America, The Land of Milk and Honey

Poverty in the United States

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Poor mother and children during the Great Depression. Elm Grove, California, USA.
In November 2012 the U.S. Census Bureau said more than 16% of the population lived in poverty in the United States, including almost 20% of American children,[1] up from 14.3% (approximately 43.6 million) in 2009 and to its highest level since 1993. In 2008, 13.2% (39.8 million) Americans lived in poverty.[2]
In 2011, Extreme poverty in the United States, meaning households living on less than $2 per day before government benefits, doubled from 1996 levels, to 1.5 million households, including 2.8 million children.[3] In 2013, child poverty reached record high levels, with 16.7 million children living in food insecure households, about 35% more than 2007 levels.[4] The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is approaching 1960s levels that led to the national War on Poverty.[5]
Poverty is a state of privation, or a lack of the usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions.[6] The most common measure of poverty in the U.S. is the “poverty threshold” set by the U.S. government. This measure recognizes poverty as a lack of those goods and services commonly taken for granted by members of mainstream society.[7] The official threshold is adjusted for inflation using the consumer price index. The government’s definition of poverty is based on total income received. For example, the poverty level for 2012 was set at $23,050 (total yearly income) for a family of four.[8] Most Americans (58.5%) will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point between ages 25 and 75.[9] Poverty rates are persistently higher in rural and inner city parts of the country as compared to suburban areas.[10][11]

Contents

Measures of poverty

Measures of poverty can be either absolute or relative.

Two official measures of poverty

Percent and number below the poverty threshold.[12]
The poverty rate for selected age groups. Those under the age of 18 are most likely to fall below
There are two basic versions of the federal poverty measure: the poverty thresholds (which are the primary version) and the poverty guidelines. The Census Bureau issues the poverty thresholds, which are generally used for statistical purposes—for example, to estimate the number of people in poverty nationwide each year and classify them by type of residence, race, and other social, economic, and demographic characteristics. The Department of Health and Human Services issues the poverty guidelines for administrative purposes—for instance, to determine whether a person or family is eligible for assistance through various federal programs.[13]
Since the 1960s, the United States Government has defined poverty in absolute terms. When the Johnson administration declared “war on poverty” in 1964, it chose an absolute measure. The “absolute poverty line” is the threshold below which families or individuals are considered to be lacking the resources to meet the basic needs for healthy living; having insufficient income to provide the food, shelter and clothing needed to preserve health.
The “Orshansky Poverty Thresholds” form the basis for the current measure of poverty in the U.S. Mollie Orshansky was an economist working for the Social Security Administration (SSA). Her work appeared at an opportune moment. Orshansky’s article was published later in the same year that Johnson declared war on poverty. Since her measure was absolute (i.e., did not depend on other events), it made it possible to objectively answer whether the U.S. government was “winning” this war. The newly formed United States Office of Economic Opportunity adopted the lower of the Orshansky poverty thresholds for statistical, planning, and budgetary purposes in May 1965.
The Bureau of the Budget (now the Office of Management and Budget) adopted Orshansky’s definition for statistical use in all Executive departments. The measure gave a range of income cutoffs, or thresholds, adjusted for factors such as family size, sex of the family head, number of children under 18 years old, and farm or non-farm residence. The economy food plan (the least costly of four nutritionally adequate food plans designed by the Department of Agriculture) was at the core of this definition of poverty.[14]
The Department of Agriculture found that families of three or more persons spent about one third of their after-tax income on food. For these families, poverty thresholds were set at three times the cost of the economy food plan. Different procedures were used for calculating poverty thresholds for two-person households and persons living alone. Annual updates of the SSA poverty thresholds were based on price changes in the economy food plan.
Two changes were made to the poverty definition in 1969. Thresholds for non-farm families were tied to annual changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rather than changes in the cost of the economy food plan. Farm thresholds were raised from 70 to 85% of the non-farm levels.
In 1981, further changes were made to the poverty definition. Separate thresholds for “farm” and “female-householder” families were eliminated. The largest family size category became “nine persons or more.”[14]
Apart from these changes, the U.S. government’s approach to measuring poverty has remained static for the past forty years.

Recent poverty rate and guidelines

United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) figures for poverty in 2012[8]
Persons in
Family Unit		48 Contiguous States
and D.C.		AlaskaHawaii
1$11,170$13,970$12,860
2$15,130$18,920$17,410
3$19,090$23,870$21,960
4$23,050$28,820$26,510
5$27,010$33,770$31,060
6$30,970$38,720$35,610
7$34,930$43,670$40,160
8$38,890$48,620$44,710
Each additional
person adds		$3,960$4,950$4,550
The poverty guideline figures are not the figures the Census Bureau uses to calculate the number of poor persons. The figures that the Census Bureau uses are the poverty thresholds. The Census Bureau provides an explanation of the difference between poverty thresholds and guidelines.[15] The Census Bureau uses a set of money income thresholds that vary by family size and composition to determine who is in poverty.[14] The 2010 figure for a family of 4 with no children under 18 years of age is $22,541, while the figure for a family of 4 with 2 children under 18 is $22,162.[16] For comparison, the 2011 HHS poverty guideline for a family of 4 is $22,350.

Numbers in other countries

The official number of poor in the United States in 2008 is about 39.1 million people, greater in number but not percentage than the officially poor in Indonesia, which has a far lower Human Development Index and the next largest population after the United States.[17][18] The poverty level in the United States, with 15% (46.2 million people in poverty, of a total of 308.5 million) is comparable to the one in France, where 14% of the population live with less than 880 euros per month.[19][20]
Number of poor are hard to compare across countries. Absolute income may be used but does not reflect the actual number of poor, which depend on relative income and cost of living in each country. Among developed countries, each country then has its own definition and threshold of what it means to be poor, but this is not adjusted for cost of living and social benefits. For instance, despite the fact that France and US have about the same threshold in terms of dollars amount for poverty, cost of living benefits differ, with universal health care and highly subsidized post-secondary education existing in France. In general, it might be better to use the Human Poverty Index (HPI), Human Development Index (HDI) or other global measure to compare quality of living in different countries.

Relative measures of poverty

Another way of looking at poverty is in relative terms. “Relative poverty” can be defined as having significantly less access to income and wealth than other members of society. Therefore, the relative poverty rate is a measure of income inequality. When the standard of living among those in more financially advantageous positions rises while that of those considered poor stagnates, the relative poverty rate will reflect such growing income inequality and increase. Conversely, the poverty rate can decrease, with low income people coming to have less wealth and income if wealthier people’s wealth is reduced by a larger percentage than theirs. In 1959, a family at the poverty line had an income that was 42.64% of the median income.[citation needed] If the poverty line in 1999 was less than 42.64% of the median income, then relative poverty would have increased.
In the European Union and for the OECD, “relative poverty” is defined as an income below 60% of the national median equalized disposable income after social transfers for a comparable household. In Germany, for example, the official relative poverty line for a single adult person in 2003 was 938 euros per month (11,256 euros/year, $12,382 PPP. West Germany 974 euros/month, 11,688 euros/year, $12,857 PPP). For a family of four with two children below 14 years the poverty line was 1969.8 euros per month ($2,167 PPP) or 23,640 euros ($26,004 PPP) per year. According to Eurostat the percentage of people in Germany living at risk of poverty (relative poverty) in 2004 was 16% (official national rate 13.5% in 2003). Additional definitions for poverty in Germany are “poverty” (50% median) and “strict poverty” (40% median, national rate 1.9% in 2003). Generally the percentage for “relative poverty” is much higher than the quota for “strict poverty”. The U.S concept is best comparable to “strict poverty”. By European standards the official (relative) poverty rate in the United States would be significantly higher than it is by the U.S. measure. A research paper from the OECD calculates the relative poverty rate for the United States at 16% for 50% median of disposable income and nearly 24% for 60% of median disposable income[21] (OECD average: 11% for 50% median, 16% for 60% median).
Some critics argue that relying on income disparity to determine who is impoverished can be misleading. The Bureau of Labor Statistics data suggests that consumer spending varies much less than income. In 2008, the “poorest” one fifth of Americans households spent on average $12,955 per person for goods and services (other than taxes), the second quintile spent $14,168, the third $16,255, the fourth $19,695, while the “richest” fifth spent $26,644. The disparity of expenditures is much less than the disparity of income.[22][neutrality is disputed]

