Sociologist Matthew Desmond has Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, which will be published on March 1. He has a goal to bring an overlooked perspective of the poverty in America as well as inequality, to a big audience. He was surprised about how people can see their home turn into not their house, in seconds. Desmond is an associate professor at Harvard, who has been studying evictions. There is poverty not just because of the lack of jobs, but also because people make plenty of money that comes from low-income families, which is what directly contributes to poverty. Desmond argues that poverty is the result of bad decisions, whether it is because of the government or because of the people themselves.
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Bernie Sanders had begun his campaign by criticizing Clinton and accusing her of supporting a legislation that had contributed to increasing poverty levels all around. Furthermore, he stated that because of that, more Americans face economic anxiety. Sanders stated that, "Mrs. Clinton helped round up votes to pass the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the welfare reform legislation that Bill Clinton signed into law" (Alcindor 2016). Bernie made a claim that the bill negatively affected Americans and poor people, rather than helping them. He said that if he was elected as the President of the United States, he would take action to lower the poverty rate in the U.S , as well as increasing wages and providing health care for everyone. The welfare reform went after many of the weak people, therefore causing for the number of families living in poverty, to double.
Last September, Ben Carson made a statement that,"We have ten times more people on welfare, more people in poverty, more broken homes, more crimes" (Carson). This time around, he had said that today, there are ten times more people on food stamps. When his statement from September was looked at, statistics show that is was much closer to 3 times rather than 10. There is a program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which has spread across the nation throughout the years. When the statistics for the food stamps were looked at, it has also been found that there is only an increase of three times, rather than ten times, which is what Carson had claimed.
The author, Henry George addresses the questions of, " How could the vice, the crime, the ignorance, the brutality, that spring from poverty and the fear of poverty, exist where poverty had vanished?" (George 44). He states that over the years, there have been multiple disappointments, discoveries, as well as inventions. However, these events that have occurred throughout the years have not brought plenty to the poor. There is distress in many parts of the world and they are all connected to one common cause. Henry mentions how it can be called material progress, or anything close to material progress. Where there is a high population, there is production and wealth, but some of the deepest poverty can be found as well. These areas have plenty of material progress an many laborers emigrate there to find higher wages and better jobs.
Experts have come together to succeed in an increase of the minimum wage. There have been recommendations to attach job requirements to food stamp programs, in order to provide more opportunities for the poor people, as well as strongly endorsing marriage and birth control. Furthermore, they have mentioned increasing the earned-income tax credit for adults who do not have any children. A proposal has been made for more federal investment during early childhood education and colleges that are in the community. The experts are hoping that administrations begin to focus more on poverty in order to find a solution to this issue.
Studies show that 71 percent of the girls who were born into poor families end up working at the age of 30, whereas the percentage for guys with the similar background is only 58 percent. This is a reverse gender gap, as men are generally more likely to be employed, compared to women. Therefore, boys have a higher risk of growing up in an unstable and high-poverty area. The boys are harmed by poverty in ways that are easily found, such as test scores and behavior problems. Factors such as these are known to affect their employment rates.
The Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, has spoke about his interest on poverty and finding a solution to this issue. In response to Paul Ryan, President Barack Obama made a claim that he would like to discuss multiple strategies, such as expanding cuts for low-income workers without children. Goals were put out to improve the working conditions of the poor and increasing minimum wage, which will help people as young as teens, work to provide for their family. There is the EITC, which many Republicans would like to pass. However, this only focuses on helping the poor who have children, rather than responding to the whole issue of poverty.
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