A new report finds that the direct relief checks that were sent out as part of the stimulus packages passed by the federal government significantly reduced hardship for families, particularly low-income families.
The University of Michigan report, first reported on byThe New York Times, used Census Bureau data to analyze hardships faced by families over the course of the pandemic. The report authors found that hardships like financial instability fell sharply from December 2020 to April 2021, during which time the federal government sent two stimulus checks to most Americans, totalling $2,000.
The analysis found that food insecurity fell over 40 percent in that time, financial instability fell 45 percent and common symptoms of depression dropped by 20 percent. The sharpest declines happened right after the checks were passed in December and March.
“Our analyses thus far have yielded a fairly simple story: throughout the crisis, the level of hardship faced by U.S. households can be directly linked to the federal government’s response,” writes the report authors. They find that, while the economy’s recovery may have helped ease hardships, the stimulus checks were likely a larger contributing factor.
Levels of hardship remained relatively steady from spring into fall last year. “This was suggestive of the efficacy of CARES Act income support provisions in stabilizing U.S. households in the midst of a global pandemic and economic crisis,” reads the report. The CARES Act was passed in March of 2020, and in April of last year the Census Bureau began conducting the surveys that the study pulls data from.
Part of the reason that hardships remained stable through that time was the $600 supplemental unemployment checks in the CARES Act that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) had lobbied for. Those checks helped the nearly 1 in 5 American workers who were receiving unemployment benefits by July of last year. The report states that the supplements helped millions of Americans hold back financial and mental challenges.
“We see an immediate decline among multiple lines of hardship concentrated among the most disadvantaged families,” H. Luke Shaefer, study co-author and professor at the University of Michigan, told The New York Times.
Declines in hardships were especially pronounced for adults with children and adults in households with annual incomes less than $25,000. Both groups were facing more food insufficiency, difficulty paying bills and financial instability than other groups, for instance, and both groups saw the sharpest declines in the same areas following the stimulus checks from last December and earlier this year.
Shaefer also argues that direct aid like the stimulus checks are an efficient form of government aid because struggling families know the most about where to spend their money. “Cash aid offers families great flexibility to address their most pressing problems, and getting it out quickly is something the government knows how to do,” Shaefer told The New York Times.
The report’s findings line up with previous studies that have found that household income rose by a record 21.1 percent after this March’s stimulus checks — checks that didn’t get a single Republican vote in Congress.
Reminder: Every single Republican in Congress voted against substantially reducing hardship for the American people. https://t.co/ELJNPaTANl
— Senator Bob Menendez (@SenatorMenendez) June 2, 2021
Congressional Republicans have been against the stimulus checks since the first stimulus was passed, saying that the aid is too broad. But, as the University of Michigan report shows, the stimulus checks reduced hardships for not only the low-income earners but also the people who received checks at the higher end of the income scale. That is likely why Republicans were touting some of the benefits of the stimulus bill despite none of them having voted for it.
The world’s population was about 7.8 billion people in 2020. About 2.2 billion people do not have access to safe drinking water, and over 4 billion do not have safe sanitation.(1) About 800 million suffer from chronic undernourishment. A fifth of all children under 5 suffer from stunted growth.(2) Each year approximately 6 million children and many millions of adults die of easily preventable diseases(3) and 9 million people die of hunger.(4) Some progress has been made on some of these issues, particularly in China. However, things have been getting worse in other regions, such as Africa.(5) Since 1960, the income gap between rich countries and poor countries has roughly tripled in size.
Friday 28 May is #WorldHungerDay. And while lack of access to food is a huge problem in the world’s poorest nations, it’s also a major issue in the UK.
Hunger is not just about food. Hunger and poverty are inextricably linked to a nexus of issues including: the rights of women and girls, income opportunities, health, education, social justice, the environment and climate change.
the critical importance of access to education, healthcare and technology in ending hunger.
The scale of the problem globally is staggering. The World Hunger Clock keeps a live count of people in food poverty. As of 11:30am on 28 May, over 2.4 billion people live in “moderate” or “severe” food insecurity; over 819 million of these are classed as severe, and over 161 million children have impaired growth (“stunted”) due to a lack of food:
The problem of food poverty also exists in the UK.
A very British problem
As foodbank charity the Trussell Trust tweeted:
Last year, #foodbanks in our network gave out a staggering 2.5 million emergency food parcels. This simply isn't right. On #WorldHungerDay, it's time to come together and call for change. pic.twitter.com/xIvRkhebtx
— The Trussell Trust (@TrussellTrust) May 28, 2021
During the financial year 2020/21, the Trussell Trust said it saw a 33% increase in use on the previous year. It also gave out food parcels to nearly one million children.
But the Trussell Trust seeing an explosion in demand is the tip of the iceberg. And it’s not just a coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic problem either.
Massive food insecurity
The World Health Organisation and other groups class food insecurity as people who have “limited access to food … due to lack of money or other resources”. As the charity Church Action on Poverty wrote, food insecurity in the UK has been a huge issue for years. It noted that:
The Government’s own research conclusively shows that, even prior to the pandemic, one in twelve of all households in the UK were experiencing low or very low levels of food security.
43% of households on Universal Credit “experience low or very low food security – over five times the national average of 8% across all households”.
26% of household on the benefit “are ranked as having ‘very low’ food security – more than six times the national average of 4% for all households”.
People on other benefits “experiencing low or very low levels of food security” were as follows: Income Support (36%); Jobseekers Allowance (37%); Employment Support Allowance (31%).
“One in four households in receipt of carers allowance and more than one in five households in receipt of personal independence payments are food insecure”.
An issue of class and protected groups
The data also found that some groups experience “particularly high levels of household food insecurity”:
“31% of working age households living in social housing experience food insecurity compared to just 3% of owner occupiers”.
“29% of single parent households”.
“25% of households with one or more unemployed adults under state pension age”.
“19% of households with one or more disabled adults under state pension age”.
“19% of black households, compared to 8% for the general population”.
It is an indictment of successive Governments that benefit levels across the board have been allowed to drop to such low levels that we have reached this stage.
Millions of families face worrying whether their food will run out before they get money to buy more; can’t afford balanced meals; skip meals or are forced to eat less than they should because there isn’t enough money for food.
Whether or not the UK will be in the same or a worse position on the next #WorldHungerDay remains to be seen. But unless urgent action is taken, it is, unfortunately, unlikely to improve any time soon.
Earlier this week, Marcus Rashford topped the Sunday Times giving list due to his donations to food poverty and community charities.
In conjunction with FareShare, he has donated £20m – more than his own wealth of £16m. He is the youngest person ever to top the list.
This adds to a year of work advocating and pressuring the government to provide free school meals for disadvantaged children.
Here’s a look back at all the times Rashford pushed to help kids when the government didn’t.
I salute @MarcusRashford not just his advocacy but also for his personal generosity. It’s an extraordinary example from such a young man. He is a tremendous role model and a tribute to our nation. https://t.co/RGmFIGVyJU
Rashford first campaigned for free school meals to be extended over summer 2020 to help struggling families.
His campaign eventually forced the government to make a U-turn and announce a £120m fund to provide meals for 1.3 million children.
This is your reminder that while Boris Johnson was happy to spend £800 per week on takeaways it took a public backlash and tireless campaigning by Marcus Rashford to get him to extend free school meals for hungry kids.
Rashford did not leave it there – he formed the Child Food Poverty Task Force in September 2020. In conjunction with several charities, he lobbied the government for long-term action on food poverty.
He then started a petition calling for the government to end child food poverty. The petition asked for free school meals to be provided during all holidays to all households on Universal Credit. It also asked for voucher values to be increased.
These were all recommendations from the National Food Strategy (NFS), an independent review of food policy commissioned by the government.
Labour called for free school meals to be extended in parliament, but Conservative MPs voted the motion down 322 to 261.
I think Marcus Rashford has done a fantastic thing , bringing the attention that children in the UK are hungry then persuading the government to change there policies. He is a shining light to the world and a great ambassador for child poverty.
Instead, venues across the country stepped in to support Rashford’s campaign. Saying they ‘didn’t stand with the 322’, cafes, pubs, and restaurants pledged to provide food for children in need.
Again, the campaign led to a government U-turn. Boris Johnson ended up personally phoning Rashford to tell him the government would provide a £396m package for free school meals during the Christmas, Easter, and summer holidays.
The campaign is still calling for the government to provide free school meals to all families where parents are receiving benefits.
Meanwhile
Marcus Rashford has donated £20 million to food, poverty and community charities (partnered with FareShare) – a sum greater than his personal wealth.https://t.co/7ewmuiXjnz
— Louis 〓〓 Defend the right to vote (@LouisHenwood) May 25, 2021
Food parcels
In January, several families posted photographs of their food hampers, many of which were small and insufficient.
Rashford immediately called out the parcels as “not good enough“, saying kids and parents would still go hungry.
The Department for Education later promised to investigate the contents of the parcels.
Marcus Rashford. He has Single handedly done more for this country since 2020 than the entire government has done in years https://t.co/441Lpq1w3A
— Sempre Vive Hun me/me (@SanguineNW) May 25, 2021
Access to reading
Rashford has now launched a book club to get disadvantaged children into reading. It kicked off in April with the donation of 50,000 books to primary schools.
The club is targeted at the estimated 383,000 UK children who have never owned a book.
From 2010-2019, cuts to local authority funding caused more than 800 public libraries in the UK to close.
Getting results
As MPs began debating Rashford’s petition yesterday, he tweeted:
It’s confusing that we are debating the implementation of government-commissioned findings. Gov did the research. Gov gathered the data. And solutions were formed from that (NFS). I endorsed them…so what’s to debate? Let’s discuss the findings and discuss the solutions.
— Marcus Rashford MBE (@MarcusRashford) May 24, 2021
Rashford’s campaigning makes it clear it’s possible for the government to take action on food poverty – but it shouldn’t take so much work to get them there.
