A Struggle With Poverty In The United States

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Poverty is a common social issue that any nations have. The United States of America is not an exception; she also faced and fought to poverty for over years. As Ronald Reagan said “We fought a war on poverty and poverty won” (Edelman, 1), a struggle with poverty is that never ended. President Lyndon Johnson attempted to make sure that there was no more poverty in the U.S. He proposed a lot of policies to aim at fighting the poverty in our nation such as Social Security Amendments, The Food Stamp Act, The Economic Opportunity Act, and The Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Although his policies have been gaining a certain success, poverty even has been getting worse in the US. And this issue is put on the table again whether we should …show more content…
Over fifty years since President Lyndon Johnson started fighting the poverty, the issue has been there. It is true that “46 million Americans, 15 percent of the population” are considered as poor (Edelman, 1). Although Social Security and food stamps system, come from trust funds, have been enacted, poverty would be almost double what it is now, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (Edelman, 1). And this has been happened for some decades. To get poverty down twice is to double trust funds. It means that payroll taxes would be double as well. If payroll taxes are increased, the poor is increased as well. Definitely, changing the tax structure, especially payroll taxes, does not defeat poverty but increase poverty …show more content…
Although President Obama cabinet is trying to get the unemployment rate down, our budget is still a big issue. According to US Government spending, our budget is continuous deficit since 2010. For instance, in 2010, our deficit budget is $1,294 bln. The budget is kept shortage of $483 bln in 2014, and still lost until 2016. This circumstance raises a question whether we should increase taxes to make up for the poor or should keep tax structure in this recession. The answer would be no since most of the people are barely to keep their jobs; thus, it’s even harder to find a better one to pay more taxes. Instead, increasing taxes would push more people in

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