The income distribution and relative poverty

Although the relative approach theoretically differs largely from the Orshansky definition, crucial variables of both poverty definitions are more similar than often thought. First, the so-called standardization of income in both approaches is very similar. To make incomes comparable among households of different sizes, equivalence scales are used to standardize household income to the level of a single person household. In Europe, the modified OECD equivalence scale is used, which takes the combined value of 1 for the head of household, 0.5 for each additional household member older than 14 years and 0.3 for children. When compared to the US Census poverty lines, which is based on a defined basket of goods, for the most prevalent household types both standardization methods show to be very similar.
Furthermore, the poverty threshold in Western-European countries is not always higher than the Orshansky threshold for a single person family. The actual Orchinsky poverty line for single person households in the US ($9645 in 2004) is very comparable to the relative poverty line in many Western-European countries (Belgium 2004: €9315), while price levels are also similar.[citation needed] The reason why relative poverty measurement causes high poverty levels in the US, as demonstrated by Förster,[21] is caused by distributional effects rather than real differences in well-being among EU-countries and the USA.
The median household income is much higher in the US than in Europe due to the wealth of the middle classes in the US, from which the poverty line is derived. Although the paradigm of relative poverty is most valuable, this comparison of poverty lines show that the higher prevalence of relative poverty levels in the US are not an indicator of a more severe poverty problem but an indicator of larger inequalities between rich middle classes and the low-income households. It is therefore not correct to state that the US income distribution is characterized by a large proportion of households in poverty; it is characterized by relatively large income inequality but also high levels of prosperity of the middle classes.[neutrality is disputed] The 2007 poverty threshold for a three member family is 17,070.

Poverty and demographics

In addition to family status, race/ethnicity and age also correlate with high poverty rates in the United States. Although data regarding race and poverty are more extensively published and cross tabulated the family status correlation is by far the strongest.

Poverty and family status

Homeless children in the United States.[23] The number of homeless children reached record highs in 2011,[24] 2012,[25] and 2013[26] at about three times their number in 1983.[25]
According to the US Census, in 2007 5.8% of all people in married families lived in poverty,[27] as did 26.6% of all persons in single parent households[27] and 19.1% of all persons living alone.[27] More than 75% of all poor households are headed by women (2012).[28]

By race/ethnicity and family status, based on data from 2007

Camden, New Jersey is one of the poorest cities in the United States.
Among married couple families: 5.8% lived in poverty.[27] This number varied by race and ethnicity as follows:
5.4% of all white persons (which includes white Hispanics),[29]
9.7% of all black persons (which includes black Hispanics),[30] and
14.9% of all Hispanic persons (of any race)[31] living in poverty.
Among single parent (male or female) families: 26.6% lived in poverty.[27] This number varied by race and ethnicity as follows”
22.5% of all white persons (which includes white Hispanics),[29]
44.0% of all black persons (which includes black Hispanics),[30] and
33.4% of all Hispanic persons (of any race)[31] living in poverty.
Among unrelated individuals living alone: 19.1% lived in poverty.[27] This number varied by race and ethnicity as follows:
18% of white persons (which includes white Hispanics)[32]
27.9% of black persons (which includes black Hispanics)[31] and
27% of Hispanic persons (of any race)[33] living in poverty

Poverty and race/ethnicity

The US Census declared that in 2010 15.1% of the general population lived in poverty:[34]
9.9% of all non-Hispanic white persons
12.1% of all Asian persons
26.6% of all Hispanic persons (of any race)
27.4% of all black persons.
About half of those living in poverty are non-Hispanic white (19.6 million in 2010),[34] but poverty rates are much higher for blacks and Hispanics. Non-Hispanic white children comprised 57% of all poor rural children.[35]
In FY 2009, black families comprised 33.3% of TANF families, non-Hispanic white families comprised 31.2%, and 28.8% were Hispanic.[36]

Poverty and age

The US Census declared that in 2010 15.1% of the general population lived in poverty:
22% of all people under age 18
13.7% of all people 19–64, and
9% of all people ages 65 and older[34]
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) uses a different measure for poverty and declared in 2008 that child poverty in the US is 20% and poverty among the elderly is 23%.[37] The non-profit advocacy group Feeding America has released a study (May 2009) based on 2005–2007 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Agriculture Department, which claims that 3.5 million children under the age of 5 are at risk of hunger in the United States. The study claims that in 11 states, Louisiana, which has the highest rate, followed by North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Idaho and Arkansas, more than 20 percent of children under 5 are allegedly at risk of going hungry. (Receiving fewer than 1,800 calories per day) The study was paid by ConAgra Foods, a large food company.[38]

Child poverty

In 2013, child poverty reached record high levels in the U.S., with 16.7 million children living in food insecure households. 47 million Americans depend on food banks, more than 30% above 2007 levels. Households headed by single mothers are most likely to be affected. Worst effected are the District of Columbia, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico and Florida, while North Dakota, New Hampshire, Virginia, Minnesota and Massachusetts are the least affected.[4]

Poverty and education

Poverty affects individual access to quality education. The U.S. education system is funded by local communities; therefore the quality of materials and teachers is reflective of the affluence of community. Low income communities are not able to afford the quality education that high income communities are. Another important aspect of education in low income communities is the apathy of both students and teachers. To some the children of the poor or ignorant are seen as mere copies of their parents fated to live out the same poor or ignorant life. The effect of such a perception can be teachers that will not put forth the effort to teach and students that are opposed to learning; in both cases the idea is that the poor student is incapable. Due to these and other reasons the quality of education between the classes is not equal.[39]

Food security

Eighty-nine percent of the American households were food secure throughout the entire year of 2002, meaning that they had access, at all times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all of the household members. The remaining households were food insecure at least some time during that year. The prevalence of food insecurity rose from 10.7% in 2001 to 11.1% in 2002, and the prevalence of food insecurity with hunger rose from 3.3% to 3.5%.[40]
In 2008, eighty-five percent of American households were food secure throughout the entire year.[41]

Factors in poverty

There are numerous factors related to poverty in the United States.
  • Income and intelligence have been found to be related. Charles Murray compared the earnings of 733 full sibling pairs with differing intelligence quotients (IQ’s). He referred to the sample as utopian in that the sampled pairs were raised in families with virtually no illegitimacy, divorce or poverty. The average earnings of sampled individuals with an IQ of under 75 was $11,000, compared to $16,000 for those with an IQ between 75 and 90, $23,000 for those with an IQ between 90 and 110, $27,000 for those with an IQ between 110 and 125, and $38,000 for those with an IQ above 125. [42]
  • Income has a high correlation with educational levels. In 2007, the median earnings of household headed by individuals with less than a 9th grade education was $20,805 while households headed by high school graduates earned $40,456, households headed holders of bachelor’s degree earned $77,605, and families headed by individuals with professional degrees earned $100,000.[43]
  • In many cases poverty is caused by job loss. In 2007, the poverty rate was 21.5% for individuals who were unemployed, but only 2.5% for individuals who were employed full-time.[43]
  • In 1991, 8.3% of children in two-parent families were likely to live in poverty; 19.6% of children lived with father in single parent family; and 47.1% in single parent family headed by mother.[44]
  • Income levels vary with age. For example, the median 2009 income for households headed by individuals age 15–24 was only $30,750, but increased to $50,188 for household headed by individuals age 25–34 and $61,083 for household headed by individuals 35–44.[45] Although the reasons are unclear, work experience and additional education may be factors.
  • Income levels vary along racial/ethnic lines: 21% of all children in the United States live in poverty, about 46% of black children and 40% of Latino children live in poverty.[46] The poverty rate is 9.9% for black married couples and only 30% of black children are born to married couples (see Marriage below). Citing the Pew Researh Center,The Economist reports that in 2007,11% of black women aged 30–44 without a high school diploma had a working spouse.[47][copyright violation?] The poverty rate for native born and naturalized whites is identical (9.6%). On the other hand, the poverty rate for naturalized blacks is 11.8% compared to 25.1% for native born blacks suggesting race alone does not explain income disparity. Not all minorities have low incomes. Asian families have higher incomes than all other ethnic groups. For example, the 2005 median income of Asian families was $68,957 compared to the median income of white families of $59,124.[48] Asians, however, report discrimination occurrences more frequently than blacks. Specifically, 31% of Asians reported employment discrimination compared to 26% of blacks in 2005.[49]
  • The relationship between tax rates and poverty is disputed. A study comparing high tax Scandinavian countries with the U. S. suggests high tax rates are inversely correlated with poverty rates.[50] The poverty rate, however, is low in some low tax countries such as Switzerland. A comparison of poverty rates between states reveals that some low tax states have low poverty rates. For example, New Hampshire has the lowest poverty rate of any state in the U. S., and has very low taxes (46th among all states).It is true however that in those instances, both Switzerland and New Hampshire have a very high household income and other measures to levy or offset the lack of taxation. For example, Switzerland has Universal Healthcare and a free system of education for children as young as four years old.[51] New Hampshire has no state income tax or sales tax, but does have the nation’s highest property taxes.[52]
  • The conservative Heritage Foundation speculates that illegal immigration increases job competition among low wage earners, both native and foreign born. Additionally many first generation immigrants, namely those without a high school diploma, are also living in poverty themselves.[53]

