...The Federal Government of Untied States of America, My Name is Betty Johnson and I am 30 years old. I am writing to you because I am very concerned with the future of the citizens in this country. Throughout my life poverty has been Americas "Darkest Secret". I never Really hear news Reports on the growing percentage of Americans living in poverty, or the ways the government is trying to fix this issue. I grew up in Detroit, Michigan where more than a third of residents live below the poverty line (Sasha Abramsky, "America's Shameful Poverty Stats"). Throughout my childhood I have watched many friends' families struggle financially. Sometimes my friends would go without eating for a couple of days simply because they could not afford it. I would offer them food but they would kindly decline because they were so embarrassed because of their situation. They would wear clothes that wouldn't fit them because they couldn't afford to buy new clothes. They would miss school to watch their little siblings because their mom was a single parent and had to work all day everyday just so she could feed them. They didn't even apply to college because they knew they had to immediately pick up a crapy job so they could help their mom pay the bills. The list goes on. All of this is happening under your supervision and it doesn't seem like much is affectively fixing this issue. America's lowest percentage of citizens living below the poverty line was 11.1 percent in 1973. It reached...
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...The Hike to $15 America, the land of freedom and opportunity they say. I think that saying might just be false with the way our nation is today. The main reason I believe being that the federal minimum wage is too low. Minimum wage should be $15 in every state. If we want people to experience the freedom and opportunity, it can’t be done off $7.25. People have kids to provide for, colleges to attend, families to support, and so many more things. The luxury to afford to have all the “freedom” or “opportunity” the rich may have isn’t plausible for minimum wage workers. Every morning these people wake up and questions whether they have enough money for food or housing for example. Robert Reich, an American political economist, professor, author, and political commentator, made some good points on this issue. Reich also believes that the minimum wage should be $15 an hour. We both agree with federal minimum wage being hiked to $15 an hour. My reason as to why I agree with him being that Reich gives 7 very valid reasons as to why the raise should occur. The benefit over time would be well worth it. Congress instituted the minimum wage in 1938 as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act (DOL). The first minimum wage that was established was 25 cents an hour (James). The last minimum wage increase occurred in 2009, when Congress raised the rate to $7.25 an hour (AFL). The District of Columbia and 19 states have also established local minimum wages higher than the federal rate (AFL)...
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...help supplement your food and utility expenses? In 2012, over 5.4 million workers left the job market entirely (Folks, 2013) and are now facing housing crises. As the demand for affordable housing continues to grow as adults are unable to find work, many Americans are facing homelessness and have no affordable housing available to them. All across America, more people are finding themselves homeless. Whether in big cities or small urban towns, the homeless rate continues to grow as the inability to pay for affordable housing grows. The number of people paying more than fifty percent (50%) of their income toward rent increased by more than six percent (6%) from 2009 to 2010. The United States Housing and Urban Development (HUD) classify those paying that high of a percentage as “severely housing cost burdened”. In a survey conducted by the Low Income Housing Information Service, more than 17.6 million households with children experience at least one major housing problem, meaning that one out of every two households with children in this country experience an issue with housing (Kaufman, 2013). Per The National Alliance to End Homelessness (2012) the national rate of homelessness was 21 homeless people per 10,000. Nearly four in ten of those homeless are unsheltered, living on the streets or in cars, abandoned buildings or other places not intended for human habitation. Homelessness affects people of all ages, races, ethnicities and geographies but studies have found that...
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...Still Separate, Still Unequal Segregation is a topic that has been discussed for decades. Segregation in schools wasn't really dealt with. The government basically disguised it and kept it away from the public. Brown V. Board of Education, Plessy V. Ferguson, and Jim Crow Laws was the cover, but it didn't solve anything. Segregation isn't just about race, it's also financially. When money is involved in the situation there's a major advantage. Johnathan Kozol talks about how we're still separate, and unequal. Johnathan Kozol touched on some really great points, when it came down to gproving how we're separate, and unequal. Kozol digs a little deeper to back up his word on being separate and unequal. In the following paragraphs I will summarize Kozol's article "Still Separate, Still Unequal" and continue on what needs to be done to solve this problem. Many people wonder do segregation still exist, but not many people want to investigate. Jonathan Kozol, did a little more than investigate. Jonathan Kozol pointed out, in most poor neighborhoods the schools have mostly black and Hispanic students (348). The percentage of blacks and Mexicans students were higher than fifty percent. There was a teacher who was 65 years old who taught at a majority black school stated that "Out of eighteen years, this is the first white student I have ever taught" (348). It's not very common that white students attend underclass schools. Kozol stated that there is a school in New York City named...