Reverend William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and president of Repairers of the Breach, says the United States needs a “Third Reconstruction” aimed at lifting 140 million poor and low-income people out of poverty. Barber worked with Congressmembers Barbara Lee and Pramila Jayapal to unveil a congressional resolution for a Third Reconstruction this week, which includes measures to expand voting rights, implement immigration reform, raise the minimum wage, establish a federal jobs program and more. “There is not a scarcity of resources,” says Barber. “What there is is a scarcity of social justice conscience.”
It’s official: the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic saw the richest people in the UK increase their wealth to over half a trillion pounds. 2020 saw more people become billionaires than ever before. That’s the verdict of the latest “Rich List”. But of course, for the rest of us, life wasn’t that fruitful.
The Rich List just gets richer
As PA reported, the Sunday TimesRich List showed that there are now a record 171 billionaires in the UK. Ukrainian-born Leonard Blavatnik tops the pile as the richest person in the country. He’s an oil and media investor. Blavatnik saw his fortune surge by £7.2bn to around £23bn during the year of the pandemic. His business interests include Warner Music, which he sold a £1.37bn stake in when it listed in the US last year.
But as the Sunday Times tweeted, it was a record year for its Rich List:
PA reported that the number of UK billionaires jumped by 24%. Their wealth rose by 21.7% over the year, going up by £106.5bn to £597.2bn. How odd, when compared to the wealth of the UK as a whole:
Last year UK GDP contracted by 9.9%. The largest annual fall on record. The collective wealth of UK based billionaires, meanwhile, grew by 21.7%.
So, these are the 10 ‘fattest cats’ in the UK according to the Rich List:
Leonard Blavatnik – £23bn.
David and Simon Reuben – £21.46bn.
Sri and Gopi Hinduja and family – £17bn.
James Dyson and family – £16.3bn.
Lakshmi Mittal and family – £14.68bn.
Alisher Usmanov – £13.4bn.
Kirsten and Jorn Rausing – £13bn.
Roman Abramovich – £12.1bn.
Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken and Michel de Carvalho – £12.01bn.
Guy, George, Alannah and Galen Weston and family – £11bn.
But even the Sunday Times had to admit that this sharp increase in the wealthiest people’s wealth was obscene. PA reported that compiler of the Rich List Robert Watts said:
The global pandemic created lucrative opportunities for many online retailers, social networking apps and computer games tycoons.
The fact many of the super-rich grew so much wealthier at a time when thousands of us have buried loved ones and millions of us worried for our livelihoods makes this a very unsettling boom.
A nightmare for the rest of us
Meanwhile, for the rest of us, the pandemic has been nothing short of a nightmare.
It’s been marked by an increase in precariousness, poverty, and destitution for many people in the UK. As The Canary has documented, this is the reality if you didn’t make the Rich List:
The number of households living in destitution doubled in 2020.
Four in ten people who needed financial support to self-isolate couldn’t get it.
Chaos with Universal Credit included researchers slamming the contentious £20 uplift as “inadequate”.
Half a million people entitled to Universal Credit didn’t claim it due to the complexity of the system, for fear of looking like ‘scroungers’, and other reasons.
Unicef fed hungry children in the UK for the first time in its history.
The Trussell Trust saw food parcels it gave to children increase in number by 107% in 2020.
The Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN) said that it saw an 88% increase in overall use between February and October 2020.
The Trussell Trust said it saw a 47% increase in “need” between 1 April and 30 September 2020. It gave out 1.2m food parcels.
By November 2020, almost 700,000 more people were in poverty than before the pandemic. This included 120,000 more children.
And moreover, the poorest communities saw the highest coronavirus death rates. As The Canary previously reported, some attribute this in part to years of social security reform.
As one Twitter user summed up:
This is not something we should should be proud of. To host a billionaire in 2021 means that you have 10,000’s people in the same country living in absolute poverty.
It’s probably safe to say that a few years ago, most Americans weren’t familiar with the term universal basic income, commonly abbreviated as UBI. But more recently, as the idea has grown in popularity among the tech community, and with Andrew Yang’s presidential run putting it into the political spotlight, the idea of everybody in the country receiving a monthly check just for existing has begun to capture the public’s imagination and has become a more normalized part of the political lexicon.
It’s important to note that there are multiple versions of universal basic income, from libertarian or right-wing iterations which see the UBI as a replacement for public benefits, to more progressive versions, such as those discussed in this article, which are intended as a supplement to already existing social safety net programs and which do not use means-testing (such as requiring employment) as a qualifying factor.
In fact, just in the last few years, several cities and nonprofits, and even tech companies across the United States have begun launching guaranteed income pilot programs intended to study the practical effects that no-strings-attached cash payments may have on a wide variety of communities, spanning from immigrants of varied legal status, to formerly incarcerated people, to women of color who are raising children, and more. Although a number of these programs are not technically universal, instead targeting specific communities, a significant number of them are truly universal.
Perhaps the most well-known universal basic income pilot program took place in the city of Stockton, California. The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration, or SEED program, was launched in February 2019 and lasted 24 months. Led by former Stockton Mayor Michael D. Tubbs, the SEED initiative was the country’s first mayor-led guaranteed income program, giving $500 a month to 125 Stocktonians.
The program, which concluded this February, was a randomized control trial, and has been evaluated by a team of independent researchers who just published a report sharing the study’s key findings.
“The Stockton results were really powerful,” said Natalie Foster, co-founder of the Economic Security Project, a network that supports exploration and experimentation of a guaranteed income, and the first organization to put money into the SEED demonstration. “People reported much lower stress, less anxiety attacks, people went off meds — just a much lower load of stress in general, which is good for society.”
Pam and Jim — one couple in their late 20s/early 30s who live in Stockton with their three school-age children and were recipients of the SEED funding — described how they used to regularly have panic attacks as a result of financial stress, but since receiving the monthly basic income, they’ve reported that their anxiety has greatly decreased.
“I had panic attacks and anxiety,” Pam told researchers in Stockton. “I had to take a pill for it. And I haven’t even touched them in a while. I used to carry them on me all the time.”
The report also showed that a guaranteed income reduced economic volatility. For example, researchers found that households receiving the intervention were better positioned over time to cover a $400 unexpected expense with cash or a credit card paid in full than the control group.
At the start of the program, only 25 percent of recipients could pay for an unexpected expense with cash or a cash equivalent, rather than racking up debt. One year in, 52 percent of those in the treatment group could pay for an unexpected expense with cash or a cash equivalent.
The research also showed that the intervention created new opportunities for self-determination, choice, goal-setting and risk-taking; and enabled recipients to find full-time employment. For example, in February of 2019, 28 percent of recipients had full-time employment, contrasted with 40 percent one year later.
“When given a baseline of income security, people found full-time work at twice the rate as the control group because they had to invest in the risky endeavor of applying for a job,” Foster said. “By having a little bit more economic security, they were able to spend more time on their own employment and with their own families.”
These findings are consistent with other universal basic income pilots, which show that, counter to what certain right-wing taking points against UBI might suggest, unconditional cash has actually been shown to increase participation in the labor force, rather than disincentivize it.
The report also outlined how people spent the money, which was largely on goods and services and things like groceries and utilities. The monthly payments also provided recipients with something less tangible: time.
“There is a story that has always stuck with me where one of the participants talked about going to the swimming pool with his children one Saturday morning after he started getting the monthly checks,” Foster said. “He realized that his kid knew how to swim, which is something he didn’t know because he’d never had the luxury of a Saturday morning with his children where he didn’t have to work.”
The promising data coming out of pilots and demonstrations like those in Dauphin and Stockton have helped to spur a national movement. In fact, Mayor Tubbs’s SEED demonstration inspired him to launch Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, a coalition which consists of more than 40 mayors across the country, from large metropolises like Los Angeles, California, to smaller cities such as Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Montpelier, Vermont.
“Those mayors are saying they support a federal guaranteed income, and that it would make the local economies and the households in their cities much better off if there were income security provided,” Foster said. “So, many of these mayors are going to demonstrate what a guaranteed income looks like in their city.”
One of these cities is Patterson, New Jersey, where Mayor Andre Sayegh announced the launch of a pilot program called Guaranteed Income in March 2021. The program will give $400 per month to 110 people, regardless of employment status, for a one year.
But not all cities are waiting for their mayors and policy makers to make the first move. In 2018, a group of mothers in the city of Jackson, Mississippi, launched the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, the first pilot in the U.S. to offer monthly payments specifically to low-income African American mothers.
“It currently is the longest-running guaranteed income project in the country, and it was the first guaranteed income project to take a gender and racial justice approach,” Aisha Nyandoro, the program’s founder, told Truthout. “We can’t talk about economic inequalities or economic justice or a guaranteed income without talking about race and gender and the role that those two realities are playing in the significant inequalities and inequities that we see around wealth.”
The Magnolia Mother’s program provides Black mothers in Jackson $1,000 per month for 12 months, and has supported 230 mothers since its inception. There is also a multi-generational component to the project which invests a one-time deposit of $1,000 into a savings account for the children of the mothers in the program.
“Our moms always talk about how it gives them breathing room, it provides the space so they can zoom out and reflect and think and plan,” Nyandoro said. “People pay off debt, explore home ownership, get cars, go on vacation for the first time. One of our moms in our first year went to visit her father — she hadn’t seen her father in over 20 years because neither one of them had ever had the disposable cash necessary to go visit each other.”
The guaranteed income provided by the Magnolia Mother’s program is not technically a universal basic income because it’s targeted to a specific, marginalized demographic, a relatively recent trend in the movement for a basic income.
“I do believe that targeted programs like ours can have a universal impact,” Nyandoro said. “The work that we have done and that SEED has done and all of the other advocates who have been working for this for the last few years, all of that research and all of our advocacy has really helped to lead the charge for cash disbursements, or stimulus checks, or the child tax credit that we’re seeing now. And that is all universal.”
