Poverty

The Best Way To Eradicate Poverty: Welfare Not Jobs

September 19, 2018 Matt Bruenig, Peoplespolicyproject.org Educate! Labor, New Economy, Poverty, Revisionism, Social Welfare

The Census released its income, poverty, and health insurance data last week (ASEC, SPM). Among other things, the data allows us to see who was in poverty and therefore gives us good insights about how to eradicate poverty. In this post, I detail what I think these insights are using my own calculations of the 2017 microdata. Below is the overall poverty rate broken down by market income and disposable income. “Market income” refers to all income received from labor earnings and capital ownership. “Disposable income” refers to each person’s final income and takes into consideration taxes paid and government benefits received. For both figures, I use the poverty line of the Supplemental Poverty Metric. In 2017, the market poverty rate was 25 percent. The poverty rate when counting disposable income was 13.9 percent.

Rights-Based Approach To Alleviating Poverty

September 16, 2018 By Tracy Smith-Carrier, Policy Options Educate! Guaranteed basic income, Poverty, Universal Income

It is time to shift away from the charitable model to a rights-based approach, guaranteeing people the right to food. People must have access to an adequate income that allows them to obtain their own food, and do so “in normal and socially acceptable ways,” ensuring personal dignity and choice. The perpetuation of food banks ensures the charitable-food model is preserved, and people remain hungry. Basic income is a solution increasingly surfacing in research and broadly in society. As an idea promoted through the ages (from a litany of leaders including Thomas Payne, Martin Luther King, Theodore Roosevelt), the literature on basic income is vast, documenting a host of positive health and social benefits produced from ensuring everyone has a minimum income floor.

Poor People On A Poor Planet

September 9, 2018 Tiny aka Lisa Gray Garcia, Poor Magazine. Educate! Climate Change, colonization, Homelessness, Poverty

i can’t exactly describe the sound of an aluminum walker being crushed by a Dept of Public Works (DPW) truck - but its a special sound of material violence unlike any other- with each crunch-clap - another unhoused disabled life is metaphorically and actually dismantled, while the truck continues to chew like a dog on a bone- our precious momentos, pictures, medicine and lives are now reduced to trash and our own bodies , no longer awarded the respect of being considered humans swept, cleaned up, removed.

Report: US Has Highest Poverty Rate In Developed World

August 1, 2018 David Brooks, Resumen-english.org Educate! Inequality, Poverty, United States

A UN report released last weekend ranks the United States as the country with the highest poverty rate in the developed world. This explains the social problems facing the country, which, among other phenomena, have increased hatred towards migrants. In yesterday’s picture, an activist outside Trump Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia, protests against the zero-tolerance policy toward undocumented immigrants with a placard that reads “Trump must be caged”. With the whirlwind of political scandals, the separation of children from their parents and the incessant noise caused by the Trump regime, few noticed the presentation of a report that documents how the richest country in history is now the most unequal, with the highest rate of poverty in the so-called advanced world.

Ignore What The Gini Coefficient Says: Real Inequality Is Growing And People Are Suffering As A Result

July 10, 2018 Staff, Taxresearch.org.uk Educate! Class Struggle, Inequality, New Economy, Poverty

The right-wing love to say inequality does not matter. They also love to say that the Gini coefficient that measures inequality is improving. They trumpet as a result that in their opinion all is right in the world because people are now getting no worse off. But, as many familiar with such data know, it is not revealing of the truth. Inequality is seriously understated because its measurement is based on survey data and the wealthy don’t do surveys any more than they pay taxes. And the wealthy also hide their income and assets more effectively than do the rest of society precisely because they have so much of it that tucking it out of sight is much easier.

Kentucky Governor Retaliates Against Poor After Court Rejects Medicaid Changes

July 10, 2018 Michael Corcoran, Truthout.org Educate! Courts, Kentucky, Medicaid, Poverty

GOP cruelty is not new, but it seems to be reaching new depths. Case in point: In Kentucky, Gov. Matt Bevin is now using the lives of Medicaid patients like pieces on a chessboard in an act of revenge and political spectacle. Governor Bevin’s administration announced that he would deprive Medicaid patients of dental and vision benefits, effective immediately. This unilateral (and some say illegal) maneuver impacts 460,000 peoplein Kentucky. This occurred just hours after a federal court stopped his Kentucky Health plan, which would throw people off Medicaid with work requirements, deductibles and other administrative and economic obstacles. The case in question is Stewart v. Azar. Through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Trump administration announced new guidelines in January to remake the program in the GOP’s image.

Reflections On The Poor People’s Campaign; Returning After 50 Years

July 8, 2018 George Pauk, Popular Resistance. Educate! Health Care, National Improved Medicare for All, Poor People's Campaign, Poverty

Fifty years have passed since I was a volunteer physician taking care of the PPC marchers who came across the country and the bridges into the District. They camped in the rain and mud to demonstrate the poverty deep in our “great” nation. But, today while the PPC has had the same soaking rains, there was no mud. The thousands who came were met with a huge interlocking mat of white plastic. It was a thick, flexible barrier between us and the grassroots. The Park Service could take it up after the rally and march and there would be no mud and tracks of the PPC.

