Private Opulence, Public Squalor. How US Helps the Rich, Hurts the Poor- Poverty, by America, Book [View all]

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Last edited Tue Mar 21, 2023, 05:55 PM - Edit history (2)

'Private opulence, public squalor: How the U.S. helps the rich and hurts the poor,' NPR, Fresh Air, March 21, 2023. Ed.

Over 11% of the U.S. population — about one in 9 people — lived below the federal poverty line in 2021. But Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond says neither that statistic, nor the federal poverty line itself, encapsulate the full picture of economic insecurity in America. "There's plenty of poverty above the poverty line as a lived experience," he says. "About one in 3 Americans live in a household that's making $55,000 or less, and many of those folks aren't officially considered poor. But what else do you call trying to raise three kids in Portland on $55,000?"

Growing up in a small town in Arizona, Desmond learned firsthand how economic insecurity could impact a family's stress level. He remembers the gas being shut off and his family home being foreclosed on.

Those hardships would later drive his research — specifically the question of how so much poverty could exist within a country as wealthy as the U.S. Desmond's 2017 book Evicted, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize, examined the nation's affordable housing crisis through the lens of those losing their homes. His new book, Poverty, by America, studies various factors that contribute to economic inequality in the U.S., including housing segregation, predatory lending, the decline of unions & tax policies that favor the wealthy. Desmond says that affluent Americans, including many with progressive political views, benefit from corporate and government policies that keep people poor.

"Most government aid goes to families that need it the least," Desmond says. "If you add up the amount that the government is dedicating to tax breaks — mortgage interest deduction, wealth transfer tax breaks, tax breaks we get on our retirement accounts, our health insurance, our college savings accounts — you learn that we are doing so much more to subsidize affluence than to alleviate poverty." Despite the daunting statistics, Desmond remains optimistic that the U.S. can make progress in its war on poverty. He says that labor unions and housing activists are creating movements that are "stirring and growing around the country."

- What we can learn from LBJ's "war on poverty."

The poverty rate between 1964 and '74 fell by half. So the "Great Society" & the war on poverty made an incredible difference. These were really robust interventions into the lives of the poorest families in America. They made food aid permanent. They expanded Social Security. There were so many elderly Americans dying penniless before the war on poverty & the Great Society. There was this massive gain in pulling older folks out of poverty.. When you have a country where there are millions of poor people living along millions of people with considerable means, a system locks in, for private opulence & public squalor - an old phrase from the Romans. But it was really brought out & brought to life by the mid-century economist John Kenneth Galbraith in his wonderful book, The Affluent Society...https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/21/1164275807/poverty-by-america-matthew-desmond-inequality
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- PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S *'WAR ON POVERTY,' PART OF *'THE GREAT SOCIETY'

The war on poverty is the unofficial name for legislation first introduced by US President Lyndon B. Johnson during his State of the Union address on Jan. 8, 1964. This legislation was proposed by Johnson in response to a national poverty rate of around 19 %. The speech led the US Congress to pass the Economic Opportunity Act, which established the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to administer the local application of federal funds targeted against poverty. The 40 programs established by the Act were collectively aimed at eliminating poverty by improving living conditions for residents of low-income neighborhoods and by helping the poor access economic opportunities long denied from them.

As a part of the Great Society, LBJ believed in expanding the federal government's roles in education and health care as poverty reduction strategies. These policies can also be seen as a continuation of FDR's New Deal, which ran from 1933 to 1937, and his Four Freedoms of 1941. LBJ stated, "Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it &, above all, to prevent it". The war on poverty was heavily criticized by conservatives & has been treated as an "idealistic touchstone" by liberals for decades, although some liberals felt that the war on poverty did not go far enough with its reforms. The legacy of the war on poverty policy initiative remains in the continued existence of such federal government programs as Head Start, Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), TRiO, & Job Corps.

Deregulation, growing criticism of the welfare state, and an ideological shift to reducing federal aid to impoverished people in the 1980s and 1990s culminated in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, which President Bill Clinton claimed "ended welfare as we know it."
- LBJ's poverty tour in 1964: - The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 which created the Community Action Program, - Job Corps and Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), centerpiece of the "war on poverty" – August 20, 1964 - Food Stamp Act of 1964 – August 31, 1964 - Elementary and Secondary Education Act – April 11, 1965 - Social Security Act 1965 (Created Medicare and Medicaid) – July 30, 1965
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The Office of Economic Opportunity was the agency responsible for administering most of the war on poverty programs created during Johnson's Administration, including VISTA, Job Corps, Head Start, Legal Services & the Community Action Program. The OEO was established in 1964 & quickly became a target of both left-wing & right-wing critics of the War on Poverty. Directors of the OEO included Sargent Shriver, Bertrand Harding, & Donald Rumsfeld. The OEO launched Project Head Start as an 8-wk summer program in 1965. The project was designed to help end poverty by providing preschool children from low-income families with a program that would meet emotional, social, health, nutritional, & psychological needs.. A 2nd project to follow children from the Head Start program was implemented in 1967 with Project Follow Through, the largest educational experiment ever conducted. The policy trains disadvantaged & at-risk youth & has provided more than 2 Mill disadvantaged young people with the integrated academic, vocational, & social skills training they need to gain independence & get quality, long-term jobs or further their education...https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_poverty
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- JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH (Oct. 15, 1908 – April 29, 2006), also known as Ken Galbraith, was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, public official, and intellectual. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the 2000s. As an economist, he leaned toward post-Keynesian economics from an institutionalist perspective. Galbraith was a long-time Harvard faculty member and stayed with Harvard University for half a century as a professor of economics. He was a prolific author and wrote 4 dozen books, including several novels, and published more than a thousand articles & essays on various subjects.

Among his works was a trilogy on economics, American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958), & The New Industrial State (1967). Some of his work has been criticized by economists Milton Friedman, Paul Krugman, Robert Solow, & Thomas Sowell. Galbraith was active in Democratic Party politics, serving in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, & Lyndon B. Johnson. He served as U.S Ambassador to India under the Kennedy administration. His political activism, literary output and outspokenness brought him wide fame during his lifetime. Galbraith was one of the few to receive both the World War II Medal of Freedom (1946) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2000) for his public service and contributions to science...https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kenneth_Galbraith