And yet for all the shortcomings of the government’s strategy, the main reason for America’s persistent poverty is the disappearance of jobs with decent pay that can take workers above the poverty line without the government’s help.
The U.S. Congress is fighting over how much to cut food assistance to needy families. Everyone knows that women and their children are the poorest people in America, but strangely, the faces of women have disappeared from the debate and have been absorbed into abstract “needy families.”
With our inequality coming close to that of Jamaica and Argentina, as Obama pointed out in his Dec. 4 speech on inequality and social mobility, we can no longer ignore the danger it poses to our democracy and living standards.
Music has always been a powerful expression and organizing tool of the oppressed people of South Africa. Here is music inspired by and supporting their struggles, including the artists Hugh Masakela, Abdullah Ibrahim, Johnny Clegg and Gil Scott-Heron.
The minimum wage used to be sufficient to keep people out of poverty -- it's not any more.
Union-backed groups mount new strikes, announce a potential federal complaint, and promise a big Black Friday.
Book Review: A Freedom Budget for All Americans, By Paul LeBlanc and Michael D. Yates; New York: Monthly Review Press
One year on, it's painfully clear that society's choices mean the hurricane hit our poorest communities harder than the well-to-do.
Continuing to attack pensions and thereby promoting these vastly inadequate personal accounts speeds the U.S. toward a generation of elders living in dire poverty.
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