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Poverty and class distinction
Poverty and social class
Poverty and social class
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The famous Aristotle once said, “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime”. This country has “classes” and being in poverty is a major fear anyone would have when living in any country but especially in the United States. Currently, the economy is in bad shape and, because of this, the cost of living is extremely high; thus it is hard to survive or make a living in this country if you come from poverty. It is the parent of revolution because it has been an ongoing issue for sometime now and has become a cycle which causes crime because people steal in order to fin for themselves, although it is not easy to get away from poverty it is not impossible to achieve. Recently, I read Loretta Schwartz-Nobel’s Article “America’s Wandering Families”, …show more content…
In the article “America’s Wandering Families”, I discovered how the two females being interviewed not only had children to care for that were also going hungry but they were uneducated. According to Schwartz-Nobel, “Our politicians don’t have the political will to help these by changing the system or even the minimum wage, at least not nearly enough. They rather pretend that the people had problems instead of admitting the system did”(254). Thus meaning, the government is not doing enough to acknowledge the difference in socioeconomic classes. One of the women was being helped and got the opportunity for a better life but was being treated unfairly. She was taken off the government help system and was back at square one in shelters. She states,” they hooked me up with a job and my stamps were cut” (Schwartz-Noble 260). Prime example, the system does try to help out, but they are not screening individuals job resources for legitimacy instead they just cut off all tides. It’s poor resource allocation and the consequences come to life when cases like these
In The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David K. Shipler tells the story of a handful of people he has interviewed and followed through their struggles with poverty over the course of six years. David Shipler is an accomplished writer and consultant on social issues. His knowledge, experience, and extensive field work is authoritative and trustworthy. Shipler describes a vicious cycle of low paying jobs, health issues, abuse, addiction, and other factors that all combine to create a mountain of adversity that is virtually impossible to overcome. The American dream and promise of prosperity through hard work fails to deliver to the 35 million people in America who make up the working poor. Since there is neither one problem nor one solution to poverty, Shipler connects all of the issues together to show how they escalate each other. Poor children are abused, drugs and gangs run rampant in the poor neighborhoods, low wage dead end jobs, immigrants are exploited, high interest loans and credit cards entice people in times of crisis and unhealthy diets and lack of health care cause a multitude of problems. The only way that we can begin to see positive change is through a community approach joining the poverty stricken individuals, community, businesses, and government to band together to make a commitment to improve all areas that need help.
One women in Kozol’s article states, “ I couldn’t understand the bills [...] and then I couldn’t write the checks to pay them. We signed things we didn’t know what they were” (190). As they cannot read effectively illiterates are often trapped by unfavorable contracts or missed payments. Illiterates’ tight finances are due to their inabilities to properly manage their money causing them to stay in poverty. Their low income does not allow them to afford the education that is necessary for themselves and their children. Even while in poverty the struggle is further worsened for illiterates as Kozol states, “ Illiterates cannot read the notices that they receive from welfare offices or from the IRS. They must depend on a social worker—or from other persons whom they have good reason to mistrust” (190). Illiterates have great difficulty finding gainful employment leading them to rely on welfare and their families as a sources of income. This puts an economic strain on both the families and the national economy. Their children are also affected because their parents cannot provide many of the services that are beneficial to a child's development. Children in turn have to pay back the mounting debts of their parents while trying to pull themselves out of poverty, creating a cycle that is difficult to
When one thinks of poverty often the mental picture that comes to mind is of single parent welfare, dependent, women and unemployed, drug-addicted, alcoholic lackadaisical men. The children are often forgotten. The impact of poverty, the destruction of crime and stigmatization of the violence on the children is more devastating and irreversible than the miseducation and illiteracy that most often companies poverty. The implication is not the poverty can not be overcome but that the cycles of teenage pregnancy, welfare dependency, and dropping out of high school continues and are hard to break. The badges of poverty are just as addictive and capitiving as any disease such as alcohol or drugs.
Poverty is a complex and growing problem in the United States. As of right now there is no solution. There are proposals and acts, such as Obama Care, that were enacted in an attempt to help people in poverty, and there are so many organizations, such as Habitat for Humanity and The Hunger Project, that try to aid people when they start to lack the necessities, like food and shelter. College students are graduating college with a large amount of student loans and no way of paying them off, people are being evicted from their homes, and employees are being laid off. The unemployment rate in the United States in 2015 was five percent, that’s about fifteen million people. It’s becoming difficult for people to find jobs, therefore making it hard for people to get back on their feet and start living a comfortable lifestyle. Poverty in the
Crime in this country is an everyday thing. Some people believe that crime is unnecessary. That people do it out of ignorance and that it really can be prevented. Honestly, since we live in a country where there is poverty, people living in the streets, or with people barely getting by, there will always be crime. Whether the crime is robbing food, money, or even hurting the people you love, your family. You will soon read about how being a criminal starts or even stops, where it begins, with whom it begins with and why crime seems to be the only way out sometimes for the poor.
Everyone knows what the word poverty means. It means poor, unable to buy the necessities to survive in today's world. We do not realize how easy it is for a person to fall into poverty: A lost job, a sudden illness, a death in the family or the endless cycle of being born into poverty and not knowing how to overcome it. There are so many children in poverty and a family's structure can effect the outcome. Most of the people who are at the poverty level need some type of help to overcome the obstacles. There are mane issues that deal with poverty and many things that can be done to stop it.
