________________________________
From: Keith Hudson <keithhudso...@googlemail.com>
To: "RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION"
<futurework@lists.uwaterloo.ca>; Ed Weick <ewe...@rogers.com>
Sent: Friday, October 25, 2013 11:15:24 AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Poverty in America
Keith: Where Stephanie Mencimer is uninformed is that (see her last sentence)
poverty doesn't doesn't affect the intellectual development of children.
What does affect it is when parents don't talk or read much
or when there are no books in the house, and so forth. In terms of
oxygen, energy and food, the brain is given top priority. A person has to
be at the extreme edge of starvation then all the other organs are
failing before the brain is affected.
Ed: I don't disagree, Keith, but nor do I fully agree. I was a depression baby
and spent the first ten years of my life in poverty. We had no books, no radio
much of the time, and there was no inspirational conversation. We moved all
over western Canada because my father was forever looking for work. Then along
came WWII. We had a steady income because my dad joined the army. We lived in
one place for about four years and the school I went to had good teachers and a
library. And good times continued for two or three decades after the war. What
I'm saying is that I believe societal and family circumstances have a great
deal to do with the success or failure of children. If the depression had
continued and the war hadn't come along my adult life would have been very
different than it was.
Keith: If the teaching unions weren't so rigid about credentialism, then you
could
be sure that private schools would invade the poverty struck parts of
America just as they have done (and continue to do) in the poorest parts
of China, India and Africa (where the poverty is at a deeper level than
the poorest of America). This would give a chance, at least, to the
children, of breaking out of the trap (though they would still need
parents who were motivated enough to spare a few pennies for the
tuition).
Ed: Teachers can make a huge difference in kid's lives. In the primary grades,
it's not so much what they are required, by educational authorities, to teach
the kids, it's more about how they befriend and treat them. Some of my teachers
were lovely people, others were brutes. A problem we now seem to have in
eastern Canada is that of too many teachers and not enough teaching jobs. I
know a few people who have teaching credentials but can't find teaching jobs.
Some of them would make excellent teachers.
At 14:19 25/10/2013, you wrote:
From Mother Jones:
>
>CHART: Welfare Reform Is Leaving More In Deep Poverty
>—By Stephanie Mencimer
>| Wed Oct. 23, 2013 3:00 AM PDT
>The economy is picking up in some parts of the country, but that hasn't
translated into any new serious efforts to help those suffering the most
hardship. In fact, for those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder,
life may be getting even harder. A new
report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) looks
at cash benefits provided under the Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families (TANF) program, commonly known as "welfare." It finds
that the value of monthly cash benefits that make up the fragile safety
net for the poorest families with children has continued to decline
steadily since the program was "reformed" in 1996.
>Back then, benefits weren't exactly generous, but they did manage to keep
a whole lot of kids out of really deep poverty. Today, those benefits are
almost nonexistent. The lucky few who are able to get cash assistance
aren't getting enough to pay rent or keep the lights on in most states, and the
value of the
benefits has declined precipitously since 1996—even more so since the
recession sttarted. According to CBPP, there is not a state in the
country whose welfare benefits are enough to lift a poor single mother
with two kids above 50 percent of the poverty line, or about $9700 a
year. In many southern states, TANF doesn't provide enough money to get a
poor family much above 10 percent of the poverty line. What's especially
troubling about these figures is that, as CBPP reports, TANF benefits are
often the only form of cash assistance poor families receive. They may be
getting food stamps, which definitely help their situations, but you
can't buy diapers or pay the rent with food stamps.
>People like President Bill Clinton and then-Speaker of the House Newt
Gingrich claimed they'd be doing welfare recipients a favor in the 1990s
when they reformed the welfare program to impose work requirements and
make it more difficult for people to get benefits. The idea was that
welfare recipients were just lazy and that their government checks were
keeping them from working, making them dependent on the government. When
the reform legislation passed, with Clinton's signature, some people in
the administration quit in protest, arguing that cutting off cash
assistance for poor families would push millions of children into
poverty. That didn't happen, at least not right away. But funding for the
TANF block grant hasn't increased since 1996, meaning that in real terms,
what the country spends to help poor families in the program has fallen
30 percent overall since welfare was "reformed," and benefit
levels have fallen even more in some states that cut benefits after the
financial crisis started in 2007. Not surprisingly, since 1996, the
number of families with children living in extreme poverty—that is, on $2
a day oor less—has gone up nearly 130 percent.
>The US Census Bureau reports that the number of Americans suffering
significant hardships, such as having utilities cut off, getting evicted,
or suffering food shortages, has escalated sharply during the recession.
Between 2005 and 2011, nearly 7 million additional people were unable to
make a mortgage or rent payment, suggesting that as the nation's
last-ditch safety net for people in really dire straits, TANF, is not
working. Given that science is now showing just how damaging the stress of
poverty is to children and their health
and intellectual development, maybe it's finally time for welfare reform
to be reformed in a way that gives poor kids a fair shot at a decent
future.
>
>
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