Despite being the richest country in the world, our poverty rate is one of the highest among highly developed nations.
I recently had the opportunity to talk with Georgetown law professor Peter Edelman, to discuss his decades of anti-poverty work and his new book, So Rich So Poor: Why It’s So Hard to End Poverty In America. Peter Edelman was legislative aide to Senator Robert F. Kennedy and accompanied Kennedy on his 1967 visits to the deep South to understand hunger and poverty in this country and how to fix it. Edelman also served as Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services years later under President Bill Clinton. He resigned this post in protest of Clinton's signing of the welfare reform legislation that converted the federal anti-poverty cash-assistance entitlement into a state block grant program that severely restricted the availability of cash assistance to those in need. [Disclosure: Edelman serves an adviser to the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and sits on the board of one of the project's current funders, the Public Welfare Foundation.]
Karen Dolan: Peter, you tell us in your book that "extreme poverty" in the U.S. is increasing. Can you explain what this means with regard to things like shelter and food and whether it's getting a lot harder to be poor than it was a few decades ago?
Peter Edelman: Extreme poverty means having an income of less than half the poverty line. That's less than $9,000 a year for a family of three. The stunning fact is that in 2010, there were 20.5 million people who had incomes that low. And perhaps even more disturbing -- 6 million people have no income other than food stamps (SNAP). That means an income at one third of the poverty line or less than $6,000 a year for a family of three. You can't live on that.
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12 comments:
Obama should have help out the poverty stricken instead the Billions he gave his green energy buddies but what the heck I guess it does pay to kiss Obamas ass
2:12. Yes he should have done that instead of all the bailout money to big corporations as well. What's gonna happen if the republicans get in and gut all the programs. They will be to blame for children starving to death in one of the richest countries in the world
dont care. these poor people continue to have 20-30 kids and expect everyone else to pay. hell, look at the debacle that octomom left us with. more often than not, poor people have more than 3 kids.
my personal opinion is they cant afford to do anything else for fun...so we get stuck with them.
@3:08 judging by your comment you probably have little to no common sense or intelligence.
actually im a genius.
@2:35 308 is right for the most part. although there are some legit cases of poor people that met some financial obstacle in life that they may not be able to overcome without TEMPORARY assistance, a vast number of them just keep having kids to live off the government. they were raised by parents, or by one parent as is more often the case, who have no sense of responsibility, and therefore they have no sense of responsibility themselves. by doing this, each generation gets (dare I say it?), dumber and more dependent on the government. dont think that 3:08 is wrong just because he speaks an opinion that is different that yours and your entitled way of thinking. in my opinion, it is people like yourself that have little to no common sense or intelligence, and are the downfall of this country.
3:57 and 3:08. These children do not ask to be born. So what you all are saying is that it's fine to let children starve to death. What monsters people have become. I'm not saying I have the answers but becoming like a third world country with the poor living in the street and starving shouldn't be it.
For years, this country has dipped into other countries affairs to a point, we didn't keep our own house clean. We've fed other countries citizen. We've fought wars in other citizen country. We've used tax payers money to invest in other citizen country. What we should have done is mind our own business and take care of our own right here in the U. S. I guess we are not woth the investments.
i don't believe most of this story either. name me just one starving child. hmmmmm. you probably can't. get it??? if you see anyone without food or clothing, then share. you do what your supposed to do. don't allow our tax dollars to be wasted by the government where our dollars go into the bottomless pit never to be seen again. wasted, wasted, wasted.
Some people are "poor on paper" in a deliberate effort to glean any program they can.Meanwhile our working poor continue to carry the load.
Have any of you ever traveled through Appalacia or the deep south. If you haven't don't talk about things you know nothing about. You all live in your own little world and choose not to believe or see the things right in front of you. There are many children right here in Wicomico county that go home from school for the weekend and don't get to eat until they go back. There are many kids here on the shore in your own back yard that will go hungry this summer because they don't have food and school where they ate is closed. Look at the homeless in Salisbury. Many are family's with children. It's time people start looking beyond their narrow little worlds and care about others. I bet at least half of you that don't care would call yourselves Christians. What happened to do unto others.
Take away the governments mandated wasting of peoples money and give the citizens more of their paychecks and see how charitable we can be. I don't give much because I don't have much and I do "have" the government has taken from me to support lazy no good slackers. The churches do as much as they can for those in need but are constantly being harassed to pay more to the government too.
Bring our troops/resources home and get out of the world policing mentality.
Allow us the freedom to be more charitable to those who really need it and you might be pleasantly surprised.
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