Concerns regarding accuracy

In recent years, there have been a number of concerns raised about the official U.S. poverty measure. In 1995, the National Research Council‘s Committee on National Statistics convened a panel on measuring poverty. The findings of the panel were that “the official poverty measure in the United States is flawed and does not adequately inform policy-makers or the public about who is poor and who is not poor.”
The panel was chaired by Robert Michael, former Dean of the Harris School of the University of Chicago. According to Michael, the official U.S. poverty measure “has not kept pace with far-reaching changes in society and the economy.” The panel proposed a model based on disposable income:
“According to the panel’s recommended measure, income would include, in addition to money received, the value of non-cash benefits such as food stamps, school lunches and public housing that can be used to satisfy basic needs. The new measure also would subtract from gross income certain expenses that cannot be used for these basic needs, such as income taxes, child-support payments, medical costs, health-insurance premiums and work-related expenses, including child care.[54]”

Understating poverty

Many sociologists and government officials have argued that poverty in the United States is understated, meaning that there are more households living in actual poverty than there are households below the poverty threshold.[55] A recent NPR report states that as much as 30% of Americans have trouble making ends meet and other advocates have made supporting claims that the rate of actual poverty in the US is far higher than that calculated by using the poverty threshold.[55] A study taken in 2012 estimated that roughly 38% of Americans live “paycheck to paycheck.”[56]
According to William H. Chafe, if one used a relative standard for measuring poverty (a standard that took into account the rising standards of living rather than an absolute dollar figure) then 18% of families was living in poverty in 1968, not 13% as officially estimated at that time.[57]
As far back as 1969, the Bureau of Labor Statistics put forward suggested budgets for families to live adequately on. 60% of working-class Americans lived below one of these budgets, which suggested that a far higher proportion of Americans lived in poverty than the official poverty line suggested. These findings were also used by observers on the left when questioning the long-established view that most Americans had attained an affluent standard of living in the two decades following the end of the Second World War.[58][59]
A neighborhood of poor white southerners, Chicago, 1974
Using a definition of relative poverty (reflecting disposable income below half the median of adjusted national income), it was estimated that, between 1979 and 1982, 17.1% of Americans lived in poverty, compared with 12.6% of the population of Canada, 12.2% of the population of Australia, 9.7% of the population of Britain, 5.6% of the population of West Germany, 5.3% of the population of Sweden, and 5.2% of the population of Norway.[60]
As noted above, the poverty thresholds used by the US government were originally developed during the Johnson administration’sWar on Poverty initiative in 1963–1964.[61][62] Mollie Orshansky, the government economist working at the Social Security Administration who developed the thresholds, based the threshold levels on the cost of purchasing what in the mid 1950s had been determined by the US Department of Agriculture to be the minimal nutritionally-adequate amount of food necessary to feed a family. Orshansky multiplied the cost of the food basket by a factor of three, under the assumption that the average family spent one third of its income on food.
While the poverty threshold is updated for inflation every year, the basket of food used to determine what constitutes being deprived of a socially acceptable minimum standard of living has not been updated since 1955. As a result, the current poverty line only takes into account food purchases that were common more than 50 years ago, updating their cost using the Consumer Price Index. When methods similar to Orshansky’s were used to update the food basket using prices for the year 2000 instead of from nearly a half century earlier, it was found that the poverty line should actually be 200% higher than the official level being used by the government in that year.[63]
Yet even that higher level could still be considered flawed, as it would be based almost entirely on food costs and on the assumption that families still spend a third of their income on food. In fact, Americans typically spent less than one tenth of their after-tax income on food in 2000.[64] For many families, the costs of housing, health insurance and medical care, transportation, and access to basic telecommunications take a much larger bite out of the family’s income today than a half century ago; yet, as noted above,[61][62] none of these costs are considered in determining the official poverty thresholds. According to John Schwarz, a political scientist at the University of Arizona:
“The official poverty line today is essentially what it takes in today’s dollars, adjusted for inflation, to purchase the same poverty-line level of living that was appropriate to a half century ago, in 1955, for that year furnished the basic data for the formula for the very first poverty measure. Updated thereafter only for inflation, the poverty line lost all connection over time with current consumption patterns of the average family. Quite a few families then didn’t have their own private telephone, or a car, or even a mixer in their kitchen… The official poverty line has thus been allowed to fall substantially below a socially decent minimum, even though its intention was to measure such a minimum.”
The issue of understating poverty is especially pressing in states with both a high cost of living and a high poverty rate such as California where the median home price in May 2006 was determined to be $564,430.[65] With half of all homes being priced above the half million dollar mark and prices in urban areas such as San Francisco, San Jose or Los Angeles being higher than the state average, it is almost impossible for not just the poor but also lower middle class worker to afford decent housing,[citation needed] and no possibility of home ownership. In the Monterey area, where the low-pay industry of agriculture is the largest sector in the economy and the majority of the population lacks a college education the median home price was determined to be $723,790, requiring an upper middle class income which only roughly 20% of all households in the county boast.[65][66]
Such fluctuations in local markets are, however, not considered in the Federal poverty threshold, and thus leave many who live in poverty-like conditions out of the total number of households classified as poor.
In 2011, the Census Bureau introduced a new supplementary poverty measure aimed at providing a more accurate picture of the true extent of poverty in the United States. According to this new measure, 16% of Americans lived in poverty in 2011, compared with 15.2% using the official figure. The new measure also estimated that nearly half of all Americans lived in poverty that year, defined as living within 200% of the federal poverty line.[67]
Duke University Professor of Public Policy and Economics Sandy Darity, Jr. says, “There is no exact way of measuring poverty. The measures are contingent on how we conceive of and define poverty. Efforts to develop more refined measures have been dominated by researchers who intentionally want to provide estimates that reduce the magnitude of poverty.”[68]

Overstating poverty

Youth play in Chicago’s Stateway Gardens high-rise housing project in 1973.
Some critics assert that the official U.S. poverty definition is inconsistent with how it is defined by its own citizens and the rest of the world, because the U.S. government considers many citizens statistically impoverished despite their ability to sufficiently meet their basic needs. According to a 2011 paper by poverty expert Robert Rector, of the 43.6 million Americans deemed to be below the poverty level by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2009, the majority had adequate shelter, food, clothing and medical care. In addition, the paper stated that those assessed to be below the poverty line in 2011 have a much higher quality of living than those who were identified by the census 40 years ago as being in poverty.[69]
The federal poverty line also excludes income other than cash income, especially welfare benefits. Thus, if food stamps and public housing were successfully raising the standard of living for poverty stricken individuals, then the poverty line figures would not shift since they do not consider the income equivalents of such entitlements.[70]
A 1993 study of low income single mothers titled Making Ends Meet, by Kathryn Edin, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, showed that the mothers spent more than their reported incomes because they could not “make ends meet” without such expenditures. According to Edin, they made up the difference through contributions from family members, absent boyfriends, off-the-book jobs, and church charity.
According to Edin: “No one avoided the unnecessary expenditures, such as the occasional trip to the Dairy Queen, or a pair of stylish new sneakers for the son who might otherwise sell drugs to get them, or the Cable TV subscription for the kids home alone and you are afraid they will be out on the street if they are not watching TV.” However many mothers skipped meals or did odd jobs to cover those expenses. According to Edin, for “most welfare-reliant mothers food and shelter alone cost almost as much as these mothers received from the government. For more than one-third, food and housing costs exceeded their cash benefits, leaving no extra money for uncovered medical care, clothing, and other household expenses.” [71]
Moreover, Swedish libertarianthink tankTimbro points out that lower-income households in the U.S. tend to own more appliances and larger houses than many middle-income Western Europeans.[72]

