Economic Report: 40 Million Low-Wage Jobs & Americans Still Believe Poverty is Caused By Lack Of Eff

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.laborradio.org/node/7170

Economic Report:

By Doug Cunningham

About 40 million U.S. jobs pay low wages and lack healthcare or pensions or both. That leaves tens of millions of Americans struggling with poverty. Yet a new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research says American views about poverty continue to blame it on a lack of effort. The report says that appeals to reduce poverty that emphasize a moral duty to help the disadvantaged or lament the unfairness of poverty run into pre-existing strong perceptual screens that resist those arguments.

[BlueJazz]

1. See...I Told you that a large share of Americans are dumb as....

...the proverbial Box of Rocks.

[Warpy]

2. Well, what the hell do you expect?

How often were class issues explored when you were in school?

How often do you read about class issues in the paper?

How often do you hear class issues being discussed on TV?

How many people have you ever heard lay the reason for poverty at the feet of those who seek to concentrate wealth into the fewest hands?

Poor folks are told every day that they're failures and that it's their own fault for making bad choices, or choosing the wrong education or choosing the wrong work or any of a host of other spurious reasons, all to get people who are in serious trouble to blame themselves for it.

THINK.

[killbotfactory]

3. Welcome to the powerless cheap-labor underclass

It's not an accident that this is happening, it's by design.

[tech3149]

4. I"ve known plenty of low wage employees in my day, including me

They were usually the hardest working people I knew. My ex was an exec for a large book store chain and most of the other execs spent so much time playing solitaire, the IT dept. had to delete all games from the computers. I've seen too many examples of mid to upper level management spending more time on personal interests than doing the job they were overpaid and under qualified to do. Those who think that a lack of income is only due to a lack of effort are either the victims of very limited life experience or very susceptible to perception management.