stimulus
G20 Countries Take On Economic Inequality
Published September 28, 2009 @ 04:43AM PT
G20 leaders are heralding their progress last weekend in Pittsburgh as a sign of a new world order, in which they will collaborate as "permanent stewards of the world economy for the first time," monitored and evaluated by the International Monetary Fund to ensure that "economic policies of G20 countries are consistent with 'sustainable and balanced trajectories for the global economy'." This plan lacks any enforceable power - it is a strategy of global goodwill, embarrassment and peer pressure to avoid on-going boom and bust economic cycles - but there is talk of imposing a tax on financial speculation (e.g., derivatives) to curb "excessive risk-taking."
This is a positive if amorphous development for the world and the US. It signals that we are eager to return to a more cooperative stance in the world, and it is a more overt, collective acknowledgment by nations of the uneven outcomes of globalization that I've seen before. But what next? Unsurprisingly, the U.S. is loathe to take on Wall Street, and the rift between the developing world's need for better access to markets and less onerous trading conditions and the developed world's desire to protect their unfair advantage in our "free" market economy persists.
Target Takes Food Stamps
Published September 21, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
So many Americans are now using food stamps that more and more chain stores have begun accepting them, rather than lose these customers to economic hardship. New or expanded recipients include Target, CVS, 7-11, Costco, BJ's and Sam's Club.
Food stamp use was up 22% this summer from 2008, with more than 35M Americans using them. Food stamps now come on a card identical to a debit or credit card, offering discretion and privacy for Americans self-conscious about relying on public assistance. For businesses, Costco finds that food stamp users spend an additional $50 or so on purchases not covered by the benefit.
There's a message in here about economic hardship becoming mainstream, becoming normal. I'm trying to generalize it to an ideal world where one is not punished for being poor, where a low-income parent can stand in line at the grocery store without a sense of shame - that she's even at the better grocery store rather than an overpriced bodega or food bank is an accomplishment. (Of course, see the original link above to understand transportation issues.)
Expanded food stamp acceptance at more stores is one of these situational responses that becomes permanent. From the sound of it, businesses have to invest in some degree of technological or process change to accept these cards. These are likely not upgrades that will be rolled back once the recession really lifts. As anti-poverty activists, we should be thinking about emergency services and about long-term changes we can push through during moments of crisis. Yes, we've got to expand eligibility for food stamps so all the many million more bellies don't go hungry, but if there was ever a moment to update the poverty measure to reflect the costs of housing, health care or decline in wages - It's Now.
Don't Forget the (Faux) Middle
Published September 11, 2009 @ 05:07AM PT
As policy wonks and politicians try to convince us of recovery, the rest of the country is focused on white-knuckled survival. Far too many are in dire straits. Take Laura and her 2 teen sons, crammed in a ramshackle trailer with Laura's prematurely aged parents in Franklin, a little town south of Indianapolis.
Her parents live, like many housing-challenged seniors do, in a trailer park. Laura and her sons doubled-up with them because they are homeless, their abode lost in this latest fiscal crisis that continues to bedevil our country (despite all the "happy" talk). Her parents own this humble single-wide. From the outside it looks like the rest of the units in the park, but the inside tells the story.
1 in 5 Elderly are Poor
Published September 05, 2009 @ 10:38AM PT
When calculating poverty using the modernized measure from the National Academy of Sciences, the number of older adults living in poverty is nearly double the official rate. The whole article is worth reading for the ways current poverty numbers - among children, single mothers, in cities, etc. - would change if we updated the federal poverty measure.
Everyday that I blog I find more features, reports, news items, etc. than I can possibly cover here. But I don't want to let these stories slip by. So consider this your weekend afternoon news dump on poverty in the U.S.
Obama Restores Civil Rights
Published September 01, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Good news this morning: the Obama Administration is "restoring" the Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice - the agency for anti-discrimination enforcement in the areas of housing, voting rights, employment, and so forth. Under Bush, the division was notoriously politicized, with conservative and Christian loyalists with little civil rights experience recruited and charged with prioritizing religious cases at the expense of the division's core focus on racial/ethnic discrimination. Why am I writing about this at Poverty in America? Because discrimination has historically reinforced racial, gender and other forms of inequality in housing, jobs, etc. - leading to the disproportionately high rates of women and people of color living in poverty.
Poverty as a Political Issue
Published August 31, 2009 @ 09:20AM PT
The American Prospect featured a great piece last week about how politicians frame poverty - and how that impacts public sentiment towards the poor. After Reagan effectively boogey-womaned mothers on welfare, President Clinton reframed Democratic economic policy as one concerned with the middle-class. This was a political maneuver to fight poverty subtly using a more inclusive rhetoric; many political observers claim that President Obama is doing the same thing today. What's especially interesting here is how their policy actions within our economic circumstances influence our general attitudes toward the poor. Is the best time to fight poverty now - during an historic recession - or when the good times roll again?
25% NOLA Public Housing Residents Lost
Published August 25, 2009 @ 08:53AM PT
Saturday August 29 marks the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's destruction of the US Gulf Coast. The pre-storm problem of deep poverty and racial inequality has worsened, and gone largely unreported. Those of us at Change.org have an opportunity to reverse that trend. It begins by educating ourselves on the enduring struggles down there to provide a safe, affordable place to live for all those who lost their homes due to a lethal combination of a natural disaster and wrongheaded public policy. To start: HUD cannot locate over 25% of public housing residents who were living in the now-demolished "Big Four" projects prior to the storm.
More, including what you can do, after the jump.