Fighting poverty

There have been many governmental and nongovernmental efforts to reduce poverty and its effects. These range in scope from neighborhood efforts to campaigns with a national focus. They target specific groups affected by poverty such as children, people who are autistic, immigrants, or people who are homeless. Efforts to alleviate poverty use a disparate set of methods, such as advocacy, education, social work, legislation, direct service or charity, and community organizing.
Recent debates have centered on the need for policies that focus on both “income poverty” and “asset poverty.”[73] Advocates for the approach argue that traditional governmental poverty policies focus solely on supplementing the income of the poor, through programs such as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and Food Stamps. According to the CFED2012 Assets & Opportunity Scorecard, 27 percent of households – nearly double the percentage that are income poor – are living in “asset poverty.” These families do not have the savings or other assets to cover basic expenses (equivalent to what could be purchased with a poverty level income) for three months if a layoff or other emergency leads to loss of income. Since 2009, the number of asset poor families has increased by 21 percent from about one in five families to one in four families.
Additionally, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC or EIC) is a credit for people who earn low-to-moderate incomes. This credit allows them to get free money from productive taxpayers who must do without so the taxabsorbers can get free money. The Earned Income Tax Credit is viewed as the largest poverty reduction program in the United States.

See also

US Census report on Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage
Other:
International:

References

  1. ^“Census: U.S. Poverty Rate Spikes, Nearly 50 Million Americans Affected”CBS. November 15, 2012
  2. ^“Poverty rate hits 15-year high”Reuters. September 17, 2010
  3. ^“Extreme Poverty in the United States, 1996 to 2011″National Poverty Center, February 2012
  4. ^ ab Walker, Duncan (6 March 2013). “The children going hungry in America”. BBC News. Retrieved 13 March 2013.
  5. ^“US poverty on track to post record gain in 2009 – Yahoo! News”. News.yahoo.com. 2009-04-13. Retrieved 2010-09-16.
  6. ^ Zweig, Michael (2004) What’s Class Got to do With It, American Society in the Twenty-first Century. ILR Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-8899-3
  7. ^ Schwartz, J. E. (2005). Freedom reclaimed: Rediscovering the American vision. Baltimore: G-University Press.
  8. ^ ab2012 HHS Poverty GuidelinesU.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Accessed: 14 June 2012
  9. ^ Hacker, J. S. (2006). The great risk shift: The new insecurity and the decline of the American dream. New York: Oxford University Press (USA).
  10. ^ Savage, Sarah. “Child Poverty High in Rural America”. Retrieved 2008-08-26.
  11. ^Child Poverty High in Rural America Newswise, Retrieved on August 26, 2008.
  12. ^“Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2008″. U.S. Census Bureau. September 2009.
  13. ^ Fisher, G.M. (2003) The Development of the Orshansky Poverty Thresholds. Accessed: 2003-12-27
  14. ^ abcPoverty Definition U.S. Census Bureau. Accessed: 2003-12-27.
  15. ^Census Bureau answer to What is the difference between poverty thresholds and guidelines?
  16. ^Census Bureau Poverty thresholds
  17. ^Census Bureau:Poverty: 2007 and 2008 American Community Surveys
  18. ^BPS:Miskin
  19. ^[1]
  20. ^INSEE Nombre et taux de personnes vivant sous le seuil de pauvreté selon leur âge
  21. ^ ab Michael Foerster/Marco Mira d’Ercole, “Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries in the Second Half of the 1990s”, OECD Social, employment and migration working papers No. 22, Paris 2005, page 22, figure 6.
  22. ^ Bureau of Labor Statistics’ 2008 Consumer Spending Survey, Table 1 ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ce/standard/2008/quintile.txt. The reported expenditures were computed by dividing the average annual expenditures (reduced by real property, income and other taxes) by the average number of persons in the household.
  23. ^ Bassuk, E.L., et al. (2011) America’s Youngest Outcasts: 2010 (Needham, MA: The National Center on Family Homelessness) page 20
  24. ^“Homeless children at record high in US. Can the trend be reversed?”Christian Science Monitor, December 13, 2011
  25. ^ ab“State of the Homeless 2012″Coalition for the Homeless, June 8, 2012
  26. ^“600 homeless children in D.C., and no one seems to care”Washington Post, February 8, 2013
  27. ^ abcdef U.S. Census Bureau. Current Population Survey. People in Families by Family Structure, Age, and Sex, Iterated by Income-to-Poverty Ratio and Race: 2007: Below 100% of Poverty – All Races.
  28. ^ Dáil, Paula vW. (2012). Women and Poverty in 21st Century America. NC, USA: McFarland. pp. 27. ISBN 978-0-7864-4903-3.
  29. ^ ab U.S. Census Bureau. Current Population Survey. People in Families by Family Structure, Age, and Sex, Iterated by Income-to-Poverty Ratio and Race: 2007: Below 100% of Poverty – White Alone.
  30. ^ ab“Poverty 3-Part 100_06″. Pubdb3.census.gov. 2008-08-26. Retrieved 2010-09-16.
  31. ^ abc“Poverty 2-Part 100_09″. Pubdb3.census.gov. 2008-08-26. Retrieved 2010-09-16.
  32. ^“Poverty 1-Part 100_03″. Pubdb3.census.gov. 2008-08-26. Retrieved 2010-09-16.
  33. ^“Poverty 1-Part 100_09″. Pubdb3.census.gov. 2008-08-26. Retrieved 2010-09-16.
  34. ^ abc“Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010“. U.S. Census Bureau
  35. ^“Poverty Is a Persistent Reality for Many Rural Children in U.S.“, William O’Hare (September 2009), Population Reference Bureau.
  36. ^“Characteristics and Financial Circumstances of TANF Recipients – Fiscal Year 2009“. United States Department of Health and Human Services.
  37. ^http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/47/2/41528678.pdf
  38. ^“3.5M Kids Under 5 On Verge Of Going Hungry
    Study: 11 Percent Of U.S. Households Lack Food For Healthy Lifestyle”     (“SHTML). Health. CBS NEWS. 2009-05-07. Retrieved 2009-05-08.
  39. ^ Doob, Christopher (2013). Social Inequality and Stratification in US Society. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.. pp. 38. ISBN 978-0-205-79241-2.
  40. ^Household Food Security in the United States, 2002– United States Department of Agriculture
  41. ^Household Food Security in the United States, 2008– United States Department of Agriculture
  42. ^ Charles Murray (1998). Income Inequality and IQ. Washington: AEI Press.
  43. ^ ab“U. S. Census: Income, Expenditures, Poverty and Wealth” (PDF). Retrieved 2010-03-20.
  44. ^futureofchildren.org
  45. ^ Census Bureau, Income Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the U. S.:2009 http://www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/p60-238.pdf
  46. ^ Center for the Future of Children, The Future of Children. Vol. 7, No 2, 1997.
  47. ^“Sex and the single black woman“. The Economist. April 8, 2010.
  48. ^ Source: U. S. Census, Family Income Tables, http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032006/faminc/toc.htm.
  49. ^ Amy Joyce, “The Bias Breakdown,” The Washington Post, December 9, 2005, p. D01 citing Gallop Poll data.)
  50. ^“The Social Benefits and Economic Costs of Taxation” (PDF). Retrieved 2007-12-20.
  51. ^ The Swiss education system swissworld.org, Retrieved on 2009-06-23
  52. ^“New Hampshire’s State and Local Tax Burden, 1970–2006″. The Tax Foundation. 2008-08-07. http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/468.html. Retrieved 2010-07-31.
  53. ^“Heritage Foundation’s views of immigration and poverty”. Retrieved 2007-02-25.
  54. ^ Harms, W. (1995) Poverty definition flawed, more accurate measure needed The University of Chicago Chronicle, 14:17.
  55. ^ ab Adams, J.Q.; Pearlie Strother-Adams (2001). Dealing with Diversity. Chicago, IL: Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company. ISBN 0-7872-8145-X.
  56. ^http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505144_162-57477881/more-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck/
  57. ^ The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II by William H. Chafe
  58. ^http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TXdWbwEPIO0C&pg=PA482&dq=bureau+labor+statistics+1969+60%25+working-class&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Qi4fT_akHtG7hAfUz73zDQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=bureau%20labor%20statistics%201969%2060%25%20working-class&f=false
  59. ^http://www.thenation.com/article/155492/seventies-show?page=full
  60. ^http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tPE0opidIxMC&pg=PA147&dq=Peter+Townsend+poverty+in+UK+percentage&hl=en&sa=X&ei=p2yQT9bvIcql0QW78Z34AQ&ved=0CDQQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&q=Peter%20Townsend%20poverty%20in%20UK%20percentage&f=false
  61. ^ ab Fisher, Gordon M.. “The Development of the Orshansky Poverty Thresholds and Their Subsequent History as the Official U.S. Poverty Measure”. Poverty – Experimental Measures. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved 11 January 2012.
  62. ^ ab Fisher, Gordon M.. “Remembering Mollie Orshansky – The Developer of the Poverty Thresholds”. U.S. Social Security Administration Office of Retirement and Disability Policy. Retrieved 11 January 2012.
  63. ^ Schwarz, John E. (2005). Freedom Reclaimed: Rediscovering the American Vision. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University. pp. 194 note 13. ISBN 0-8018-7981-7.
  64. ^ Clauson, Annette (September 2000). “Despite Higher Food Prices, Percent of U.S. Income Spent on Food Remains Constant”. Amber Waves (U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service).
  65. ^ ab“California median home price”. Retrieved 2006-07-06.[dead link]
  66. ^“Monterey County income distribution”. Retrieved 2006-07-06.
  67. ^http://www.epi.org/publication/poverty-measure-highlights-dire-circumstances/
  68. ^[2]
  69. ^ Rector, Robert; Rachel, Sheffield (July 18, 2011). “Air Conditioning, Cable TV, and an Xbox: What is Poverty in the United States Today?”. The Heritage Foundation. Retrieved July 27, 2011.
  70. ^Poor Poverty Yardsticks by Rea Hederman, Heritage Foundation, Washington Post. September 7, 2006. Accessed: 2007-02-18
  71. ^Devising New Math to Define Poverty by Louis Uchitelle, New York Times. 1999-10-18. Accessed: 2006-06-16
  72. ^“E.U. vs U.S.A,Timbro” (PDF). Retrieved 2007-11-10.
  73. ^http://assetsandopportunity.org/scorecard/

