If you work with the poor in the United States it's very easy to believe that this country doesn't like "those people." According to the National Poverty Center nearly fifteen percent of the U.S. lived in poverty in 2009. It's counterproductive to detest 1/6 of the population especially when that translates into loathing fifteen and a half million children.
I work in a homeless shelter and daily learn stories that prove few folks in power think about the poor when they are making the rules which effect them. One of my residents is a sixty-four year old woman who works at a fast food joint. She makes minimum wage and seldom gets more than twenty hours. She's been poor her whole life and always earned minimum wage. Consequently over the years she's allowed "little things" like her dental health to decline and now has no teeth. Because of this she is not selected for counter work at her job and cleans the lobby three to four hours a day.
The budget issues which have made federal and state lawmakers use as justification for cutting basic necessities to the needy resulted the elimination of her state subsidized health insurance because her income exceeded $415 last month.
She stood in my office -- still dressed in her uniform with the famous cheeseburger logo on the left breast side -- and asked me what she was going to do. I muttered, "Join the other 45 million American working poor that have no access to healthcare and then sign up at the poverty clinic in town." I could have told her to quit her job and qualify again, but she's already living in a homeless shelter, she'd never get a home if she did that.
I asked her if her employer appreciated the subsidies it received from the community when shelters and clinics kept their work force in place. "You're right," she shouted, "if the minimum wage was a decent wage I wouldn't have to live here." According to the Taco Bell food chain, which is not number one but they're up there, they sell 2 billion tacos a year. If each taco were five cents more they would have a hundred million more dollars with which they could increase their workers pay. Imagine what the burger joints would be able to do with five cents a cheeseburger -- including provide healthcare.
Homeless Advocate Diane Nilan has a extensive list of homelessness causes in her book "Crossing the Line: Taking steps to end homelessness." But the three main causes are low wages, and healthcare and housing priced out of the reach of the poor.
But it's not just a disregard for low wage workers that makes the country seem self loathing. The education laws don't help. When you are homeless it's hard to keep your kid in school. Actually, that because being homeless makes it hard to do everything. And holding a family together and making sure the kids stay healthy and stay in school is exponentially tough when homeless. Many of our nation's individual truancy laws demand fines and/or jail time for parents with children who miss too much school. And for the child the punishment is often suspension from school.
Let me type that again. The punishment for truancy is being barred from school: reinforcing many barriers to education.
And the last little proof that the lawmakers at-worst don't like the poor and at-best don't consider them when writing laws; is that in many states if a parent cannot provide an adequate home for his or her children those kids get put in foster care. The non-profit Foster Care Alumni of America finds, "The U.S. spends $22 billion dollars ($5 billion from the Federal government and the balance from state/county governments) to provide services for children and youth in foster care. This averages out to $40,000 per child."
Even for a family with just one child, it's a lot cheaper to just give a homeless family a home than to take their kids away. And yet that's what's done.
Come to think of it, the U.S. doesn't just seem to dislike the poor. The U.S. appears to dislike the taxpayer as well -- subsidizing power retailers and fast food joints, clogging the courts with kids who have difficulty getting to school and paying many times over the cost of an dwelling to separate families because they have none -- really wastes tax resources.
Joel John Roberts: Unlivable Wages Mean Unlivable Conditions
Mark Horvath: Homeless Single Mom, Daughters Live in a Seattle Van
Workers are going to have to fight back - HARD - to remind the owners that products and services are NOT produced by magic!!!
The poor get Medicaid. Medicaid is a State program funded by general tax revenues. but they get Federal assistance sometimes.
However, most of them have no financial common sense and have no idea how ordinary lower class Americans live.
Being poor, even hardworking poor, is something the politicians think you deserve for being a loser.
Simply put, no compassion, sympathy, empathy, OR understanding is forthcoming.
Many non-politicians think the same way....poverty is something you deserve for being inferior....something is wrong with you.
To bad the upper classes couldn't experience poverty for at least a month or two.
It would open their eyes and maybe their hearts.
My story is longer than the space to write, but the short version can be summed up in two words:mental health. I struggle daily with depression, anxiety, an eating disorder and some other associated issues.
To see me during the day, there's no indication that I'm homeless. I might be at the library working on a project on my laptop. I might be displaying my artwork at a local arts festival. I'm a freelance graphic designer and artist.
I'm not addicted to drugs or alcohol, and I don't sit outside panhandling all day. I am not a high school dropout. I can have a coherent conversation with you, discuss current events, entertainment, etc.
In fact, let me share something with you: what we face when we are homeless. The rude treatment, the lack of compassion, the ignorance, the humiliation.
