Welcher-Miner, Blog #2

Ambrasky continues to delve in to the realm of inadequate government policy and the prevalence of poverty amongst the American people.  While reading this assigned portion of the book, I happened to watch “The Big Short” which highlighted the housing crisis in 2008, which occurred simultaneously with the unemployment crisis mentioned by Ambrasky.  This film more than brought to light the corruption of big banks, corporate America, and the U.S. government.     

I appreciated Ambrasky’s take on the safety net in his section titled – “How Many Holes Can You Poke In A Net Before It’s Just A Hole?”  He speaks of the ever-apparent conservative trends in politics, all the while government finances worsening and the safety net that is welfare slowly falling apart.  These trends are most apparent in the Southern part of the United States.   I see nothing wrong with the concept of government assistance in the instances that it is truly needed.  Unfortunately the system is saturated, loosely monitored, and thus failing slowly but surely.  Ambrasky went as far as to say,

“There is not merely a kink in the system, but a fundamental flaw in the design of the modern-day American safety net”

The worst part, we all know that inequality exists; yet those that are at the disadvantage are often blamed for their individual situations.  As we all witnessed in viewing “The Line” previously this semester, this simply isn’t always the case.  The Mississippi Effect summarizes this ideology in the most eloquent manner.

“It is easy to be an armchair critic of those who rely on government assistance; to denounce them as crazy, manipulative, lazy or dysfunctional; to declare them their own worst enemies; to urge them to stand on their feet and pull themselves up by their bootstraps.  Get beyond the tired, clichéd, sound bites, however, and one enters a world of frequent humiliation, of desperate poverty, of shrunken horizons.”

These words by Ambrasky literally made me shutter.  Generation poverty is real and it is debilitating.  Lifelong feelings of hopelessness and a society that stereotypes and degrades, both consciously and subconsciously, fuels this continuous cycle.  In this same topic are of the book, Ambrasky addresses the notions of “welfare-addiction”. 

In the Introduction to Part Two of The American Way of Poverty, a statement that almost hopped of the page at me was that “absolute equality is neither possible nor remotely desirable”.  This is something that I feel our society is constantly striving for…absolute equality.  Whether it be among race, gender, or socioeconomic status, equality is the ultimate goal.  I must agree with Ambrasky in the fact that absolute equality is more of a Utopia-type wish.  Instead, the focus should be on eliminating the EXTREME levels of inequality.  Priorities must change and budgets must be redistributed to help poor American’s climb from the ashes.  These situations requiring reform bring me back to my previous discussion of the failing welfare system.  Ambrasky actually put it in to numbers.  Reliance on SNAP rose from 17.2million to 46 million in 2012, while those qualifying for TANF remained around 4 million.  SNAP finds its highest numbers in times of recession and collapsing wages and has become the central component of the American welfare system.  As mentioned by Ambrasky, SNAP is well-devised aid for those new to poverty, but the current system is not efficient in limiting the slippery slope that leads to deep poverty.  In one of the richest countries in the world, our poverty rate is disturbing.