Poverty in US: American Dream Now Nightmare for Millions
Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 7:58 amFinance...I agree with what you say about the numbers and that a minimum wage 40 hour a week job puts people over the poverty threshold. The 2005 HHS poverty guidelines sets a limit of $9,570 for a 1 person household with an additional $3,260 for each additional family member. Personally, I think that is pretty low in my opinion. However I think that underemployment is something that we need to take into consideration. Could that be the reason that the numbers are lower than what we might think? Many people don't work a full 40 hour work-week. I think that it is pretty hard if not next to impossible to really nail down the extent of poverty in our country. Even with the statistics that we can find online, I'm not so sure that we'll be able to make any concrete determination with regards to how widespread nor how deep into poverty some people are.
When I had kids come to me right before class and ask if they could go get breakfast in the cafeteria as they don't get to eat at home, or have children panic because they couldn't find their coat in the coat-room stating that they would be beaten if they didn't come home with it it really hit me hard as to how some people live. There were even students that would forgo recess in order to do their homework assignments stating that their family didn't even own a dictionary and they would be unable to complete the assignments at home.
I still think that this should be in the economics section and could/should make for an interesting and necessary conversation topic.