Alongside Rising Top Incomes, The Level Of Living Of America’s Poorest Has Fallen

June 27, 2018 Martin Ravallion, Dean Jolliffe, and Juan Margitic, Voxeu.org Educate! Income, Poverty, United States

When the poorest gain, the lower bound, or ‘floor’, of the distribution of living standards rises. Using microdata spanning the last 30 years, this column argues that the floor in the US has been sinking, alongside rising top incomes. The floor would have fallen further without public spending on food stamps, which helped protect the poorest in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. As is well known, the US is experiencing a marked rise in top incomes (e.g. Piketty and Saez 2017), with relative stagnation of middle household incomes. But what is happening at the other extreme of the distribution? Are America’s poorest families seeing some progress? That is the question this column tries to answer. Some terminology first. “Top incomes” refers to the incomes of the richest 1%. We refer to the lower bound of the distribution of levels of living as “the floor”.

Red Green Revolution – Victor Wallis On The Ecosocialist Future

June 26, 2018 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, ClearingtheFOGRadio. Podcast Capitalism, Climate Change, Ecosocialism, Poverty

Two major crises of our era are growing wealth inequality and its resultant poverty and climate change, which is connected to a variety of environmental issues. Neither of these crises can be resolved without addressing the underlying root cause of capitalism, but many people are uncertain about what an economy beyond capitalism looks like. In his new book, Red Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism, Victor Wallis explains why a livable future must be ecosocialist, what ecosocialism is and how we get there. We discuss his book and the latest news.

Thousands Marching With Poor People’s Campaign Prevented From Entering Capitol Grounds

June 24, 2018 Anne Meador and John Zangas, DC Media Group Resist! Inequalit, Poor, Poor People's Campaign, Poverty

Thousands of people protesting systemic racism and poverty marched to the Capitol on Saturday but were barred from entering the grounds by U.S. Capitol Police. A long line of officers blocked the South Lawn and halted a march organized by the Poor People’s Campaign–a revival of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s movement 50 years ago—at the Capitol Reflecting Pool. Rev. William Barber and Rev. Jesse Jackson pressed police to allow them to proceed to the Capitol Lawn and conclude their march with the delivery of petitions demanding Congress allocate resources for the poor and struggling workers. U.S. Capitol Police Captain John Erickson, however, refused on the grounds that a large group needed a permit to demonstrate. An agreement was eventually worked out for petition boxes to be carried by individuals one at a time to the Capitol steps.

Poverty American Style

June 17, 2018 By Kenneth Surin, Counterpunch Educate! New Economy, Poor people, Poverty

The US by saying that “in practice, the United States is alone among developed countries in insisting that while human rights are of fundamental importance, they do not include rights that guard against dying of hunger, dying from a lack of access to affordable healthcare, or growing up in a context of total deprivation. . . at the end of the day, particularly in a rich country like the USA, the persistence of extreme poverty is a political choice made by those in power. With political will, it could readily be eliminated”.

How Rich Are The Ultra Rich?

June 15, 2018 Josh Hoxie, Other Words. Educate! New Economy, Poor People's Campaign, Poverty, wealth inequality

Nearly seven years ago — I know, wow — the Occupy Wall Street movement began highlighting the divide between the top 1 percent and the bottom 99 percent. Since then, it’s become common knowledge that income inequality in the United States is high. But there’s more to the story than just numbers. Income inequality isn’t the defining social issue of our time because your neighbor bought a slightly bigger house or nicer car than you did. It’s because multi-millionaires and billionaires are competing for slightly bigger mega-yachts while our friends set up GoFundMe accounts to plead for help with basic medical expenses.

Welfare Beats Jobs When It Comes to Poverty Reduction

June 14, 2018 Nathaniel Lewis, People's Policy Project. Educate! Jobs and Wages, New Economy, Poverty

When it comes to poverty reduction, increasing employment and increasing social spending can both help. But which is the more effective of the two approaches? In this piece, I use data from the OECD to attempt to answer this question. What I find is that social spending is far more effective at reducing poverty than jobs are. Before we get into the numbers, let’s define our terms here. Poverty refers to the percent of people with incomes below 50 percent of a country’s median income. For this analysis, I use both market poverty, which refers to how many people are in poverty when only counting income from market sources such as wages and dividends, and final poverty...

Poor-Led People’s Campaign Marches To Resurrect Resurrection City

June 10, 2018 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG Radio. Podcast Homelessness, Poor People's Campaign, Poverty, Resurrection City

For the 50th Anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Poor People's Campaign and Resurrection City, poor and houseless people marched from the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia to Washington, DC where they are setting up a Resurrection City in DuPont Circle. We speak with Tiny (aka Lisa Gray-Garcia), co-founder of POOR Magazine and a participant on the march, about the reality of poverty in the United States. Tiny describes the march and the intersections between poverty and many other areas such as mass incarceration, health and colonization. This is a poor-led people's campaign that is not only resisting the policies and systems that drive the current crises, but is also putting forth poor people-led solutions, such as the Bank of Community Reparations and Homefulness.

Poor People’s March To Arrive In DC, Set Up Resurrection City

June 9, 2018 Poor People's Economic and Human Rights Campaign, Popular Resistance. Organize! Poor People's Campaign, Poverty, Resurrection City

Washington, DC - This summer marks the 50th anniversary of the 1968 Poor People’s March on Washington. This effort, organized by Martin Luther King, Jr., united poor people from around the United States to demand economic justice. Upon reaching D.C., this multiracial movement set up Resurrection City so that the issues of the poor could no longer be ignored. To observe this anniversary and to highlight what we call ‘The Ugly Road’ walked by the poor in the U.S. and abroad everyday, the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) has organized the 2018 Poor People’s March on Washington, D.C.

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