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...Why We Should Raise the Minimum Wage Imagine working full time, but you can’t still make enough money to support your family. That's what millions of Americans who work on minimum wage experience. Minimum wage should be raised because it would reduce government welfare spending and poverty rates. According to Fletcher, raising minimum wage “would reduce federal food stamp spending by $4.6 billion a year” ( Fletcher 1). This increase in minimum wage allows the government to free up an astonishing amount of funds that they can end up spending on our military, education, and so much more. Imagine what we could do if we spent the money on developing cures and furthering our space exploration. The welfare spending could end up going to education which in return leads to more students getting degrees which leads to better jobs and even less spending on food stamps. It becomes a cycle to where the more people the...
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...Why I believe immigrants come to America? I believe they come to America to have a better life, and get money to provide for their families. Immigrants come to America to seek freedom and different opportunities they cannot get in their homeland. Why should immigrants have to be deported back to their homeland because they have no rights in America which is supposed to be the “Land of the Free”. These people we call “immigrants” are the same people who would do anything to stay in the country.They do work us Americans don't like to take part in and wouldn't lift a finger doing. Immigrants actually want to work in U.S, they wants something good for themselves. This is the dream, they come to pursue a dream they wouldn't be able to get back home. They see America as their way to happiness and a better life. So why not let immigrants try to pursue a dream and find happiness instead of judging them and wanting to kick them out if the country. If they aren't doing any harm, why want them leave? Freedom is a big part of why immigrants come to America. Immigrants are people just as Americans, they aren't nothing less. They fight just like Americans fight to survive in the country. What would us Americans do if they were an immigrant living in poverty raising themselves? Yes some Americans do raise themselves but not all live in poverty.(Weeden, L. Darnell) No one should be judged by where they come from, who they are, or how they look. Us people use the quote “ Don't judge a book...
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...pregnant; not allowing them to get an abortion is saying that they have to raise their child as a single mother or in poverty (Jacob, Weisberg). Children or woman that are raped or woman who can’t cope mentally or physically with a baby should not be forced to go through the whole pregnancy. It is not their life we are talking about there are children being brought into the world and having to live in poverty and suffer. Abortion as an option would help the children being born to teenage mothers, the women that are raped not have to live with the rape their whole lives and woman that can’t mentally handle having a child another option. Part 1: Argument Abortion should be an option for any woman if they are pregnant and feel they do not want to have the baby. They may choose abortion so they don’t have to go through all of the emotions of carrying the baby to full term and then giving it up for adoption. Teenage girls that get pregnant and are not allowed to have an abortion are being set up for failure in the future. How can a child take care of another child? Teenagers that have babies drastically diminish their chances of living the “American dream” (Jacob Weisberg). Most teenagers hardly ever get any support from the dad and tend to live their lives in poverty. The chances of them going to college and getting a good education are slim so they will probably end up on welfare or needing some kind of financial assistance. The children of teen moms may also...
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...seen standing on the side of the streets of my neighborhood every morning. I’m not sure why the concentration is higher in my neighborhood than anywhere else I have seen on the island, but there they are, every morning, hoping to get picked up to work that day. Sometimes I wonder how someone is picked over the guy standing next to him. Sometimes I wonder why they stand there at all - when people have 100 men to choose from, the odds of working that day are stacked pretty high. Then I stop and think about what they are going to be asked to do that day in exchange for $50-$100. They’ll be asked to do jobs that their more affluent counterparts feel are “below” them or that they “don’t have time” to do themselves – painting the outside of the house, de-winterizing the back yard for the family barbeque, trimming the hedges and mowing the lawn, cleaning up after a septic tank overflows. It is work that takes physical strength, the willingness to get dirty, to sweat in the hot sun, and to be physically exhausted when you walk in the door at night, and they line up on the side of the road every morning hoping to be picked. In his poem So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans, Baca writes about how Americans focus on the negative aspects of immigrants, but don’t look at the reality of what they contribute to our society, nor the reality of what the hard-working men and women face at the end of the day. Baca writes the poem in a tone that mocks Americans for their ignorance, hoping...
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...days in life is the day you are born and the day you discover why.” This quote is by Mark Twain. This quote means everyone that is born has a purpose. This quote is really similar to the philosophy Bono showed in his commencement speech, Because we can, We must, which he gave at Penn State University, in 2004. In the excerpt from Because We can, We Must, by Bono, he develops his philosophy that everyone should look for a cause that they are passionate about and fight for it by using rhetorical devices. One of the rhetorical devices he used in his speech is syntax. In the beginning of his speech, Bono says, “What are the ideas right now worth betraying? What are the lies we tell ourselves now? What are the blind...