Although not officially partnered with the city, Jackson’s mayor, Chokwe Lumumba, is a member of the Mayors for a Guaranteed Income coalition, so the potential for a municipal guaranteed income program is not off the table.
“The demonstrations of basic income are replicating in cities across the United States at incredible speed and have spurred a federal conversation,” Economic Security Project’s Foster told Truthout. “We live in an era of pandemics. There will be more and more income instability and income insecurity, and guaranteed income is something that should be part of our 21st century social contract to help families weather coming pandemics, whether they be disruptions to the labor market, climate-induced disasters or future viruses.”
Although still somewhat siloed in specific localities, the pilot studies and guaranteed income programs emerging across the country are all providing useful and important data on the positive outcomes of providing individuals and communities with unconditional cash. This data is important to starting a national conversation about basic income and is also useful for policy makers when considering the potential for municipal, state or even federal programs.
“What’s important is that these demonstrations show what’s possible — but they are never a substitute for public policy.” Foster said. “I think we’re at a moment, as a society, where we’re inspired by these pilots and are moving to make them policy — we’re going from pilots to policy.”
There are currently around 30 guaranteed income pilots either taking place or being planned all across the country, mostly having taken place or having been announced in the last two or three years. With mayors in cities like Oakland, California, and Hartford, Connecticut, unveiling new basic income pilots in just the last few months, it’s clear that more and more municipalities are interested in reimagining how to ensure economic security and stability for their residents.
“What I’m working on—like making sure students have access to food, clean clothing, and streetlights—may not look like what I’m working on,” Catherine Gilmore told me over a phone call. Gilmore has worked as an educator in Hillsborough County, Florida, for 13 years, and has spent the last six years at Gibsonton Elementary School where she was in the classroom for four years prior to spending the last two years as the community schools coordinator there. During our phone call, she explained to me how her school has addressed its low scores on the state’s school performance report card. And it seems to be working.
In the 2017-2018 school year, Gibsonton received a grade of “D” on the state’s annual report card that assesses elementary schools on the basis of their scores on standardized achievement tests. In 2018-2019, Gibsonton raised its grade to a “C.”
While Gilmore welcomed the progress, she warned against overemphasizing these assessments, calling them “lagging indicators.”
“State standardized testing mostly just identifies student demographics,” she told me, an observation that is validated by research. “Sure, we use data, including test scores. But we use data to drive for the right things rather than letting data get in the way.”
The “right things,” in her view, are the factors—what she spends her time on—that she believes tend to correlate with test scores but are often ignored by school improvement approaches that tend to blame educators when test scores are low.
Often, what can lead to low test scores may have nothing to do with academics. For instance, making sure students are well-fed seems self-evident because students who are hungry aren’t going to do very well at schoolwork. Making sure students have clean clothes seems a little less obvious. But streetlights?
What Gilmore is practicing is an approach to school improvement that is getting more attention—and perhaps a lot more money—as schools reopen from the pandemic; and policy experts, politicians, and pundits hail the restart as a clean slate for drawing up new plans for “redesigning” schools.
Addressing More Than Just a Test Score
The approach Gilmore refers to, called “community schools,” looks at addressing student achievement by responding to the full range of factors in the community that can influence learning, including factors outside of schools.
The approach, as defined by the U.S. Department of Education’s Full-Service Community Schools (FSCS) program, involves “the coordination, integration, accessibility, and effectiveness of services for children and families, particularly for children attending high-poverty schools, including high-poverty rural schools.”
The community schools approach got its first significant national attention in the 2020 presidential campaign when, as Reuben Jacobson from American University’s School of Education wrote in an op-ed for the Hill, “[a]ll of the leading candidates, from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), … committed to further investing in community schools through their education proposals.”
The profile of the community schools approach rose even higher in April 2021, reported the 74, when the Biden administration proposed a fiscal 2022 budget for the education department that included an increase in spending of $413 million for the FSCS, a nearly 15-fold boost for the program, from $30 million to $443 million.
Days after the budget announcement, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona visited an elementary school in Prince George’s County, Maryland—where schools recently reopened—that “is one of 65 ‘community schools’ in the county,” the Washington Postreported, “each considered a hub for family support and social services, along with student learning.” This marked one of the first school visits of his tenure.
‘Our Families Are Struggling to Survive’
Gibsonton Elementary is part of the Hillsborough County Public Schools system, the seventh-largest school district in the U.S., serving nearly 224,000 students. The district is in its third year of implementing the community schools approach, Rob Kriete, president of Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association, told me.
Kriete taught middle school and high school English for 24 years in Hillsborough County before taking temporary leave to serve as the president of the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association, which is affiliated with the state and national teachers’ unions.
Six schools in the district are in their third year of using the community schools approach, two are in their second year, and two more are being added next year.
“We’ve been very intentional about the schools we’ve picked to adopt the approach,” Kriete said, but the district has not taken a “top-down approach,” and has instead chosen schools that seem well-suited to the approach and have leadership and faculty who are agreeable to the demands of it.
Gibsonton Elementary seemed like a good fit. The school is just one of a handful of schools in Gibsonton, an unincorporated, semi-rural community south of Tampa Bay that has its roots in agriculture, light manufacturing, maritime-related businesses, and the carnival industry.
Nearly 20 percent of households in the community are at or below the poverty rate, according toWorld Population Review, with a median house value of only $188,400, and with 71 percent of adults having attained an education of less than an associate or college degree.
The community seems bereft of many services children and families would need.
Clinics and other health care facilities are sparse and modest and mostly inconvenient to families living near the elementary school. Facilities for dental care and eye care are even rarer. Other than a Walmart Supercenter, there are no grocery stores, so many families have to rely on small convenience stores and bare-bones retailers like Dollar General and Family Dollar that offer very little in the way of fresh and nutritious food.
Gibsonton Elementary also has a student population that often struggles in the public school system. Most of the students (56.4 percent) are Hispanic, according to state data, and nearly all the students are economically disadvantaged (94.1 percent), with 26.3 percent being English language learners, and 23.8 percent having some sort of disability.
“We became a community school because we really needed the outside help,” Gilmore told me. “Our families are struggling to survive,” she said. Many of the school’s families are generational carnival people and live in old and often rundown trailers. Some still leave in May and return in October, which is considered the peak season for the carnival industry.
“There’s so much growth in communities all around us,” she said, referring to the more prosperous Tampa metro area, “but the growth hasn’t improved our community.”
What the Community Really Needs
In March 2018, Gibsonton Elementary leadership, faculty, and support staff agreed the school should adopt the community schools approach. “The entire school had to be behind the idea,” she said, “and we were.” Out of the six candidates who applied for school improvement coordinator, a key position the approach requires, Gilmore was chosen.
Much of what the school needed seemed obvious to Gilmore and her colleagues, but the first year of implementing the community schools model requires the school to conduct a needs assessment, including an audit of program strengths and weaknesses and assets in the surrounding community, and an outreach, via surveys and interviews, to students, parents, business leaders, local nonprofits, and others.
“We interviewed 92 percent of parents, including both parents in two-parent households,” Gilmore recalled. “We really wanted to get a thorough understanding of our stakeholders’ needs and what they felt were the problems.”
After the audit and survey results were accumulated and ranked, the foremost concern was the low rate of student attendance. Parent engagement was also lacking, and families said they wanted a more enriching program for their children—not just the basics.
Poised with that knowledge, Gilmore and her colleagues went about the work of addressing the school’s attendance problems.
But what they had not prepared to address, but were actually better prepared for because they adopted the community schools approach, was a pandemic.
Not a One-Size-Fits-All Approach
“When COVID-19 hit, the first thing we knew we had to do was find [and reach out to] our [students’] families,” Gilmore recalled.
She helped organize a team to make phone calls and canvass neighborhoods. Because of the community’s ties to the carnival business, family mobility rates in Gibsonton were already high. COVID-19 would only make transience worse. Yet, within four weeks, Gilmore and her team found every Gibsonton Elementary student, the first school in Hillsborough County to do so.
“We were 100 percent better able to make the transition [caused by COVID-19] because of the community schools model,” Gilmore said. “Because we were already talking with our families, they weren’t afraid of us. Also, because we had created my position [of school improvement coordinator], we had more capacity. The model ensured we had structures and people in place.”
The dialogue the school had already established with its families also ensured the response to their efforts would be effective.
“The community schools approach was well-suited to the crisis because the approach demands that you stop, ask questions, and listen to those you serve,” Kriete explained. “Another strength of the community schools approach is that it is not a one-size-fits-all approach, and there is a lot of flexibility built into it.”
Based on the community input, the school expanded its on-campus food pantry to include more fresh fruit and vegetables, bread, and fresh meat. For those families who couldn’t come to campus, the school provided prepackaged boxes.
When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis mandated schools reopen for in-person learning in August 2020, Gibsonton Elementary had in place resources and infrastructure to support families still reeling from the pandemic.
Parents who attended the open house found, in their children’s seats, backpacks full of supplies their children would need for the new school year. “I saw parents leaving in tears from the relief that they would start off the year with supplies,” Gilmore recalled. (Parents who couldn’t attend the open house got supplies through the school’s backpack program.)
Every two months, the school sends out fliers asking families what they need, and in one month, that outreach helped 644 families with a wide array of assistance.
“Today I helped a family find a home,” Gilmore told me during our phone call. “In November and December [2020], we helped families deal with evictions and utilities.”
What Raised Reading and Math Scores
Big contributors to Gibsonton’s rise from grade “C” to “D” on Florida’s school performance report card were the school’s dramatic increases in students who achieved learning gains shown in assessment test scores from one year to the next.
Comparing 2017-2018 results to those in 2018-2019, achievement gains in English language arts increased by 12.8 percentage points. The gains were even larger in mathematics, 16.3 points. The increases were more significant for the lowest-performing 25 percent of students, rising by 16.6 percentage points in English language arts and 24.8 points in mathematics.
