Poverty in America; Created or Inherited According to an article written by Barbara Ehrenreich “How I Discovered the Truth about Poverty”, society defines poverty by its ethnicity, culture and economic status. Ehrenreich accredited this discovery to Michael Harrington. Government assisted programs were design to be a temporary remedy for poverty, instead it is a crutch for others. The implication that poverty was not caused by “low wages or lack of jobs, but bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles” projects images of laziness (608). Society defines poverty by an individual capability to earn wages without the assistance and dependency on the government. Ehrenreich describes the history timeline of poverty, referencing Harrington’s book “The Other America”. Poverty was not acknowledged as a problem until, Harrington discovered that one quarter of the population who is “the inner-city black, Appalachian white, farm worker and the elderly” lives in poverty (609). Based on his analogy these categories of individual …show more content…
This program was to assist families in need and it was supposed to assist families with a leg up through the workfare program. By allocating small amounts of cash with a job incentive, families were able to eventually come off the assistance. However, the economy fluctuates, the job demand decreases, and the program carries on. The housing program was revisited in 1996 by the Clinton administration, stating that anyone who had a felony was banned from public housing. Enforcing this law means two things; First, the felon, was raised in public housing, lives with their unwed mother or girlfriend, who benefits from (TANF) without a job; second the felon is put out on the street to commit crimes or other lascivious acts. This cycle of poverty is repeated from generation to generation which is both created and