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...wrong, people in poverty try their hardest to escape but it is often too hard. But what if I told you it was actually our fault, Society as a whole could be doing more to help the poor. It is society’s responsibility to help those in poverty escape its clutches. In their paper Framing the Poor, Max and Frank discuss the prominence of the pessimistic view towards the poor in recent years. They discuss Ronald Reagan and a strategy of his campaign, where he would talk about Linda Taylor, “The Welfare Queen”. She was a highly skilled con artist, who had 80 fake names and made $150,000 in illicit welfare (Max and Frank). Linda Taylor doesn't make a good name for the poor, many people despised her for cheating the system for her income while others had to actually work. However Taylor is an extreme case, and it is only probable that she had this big of a con. Taylor still became a media sensation, with many people believing that she represented the poor. This lead to a harsh attitude to the poor and the belief that they were lazy and living off welfare...
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...Where Does America Go from Here? How close to being homeless are you? Any person living in poverty is one mishap away from living out on the streets. Many Americans live everyday with a risk of being homeless or becoming homeless, America has the highest homelessness rates in the world and the biggest problems are not enough jobs opportunities and outsourcing, not enough affordable housing, and mental illness. PROBLEM 1 Homelessness can be directly related to a shortage of jobs in America due to outsourcing and businesses being shut down. Although most of the population has jobs there is a small percentage that don’t and in that percentage lays the homeless percentage. Long-term unemployed individuals rates have not changed since June of...
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...got to. That’s why [we] folks always move. Movin’ cause [we] want somepin better’n what [we] got” (Steinbeck, 128). The American dream was seen as a simple concept by the immigrants in the Grapes of Wrath. According to them, “You can reach anywhere and pick an orange” (Steinbeck, 34). They thought they will just go to California and get plenty of jobs for everyone and get rich. This is highlighted in page 34,”there’s work there and it never gets cold”. What the immigrants did not know was that finding an ideal life in the west was nearly impossible. Additionally, those who were looking for an ideal life were corrupted by the system. In his book, Steinbeck said that the attainment of the American dream was nearly impossible due to the economic instability and constant government interference. The Joads found unpredictable jobs in California (Ownby 73). They failed to achieve the American dream and so they did not succeed in California. Before they migrated from Oklahoma, the Joads had a good life. They had land, a home and money. Their migration was fuelled by their hopes of finding success and a better life in California. The Grapes of Wrath is set during the great depression. The great depression was a result of the inaction by the federal government which led to failing of the financial institutions. Many people were out of work since jobs were scarce hence a rise in poverty and economic hardships. It basically focuses on the Joads family who move to America in pursuit of...
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...Many people believe it is immoral and even consider it to be murder. The definition of abortion is; “The termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to being capable of normal growth.” Many pro-life advocates would argue that as soon as the egg in the uterus is fertilized there is a new human life. Though science has no consensus on when a fetus is truly a person. If you go off the bases of the fact that since that zygote has the potential of being a human and that’s why it would be considered murder, then you’re forced to think about all the sperm and eggs that didn’t become human, but had the potential to. A zygote...
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...| Poverty Then and Now | SOC-100 | | 5/11/2014 | | Poverty, While it still exists, how far have we come in ten years and what can we do to help. Poverty In this paper I will be discussing how far we have come from poverty in ten years. I will touch base on three main reasons why poverty still exists within the United States today. First reason unemployment, second reason is education, third is Health care. I will also discuss what Obama Care is and how it can change people’s lives in the future. Unemployment is one of the main reasons why poverty exists in the United States. If there are no jobs then how can people live? In 2004 the unemployment rates were down by the end of the year to 5.4 percent. The reason for this was because the economy created more than 144,000 jobs for Americans. Within the next couple of years the unemployment rate had a boost and went up in 2009 to a record of 10.0 percent. Now if we bring ourselves to the percentage of today’s unemployment rate we are back down as of April of this year to 6.3 percent (Bureau of Labor Statistics). The reason the unemployment rate went back down is because jobs refuse to hire any new employees until they know for sure the economy will remain stable. I understand that, but with no jobs for people how can people survive? One thing that plays a big roll with jobs these days is education; so many jobs want you to have a degree in order to work. Education plays a big roll...
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...History & heritage: origins of poverty The causes of poverty are quite overwhelming at first glance: from colonialism to industrialization, from political institutions to geography, corruption and so on. But they are extremely interesting to look at if you want to better understand how so many countries are where they are today. Each cause is rooted in a radically different phenomenon and each needs a specific solution. Heritage is unquestionably an essential factor among the causes of poverty. Colonization & slavery Most countries that started their modern history with great inequalities evolved into societies that often maintained such pattern of biased wealth distribution. And conversely for countries that began with more or less equal societies. So, countries that experienced colonization and slavery often had trouble getting rid of the inherited institutions and discrimination. Others like Canada or the US on the other hand have been doing much better since then. In the case of colonized countries such as Brazil, South Africa or the Caribbean islands, the remaining white population often inherited ownership of capital and means of production once the country became independent. “Poverty is the consequence of plunder. Behind every single form of modern poverty, you find the use of force.” (Dr. Oscar Guardiola-Rivera) The colonial influence 6 The role of resources and geography The former colonies in Latin America were exploited to export their...
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