Gilmore believes much of these gains had to do with the work the school did to increase attendance. But how they went about increasing attendance was guided by their use of the community schools approach.
“When we found out there was a problem with attendance, we asked parents why,” she recalled, and one of the most frequent responses they heard was that not having clean clothes was an impediment to coming to school.
The school responded by installing a campus washer-dryer and eventually opened a clothing closet that provided some free clothing articles.
Another factor contributing to the attendance problem was that in the shorter daylight hours of winter, streets were often too dark for students to safely walk to the bus or to school, and there were too few streetlights.
Given this response, the school organized an effort to have the county install new streetlights around the school. Working with the commissioners, the number of streetlights near the school quickly increased from nine to 51. Attendance immediately improved.
What Gilmore hopes to move to next is to work with a local nonprofit to provide mental health services to help children and families through the social and emotional traumas of the pandemic.
“Having the community schools approach that includes someone like me in place is critical,” she said. “If a school has all these needs, but no one in place specifically focusing on those needs, then that work goes by the wayside. Teachers and principals simply don’t have the time to address these issues.”
One hundred and fifty years ago, in the bloody wake of the Civil War, the abolitionist Julia Ward Howe issued a “Mother’s Day Proclamation.” The world, she wrote, could no longer bear such terrible violence and death. She called on women across the country to “rise up through the ashes and devastation” and come together in the cause of peace. Forty years later, her daughter Anna Jarvis created Mother’s Day.
In the midst of another national trauma, with the latest Mother’s Day just past, perhaps it’s an auspicious moment to celebrate not just mothers, but women more generally. I think about countless women like my mom (who died nearly a year ago) enduring tremendous adversity to make ends meet and care for those they love. During the pandemic, after all, women have found themselves on the front lines in so many ways. They make up more than 75% of healthcare workers, almost 80% of frontline social workers, and more than 70% of government and community-based service workers. Add in one more thing: women have been hit first and worst by the economic crisis that Covid-19 set off, as female-dominated industries like retail, leisure, and hospitality were decimated.
The situation continues to be so dire for women that economists have even begun to talk about a “shecession.” A recent poll found that a quarter of women claimed they were financially worse off a year into the pandemic. In March, the percentage of women out of, or looking for, work was the highest it’s been since December 1988. For the first time in American history, job and income losses in an economic crisis have been worse for women than for men. And it’s been poorer women and women of color who have been hit hardest of all.
But the true depth of this crisis can’t be measured by job numbers and frontline risks alone. In an intensified yet eerily familiar way, this past year-plus has laid bare the pressures, burdens, and violence that women, especially poor women and women of color, face every day. It’s highlighted the disproportionate, unpaid labor they shoulder at home; the role they take in raising and educating children while caring for the sick and elderly; and the paternalistic, often punitive, presence of welfare and law enforcement agencies like Child Protective Services, the police, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in their lives.
In such a moment, we should all think about the opening words of Howe’s 150-year-old proclamation: “Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!”
Of Water and Tears
Before slavery was outlawed in America, formerly enslaved abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass insisted that those who feel the first pains of injustice must be the first to strike out against it. That was the very kind of “baptism” Howe invoked in her proclamation — an invitation to initiate women into struggles born from those already so much a part of their lives. Today, her invocation of “water and tears” should resonate for millions. Among them, it may have no greater relevance than for the women of the Michigan cities of Flint and Detroit.
April 25th marked the seventh anniversary of the ongoing water crisis in Flint. Many will remember the breaking news coverage about the lead poisoning of that city’s water system at the end of 2015. Others will recall President Barack Obama’s “mission accomplished” moment when he visited Flint and drank a cup of newly filtered tap water. But for the many women, poor and largely of color, who have become Flint’s “water protectors,” the crisis isn’t over. Even now, new water lines are still needed in some neighborhoods. A $641 million class-action settlement fund from lawsuits against the state of Michigan has indeed recently been set up for Flint residents, particularly impacted children, to receive help. However, community leaders are continuing to organize, because unfortunately many of the families and children who need the resources the most will be left out since the settlement requires documentation, which the poorest and most vulnerable families will struggle to obtain.
It’s important to note that the struggle of these warriors for clean water did not begin when the first cameras arrived in Flint to record the disaster. It began when, in 2011, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed an unelected emergency manager to rule the city with near-dictatorial powers.
A similar emergency manager had already imposed mass water shutoffs in Detroit after that city went bankrupt, while the one in Flint switched from piping in well-treated water from Detroit to pumping water directly out of the Flint River, which had been an unofficial waste-disposal site for local industry for decades. It was seen as a cost-saving measure for that financially strapped city until a new water-piping system could be built. Warnings and safety precautions were ignored when it came to lead and other pollutants ending up in local drinking water, a decision that would, in the end, condemn Flint’s inhabitants to years of mass lead poisoning. Because of that same tainted water, more than 100 people would also die of Legionnaires’ disease.
We’re talking about a place that had once been a beacon of industry and prosperity, a city now struggling under the weight of deindustrialization and growing poverty. Claire McClinton, a long-time Flint community organizer and leader, summed up the crisis this way: “They could not have taken our water away without taking our democracy first.”
Her words are informed as much by history as by contemporary events. McClinton and many of the other women fighting for clean water had already spent decades organizing for a broad range of welfare, labor, and economic rights. She and many of those other Michigan water warriors are my political mothers and mentors. No wonder I once again celebrated them (as well as my own mom) this Mother’s Day.
Even earlier, in 1996, during the heyday of neoliberal austerity politics, welfare-rights and labor activists like those in Flint and Detroit witnessed Democratic President Bill Clinton eliminate the entitlement of millions to welfare and better living standards of millions by signing into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. Among its other “reforms,” it replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a program which provided desperately needy children with welfare payments, with the far more restrictive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. They watched as government agencies kicked staggering numbers of people off life-saving federal assistance programs and continued to forcibly rip kids away from parents who, in terrible economic circumstances, could no longer afford to feed and house their own families adequately.
As the situation in Flint made clear, the historic fight for welfare was integrally connected to the ongoing fight for clean and affordable water, as well as, in our present moment in thousands of communities, the fight for living wages and voting rights. And don’t forget the need for a revival of an increasingly impoverished, not to say (in the wake of Donald Trump) ravaged, democracy.
Indeed, all these issues raise questions about the role the government should play in caring for people and addressing fundamental fractures in society like poverty, hunger, and sickness, which always disproportionately hurt women. All of these are, then — or at least should be — non-negotiable issues for women today.
Lifting From the Bottom Up
The first 100 days of the administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have clearly represented a surprising pivot from neoliberalism’s halcyon days under Clinton. For an anti-poverty organizer like myself, schooled in the politics of the 1990s and early 2000s, it was startling, even moving, to watch Biden address a joint session of Congress and announce that “trickle-down economics has never worked. It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle-out… We have a real chance to root out systemic racism that plagues American life… A chance to deliver real equity. Good jobs and good schools. Affordable housing. Clear air and clean water.”
Without a doubt, one of the administration’s biggest achievements so far is the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), a $1.9-trillion relief package that has already begun to inject desperately needed resources into a needy America. Included in it was the Child Tax Credit (CTC), a potentially breakthrough anti-poverty program.
The CTC could be transformative for millions of poor families, especially if it were to be expanded and made permanent. For some observers, it may seem like a good idea conceived by policy experts for a critical but passing moment of national need. Dig a little deeper, though, and what you’ll find is that the CTC is an inheritance from the efforts of poor women over these last decades, especially those of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) in the 1960s and 1970s, some of whom are still organizing in Flint and Detroit.
The NWRO was a national organization of poor women on welfare, Black and white alike, at a time when more than eight million single women and their children received regular but meager benefits through the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. NWRO leaders, however, saw such welfare not as a form of charity, but as a right. They insisted on the dignity of all work, whether in traditional jobs or at home, and the need to compensate all women for their labor. They championed a welfare system that wouldn’t separate the “deserving” from “undeserving” poor but instead put agency and power in the hands of welfare recipients rather than bureaucrats and social workers.
As it grew, their organizing coalesced around a demand for a guaranteed adequate annual income — and, in the late 1960s, they would prove a force to be reckoned with, recruiting leaders like Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., to their cause. Their political imaginations were decades ahead of their time and their moral clarity on the position of poor women in this society prophetically advanced.
In 1972, Johnnie Tillmon, the first chairwoman of the NWRO, published a paradigm-shifting essay entitled “Welfare is a Women’s Issue,” in which she wrote:
“I’m a woman. I’m a black woman. I’m a poor woman. I’m a fat woman. I’m a middle-aged woman. And I’m on welfare. In this country, if you’re any of those things you count less as a human being. If you’re all of those things, you don’t count at all.”
Nearly half a century later, as we pause to honor mothers, isn’t it time to recognize the ways women like Johnnie Tillmon have for all too long been discarded by this society? Isn’t it time to be honest about those men — and women — who have risen to great heights, only to wield power in ways that hurt women? As for me, I can’t forget the moment when, during the fight over ARPA, Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema, a Democrat, made a show of walking past the Senate clerk’s desk, giving an exaggerated thumbs down to an amendment to the bill that would have raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
When a reporter from the Huffington Post inquired about her vote, the senator’s spokesperson claimed that it was sexist to comment on a female politician’s “body language” or “physical demeanor.” Much more harmful to women, though, is the disproportionate impact of poverty and low wages on their families and them.
Sinema represents a state in which nearly three million people are poor or one emergency away from economic ruin, a majority of them women. It’s troubling, then, that a woman who has reportedly experienced poverty herself (although questions have been raised about whether she has exaggerated how poor she was) would deny living wages to poor and low-income women in her state and across the country. Among the Democrats in the Senate joining Sinema in dissent were New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, as well as five male senators. (All seven of them are millionaires.) Their actions are a stark reminder that women need genuine representation in Congress, as well as policies that lift us all.
