Book Blog 3 FCS 4840  Nina Davis

            The first paragraph of page 236 of the book, “The American way of poverty: How the other half still lives”, is a very profound thought.  By improving the broken welfare system easily, we would be one-step closer to ending poverty. It also states what we all know in this profession, it is Much harder to break the poverty cycle that includes medical care, drug treatment, mental health programs, education, the criminal justice system, labor and banking markets, and, of course, housing. I believe that the government knows this, they have extensively studied it, and to them, if they make a huge “payment” into solving the poverty problem, it will make more problems for them. They would have to be responsible with the money they have the power over and not gamble it on a new parking lot or shopping center to bring in new revenue to an area. It would, possibly, show how much of the money they have been irresponsibly spending and that they were worst than those they felt needed drug tested or work tracking  to prove the money was being earned and spent on “right choices”.

I lived in Alaska for three years and have many friends who receive money from the Alaska Permanent Dividend Fund.  I understand it, and the helpfulness of it. Alaska was one of the many states I worked in and seemed to be less poverty.  Pay the people revenue the states makes, in this case oil, and the people pay higher taxes, but more money goes back into their pockets, and they are happier to live there.   Alaska takes care of its people. The natives were some of the poorest I met, but their poverty seemed to be from not having an education to get the higher paying jobs. The cost of education was higher there, as was everything else, but the quality was high too.

This section of the book talks mostly about there not being any excuse why the government cannot get the country out of poverty. The cost it would take initially to jump start a true anti-poverty campaign would, and does, stop it from happening. We are not a society of waiting. Those people, who are not in poverty, would have to wait a long time to see the changes that would benefit the down payment of a substantial amount of money put into the plan. The book gives examples of many programs that do work to help people in many areas such as student loan debt, foreclosures, prison reform, job assistance, health assistance, and education.

The final chapters put the responsibility back on us. We know what is wrong, we know how to fix it, we just need to be aware and be active to take care of one another.