My mother 's favorite saying is “we can no longer cover the sky with our hands.”We cannot pretend it doesn 't exist anymore because poverty is lying on our doorstep. National Geographic 's Andrea Stone has learned through a Feeding America study that “72 percent of households reported living at or below the poverty line.” Our job prospects are not much better. MarketWatch Reporter Jeffry Bartash states that “3.8 million people have been out of work for as long as six months” and he dampers our hope for a speedy economic recovery by informing us that “ the economy has only grown by 2.25% since 2010-well below the historic 3.3% pace of U.S. growth since 1929.” The number of people receiving food stamps is a grand total of 46, 535,904 (USDA)
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In fact welfare was viewed as “an unjust system that extended special favors to undeserving minorities at the expense of ‘America’s working families’.” (Marchevsky and Theoharis 15). The biggest supporters of welfare reform viewed “blacks and nonwhite immigrants” as “freeloaders and threats to the national community.” (Marchevsky and Theoharis 16). Nonwhite recipients who received benefits were not only viewed as a threat but they were also denied welfare benefits altogether because at one time “welfare was largely not accessible to African Americans and Mexican Americans.”(Marchevsky and Theoharis 36). Black women were” intimidated from even applying” for benefits (Marchevsky and Theoharis 37) and “local agencies shut their doors to immigrant and U.S. born Mexican citizens.” Immigrants may have been viewed as “welfare cheats who were getting a free ride” (Marchevsky and Theoharis 18) but were tolerated if they provided “a flexible low-wage workforce for U.S. employers.” (Marchevsky and Theoharis 17). The work that immigrants “performed in other people’s homes was seen as an act of independence.” (Marchevsky and Theoharis 18). The trials that immigrants faced were “personal traumas and shortcomings that could be …show more content…
As Michelle Miller-Adams states in her book, “Owning Up: Poverty, Assets, and the American Dream”. “poor people are willing and eager to make sacrifices” (4), even if those sacrifices involve “earning incomes that will leave them below the poverty line and sometimes even worse than they were on welfare.” (4). Miller-Adams found through professor of social work Michael Sherraden that “poor people, contrary to popular belief can and will save if given the opportunity to do so.” (6). Miller-Adams also names Sherraden as the pioneer of “a special kind of savings account for the poor in which savings would be matched by public and private funds.” (5). The “individual development accounts (IDAs), as Sherraden called them would be restricted to specific uses: the purchase of a home, investment in education or job training, ownership of a small business…. the acquistion of asssets. “ (Miller-Adams 5). While helping the poor reach self sufficiency we must also get rid of the “doctors who billed Medicaid for fictitious procedures and overworked caseworkers who failed to purge ineligible recipients from the welfare rolls.” (Levin) as they are at fault as much as the little and big fish. Pennsylvania state
In fact welfare was viewed as “an unjust system that extended special favors to undeserving minorities at the expense of ‘America’s working families’.” (Marchevsky and Theoharis 15). The biggest supporters of welfare reform viewed “blacks and nonwhite immigrants” as “freeloaders and threats to the national community.” (Marchevsky and Theoharis 16). Nonwhite recipients who received benefits were not only viewed as a threat but they were also denied welfare benefits altogether because at one time “welfare was largely not accessible to African Americans and Mexican Americans.”(Marchevsky and Theoharis 36). Black women were” intimidated from even applying” for benefits (Marchevsky and Theoharis 37) and “local agencies shut their doors to immigrant and U.S. born Mexican citizens.” Immigrants may have been viewed as “welfare cheats who were getting a free ride” (Marchevsky and Theoharis 18) but were tolerated if they provided “a flexible low-wage workforce for U.S. employers.” (Marchevsky and Theoharis 17). The work that immigrants “performed in other people’s homes was seen as an act of independence.” (Marchevsky and Theoharis 18). The trials that immigrants faced were “personal traumas and shortcomings that could be …show more content…
As Michelle Miller-Adams states in her book, “Owning Up: Poverty, Assets, and the American Dream”. “poor people are willing and eager to make sacrifices” (4), even if those sacrifices involve “earning incomes that will leave them below the poverty line and sometimes even worse than they were on welfare.” (4). Miller-Adams found through professor of social work Michael Sherraden that “poor people, contrary to popular belief can and will save if given the opportunity to do so.” (6). Miller-Adams also names Sherraden as the pioneer of “a special kind of savings account for the poor in which savings would be matched by public and private funds.” (5). The “individual development accounts (IDAs), as Sherraden called them would be restricted to specific uses: the purchase of a home, investment in education or job training, ownership of a small business…. the acquistion of asssets. “ (Miller-Adams 5). While helping the poor reach self sufficiency we must also get rid of the “doctors who billed Medicaid for fictitious procedures and overworked caseworkers who failed to purge ineligible recipients from the welfare rolls.” (Levin) as they are at fault as much as the little and big fish. Pennsylvania state