Further reading

External links

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Life in the United States
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Poverty in North America

Two Americas

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Two Americas is a catch phrase referring to social stratification in Americansociety, made famous in a speech by former US Senator and former presidential candidate John Edwards, originally referring to haves and have-nots.[1] The speech has since become popular and inspired many parodies and similar metaphors.

Contents

Background

Although not necessarily the most prominent issue for other candidates in the seasons in which he campaigned for president, poverty has typically been a mainstay of liberal politics and a major focus for Edwards’ campaign efforts.[2] Edwards has since expanded the metaphor further, for instance in a guest blog entry in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:[3]
“During the campaign of 2004, I spoke often of the two Americas: the America of the privileged and the wealthy, and the America of those who lived from paycheck to paycheck. I spoke of the difference in the schools, the difference in the loan rates, the difference in opportunity. All of that pales today. Today … we see a harsher example of two Americas. We see the poor and working class of New Orleans who don’t own a car and couldn’t evacuate to hotels or families far from the target of Katrina. We see the suffering of families who lived from paycheck to paycheck and who followed the advice of officials and went to shelters at the Civic Center or the Superdome or stayed home to protect their possessions.”

The speech

The following are excerpts from a speech given by Senator John Edwards as Democratic vice presidential nominee to the 2004 Democratic National Convention on 28 July 2004, based on the idea of Two Americas. For the complete transcript, see External links.
“I have spent my life fighting for the kind of people I grew up with. For two decades, I stood with kids and families against big HMOs and big insurance companies. When I got to the Senate, I fought those same fights against the Washington lobbyists and for causes like the Patients’ Bill of Rights. I stand here tonight ready to work with you and John [Kerry] to make America stronger. And we have much work to do, because the truth is, we still live in a country where there are two different Americas… [applause] one, for all of those people who have lived the American dream and don’t have to worry, and another for most Americans, everybody else who struggle to make ends meet every single day. It doesn’t have to be that way…
“We can build one America where we no longer have two health care systems: one for families who get the best health care money can buy, and then one for everybody else rationed out by insurance companies, drug companies, HMOs. Millions of Americans have no health coverage at all. It doesn’t have to be that way. We have a plan…
“We shouldn’t have two public school systems in this country: one for the most affluent communities, and one for everybody else. None of us believe that the quality of a child’s education should be controlled by where they live or the affluence of the community they live in. It doesn’t have to be that way. We can build one school system that works for all our kids, gives them a chance to do what they’re capable of doing…
“John Kerry and I believe that we shouldn’t have two different economies in America: one for people who are set for life, they know their kids and their grand-kids are going to be just fine; and then one for most Americans, people who live paycheck to paycheck…
“So let me give you some specifics. First, we can create good-paying jobs in this country again. We’re going to get rid of tax cuts for companies who are outsourcing your jobs… [applause] and, instead, we’re going to give tax breaks to American companies that are keeping jobs right here in America…
“Well, let me tell you how we’re going to pay for it. And I want to be very clear about this. We are going to keep and protect the tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans — 98 percent. We’re going to roll back — we’re going to roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. And we’re going to close corporate loopholes…

Other applications

Edwards later revisited the Two Americas theme frequently in his 2008 presidential election campaign.

See also

References

External links

[hide]

On the Bowery

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On the Bowery

Film poster
Directed byLionel Rogosin
Produced byLionel Rogosin
Written byMark Sufrin (uncredited)
StarringGorman Hendricks, Frank Matthews, Ray Salyer
Music byCharles Mills
CinematographyRichard Bagley (uncredited)
Editing byCarl Lerner
Distributed byMilestone Films
Release date(s)
  • 1956
Running time65 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
On the Bowery is a 1956 American docufiction film directed by Lionel Rogosin. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.[1]
After the Second World War Lionel Rogosin made a vow to fight fascism and racism wherever he found it. In 1954 he left the family business (Beaunit Mills-American Rayon Corp.) in order to make films in accordance with his ideals. As he needed experience, he looked around for a subject and was struck by the men on the Bowery and decided that this would make a strong film. Thus On the Bowery was to be Rogosin’s provocative film school that would prepare him for the filming of his anti-apartheid film: Come Back, Africa (1960).
In 2008, On the Bowery was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

Contents

Filming

Greatly influenced by Robert Flaherty and Italian neorealism tradition, Rogosin submerged himself on the Bowery for many months before filming. He got to know the street and the men intimately, befriending a Bowery man: Gorman Hendricks. Together they wandered through the Bowery for several months until Rogosin started filming himself with a hidden camera. Not satisfied with the result he then hired a commercial crew but decided that these attempts were not satisfactory. At this time he was living in New York City’s Greenwich Village and he frequently went to the White Horse Tavern where he met writer Mark Sufrin and cinematographer Dick Bagley (recently part of the crew of Sydney Myers The Quiet One). They got along right away and agreed to work with Rogosin. Shooting began with no script or story in July 1955. The first rushes were not working well, so that Rogosin, Sufrin and Bagley worked out a simple script based on the lives of the Bowery men.
In July 1955 Rogosin and his crew started filming. With these Bowery men, Rogosin quickly developed his own method of creating dialogue and improvisation. The filming continued through October 1955 in a grueling schedule of long days and late nights. When the film was finished the first edit with editor Helen Levitt did not meet Rogosin’s approval and he solicited the help of Carl Lerner. Lerner was instrumental in pulling the film together according to Rogosin’s vision and acted as a mentor and editor as Rogosin learned this aspect of his craft.

