What is Poverty and How do we Rise Above it? It seems that many had hoped that the Obama administration would have mirrored the Roosevelt administration. There were hopes that Obama would herald an era of social reform and eradicate America's poverty problem. There many flaws with this naive outlook and to really understand why America faces such economic insecurity we need to examine what poverty is.
What Does Poverty Look Like? The definition of poverty is lacking the minimum food and shelter necessary for maintaining life. Adults struggling with joblessness, reliance on welfare for parts of their lives, and finding more economic stability in a life of crime than at minimum wage jobs are all signs of deteriorating economic security and the ever elusive American dream. Daguerre defines the social contract in America as “the dream of social mobility through hard work” and yet this dream seems impossible for so many Americans to reach. Separations, and divorces mean that more women head poor households. Reductions in welfare benefits have forced many of these women‐headed households to join the ranks of the underclass. Women live longer than men and when their husbands die we find growing numbers of elderly women living in poverty because they lose much of their income. Many of the nation's largest gaps in social
…show more content…
The rich have taken full advantage of their wealth to lobby the politicians. Democrats and Republicans have used their money to secure passage of legislation that redistributes wealth from the working class and the poor to themselves. While the wealth of the rich is reaching the stratosphere, their taxes are plummeting, which exacerbates inequalities and creates a vicious cycle: more money pays for more lobbying which creates more money. Meanwhile, even though the income of working people and the poor has declined, their taxes have actually