Sadly, that “Nay” vote against including a minimum wage raise in the Covid-19 relief package hurt women, people of color, and the poor. Altogether, 59% of low-wage workers are women and nearly 40% of all Black workers labor for less than $15 an hour. Yes, during the pandemic, we’ve begun calling many low-wage workers “essential.” It turns out, though, that they aren’t essential enough to be guaranteed wages that might help them afford the essentials of life.
Now, Sinema is also at the center of another legislative battle — about the future of the filibuster, a racist relic of the slavery and then Jim Crow eras that still has democracy in chains. It continues to prove a powerful cudgel for extremists in the Republican Party who are increasingly unable to win a governing majority fairly. It’s especially useful for those determined to stonewall on a host of policies that disproportionately impact women, from wage increases to welfare programs and reproductive rights. Sadly, despite claiming to care about sexism and the fortunes of women, Sinema continues to help hold the Senate hostage to score political points.
Arise Women of This Day
As a white woman — a mother, a pastor, a feminist, an activist, a teacher, and the co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival — I feel obliged to challenge Senator Sinema: for her performance on the Senate floor, for her stance against living wages and for the filibuster, and for the long-term impact her actions will have on the 140 million poor and low-income people in this country, especially the 74 million poor and low-income women.
I also feel honored and obliged to uphold the work of women like Claire McClinton, Johnnie Tillmon, and Julia Ward Howe who have allowed us glimpses of what a government and economy that served and empowered all women could look like and who have highlighted the prophetic leadership of women impacted by the social injustices of their day. Now is the time to raise wages, ensure vaccine equity, and so much more. Now is the time to lift from the bottom so that all of society can rise, as poor people have been saying for years and President Biden has recently reaffirmed.
Tillmon couldn’t have made it clearer for us. “Women’s liberation,” she said so many years ago, “is simple. No woman in this country can feel dignified, no woman can be liberated, until all women get off their knees.”
Today, let’s hear her and arise together! In truth, every day should be Mother’s Day.
Rights groups say government and UN inaction has left people lacking food and medicine for weeks
Tens of thousands of Cambodians are going hungry under the country’s strict lockdown as Covid cases continue to rise amid criticism from human rights groups that the government and the UN are being too slow to act.
The south-east Asian country had recorded one of the world’s smallest coronavirus caseloads, but infections have climbed from about 500 in late February to 20,695 this week, with 136 deaths.
8Mins Read OUR 4°C-ABLE WORLD is a new student-led theatrical production that has premiered on YouTube on May 1, centred on the disproportionate impact of the climate emergency on marginalised communities. Following the fictional story of teenage climate activist Jane, the film takes viewers on her journey to discovering the intersectionality between the climate crisis, poverty and […]
As we face the stark reality that one in seven Americans are projected to have resources below the poverty level in 2021, the world demands systemic solutions. No problem as widespread as poverty in America and across the world can be blamed entirely on the individuals and families that poverty affects — though some would certainly argue this point.
Approaching poverty systemically may be the only way we can make progress at any significant rate. From minimum wage to criminal justice reform, systemic changes have the potential to make a real impact on poverty at a national level. Adopted at scale, systemic solutions can help end the global travesty that is poverty.
But understanding potential fixes requires first assessing the causes of poverty. With a systemic approach, we can broaden the picture and give context to the millions of families struggling with a lack of resources. In turn, working solutions can become much clearer.
Assessing the Causes of Poverty
A host of factors contribute to the problem of poverty. From geographical locations where access to jobs and opportunities is scarce to faulty education systems that add to the problem of generation poverty, the causes of inequality on a massive scale are far-ranging and nebulous. While a world without any poverty may be difficult to imagine, addressing the root causes behind the millions without access to resources — even in countries as wealthy as America — can help give us the tools to make systemic changes.
Here are three of the most prominent causes of widespread poverty:
Wage Inequality
Often, the poverty problem goes hand-in-hand with a lack of access to jobs that pay a living wage. Either these are leaving cities in the post-industrial economic shift, or the jobs that remain simply do not pay enough. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that as many as 11.4% of full-time, year-round American workers were not being paid enough to break past poverty thresholds. For CEOs, however, the situation is much different. From 1978 to 2019, CEO pay increased by 1,167%. For typical workers, wages grew only 13.7% in the same period.
Social Injustice
The problem of wage inequality is only compounded by the social injustice still commonly experienced by women and minorities in the sectors of the economy they more often occupy. The EPI found that female workers were paid poverty wages at a greater rate than men (13.5% compared to 9.6% of men). Meanwhile, destructive austerity policies like those employed in the UK disproportionately impact women, children, and minorities, pushing vulnerable families into greater levels of poverty. Social injustice keeps certain groups from getting ahead, a problem caused by poor governmental representation, underpayment in sectors of the economy like service, and limited access to other necessary resources like childcare.
Lack of Resources
Finally, the limits of resources and their even geographical spread equate to greater levels of poverty. For example, UNESCO has found that if all students in low-income countries were given the education to acquire elementary reading skills, as many as 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty. Limited access to education, clean water, food, and healthcare all contribute to poverty around the world. Now, climate change threatens access to food and water in various regions, meaning the problem will only get worse without systemic solutions.
Applying Systemic Changes
Applying solutions on a scale large enough to make a real difference requires understanding the causes of poverty and combating them at their source. With that achieved, we can propose informed solutions at a systemic level that may play a role in elevating families out of poverty and establishing greater levels of equality throughout the world. From federal minimum wages to education systems, this is much more possible than you might imagine.
Addressing Pay Disparities and Social Injustice
First, we can address the problem of wage inequality. This can start with a minimum wage increase, which has the power to impact the lives of 32 million workers. The Raise the Wage Act of 2021, for example, is projected to make a huge difference in the lives of workers relegated to low-wage work, which are disproportionately people of color. In fact, by lifting the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, the 23% of the workforce made up of Black women and Latinas would experience an annual income boost between $3,500 and $3,700 per individual.
Additionally, we can create legislation that ties CEO pay to that of their workforce. There is no conscionable reason that CEOs should be making hundreds of times more a year than their employees. Shareholders often do not even understand the pay packages they offer CEOs, and higher rates of pay have been associated with poorer market performance. With tax incentives for more equitable pay ratios, we can better combat inequality on a systemic level.
Building Better Resources
Then, we can better address the resource discrepancies on a global scale. From education to criminal justice systems, resources are needed to mitigate the damages of poverty and curb the cycles of poverty born by system problems. Social workers are needed to empower and advocate for communities all over the world, educating them about the resources available to them and providing even more. Schools must support their students with programs designed to elevate them based on specific needs, while criminal justice reform must support re-entry.
All these resources can help a family survive unexpected financial hardships, especially after COVID. In the era of mass global financial instability, giving communities across the world the means to succeed will help eradicate poverty. Through education, opportunity, and equity, we can ensure that talent and ability aren’t lost to the shackles of social injustice that hold too many individuals back. But we must ensure that systemic solutions are built with and for the families they target.
By advocating for systemic change, you can support a richer, better world. Start now by exploring the needs of your community and supporting legislation that improves pay and resource accessibility.
Beau Peters is a freelance writer based out of Portland, OR. He has a particular interest in covering workers’ rights, social justice, and workplace issues and solutions. Read other articles by Beau.
As we face the stark reality that one in seven Americans are projected to have resources below the poverty level in 2021, the world demands systemic solutions. No problem as widespread as poverty in America and across the world can be blamed entirely on the individuals and families that poverty affects — though some would certainly argue this point.
Approaching poverty systemically may be the only way we can make progress at any significant rate. From minimum wage to criminal justice reform, systemic changes have the potential to make a real impact on poverty at a national level. Adopted at scale, systemic solutions can help end the global travesty that is poverty.
But understanding potential fixes requires first assessing the causes of poverty. With a systemic approach, we can broaden the picture and give context to the millions of families struggling with a lack of resources. In turn, working solutions can become much clearer.
Assessing the Causes of Poverty
A host of factors contribute to the problem of poverty. From geographical locations where access to jobs and opportunities is scarce to faulty education systems that add to the problem of generation poverty, the causes of inequality on a massive scale are far-ranging and nebulous. While a world without any poverty may be difficult to imagine, addressing the root causes behind the millions without access to resources — even in countries as wealthy as America — can help give us the tools to make systemic changes.
Here are three of the most prominent causes of widespread poverty:
Wage Inequality
Often, the poverty problem goes hand-in-hand with a lack of access to jobs that pay a living wage. Either these are leaving cities in the post-industrial economic shift, or the jobs that remain simply do not pay enough. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that as many as 11.4% of full-time, year-round American workers were not being paid enough to break past poverty thresholds. For CEOs, however, the situation is much different. From 1978 to 2019, CEO pay increased by 1,167%. For typical workers, wages grew only 13.7% in the same period.
Social Injustice
The problem of wage inequality is only compounded by the social injustice still commonly experienced by women and minorities in the sectors of the economy they more often occupy. The EPI found that female workers were paid poverty wages at a greater rate than men (13.5% compared to 9.6% of men). Meanwhile, destructive austerity policies like those employed in the UK disproportionately impact women, children, and minorities, pushing vulnerable families into greater levels of poverty. Social injustice keeps certain groups from getting ahead, a problem caused by poor governmental representation, underpayment in sectors of the economy like service, and limited access to other necessary resources like childcare.
Lack of Resources
Finally, the limits of resources and their even geographical spread equate to greater levels of poverty. For example, UNESCO has found that if all students in low-income countries were given the education to acquire elementary reading skills, as many as 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty. Limited access to education, clean water, food, and healthcare all contribute to poverty around the world. Now, climate change threatens access to food and water in various regions, meaning the problem will only get worse without systemic solutions.