Plot

The film chronicles three desperate days in a then impoverished lower Manhattan neighborhood, New York’s skid row: the Bowery. It is the story of Ray, a railroad worker, who drifts on to the Bowery to have a drunken spree after a long bout of laying tracks and then falls in with a band of drunks who help him spend his money. Ray, the “new guy on the Bowery,” whose biceps still fill out his sleeves, looks preoccupied as he enters the “Confidence Bar & Grill”. Surrounded by various alcoholics in advanced states of decay, he buys them rounds of drinks, then blacks out on his first night, and wakes up to discover that his suitcase has been stolen. The thief will become the closest thing to a friend…and just like that, Ray embarks on a trip to hell, becoming part of the Bowery. In a series of Beckettian portraits, the protagonists, congregations of winos, listless listeners, blubber through numerous bar scenes, games of dominos around a flophouse stove, and a sermon at the Bowery Mission. Will Ray find his way out of this uncaring urban jungle?

Cast

  • Ray Salyer, the lead character in the film, was offered a Hollywood contract but chose to remain on the Bowery.
  • Gorman Hendricks died weeks after the film opened. Rogosin helped both men and took care of Hendricks’ burial.

Crew

  • Dick Bagley
  • Mark Sufrin
  • Carl Lerner edited Rogosin’s second film Come Back, Africa
  • Darwin Deen, Assistant Cameraman and Second Camera Operator

Reception

In September 1956, Rogosin became the first American director to win the Best Documentary award at the Venice Film Festival with “On The Bowery.” Attacked by Bosley Crowther in the New York Times and shunned by the American Ambassador to Italy Claire Boothe Luce at the Venice Festival, Rogosin found support with the Flaherty family and many favorable reviews. In 1957, “On the Bowery” opened at the 55th Street Playhouse in New York, and was nominated for an Academy Award. Despite this success, distribution was extremely difficult. With On The Bowery, Rogosin became one of the founding fathers in the development of Independent cinema in America, along with Sydney Myers and Morris Engel. On the Bowery would become an influence to many future independent filmmakers worldwide.
“..a film made from the inside…In the bars and on the sidewalks, the camera leans sympathetically across table or grating towards these men and women who have passed the point of no return, and have reached a hideous sort of happiness achieved at best by gin and whiskey, and at worst by a shared squeeze from a can of metal polish. We are with these people and we hear what they say. And Rogosin insists that we must love them; he seems to say, with Dostoyevsky, “the sense of their own degradation is as essential to those reckless unbridled natures as the sense of their own generosity.” —Basil Wright, Sight and Sound
“…brilliantly revealing photography by Richard Bagley matched to the patient, thoughtful construction and organization of director-producer Lionel Rogosin and writer Mark Sufrin…what stays in your mind permanently, striking you like a hammer when you first see it, is the face of the Bowery…the caked filth, the stubble beard, the clothes of eternity, the physical weakness and the shambling walk, and the unmistakable brand of liquor…” —Arthur Winston, New York Post
“…an extraordinary, agonizing document…filled with an overwhelming sense of veracity and an unvoiced compassion for the men who have surrendered their dignity for a drink” —Arthur Knight, Saturday Review
“This film, without the pity that secretly insults, without the disgust that indirectly compliments, studies its subjects with honest human interest, tries to see what they see in their lives, tries to find what they find in the bottom of the bottle.” —Time Magazine

Home media

Milestone Films released On the Bowery on DVD and Blu-ray in 2012.[2]

Awards

  • Grand Prize in the Documentary and short film Category, Venice Film Festival, 1956
  • British Film Academy Award, “The Best Documentary of 1956”
  • The Robert Flaherty Award 1957
  • Nominated for an Academy Award 1957[3]
  • Gold Medal Award, Sociological Convention, University of Pisa 1959
  • Selected as one of the “Ten Best Movies of Ten Years Between 1950-59” by Richard Griffith, Museum of Modern Art Film Library
  • Festival of Popoli, 1971

Quotes

“Making ‘On the Bowery’ taught me a method of molding reality into a form that could touch the imagination of others. The total reality of a community or a society is so vast that any attempt to detail its entirety would result in nothing more than a meaningless catalogue of stale, factual representation—-a result which I call ‘documentary.’ Flaherty’s great work has no more to do with ‘documentary’ than great poetry has to do with the factual report of a sociologist.” Lionel Rogosin
“To tell the truth as you see it, incidentally, is not necessarily the truth. To tell the truth as someone else sees it is, to me, much more important and enlightening. Some documentaries are fantastic. Like Lionel Rogosin’s pictures, for instance; like “On the Bowery”. This is a guy who’s probably the greatest documentary filmmaker of all time, in my opinion.” John Cassavetes
“On The Bowery” was restored in 2006 from the original negatives by the Cineteca di Bologna and the laboratory L’Immagine Ritrovato, in cooperation with Rogosin Heritage Inc.

References

  1. ^ Crowther, Bosley. “On the Bowery”. The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-11-08.
  2. ^ Kehr, Dave. “Out of the Bowery’s Shadows (Then Back In)”. The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-11-08.
  3. ^“The 30th Academy Awards (1958) Nominees and Winners”. oscars.org. Archived from the original on 6 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-08-21.

External links

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Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor is a classical political-economic argument, stating that in the advanced capitalist societies state policies assure that more resources flow to the rich than to the poor, for example in form of transfer payments. The term corporate welfare is widely used to describe the bestowal of favorable treatment to particular corporations by the government. One of the most commonly raised forms of criticism are statements that the capitalist political economy toward large corporations allows them to “privatize profits and socialize losses.”[1] The argument has been raised and cited on many occasions.

Contents

History and usage

Globe icon.
The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (March 2011)
The phrase may have been first popularized by Michael Harrington‘s 1962 book The Other America[2][3] in which Harrington cited Charles Abrams,[4] well-known authority on housing.
Andrew Young has been cited for calling the United States system “socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor”, and Martin Luther King, Jr. frequently used this wording in his speeches.[5][6] Since at least 1969, Gore Vidal used the expression “free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich” to describe the U.S. economic policies,[7][8] and he used it from the 1980s in his critiques of Reagonomics.[9]
In winter 2006/2007, in response to criticism about oil imports from Venezuela, that country being under the leadership of Hugo Chávez, the founder and president of Citizens Energy Corporation Joseph P. Kennedy II countered with a critique of the U.S. system which he characterized as “a kind of socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor that leaves the most vulnerable out in the cold”.[10] Also Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has become known for expressing to large audiences that the United States is now a land of “socialism for the rich and brutal capitalism for the poor”.[11]
Economist Dean Baker expressed similar views in his book The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer, in which he pointed out several different policy areas in which government intervention is essential to preserving and enhancing wealth in the hands of a few.[12]
Linguist Noam Chomsky has criticized the way in which free market principles have been applied. He has argued that the wealthy use free-market rhetoric to justify imposing greater economic risk upon the lower classes, while being insulated from the rigours of the market by the political and economic advantages that such wealth affords.[13] He remarked, “the free market is socialism for the rich—[free] markets for the poor and state protection for the rich.”[14]
Arguments along a similar line were raised in connection with the financial turmoil in 2008. With regard to the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Ron Blackwell, chief economist of AFL-CIO, used the expression “Socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor” to characterize the system.[15] In September 2008, the US Senator from Vermont, Democratic SocialistBernie Sanders said regarding the bailout of the U.S. financial system: “This is the most extreme example that I can recall of socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor”.[16] The same month, economist Nouriel Roubini stated: “It is pathetic that Congress did not consult any of the many professional economists that have presented […] alternative plans that were more fair and efficient and less costly ways to resolve this crisis. This is again a case of privatizing the gains and socializing the losses; a bailout and socialism for the rich, the well-connected and Wall Street”.[17]
Former U.S. Secretary of LaborRobert Reich adapted this phrase on The Daily Show on October 16, 2008: “We have socialism for the rich, and capitalism for everyone else.”[18]
Journalist John Pilger included the phrase in his speech accepting Australia‘s human rights award, the Sydney Peace Prize, on 5th November 2009: “Democracy has become a business plan, with a bottom line for every human activity, every dream, every decency, every hope. The main parliamentary parties are now devoted to the same economic policies – socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor – and the same foreign policy of servility to endless war. This is not democracy. It is to politics what McDonalds is to food.”[19]
U.S. SenatorBernie Sanders referenced the phrase during his eight-and-a-half-hour speech on the senate floor on December 10, 2010 against the continuation of Bush-era tax cuts, when speaking on the federal bailout of major financial institutions at a time when small-businesses were being denied loans. [20]

