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“one group’s gain need not always come at another group’s expense and that adopting such a zero-sum mindset has time and again led poor whites to choose poverty and sickness over parity with Black Americans.[”
― Poverty, by America
― Poverty, by America
“When I first started looking into this depressing state of affairs, I figured America’s efforts to reduce poverty had stalled because we had stopped trying to solve the problem. I bought into the idea, popular among progressives, that the election of President Ronald Reagan (as well as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom) marked the ascendancy of market fundamentalism, or “neoliberalism,” a time when governments cut aid to the poor, lowered taxes, and slashed regulations. If American poverty persisted, I thought, it was because we had reduced our spending on the poor. But I came to realize that the reality was far messier. President Reagan expanded corporate power, massively cut taxes on the rich, and rolled back spending on some antipoverty initiatives, especially in housing. But he was unable to make large-scale, long-term cuts to many of the programs that make up the American welfare state. When the president proposed reducing Social Security benefits in 1981, Congress rebuffed him.[7] Throughout Reagan’s eight years in office, antipoverty spending did not shrink. It grew and continued to grow after he left office. In fact, it grew significantly. Spending on the nation’s thirteen largest means-tested programs—aid reserved for Americans who fall below a certain income level—went from $1,015 a person the year Ronald Reagan was elected president to $3,419 a person one year into Donald Trump’s administration.[8] That’s a 237 percent increase.”
― Poverty, by America
― Poverty, by America
“As estimated by the federal government’s poverty line, 12.6 percent of the U.S. population was poor in 1970; two decades later it was 13.5 percent; in 2010, it was 15.1 percent; and in 2019, it was 10.5 percent.”
― Poverty, by America
― Poverty, by America
“Almost one in nine Americans—including one in eight children—live in poverty.”
― Poverty, by America
― Poverty, by America
“This makes the country’s stalled progress on poverty even more baffling. Decade after decade, the poverty rate has remained flat even as federal relief has surged. How could this be? — Part of the answer, I learned, lies in the fact that a fair amount of government aid earmarked for the poor never reaches them. To understand why, consider welfare. When welfare was administered through the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, almost all of its funds were used to provide single-parent families with cash assistance.[12] But when President Bill Clinton reformed welfare in 1996, replacing the old model with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), he transformed the program into a block grant that gives states considerable leeway in deciding how to distribute the money. As a result, states have come up with rather creative ways to spend TANF dollars. Nationwide, for every dollar budgeted for TANF in 2020, poor families directly received just 22 cents.”
― Poverty, by America
― Poverty, by America
Molly’s 2025 Year in Books
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