Applying Systemic Changes
Applying solutions on a scale large enough to make a real difference requires understanding the causes of poverty and combating them at their source. With that achieved, we can propose informed solutions at a systemic level that may play a role in elevating families out of poverty and establishing greater levels of equality throughout the world. From federal minimum wages to education systems, this is much more possible than you might imagine.
Addressing Pay Disparities and Social Injustice
First, we can address the problem of wage inequality. This can start with a minimum wage increase, which has the power to impact the lives of 32 million workers. The Raise the Wage Act of 2021, for example, is projected to make a huge difference in the lives of workers relegated to low-wage work, which are disproportionately people of color. In fact, by lifting the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, the 23% of the workforce made up of Black women and Latinas would experience an annual income boost between $3,500 and $3,700 per individual.
Additionally, we can create legislation that ties CEO pay to that of their workforce. There is no conscionable reason that CEOs should be making hundreds of times more a year than their employees. Shareholders often do not even understand the pay packages they offer CEOs, and higher rates of pay have been associated with poorer market performance. With tax incentives for more equitable pay ratios, we can better combat inequality on a systemic level.
Building Better Resources
Then, we can better address the resource discrepancies on a global scale. From education to criminal justice systems, resources are needed to mitigate the damages of poverty and curb the cycles of poverty born by system problems. Social workers are needed to empower and advocate for communities all over the world, educating them about the resources available to them and providing even more. Schools must support their students with programs designed to elevate them based on specific needs, while criminal justice reform must support re-entry.
All these resources can help a family survive unexpected financial hardships, especially after COVID. In the era of mass global financial instability, giving communities across the world the means to succeed will help eradicate poverty. Through education, opportunity, and equity, we can ensure that talent and ability aren’t lost to the shackles of social injustice that hold too many individuals back. But we must ensure that systemic solutions are built with and for the families they target.
By advocating for systemic change, you can support a richer, better world. Start now by exploring the needs of your community and supporting legislation that improves pay and resource accessibility.
Beau Peters is a freelance writer based out of Portland, OR. He has a particular interest in covering workers’ rights, social justice, and workplace issues and solutions. Read other articles by Beau.
As we face the stark reality that one in seven Americans are projected to have resources below the poverty level in 2021, the world demands systemic solutions. No problem as widespread as poverty in America and across the world can be blamed entirely on the individuals and families that poverty affects — though some would certainly argue this point.
Approaching poverty systemically may be the only way we can make progress at any significant rate. From minimum wage to criminal justice reform, systemic changes have the potential to make a real impact on poverty at a national level. Adopted at scale, systemic solutions can help end the global travesty that is poverty.
But understanding potential fixes requires first assessing the causes of poverty. With a systemic approach, we can broaden the picture and give context to the millions of families struggling with a lack of resources. In turn, working solutions can become much clearer.
Assessing the Causes of Poverty
A host of factors contribute to the problem of poverty. From geographical locations where access to jobs and opportunities is scarce to faulty education systems that add to the problem of generation poverty, the causes of inequality on a massive scale are far-ranging and nebulous. While a world without any poverty may be difficult to imagine, addressing the root causes behind the millions without access to resources — even in countries as wealthy as America — can help give us the tools to make systemic changes.
Here are three of the most prominent causes of widespread poverty:
Wage Inequality
Often, the poverty problem goes hand-in-hand with a lack of access to jobs that pay a living wage. Either these are leaving cities in the post-industrial economic shift, or the jobs that remain simply do not pay enough. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that as many as 11.4% of full-time, year-round American workers were not being paid enough to break past poverty thresholds. For CEOs, however, the situation is much different. From 1978 to 2019, CEO pay increased by 1,167%. For typical workers, wages grew only 13.7% in the same period.
Social Injustice
The problem of wage inequality is only compounded by the social injustice still commonly experienced by women and minorities in the sectors of the economy they more often occupy. The EPI found that female workers were paid poverty wages at a greater rate than men (13.5% compared to 9.6% of men). Meanwhile, destructive austerity policies like those employed in the UK disproportionately impact women, children, and minorities, pushing vulnerable families into greater levels of poverty. Social injustice keeps certain groups from getting ahead, a problem caused by poor governmental representation, underpayment in sectors of the economy like service, and limited access to other necessary resources like childcare.
Lack of Resources
Finally, the limits of resources and their even geographical spread equate to greater levels of poverty. For example, UNESCO has found that if all students in low-income countries were given the education to acquire elementary reading skills, as many as 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty. Limited access to education, clean water, food, and healthcare all contribute to poverty around the world. Now, climate change threatens access to food and water in various regions, meaning the problem will only get worse without systemic solutions.
Applying Systemic Changes
Applying solutions on a scale large enough to make a real difference requires understanding the causes of poverty and combating them at their source. With that achieved, we can propose informed solutions at a systemic level that may play a role in elevating families out of poverty and establishing greater levels of equality throughout the world. From federal minimum wages to education systems, this is much more possible than you might imagine.
Addressing Pay Disparities and Social Injustice
First, we can address the problem of wage inequality. This can start with a minimum wage increase, which has the power to impact the lives of 32 million workers. The Raise the Wage Act of 2021, for example, is projected to make a huge difference in the lives of workers relegated to low-wage work, which are disproportionately people of color. In fact, by lifting the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, the 23% of the workforce made up of Black women and Latinas would experience an annual income boost between $3,500 and $3,700 per individual.
Additionally, we can create legislation that ties CEO pay to that of their workforce. There is no conscionable reason that CEOs should be making hundreds of times more a year than their employees. Shareholders often do not even understand the pay packages they offer CEOs, and higher rates of pay have been associated with poorer market performance. With tax incentives for more equitable pay ratios, we can better combat inequality on a systemic level.
Building Better Resources
Then, we can better address the resource discrepancies on a global scale. From education to criminal justice systems, resources are needed to mitigate the damages of poverty and curb the cycles of poverty born by system problems. Social workers are needed to empower and advocate for communities all over the world, educating them about the resources available to them and providing even more. Schools must support their students with programs designed to elevate them based on specific needs, while criminal justice reform must support re-entry.
All these resources can help a family survive unexpected financial hardships, especially after COVID. In the era of mass global financial instability, giving communities across the world the means to succeed will help eradicate poverty. Through education, opportunity, and equity, we can ensure that talent and ability aren’t lost to the shackles of social injustice that hold too many individuals back. But we must ensure that systemic solutions are built with and for the families they target.
By advocating for systemic change, you can support a richer, better world. Start now by exploring the needs of your community and supporting legislation that improves pay and resource accessibility.
Beau Peters is a freelance writer based out of Portland, OR. He has a particular interest in covering workers’ rights, social justice, and workplace issues and solutions. Read other articles by Beau.
As we face the stark reality that one in seven Americans are projected to have resources below the poverty level in 2021, the world demands systemic solutions. No problem as widespread as poverty in America and across the world can be blamed entirely on the individuals and families that poverty affects — though some would certainly argue this point.
Approaching poverty systemically may be the only way we can make progress at any significant rate. From minimum wage to criminal justice reform, systemic changes have the potential to make a real impact on poverty at a national level. Adopted at scale, systemic solutions can help end the global travesty that is poverty.
But understanding potential fixes requires first assessing the causes of poverty. With a systemic approach, we can broaden the picture and give context to the millions of families struggling with a lack of resources. In turn, working solutions can become much clearer.
Assessing the Causes of Poverty
A host of factors contribute to the problem of poverty. From geographical locations where access to jobs and opportunities is scarce to faulty education systems that add to the problem of generation poverty, the causes of inequality on a massive scale are far-ranging and nebulous. While a world without any poverty may be difficult to imagine, addressing the root causes behind the millions without access to resources — even in countries as wealthy as America — can help give us the tools to make systemic changes.
Here are three of the most prominent causes of widespread poverty:
Wage Inequality
Often, the poverty problem goes hand-in-hand with a lack of access to jobs that pay a living wage. Either these are leaving cities in the post-industrial economic shift, or the jobs that remain simply do not pay enough. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that as many as 11.4% of full-time, year-round American workers were not being paid enough to break past poverty thresholds. For CEOs, however, the situation is much different. From 1978 to 2019, CEO pay increased by 1,167%. For typical workers, wages grew only 13.7% in the same period.
Social Injustice
The problem of wage inequality is only compounded by the social injustice still commonly experienced by women and minorities in the sectors of the economy they more often occupy. The EPI found that female workers were paid poverty wages at a greater rate than men (13.5% compared to 9.6% of men). Meanwhile, destructive austerity policies like those employed in the UK disproportionately impact women, children, and minorities, pushing vulnerable families into greater levels of poverty. Social injustice keeps certain groups from getting ahead, a problem caused by poor governmental representation, underpayment in sectors of the economy like service, and limited access to other necessary resources like childcare.
Lack of Resources
Finally, the limits of resources and their even geographical spread equate to greater levels of poverty. For example, UNESCO has found that if all students in low-income countries were given the education to acquire elementary reading skills, as many as 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty. Limited access to education, clean water, food, and healthcare all contribute to poverty around the world. Now, climate change threatens access to food and water in various regions, meaning the problem will only get worse without systemic solutions.
Applying Systemic Changes
Applying solutions on a scale large enough to make a real difference requires understanding the causes of poverty and combating them at their source. With that achieved, we can propose informed solutions at a systemic level that may play a role in elevating families out of poverty and establishing greater levels of equality throughout the world. From federal minimum wages to education systems, this is much more possible than you might imagine.
Addressing Pay Disparities and Social Injustice
First, we can address the problem of wage inequality. This can start with a minimum wage increase, which has the power to impact the lives of 32 million workers. The Raise the Wage Act of 2021, for example, is projected to make a huge difference in the lives of workers relegated to low-wage work, which are disproportionately people of color. In fact, by lifting the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025, the 23% of the workforce made up of Black women and Latinas would experience an annual income boost between $3,500 and $3,700 per individual.
