Post #5

The first video “Living With a Hole in Your Pocket,” really addresses Chaudry’s argument that "we are asking the lest fortunate to strive and work harder, we are deeply discounting our public responsibility for the children born into poor families and disadvantaged communities." The video says that vicious cycles & catch 22s in the system are keeping way too many people in poverty. Systemic barriers have grown worse, preventing the poor from being able to better their situation.

The working poor are the people who go to work and earn a wage but cannot make enough money to subsist at a higher level. The Associated Press article said that in 2006, the most recent year for available data, a family of four earning $41,228 or less qualified as a low-income family. According to the federal government, if a family of four is earning less that $20,614, that family is living in poverty.

However, when you look at annual expenses for that same family, they spend $5756 on housing, $2656 just on utilities and public services, $5330 on transportation, $ 4064 on food, $2329 on health care, and $2600 on child care, leaving that family $2121 in the hole. Families in this situation are forced to let things go, give things up that aren’t necessarily considered vital to live.

Somewhere around 37 million people live below the poverty line, and 12 million of them are children. 1 in 5 children live in poverty in the US.

Living poor is like living with a permanent hole in your pocket, living payday to payday, barely making ends meet. Families cannot overcome the problems in the system. “The ‘oops’ in life should not be able to put you in the gutter.”

There is a shortage of higher paying jobs that will help the working poor stay ahead. According to the Associated Press article, the number of U.S. jobs paying a poverty-level wage increased by 4.7 million between 2002 and 2006. The number of jobs with pay below the poverty threshold increased to 29.4 million, or 22 percent of all jobs, in 2006 from 24.7 million, or 19 percent of all jobs, in 2002.

People struggle in the job market even with job training programs. Most times, job training gets people into the workforce, but most of these jobs are low-paying jobs, or don’t exist because they have been taken already. These people are in debt due to relying on credit to live. They work long hours at work but have bills to pay.

These people are uninsured, somewhere around 33 million Americans are without health insurance. They earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but don’t work for employers who offer health insurance.

Educational opportunities are limited for these people. Public higher education is not highly available for them.

Another great problem with poverty is that it has become an inter-generational phenomenon. This has occurred from a lack of motivation, education, resources and support systems in poor communities. Poverty begets more poverty. People who grow up in poverty are more likely to remain in poverty and raise families in poverty.

Only 5% of Americans think that poverty is an important problem to remedy. Americans don’t feel like they need to help the poor because of the belief that the poor are lazy, do not work at all, and don’t deserve help. So the poor are ignored by public policy because they aren’t seen as important.