Monday, February 8, 2016

The American Way of Poverty By Amanda Stratton Blog 1


Throughout the book so far, I have come to realize that this is a bit of history about poverty. It tells the political side of poverty.  Ambramsky has used people’s stories that he has encountered to give us an idea of what poverty is like. What is being done or rather not being done. Some evidence used to back up his findings includes information from the Census Bureau. On page 51, Ambramsky wrote, “There is, after all, a reason Swedes…tolerate far higher taxes than Americans do.” Ambramsky clearly stated that the Swedes get treated better than the Americans do. They get their money’s worth from their taxes. There have been a few stories told in the book so far that are just so sad. Like the one where they were about to get medical insurance but something came up right before they received it and they went into debt because they did not have medical insurance at the time of the incident.  Also, on page 44, Ambramsky wrote, “In other words, to assume the worst of applicants, to have as a bureaucratic default position the belief that all applicants would cheat the system if they could, rather than that most were simply people who were mired in hard times and needed assistance to survive from one day or one week to the next.” Ambramsky wrote this talking about the “welfare queens” of the Reagan era. I thought that it was an interesting way to describe people on welfare. So far this book has been a bit eye opening. It definitely has a lot of information to share.

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