Additionally, we can create legislation that ties CEO pay to that of their workforce. There is no conscionable reason that CEOs should be making hundreds of times more a year than their employees. Shareholders often do not even understand the pay packages they offer CEOs, and higher rates of pay have been associated with poorer market performance. With tax incentives for more equitable pay ratios, we can better combat inequality on a systemic level.
Building Better Resources
Then, we can better address the resource discrepancies on a global scale. From education to criminal justice systems, resources are needed to mitigate the damages of poverty and curb the cycles of poverty born by system problems. Social workers are needed to empower and advocate for communities all over the world, educating them about the resources available to them and providing even more. Schools must support their students with programs designed to elevate them based on specific needs, while criminal justice reform must support re-entry.
All these resources can help a family survive unexpected financial hardships, especially after COVID. In the era of mass global financial instability, giving communities across the world the means to succeed will help eradicate poverty. Through education, opportunity, and equity, we can ensure that talent and ability aren’t lost to the shackles of social injustice that hold too many individuals back. But we must ensure that systemic solutions are built with and for the families they target.
By advocating for systemic change, you can support a richer, better world. Start now by exploring the needs of your community and supporting legislation that improves pay and resource accessibility.
A project which asked working class people to keep diaries during the first coronavirus (Covid-19) lockdown is nearly complete. It’s now nearly ready for release as a graphic novel. But the project of lockdown diaries needs your help. It’s fundraising to get these crucial pieces of class and social history published.
Looking from the inside out
Lockdown Diaries of the Working Class is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter. It was founded by Dr Lisa McKenzie. She’s a working-class academic and sociologist who’s also an ethnographer. That’s someone who studies human culture and society; kind-of like an anthropologist. The difference is an ethnographer gathers and then presents the information from the point of view of the person/people being studied.
McKenzie’s approach always aims to be inclusive. She includes working-class people in the research process rather than just looking from the outside in at them. An excellent example of this is her groundbreaking bookGetting By. McKenzie spent several years interviewing, studying, and observing the residents of the St Ann’s estate in Nottingham. It was the estate she grew up on. The book smashed the establishment’s classist and racist narratives and tropes about life on council estates. Because McKenzie painted a picture of a community, its characters, and its values that the system rarely allows outsiders to see.
McKenzie has now turned her attention to life during lockdown. And the results could make for equally groundbreaking reading.
Lockdown Diaries
McKenzie launched the Lockdown Diaries at the start of the pandemic. She was worried about how life for the poorest people in the UK would be documented. That is, she was worried that other people would co-opt and narrate the lived experiences of working class people. McKenzie wanted them to tell their own stories. So, she contacted people she had worked with previously on other projects. McKenzie also put call-outs on social media. As she wrote for the London School of Economics (LSE):
I recruited 38 individual working-class diary writers. Some of them wrote for four weeks, while mothers who were home-schooling did five-seven days. I was sent pictures, images, traditional diaries, doodles, and short video diaries. They add up to an enormous amount of rich data from those first weeks of lockdown.
But for McKenzie, the project was about a lot more than just diaries.
The academic route
She told The Canary:
Initially I wasn’t really thinking about what I would do with this. At the beginning of lockdown, like everyone I was watching the telly a lot. And I realised that the same voices had got all the air space. Working class people were either being spoken about or not at all. I sat there wondering what was happening to the foodbank users that would be running out of food or couldn’t get out their houses. I saw the valorisation of the same groups nurses, medics but not others supermarket workers. And I knew from experience that working class voices would be absent now, and totally disappear in a year.
So, I just thought: ask people to write me diaries. I went to the university I lecture at and got ethical clearance. It was going to be a bog standard piece of academic research (it never was but I told myself that).
Shut-down
But getting Lockdown Diaries going wasn’t that simple. McKenzie said that she couldn’t get funding for it:
When I couldn’t get any academic funding to do the academic thing, I realised that I didn’t want working class voices removed by the academic process. So, I thought I’m going to self-publish a beautiful graphic novel; one that pays tribute to our humour, sadness and resilience.
So, Lockdown Diaries was born. The project is currently on Kickstarter. It needs funding of around £12,500 to properly publish it and pay people; not McKenzie though, who’s doing the project for free. You can pledge here. And it’s her approach to the project that partly got it to this point.
The trust issue
McKenzie is different to most of her peers. Being from a working-class background gives her credibility with the communities she works with. And she has always stayed true to her roots. This is crucial. Because as most people from poor backgrounds know, trust of outsiders and people from the system is a major issue. You’re all too often burned by the people who are supposed to be supporting you. As she wrote in Getting By:
Even though I had lived on the estate for over 20 years, the women [McKenzie wanted to speak to] did not welcome me into their lives with open arms, They were initially sceptical… More importantly, most people in St Ann’s were acutely aware that asking questions in the neighbourhood usually led to the neighbourhood being represented negatively, or ‘outsiders’ using local knowledge for their own benefit.
Respect
McKenzie was confident that the people would trust her to handle Lockdown Diaries with care and sensitivity. She told The Canary:
I think people trust me. I’m so far away from the normal academic and haven’t let working class people down so far. That probably means I’m a crap academic…! But it also means there was trust. On a personal note, if there was or would be any danger of disrespecting the diary writers, I would have pulled the whole thing. Which is why I’m not glad I’m doing this totally independently and away from the university. It’s on me. And I have always taken my responsibility and love for my class seriously; far more than to the university.
Moreover, trust isn’t the only potential issue McKenzie could’ve faced.
Time poverty
Much like trust, anyone who’s poor knows that time’s not your friend, You never have enough of it. Things you would like to do get put-off because of things you have to do. The idea of ‘choice’ is often out of reach. And the means to get yourself out of income poverty are restricted by time. This is called time poverty. The system which causes people to be time poor often doesn’t recognise it. But it’s a real thing – as many poor, working class people will tell you.
McKenzie made Lockdown Diaries so accessible that none of this was an issue. She told The Canary:
Because I only asked for a maximum of 28 days, I think it was manageable. Some of the mothers who were home schooling only did 5-7 days. But that was enough. I had one diary sent by text everyday, because he didn’t have access to a computer. Some diaries came as images… I had some diarists whose English was a second language. So, they chose to send me photos, some of which came as pictures of actual writing. It all really showed the diversity of who we are.
So, the participants wrote their diaries. And when McKenzie got them, her reaction was telling.
“Overwhelmed”
She told The Canary:
Initially I couldn’t read them. I was living on my own and going through the same stuff. But when I started to read them, I was overwhelmed emotionally. When someone writes to you they write in a far more personal way than an interview. They often started with “Dear Lisa”. And it broke me to be honest. A year on, I’m reading them again and honestly, they are incredible. The humour, misery but also massive resilience is all over them. I have people from East London to rural Wales and everywhere in between. A range of people, of different ages. But all of them incredible writers and documenters.
A graphic novel
McKenzie shared a preview of Lockdown Diaries in her LSE column. The project is going to be a graphic novel. And theartistSocial Commontating has already turned one family’s lockdown diary into strip art:
There are things that are similar between McKenzie’s book Getting By and the Lockdown Diaries. One of them is that poor, working class people get to tell their stories. And they’re presented in a way which means none of these people’s truths are lost or misrepresented. Because all too often, this isn’t the case.
Deplatformed
McKenzie told The Canary:
I definitely think that since 2008 there has been a gradual decline in working class people having any platform at all. And then it seemed to drop off a cliff after 2013. The middle class have every single space tied and locked up. This means a project like this can only happen through solidarity; from beginning to end.
It cannot be done any other way, because there are too many middle class gate keepers. They tell us what our stories and lives need to look and sound like; what is acceptable and what isn’t. And then we become sieved of everything we are. Finally, we become a pure character of who and what the middle class can cope with around working class people. We need to be the pure victim or the pure enemy: the right-wing football-gammon Brexiteer – or the single mother trying her best working three jobs and advocating education and social mobility to her children. That’s what my intent is in everything I do: to not let the middle class tell our stories and narrate who we are.
Constant exhaustion
Being poor and working class is exhausting:
The fear you feel every time you put your card into a cashpoint; not knowing if you’ve got any money or not.
Counting how many sheets of toilet paper you use so you can save a quid on next week’s shopping.
The devastating feeling when you know your kid wants something bought for them but they daren’t ask you.
Hiding a brown envelope until you can find the courage to open it.
Automatically ducking down and holding your breath when someone knocks at the door in case it’s bailiffs.
But what’s also exhausting is the zero representation you have.
Time to take back our spaces
Poor, working class people rarely see themselves in academic, media, or public life. And if they are shown, it’s often stereotypes. Feeling like no-one outside your own community understands or properly reps you is isolating, demoralising, and frustrating. It also makes you angry seeing people who are not working class (but say they are) speaking on ‘your behalf’. So Lockdown Diaries aims to change this.
McKenzie summed-up her feelings about Lockdown Diaries:
I just that I hope this type of DIY research and publishing will be taken seriously by ‘them’. Because this is the only way to make sure minority and working class voices are not cleansed and cleaned by the process.
Knowing McKenzie, no filters will be needed. Lockdown Diaries should be a groundbreaking, heartfelt, and important project. And moreover, it will mark an important moment in the history books: one where working class people’s voices were properly heard.
You can pledge to the Lockdown Diaries Kickstarter here.
Featured image and additional images via Social Commontating/Lisa McKenzie
To conceal the economic and social decline that continues to unfold at home and abroad, major newspapers are working overtime to promote happy economic news. Many headlines are irrational and out of touch. They make no sense. Desperation to convince everyone that all is well or all will soon be great is very high. The assault on economic science and coherence is intense. Working in concert, and contrary to the lived experience of millions of people, many newspapers are declaring miraculous “economic growth rates” for country after country. According to the rich and their media, numerous countries are experiencing or are on the cusp of experiencing very strong “come-backs” or “complete recoveries.” Very high rates of annual economic growth, generally not found in any prior period, are being floated regularly. The numbers defy common sense.
