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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Sat Jan 28, 2012, 11:58 AM Jan 2012

46 Million Americans Live in Poverty -- So Why Isn't Anybody Saying the P Word?

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/767199/46_million_americans_live_in_poverty_--_so_why_isn%27t_anybody_saying_the_p_word/

Did you catch the reference in President Obama's State of the Union address to "poverty"?

You can be forgiven if you didn't. Greg Kaufmann of The Nation, who recently launched a weekly column, "This Week in Poverty," on thenation.com, warns in his column today that if you review the video or the transcript of Obama's speech, "don't blink, you'll miss it."

Here’s what he had to say about poverty...:

“A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance.”

Got that? Great teacher, poverty, child who dreams. We good?

People living below the poverty line, 46 million Americans, represent 15 percent of the country, including more than one in five of the nation's youth. And yet, as Kaufmann writes today, "in a 65-minute address describing the state of the union, President Obama decided it merited barely a mention."

Kaufmann, who you can hear above in an interview I conducted earlier this month, is on a crusade to get progressives to start saying "the p word" again. So each week Kaufmann writes a column that highlights the facts, statistics and perspectives that he believes should drive our discussion about poverty, its causes and solutions.
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46 Million Americans Live in Poverty -- So Why Isn't Anybody Saying the P Word? (Original Post) xchrom Jan 2012 OP
Well, they just aren't trying hard enough. :sarcasm: baldguy Jan 2012 #1
The Republican legacy is creating poverty. liberal N proud Jan 2012 #2
This is very true. GreenPartyVoter Jan 2012 #3
If you talk about it, you have to do something about it. russspeakeasy Jan 2012 #4
Because they are largely "invisible" LiberalEsto Jan 2012 #5
The good teacher/rescue/poverty cliche is universally accepted. JDPriestly Jan 2012 #6
Unfortunately.... daleanime Jan 2012 #7
Great post--deserves its own thread. nt raccoon Jan 2012 #8
Some of us teachers are the poor. Starry Messenger Jan 2012 #9
Why? For the same reason people wil donate overseas but not to the USA DebJ Jan 2012 #10
Why? Because... Hotler Jan 2012 #11
 

baldguy

(36,649 posts)
1. Well, they just aren't trying hard enough. :sarcasm:
Sat Jan 28, 2012, 12:04 PM
Jan 2012

The other day a local call center advertized for 30 job openings. They said they received 10,000 applications.

liberal N proud

(60,300 posts)
2. The Republican legacy is creating poverty.
Sat Jan 28, 2012, 12:05 PM
Jan 2012

If they were to discuss it, would be how to make their plight even worse.

russspeakeasy

(6,539 posts)
4. If you talk about it, you have to do something about it.
Sat Jan 28, 2012, 12:15 PM
Jan 2012

I don't see the fortitude on the left to go after this issue.

 

LiberalEsto

(22,845 posts)
5. Because they are largely "invisible"
Sat Jan 28, 2012, 12:57 PM
Jan 2012

and the Corporate Media pretty much ignores them.

Out of sight, out of mind.

We need a new Poor People's March.

JDPriestly

(57,936 posts)
6. The good teacher/rescue/poverty cliche is universally accepted.
Sat Jan 28, 2012, 01:33 PM
Jan 2012

But I know some very impoverished scholars, laid-off teachers and out-of-work scientists with advanced degrees.

Education is no longer a sure path to a job. And it certainly is not the way out of poverty if you get a salary of $35,000 and have huge student debts.

Good teachers are the key to a good life, but a good education does not insure wealth.

The statistics on this can be misleading. Yes. A good education can enable a poor child to join the middle class and rarely, very, very rarely to become wealthy.

But the fact is that most of the people who get a good education, an education good enough to permit them to become say a doctor or an economist or to join a profession or find a career that pays really well, are from middle class or wealthy families.

You would be surprised at the percentage of doctors who did not have to borrow to go through college and medical school because their parents could afford to pay for all those years during which the doctor did not earn a cent.

It would not be the majority, but it would be a surprising percentage.

Bill Gates was not from a poor family.

And many of the extremely wealthy individuals who claim to have had poor parents came from middle-class families.

Bill Clinton was not from a wealthy family, but I think his mother was a nurse -- which put him in the middle class.

A good teacher plus a middle-class (at least) family. That's what a child needs.

In the past, a father and mother who stayed sober and worked hard could give their children a start toward belonging to the middle class. That is no longer true. The lower middle-class no longer earns enough to provide what we used to call a middle-class life with the realistic hope of a higher education and a good job for their children.

Starry Messenger

(32,342 posts)
9. Some of us teachers are the poor.
Sun Jan 29, 2012, 08:22 AM
Jan 2012

We have more in common with our students than the 1%ers who claim to know our business.

DebJ

(7,699 posts)
10. Why? For the same reason people wil donate overseas but not to the USA
Sun Jan 29, 2012, 10:55 AM
Jan 2012

Americans have a long history of donating more money to help those in poverty overseas than here in the USA.
This comes from two things: the idea of American exceptionalism/individualism, and FEAR.

People in this country have long bought into the dream that here in America, you can be whatever you want
to be and accomplish this solely by your own sweat. The corollary to that is that if you are in poverty, then
you brought this upon yourself, which then extends to either a) you deserve no help or b)you can still fix
the situation all by yourself. However, those overseas do not have this magical ability, so they do deserve
and need our help. When Americans donate overseas, they are again reinforcing the concept of how much
better we Americans are, to help those 'truly' less fortunate.

The FEAR Factor: If an American admits to themselves that the above 'logic' is actually more of a fallacy
than a truth, then this exposes that person to the brutal concept that "Hey, that could be me out on the
streets tomorrow." That concept is often rigidly rejected, because they don't want to handle the fear,
nor to revise their haughty concepts that Americans are in general far superior to other human beings
on the rest of the planet. It would be too much of an earthquake within the core foundation of their beliefs.

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