Variations

  • Privatize profits/gains, and socialize risks/losses/debts
  • Markets, free enterprise, private enterprise, and capitalism for the poor, while state protection and socialism for the rich

See also

Notes

  1. ^Stealth Public Bailout of Countrywide: Privatize profits and socialize losses, Nouriel Roubini
  2. ^ Harrington 1962, p.170, quote: “socialism for the rich and private enterprise for the poor”
  3. ^ Robert P. Engvall (1996) The connections between poverty discourse and educational reform: When did “Reform” become synonymous with inattention? in The Urban Review Volume 28, Number 2 / June, 1996, pp. 141-163
  4. ^Michael Harrington (1962) The Other America, p.58, quote: This is yet another case of “socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor,” as described by Charles Abrams in the housing field
  5. ^King’s Light, Malcolm’s Shadow, January 18, 1993
  6. ^ Thomas F. Jackson, Martin Luther King: From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice, ISBN 0-8122-3969-5, ISBN 978-0-8122-3969-0, page 332
  7. ^ Gore Vidal: Reflections Upon a Sinking Ship, Little, Brown, 1969
  8. ^ Gore Vidal: Imperial America, September 1, 2004
  9. ^‘Free enterprise for the poor, socialism for the rich’: Vidal’s claim gains leverage, irishtimes.com, September 20, 2008
  10. ^Kennedy: U.S. oil companies profit; Citgo helps the poor, MetroWest Daily News, January 24, 2007
  11. ^ Mark Jacobson: American Jeremiad, New York Magazine, February 5, 2007, see page 4
  12. ^ Baker, Dean (2006). The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer. Washington, D.C.: Center for Economic and Policy Research. ISBN 1-4116-9395-7. Reviewed in: Scott Piatkowski: Socialism for the rich, http://www.rabble.ca, May 25, 2006
  13. ^ Takis Michas, “The Other Chomsky”, Wall Street Journal, November 4, 2005. Reproduced on Chomsky’s official site.
  14. ^ Noam Chomsky, “The Passion for Free Markets”, Z Magazine, May 1997. Reproduced on Chomsky’s official site.
  15. ^Fannie/Freddie’s “Socialism for Rich”, July 15, 2008
  16. ^Sanders Op-Ed: Billions for Bailouts! Who Pays?, September 19, 2008
  17. ^Nouriel Roubini: Nouriel Roubini’s Global EconoMonitor, September 28, 2008
  18. ^ Interview with Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, Oct 16, 2008: Available at The Daily Show Site
  19. ^ Full transcript of the John Pilger speech at the Sydney Opera House to mark his award of Australia’s human rights prize, the Sydney Peace Prize: [1]
  20. ^http://www.c-span.org/Events/Sen-Sanders-Held-a-Tax-Cut-Filibuster/20338/

References

Skid row

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Skid row (disambiguation).
Two photos of the original “Skid Road” (Mill Street, now Yesler Way) in Seattle, Washington. Top: View looking west to Yesler’s Mill at the end of the street (see smokestack) and nearby cookhouse; the tall pole in the road on the right is where the Pioneer Square pergola stands today, (1874) Bottom: Yesler’s Mill, stores, and taverns on Skid Road
Skid row or skid road is a shabby urban area with cheap taverns, dive bars, and dilapidated hotels frequented by lowlifes, alcoholics, and itinerants.[1] The term skid road originally literally referred to a path along which timber workers skidded logs.[2] Its current sense appears to have originated in the Pacific Northwest.[3] Areas identified by this name include Pioneer Square in Seattle, Washington;[4]Old Town Chinatown, Portland, Oregon;[5]Downtown Eastside in Vancouver; Skid Row in Los Angeles, and San Francisco‘s Tenderloin District.

Contents

Origins

The term “skid road” dates back to the 17th century, when it referred to a log road, used to skid or drag logs through woods and bog.[3] The term was in common usage in the mid-19th century and came to refer not just to the corduroy roads themselves, but to logging camps and mills all along the Pacific Coast.[6]
The source of the term “skid road” as an urban district is heavily debated, and is generally identified as originating in either Seattle or Vancouver.[3] One job on the skid road was lubricating it to make the logs slide more easily. The person with that job was called the “grease monkey”,[7] predating, and probably giving rise to the modern usage of grease monkey as a mechanic.

Seattle

The name “Skid Road” was in use in Seattle by 1865 when the city’s historic Pioneer Square neighborhood began to expand from its commercial core.[8] The district centered near the end of what is now Yesler Way, often said to have been the original “Skid Road” in the literal sense serving a saw mill owned by Henry Yesler.
Henry Yesler acquired land from Doc Maynard at a small point of land at what is today near the intersection of 1st Ave and Yesler Way. He also acquired a swath of land 450 feet wide from his property up First Hill to a box of land about 10 acres in size full of timber spanning what is today 20th to 30th Avenues. His steam-powered logging mill was built in 1853[8] on the point of land that looked south towards a small island (Denny’s Island, part of his land purchase from Doc Maynard) that has since been filled in around and is the heart of today’s Pioneer Square. The mill operated seven days a week, 24 hours per day on the waterfront.[8] The street’s end near the mill, attracted cookhouses and inexpensive hotels for itinerant workers, along with several establishments that served beer and liquor.[8]
The Skid Road was built on that 450 foot wide slice of land from the top of First Hill to the logging mill on the point. Timber cut in nearby forests was greased and skidded down a long, steeply sloping dirt road.[8] Since the building of the mill much of what is today’s Seattle is the result of extensive terra-forming by the local people to make the hilly landscape of Seattle habitable. At the time of the building of the mill it was some of the only flat land available. The Skid Road became the demarcation line between the affluent members of Seattle and the mill workers and more rowdy portion of the population.[9] The road became Mill Street, and eventually Yesler Way, but the nickname “Skid Road” was permanently associated with the district at the street’s end.[8]

Vancouver

Main article: Downtown Eastside
The 100-block of East Hastings Street in Vancouver, British Columbia, the heart of that city’s “skid road” neighborhood, lies on a historical skid road. The Vancouver Skid Road was part of a complex of such roads in the dense forests surrounding the Hastings Mill and adjacent to the settlement of Granville, Burrard Inlet (Gastown).[10]
The city began as a sawmill settlement called Granville, in the early 1870s.[11] By at least the 1950s, “Skid Road” was commonly used to describe the more dilapidated areas in the city’s Downtown Eastside,[12] which is focused on the original “strip” along East Hastings Street due to a concentration of single room occupancy hotels (SROs) and associated drinking establishments in the area. The area’s seedy origins date back to the early concentration of saloons in pre-Canadian Prohibition (1915–1919) and its popularity with loggers, miners and fishermen whose work was seasonal and who spent their salaries in the area’s cheap accommodations and public houses.
Opium and heroin use became popular early on; Vancouver was for many years the main port-of-entry for the North American opium supply. During the Great Depression, the railway rights-of-way and other vacant lots in the area were thronged by the unemployed and poor, and the pattern of social decay became well-established. In the 1970s, the endemic alcohol and poverty problems in the area were exacerbated by the expansion of the drug trade, with crack cocaine becoming high-profile in the 1980s as well as a reconcentration of the prostitution trade in the area because of the relocation of hooker strolls in conjunction with city policy for Expo 86.
A portion of Vancouver’s Skid Row, Gastown, has also been gentrified; however it is in a difficult coexistence with the nearby impoverished Downtown Eastside along East Hastings Street. Downtown Eastside is infamous for its open drug trade, drug-related deaths (Vancouver’s Skid Row has the highest per capita heroin-related deaths in the entire North American continent), prostitution and the highest rate of HIV and Hepatitis C infection in North America.[citation needed]
The poorest urban area in Canada,[13] it is wedged between Downtown, Chinatown and Gastown. These areas are frequented by tourists, and East Hastings Street is a major thoroughfare. These avenues of exposure make the Downtown Eastside a highly visible example of a skid row. The Downtown Eastside (sometimes abbreviated D.T.E.S.) is also home to Insite, the only legal intravenous drug safe injection site in North America, part of a harm reduction policy aimed at helping the area’s drug addicted residents.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles’s Skid Row in an area of Downtown Los Angeles, formally known as Central City East, has one of the largest stable populations of transient persons (homeless) in the United States.[citation needed] Local homeless count estimates have ranged from 3,668 to 5,131. In 2011, the homeless population estimate for Los Angeles’ Skid Row was 4,316.[14] L.A.’s Skid Row is sometimes called “the Nickel”, referring to a section of Fifth Street.[15]
Several of the city’s homeless and social-service providers (such as Weingart Center Association, Volunteers of America, Frontline Foundation, Midnight Mission, Union Rescue Mission and Downtown Women’s Center) are based in Skid Row. While downtown Los Angeles has experienced a recent revitalization, developers have mostly neglected Skid Row.[citation needed] Between 2005 and 2007, several local hospitals and suburban law-enforcement agencies were accused by Los Angeles Police Department and other officials of transporting those homeless people in their care to Skid Row.[16][17]
The name Skid Row is sufficiently official that the fire apparatus at LAFD Fire Station # 9, the fire station that serves the neighborhood, have historically[when?] had “Skid Row” emblazoned on their sides.[citation needed] On 1 June 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported[citation needed] that fire officials plan to change the legend on the vehicles to read “Central City East”. Many residents support the change, but it is opposed by firefighters and some residents who take pride in the sense that they live in a tough place.[18]
In recent years, the Safer City Initiative set to clean up Skid Row was enacted by the city and police department and has resulted in dramatic changes in the area.[19]

