Friday, February 12, 2016

Nina Davis -February 12, 2016

The central idea of the book thus far appears to be the struggle to keep America out of poverty. The author uses many statistics, data from the Federal Reserve (pg8), data compiled from the U.S. Census Bureau, and many stories from people who struggle to live day-to-day in poverty or to just above it.  Many passages in the chapters I have read have angered and alarmed me. One of the first things I read early in the first chapter, on page 26, when facts tell us that the top 1% are getting richer, while the other 99% is declining in net worth. That 1% of the population control 40% of the country’s wealth, (p32) makes things seems hopeless. What can we do with this information?  Even reading the rest of the assigned reading tells at how things got better when “The War on Poverty” began with President Lyndon Johnson starting in 1964. The numbers looked good, but that was only on the surface. Had the “war on Poverty” not been interrupted by the Vietnam War would the country be out of poverty? Would things have been turned around? Probably not!  America is still, I “eat or heat” society it’s just more hidden, or less talked about in the press and politics than it used to be. We are spinning, once more, out of control. The rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. A country set up by immigrants that came over to this country to make a living stacked the deck in their favor, to keep the wealthy in power and the lower-income out of the race to make changes that will work because it will cost the rich a lot of money. The Swedes tolerate higher taxes (p51) because they see where their tax money is going and know it is being spent where is suppose to be spent. Even with healthcare systems set up for veterans, food stamp programs, food banks backed up by USDA surplus, and nutritional assistance programs set up to combat poverty, America is still sinking into poverty. When there is an improvement in one area, the government seems to move or cut funds. Poverty is seen as a sickness that just needs one cure, when in fact, there are so many faucets of it; it would take a large change to “fix” poverty.

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