When people hear about poor people, they think of bums who steal and do drugs all the time. Society believes that they steal to avoid paying a few dollars on something that they need. People raise prices on healthier and much needed nutritious foods. The increase of price makes that food out of reach for people who can barely afford a place to live. In the book, Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America, by Linda Torado, Barbara Ehrenreich explains that being poor “… means having no privacy, since the boss has the legal right to search your belongs for stolen items” Poor people are on a tight leash and are constantly “… under suspicion of drug use and theft” (2). People who are facing financial hardship can lose their homes if they don’t pay their rent on time. They struggle to live through every week with the right necessities needed to
There are 15 million more people living in poverty than in the year 2000. Moreover, America has become a low-wage nation. The median paying job in the country now pays about $35,000 a year for a full-time job. It is barely more than it paid in 1973. With the salary being $35,000 it has people in America living in poverty because that amount of salary isn’t even enough to even live in a one bedroom house. It maybe is enough for one person, but for a person who has a family, it sure isn’t. In most cases in America, many families don’t have both parents. Single mothers were and are in trouble, with a poverty rate in excess of 40 percent. With this being said single mothers are the ones who are being affected and who are one of the cases that live in poverty. They live in poverty due to being the only ones that are bringing money into the households and with their salary being $35,000 is not enough to provide for themselves along with their children. Family structure plays a big role in poverty. “The poverty of single mothers with children at home, of all races, is the highest among demographic groups, higher than any minority or age group.” states Edelman, Peter. (2014). During the great recession when many single mothers were living off of food stamps and they soon destroyed the legal rights of benefits the Food stamp
A single divorcee’ mother of two is working a minimum waged job that doesn’t pay life’s cost of survival. Not only does this mother have to take care of herself, she has children that need shelter, nourishment, and stability. In order for that to be possible, help is needed. Most people, majority is fathers, have too much pride to ask for help because of the image. Being on social welfare promotes the ego dropping image that one cannot provide for themselves or their family. But is image more important than the life itself? Children are dying of hunger or dehydration because their parents cannot afford decent meals or purified water. Children are dying from sickness because their parents cannot afford a home that protects them from the cold. Some of these parents are working forty hours a week or more for minimum wage and still cannot afford the necessities to live healthy. Some parents cannot find a job due to lack of qualification. The government has provided resources for people who are disadvantaged; however, there are still problems that need to be addressed. Social welfare isn’t a discouragement, it is a helping hand. There is no reason why lives should be shortened because of the inability to access governmental assistance. Social welfare benefits America as a whole because it serves as a crutch for the financially handicapped and provides motivation to work harder for a better lifestyle.
Poverty has been a growing problem in America, and it most likely will never stop being one. Someone who is identified as being in poverty lives beneath the poverty line determined by the Federal government. The poverty line in 2015 for a family of four was $24,250. These are the people who are really considered poor. Poverty isn’t just a problem in the United States; in fact, other countries struggle just as much, if not more, than the United States does. Many people struggle to keep themselves above the government’s poverty line, shown by the fact that the percent of poor people in America hasn’t drastically changed over the years. However, it is possible to get out of, and ultimately stay out of, poverty.
According to Schwartz-Nobel, America will lose as much as 130 billion in future productive capacity for every year that 14.5 American children continue to live in poverty (Koppelman and Goodhart, 2007). Sadly the seriousness of poverty is still often clouded by myths and misunderstandings by society at large. This essay studies the issue of poverty and classism in today's society.
In the year 2015, around 40 million U.S. citizens were food insecure (Randall para. 3). Food insecurity can be defined in paragraph 3 by “[having] difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members due to a lack of resources. This 12.7% of American citizens also contains another group - children. Aged 10-17, 6.8 million adolescents struggle with a food insecurity. There have been several years of cuts to the social programs designed to help these people, along with the Great Recession continuing to leave an impact on the U.S. economy (para. 6). Under the Obama administration, $8.6 billion was cut from the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as Food Stamps. From 1993-2001 under the Clinton administration, former President Bill Clinton’s administration “gutted the welfare system” (para. 15). Because of these budget cuts, the families who rely on food assistance from the government have been allotted less throughout the years. From a sociological perspective, the concepts of sociological imagination, class stratification, and social location are in effect when it comes to child hunger in the United States. Being hungry is an issue larger than any one individual can control.
In today 's society, there is 1 in 7 people living in poverty which is costing Canadian citizens’ money as they are paying for taxes. There are many standpoints in which people examine the ways poverty affect society such as Marx’s conflict theory. Marx’s conflict theory goes over how social stratification being inevitable and how there is a class consciousness within people in the working class. Another way that poverty is scrutinized is by feminization. Feminization is the theory that will be explored throughout this essay. Poverty will be analyzed in this essay to determine the significance of poverty on the society and the implications that are produced.
Poverty is an outcome of the mode of production and plays a large role in relation to production. Therefore, according to Marx, it is a contributor to the economic base. People who are living at poverty level struggles to meet the living necessities due to capitalist exchange values on productions. What I mean by this that people in poverty cannot afford to buy enough food, clothes, and most importantly a safe home for their kids. This is due to the fact that most people living in poverty are being paid minimum wages that does not meet the exchange values of commodities. People in poverty are the laborers in the capitalist world, they a commodity as well. Using Marx’s theory, people in poverty are the proletariats since they are the actual
Poverty is an undeniable problem in America. In 2014, 14.8 percent of the United States was in poverty (“Hunger and Poverty Fact Sheet”). There are more people in the United States than it seems that do not have their basic necessities. In an