San Francisco

O’Farrell Street in the Tenderloin section of downtown San Francisco, near Union Square
The Tenderloin neighborhood is a small, dense neighborhood near downtown San Francisco. In addition to its history and diverse and artistic community, there is significant poverty, homelessness, and crime.[20]
It is known for its immigrant populations, single room occupancy hotels, ethnic restaurants, bars and clubs, alternative arts scene, large homeless population, public transit and close proximity to Union Square, the Financial District, and Civic Center.[20] The 2000 census reported a population of 28,991 persons, with a population density of 44,408/mi² (17,146/km²), in the Tenderloin’s 94102 Zip Code Tabulation Area, which also includes the nearby Hayes Valley neighborhood.[21]
During the 1960s, when development interests and the Redevelopment Agency were using eminent domain to clear out a large area populated by retired men in the South of Market area, that area was termed “Skid Row” in the media. The City’s convention center was built after the clearing of long term low-income residents.[22][23]

New York

In New York, Skid Row was a nickname given to the Bowery during much of the 20th century.[24]

Chicago

Traditonal Skid Row areas in Chicago were centered along West Madison Street just west of the Chicago River and, to a lesser degree, North Clark Street just north of the Chicago River. Since the 1980s both of these areas have been gentrified.

Philadelphia

Philadelphia once had a highly visible skid row centered on Vine Street, just west of the approaches to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. This area was essentially obliterated by highway construction starting in the late 1970s.

Popular references

  • ‘Skidrow’ is the title of a playable multiplayer map in the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Its design takes a very similar appearance to a typical skid row.
  • The term was memorialized in the song “Skid Row” from the musical Little Shop of Horrors.
  • “Skid Row” is the name of an American heavy metal band formed in New Jersey.
  • “Skid Row” is also the name of a Dublin, Ireland-based blues-rock band from the late 1960s and early 1970s that included such musicians as singer Phil Lynott and guitarist Gary Moore, both who later were part of Thin Lizzy.
  • Kurt Cobain, playing in a band that at the time had no name, came up with the name “Skid Row” to put on the marquee at a gig on the spur of the moment. That band’s name would change frequently after that. He would later go on to form Nirvana.[25]
  • SKiDROW is one of the prominent warez groups in software. Whether this is based on the band is unknown.
  • In the 1976 film Rocky, the title character grows angry when finding out that his gym locker has been given to another boxer. He asks the attendant, “You put my stuff on Skid Row?”
  • In Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble, there’s a level called “Skidda’s Row”, which derives its name from Skid Row.

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ Random House Dictionary, Random House, Inc.. “Skid row”. Dictionary.com. Retrieved 15 January 2013.
  2. ^ The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. “Skid road”. The Free Dictionary by Farlex.
  3. ^ abc Turner, Wallace (December 2, 1986). “A Clash Over Aid Effort on the First ‘Skid Row’”. The New York Times. p. A20.. Convenience link on Proquest (requires account).
  4. ^“National Register Information System”. National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. 2010-07-09.
  5. ^“Portland’s History”. Retrieved 2011-10-09.
  6. ^ Rochester, Junius; Walt Crowley (October 17, 2002). “Yesler, Henry L. (1810-1892)”. History Ink.. Retrieved 2007-01-27.
  7. ^“Using Oxen to move the Redwoods on the Mendocino coast”. Retrieved 2012-07-31.
  8. ^ abcdef Keniston-Longrie, Joy (2009). Seattle’s Pioneer Square. Chicago, San Francisco, & Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. pp. 128. ISBN 978-0-7385-7144-7.
  9. ^ William C. Speidel, “Sons of the Profits, The Seattle Story 1851 to 1901″
  10. ^“Gastown”. Virtual Vancouver. Retrieved 2008-02-10.
  11. ^“About Vancouver”. City of Vancouver. 2007. Retrieved 2007-01-27.
  12. ^“Demolish City’s Skid Road, Murder Protest Demands.” Vancouver Sun. April 6, 1962. p. 1.
  13. ^ Kalache, Stefan (January 12, 2007). “The Poorest Postal Code Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in Photos”. The Dominion. Retrieved 2007-10-15.
  14. ^“2011 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count (page 38 — Skid Row section)”. Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Retrieved 2011-11-16.
  15. ^“For Some, L.A.’s Skid Row Is For Beginnings”. NPR. Retrieved 2009-09-21.
  16. ^“LA Downtown News Online”. Downtownnews.com. Retrieved 2009-09-21.
  17. ^“A Plan to Spread Homeless Countywide – Los Angeles Times”. Latimes.com. 2006-03-24. Retrieved 2009-09-21.[dead link]
  18. ^“Fire Station 9 Skid Row”. Fire Station 9 Skid Row. 2006-06-01. Retrieved 2009-09-21.
  19. ^The Reclamation of Skid Row by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal Autumn 2007. City-journal.org (2007-11-07). Retrieved on 2012-09-16.
  20. ^ abThe Sidewalks of San Francisco by Heather Mac Donald, City Journal Autumn 2010. City-journal.org (2010-10-14). Retrieved on 2012-09-16.
  21. ^ American FactFinder, United States Census Bureau. “941 3-Digit ZCTA by 5-digit ZIP Code Tabulation Area – GCT-PH1. Population, Housing Units, Area, and Density: 2000″. Factfinder.census.gov. Retrieved 2009-09-21.
  22. ^ Hartman, Chester. 1984. The Transformation of San Francisco. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld.
  23. ^ Averbach, Alvin. 1973. “San Francisco’s South of Market District, 1858-1958: The Emergence of a Skid Row.” California Historical Quarterly 52(3):196223.
  24. ^ Jesse McKinley (2002-10-13). “Along the Bowery, Skid Row Is on the Skids”. The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-04-06.
  25. ^Who killed Kurt Cobain, Chapter 2. Books.google.com. Retrieved 2009-09-21.

Bibliography

  • Holbrook, Stewart H. (1961). Yankee Loggers. New York: International Paper Company.
  • Newell, Gordon (1956). Totem Tales of Old Seattle. Seattle: Superior Publishing Company.
  • Morgan, Murray (1960). Skid Road. Ballantine Books (revised edition; first edition was 1951).

External links

Welfare dependency

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Welfare dependency is the state in which a person or household is reliant on government welfare benefits for their income for a prolonged period of time, and without which they would not be able to meet the expenses of daily living. The United States Department of Health and Human Services defines welfare dependency as the proportion of all individuals in families which receive more than 50 percent of their total annual income from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, and/or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits.[1] Typically viewed as a social problem, it has been the subject of major welfare reform efforts since the mid-20th century, primarily focused on trying to make recipients self-sufficient through paid work. While the term “welfare dependency” can be used pejoratively, for the purposes of this article it shall be used to indicate a particular situation of persistent poverty.

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