Sure, it sounds like I'm living the high life - laptop, art, etc. Thankfully, I have private sleeping accommodations, and a kitchen to make meals instead of having to eat elsewhere. But, when you are (or have been) homeless, your whole thought process changes. At night, I come home to a bed (for which I am very grateful, mind you) that's not mine. When I go to cook my dinner, I have to hope that someone didn't raid my food supplies.
You want to know what it's like? Come and live in my shoes for a week.
I wish congress was required to visit skid rowand other places like Pat has befoe all the votes they make that change our lives.. I live in my own home I can barely keep warm. I get HEAP to help with that we live paycheck to pay check as it is loss of a job and we are on the street or movingin with my in laws ...
.
The demonization of welfare recepients has gone on so long and the changes in welfare law (1996) so drastic, that when the economic collapse of 2008 occurred the welfare rolls barely increased.
So conservatives and Republicans turned today's unemployed as the new welfare recepient, being paid not to work.
Then hate filled conservatives turned their vitriol on WAGE EARNERS who were able to engage in legal tax avoidance to zero out their tax bill (considered nirvana for the well off.) and accussed these WORKING people of being the new dead beats.
Republicans and conservatives will not stop until they can, simply stated, criminalize poverty.
But it’s not just the right that doesn’t want to hear it. Much of the traditional left, including most people who Blog on the topic at HuffPo, would much rather write about “fixing” foster care than actually preventing it by helping families. They’ve bought into the middle-class rescue fantasies of the rightwingers, who have demonized all parents who lose their children as abusive, just as they demonize all poor people as lazy.
One classic case-in-point: The editor of NPR who declared that parents, or as she actually called them, “these people,” have no place in a story about foster care – as discussed in this 2008 post to my organization’s Child Welfare Blog: http://bit.ly/lmDYvD
Until the left starts to value impoverished families – including those who lose their children to foster care - the right will have a clear field to exploit so-called “family values.”
Richard Wexler
Executive Director
National Coalition for Child Protection Reform
www.nccpr.org
I have said it before and I will say it again....too many politicians have NO common sense or understanding of economics and finance.
Watching the Repugs push trickle down economics and all the rest of it proves my point.
To make up for their lousy financial acumen (judgement), they demonize teachers and the unemployed.
Anything to deflect the blame for what they helped do.
****They already demonized "welfare queens" but now too many (former) hardworking Americans need help (unemployment, food stamps) that now THEY must be demonized.
From what I can see, the American people are starting to wake up.
Yes, it IS class warfare....especially by the upper classes who helped impoverish their fellow Americans and now need excuses to shift the blame.
Soon crime and poverty will be so bad that whole areas of the U.S. will be a "no-go" zone for anyone with anything to lose and how much will that cost the rest of us? The rich are richer than they have ever been. It's those of you in the middle who somehow think the finger is being pointed at you for eking out your little existence that are part of the problem. Whenever someone says "feeding the poor is cheaper than dealing with the consequences of them starving" you somehow think we're coming for your money. No. It is the uber-rich, which you are not and will probably never be if you're reading this, that are robbing ALL OF US of our cherished American Way of Life. If you're standing up for them you are getting nothing for your struggle against yourself and the rest of us. Plutocrats are still taking your country away from you and expecting you to give it to them with a smile and get NOTHING in return...
Welcome to America!
I am grateful I have a place to live and my needs taken care of.
Just barely, but I am not complaining.
So many have it much worse than me.
I am ANGRY for the America my kids are dealing with.
*****My adult nephew told some horrified working class church friends that he pulled out his tooth with pliers. (After swallowing some booze.)
They asked him why did he do such a crazy thing?
He answered that he had a bad toothache and NO money.
Sure, you can ALWAYS find some sad story out there...and you can always find a scenerio were someone just flat "stepped up and takes care of business"...
Get on with it...your job/career/profession is NOT coming back. It's well past time to do something to earn a $.
Unfortunately, many right-wing Christians today believe that the poor are "bad" and are being "punished by God". They believe in the so-called gospel of success. "Today we are witnessing the emergence, all around us, of what has been called the "gospel of success." Its basic message is that if you want to climb the ladder to worldly success and enjoy all the good things this life has to offer, then get Jesus on your team, and he will fulfill your fondest ambition. He will help you live out the American dream of wealth and prosperity."
linkie: http://www.theexaminer.org/volume2/number2/gospel.htm
It used to be in this country, that you helped your neighbor in times of trouble. Now, it seems it's everyman for himself. These politicians pit the poor against each other while they laugh all the way to the bank with their corporate supporters. And it's just sad.
As all the religious people say...The Lord helps those that help themselves...start with stepping up and helping yourself before you ask me for something.