. These are affective because they pull on the reader’s compassionate nature. He makes you feel for the people in the stories; wonder what their life was like and if it got any better.

Have any specific passages from the book have struck you so far? If so, which ones?

There have been a few different passages that have stuck out to me in this book. In the prologue, Abramsky states “The American Way of Poverty is a plea for a more morally cogent political approach to poverty… exploring how a new politics could emerge that prioritizes poverty as a moral challenge.” This actually stuck out to me because it reminds me of the Bible. Mark 12: 31 says “… Love your neighbor as yourself.” Morals have not meaning if the source of them is not honorable. Prioritizing poverty as a moral challenge is extremely difficult because everyone has different morals. What is right to one person may be detestable to another. But from my perspective, poverty can be helped (if not entirely healed), if everyone would take on the moral responsibility to help out and love their neighbor.

              Another striking thought I came across was this: “…this situation has far more to do with the emergence of a set of political and economic priorities that privilege wealth accumulation for the few over the well-being of the many.” It struck me because it reminded me of the move In Time. In this movie, people literally work to add time to their lives. They are paid in hours that are added to this internal clock on their wrist. Whenever their time runs out, they die immediately. I found this movie to be very sad, frustrating, and thankfully impossible. I was glad that our world does not function on these microchips in our bodies that stop our heart the minute we run out of time. But it reminded me of this book because the extremely wealthy people (in the movie) have enough time to virtually live forever while the poor people literally live day-to-day, hour-to-hour. And this is basically what the poverty situation is like in our country.  

On page 51, Abramsky wrote “There is, after all, a reason Swedes… tolerate for higher taxes than Americans do.” What does Abramsky mean by this?

              In this statement, Abramsky is talking about the worth of tax dollars. In Sweden, people are paying higher taxes, but the programs and outcomes of those tax dollar are high quality. Their tax money actually provides quality education, healthcare, childcare, vacation times – all of these perks that people want. On the other hand, American’s tax dollars supply subpar, second-rate goods and services. No wonder no one wants tax values to increase; it would only serve to produce more, low-quality services that do not actually fix our problems.