In reality, economic and social problems are getting worse nationally and internationally.
“Getting back to the pre-Covid standard will take time,” said Carmen Reinhart, the World Bank’s chief economist. “The aftermath of Covid isn’t going to reverse for a lot of countries. Far from it.” Even this recent statement is misleading because it implies that pre-Covid economic conditions were somehow good or acceptable when things have actually been going downhill for decades. Most economies never really “recovered” from the economic collapse of 2008. Most countries are still running on gas fumes while poverty, unemployment, under-employment, inequality, debt, food insecurity, generalized anxiety, and other problems keep worsening. And today, with millions of people fully vaccinated and trillions of phantom dollars, euros, and yen printed by the world’s central banks, there is still no real and sustained stability, prosperity, security, or harmony. People everywhere are still anxious about the future. Pious statements from world leaders about “fixing” capitalism have done nothing to reverse the global economic decline that started years ago and was intensified by the “COVID Pandemic.”
In the U.S. alone, in real numbers, about 3-4 million people a month have been laid off for 13 consecutive months. At no other time in U.S. history has such a calamity on this scale happened. This has “improved” slightly recently but the number of people being laid off every month remains extremely high and troubling. In New York State, for example:
the statewide [official] unemployment rate remains the second highest in the country at just under 9%. One year after the start of the pandemic and the recession it caused, most of the jobs New York lost still have not come back. (emphasis added, April 2021).
In addition, nationally the number of long-term unemployed remains high and the labor force participation rate remains low. And most new jobs that are “created” are not high-paying jobs with good benefits and security. The so-called “Gig Economy” has beleaguered millions.
Some groups have been more adversely affected than others. In April 2021, U.S. News & World Report conveyed that:
In February 2020, right before the coronavirus was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, Black women had an employment to population ratio of 60.8%; that now stands at 54.8%, a drop of 6 percentage points.
The obsolete U.S. economic system has discarded more than half a million black women from the labor force in the past year.
In December 2019, around the time the “COVID Pandemic” began to emerge, Brookingsreported that:
An estimated 53 million people—44 percent of all U.S. workers ages 18–64—are low-wage workers. That’s more than twice the number of people in the 10 most populous U.S. cities combined. Their median hourly wage is $10.22, and their median annual earnings are $17,950.
The Federal Reservereports that 37 percent of Americans in 2019 did not have $400 to cover an unanticipated emergency. In Louisiana alone, 1 out of 5 families today are living at the poverty level. Sadly, “60% of Americans will live below the official poverty line for at least one year of their lives.” While American billionaires became $1.3 trillion richer, about 8 million Americans joined the ranks of the poor during the “COVID Pandemic.”
And more inflation will make things worse for more people. A March 2021 headline from NBC Newsreads: “The price of food and gas is creeping higher — and will stay that way for a while.” ABC News goes further in April 2021 and says that “the post-pandemic economy will include higher prices, worse service, longer delays.”
Homelessness in the U.S. is also increasing:
COVID-driven loss of jobs and employment income will cause the number of homeless workers to increase each year through 2023. Without large-scale, government employment programs the Pandemic Recession is projected to cause twice as much homelessness as the 2008 Great Recession. Over the next four years the current Pandemic Recession is projected to cause chronic homelessness to increase 49 percent in the United States, 68 percent in California and 86 percent in Los Angeles County. [The homeless include the] homeless on the streets, shelter residents and couch surfers. (emphasis added, January 11, 2021)
Perhaps ironically, just “Two blocks from the Federal Reserve, a growing encampment of the homeless grips the economy’s most powerful person [Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell].”
Officially, about four million businesses, including more than 110,000 restaurants, have permanently closed in the U.S. over the past 14 months. In April 2021 Business Insiderstated that, “roughly 80,000 stores are doomed to close in the next 5 years as the retail apocalypse continues to rip through America.” The real figure is likely higher.
Bankruptcies have also risen in some sectors. For example, bankruptcies by North American oil producers “rose to the highest first-quarter level since 2016.”
In March 2021 the Economic Policy Institutereported that “more than 25 million workers are directly harmed by the COVID labor market.” Anecdotal evidence suggests that there are more than 100 applicants for each job opening in some sectors.
Given the depth and breadth of the economic collapse in the U.S., it is no surprise that “1 in 6 Americans went into therapy for the first time in 2020.” The number of people affected by depression, anxiety, addiction, and suicide worldwide as a direct result of the long depression is very high. These harsh facts and realities are also linked to more violence, killings, protests, demonstrations, social unrest, and riots worldwide.
In terms of physical health, “Sixty-one percent of U.S. adults report undesired weight changes since the COVID-19 pandemic began.” This will only exacerbate the diabetes pandemic that has been ravaging more countries every year.
On another front, the Pew Research Centerinforms us that, as a result of the economic collapse that has unfolded over the past year, “A majority of young adults in the U.S. live with their parents for the first time since the Great Depression.” And it does not help that student debt now exceeds $1.7 trillion and is still climbing rapidly.
Millions of college faculty have also suffered greatly over the past year. A recent survey by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) found that:
real wages for full-time faculty decreased for the first time since the Great Recession[in 2008], and average wage growth for all ranks of full-time faculty was the lowest since the AAUP began tracking annual wage growth in 1972. After adjusting for inflation, real wages decreased at over two-thirds of colleges and universities. The number of full-time faculty decreased at over half of institutions.
This does not account for the thousands of higher education adjuncts (part-time faculty) and staff that lost their jobs permanently.
In April 2021, the Center on Budget & Policy Prioritiesstated that, “millions of people are still without their pre-pandemic income sources and are borrowing to get by.” Specifically:
54 million adults said they didn’t use regular income sources like those received before the pandemic to meet their spending needs in the last seven days.
50 million used credit cards or loans to meet spending needs.
20 million borrowed from friends or family. (These three groups overlap.)
The pandemic’s disruption has created inescapable financial strain for many Americans. Nearly 2 of 5 of adults have postponed major financial decisions, from buying cars or houses to getting married or having children, due to the coronavirus crisis, according to a survey last week from Bankrate.com. Among younger adults, ages 18 to 34, some 59 percent said they had delayed a financial milestone. (emphasis added)
The U.S. economy has seen a long-term decline in capacity utilization in manufacturing, which has averaged 78 percent from 1972 to 2019—well below levels that stimulate net investment. (emphasis added, January 1, 2021).
Capitalist firms will not invest in new ventures or projects when there is little or no profit to be made, which is why major owners of capital are engaged in even more stock market manipulation than ever before. “Casino capitalism” is intensifying. This, in turn, is giving rise to even larger stock market bubbles that will eventually burst and wreak even more havoc than previous stock market crashes. The inability to make profit through normal investment channels is also why major owners of capital are imposing more public-private “partnerships” (PPPs) on people and society through neoliberal state restructuring. Such pay-the-rich schemes further marginalize workers and exacerbate inequality, debt, and poverty. PPPs solve no problems and must be replaced by human-centered economic arrangements.
The International Labor Organizationestimates that the equivalent of 255 million full-time jobs have been lost globally as a result of government actions over the past 13-14 months.
In March of this year, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations reported that, “Acute hunger is set to soar in over 20 countries in the coming months without urgent and scaled-up assistance.” The FAO says, “”The magnitude of suffering is alarming.”
And according to Reuters, “Overall, global FDI [Foreign Direct Investment] had collapsed in 2020, falling by 42% to an estimated $859 billion, from $1.5 trillion in 2019, according to the UNCTAD report.” UNCTAD stands for United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
The international organization Oxfamtells us that:
The coronavirus pandemic has the potential to lead to an increase in inequality in almost every country at once, the first time this has happened since records began…. Billionaire fortunes returned to their pre-pandemic highs in just nine months, while recovery for the world’s poorest people could take over a decade. (emphasis added, January 25, 2021)
According to the World Bank, “The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed about 120 million people into extreme poverty over the last year in mostly low- and middle-income countries.” And despite the roll-out of vaccines in various countries:
the economic implications of the pandemic are deep and far-reaching. It is ushering in a “new poor” profile that is more urban, better educated, and reliant on informal sector work such as construction, relative to the existing global poor (those living on less than $1.90/day) who are more rural and heavily reliant on agriculture. (emphasis added)
Pew Research Center, using World Bank data, has estimated that the number of poor in India (with income of $2 per day or less in purchasing power parity) has more than doubled from 60 million to 134 million in just a year due to the pandemic-induced recession. This means, India is back in a situation to be called a “country of mass poverty” after 45 years. (emphasis added)
In Europe, there is no end in sight to the economic decline that keeps unfolding. The United Kingdom, for example, experienced its worst economy in literally 300 years:
The economy in the U.K. contracted 9.9 percent in 2020, the worst year on record since 1709, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a report on Friday (Feb. 12). The overall economic drop in 2020 was more than double in 2009, when U.K. GDP declined 4.1 percent due to the worldwide financial crisis. Britain experienced the biggest annual decline among the G7 economies — France saw its economy decline 8.3 percent, Italy dropped 8.8 percent, Germany declined 5 percent and the U.S. contracted 3.5 percent. (emphasis added)
Another source also notes that, “The Eurozone is being haunted by ‘ghost bankruptcies,’ with more than 200,000 firms across the European Union’s four biggest nations under threat when Covid financial lifelines stop.” In another sign of economic decline, this time in Asia, Argus Mediareported in April 2021 that Japan’s 2020-21 crude steel output fell to a 52-year low.
Taken alone, on a country-by-country basis, these are not minor economic downturns, but when viewed as a collective cumulative global phenomenon, the consequences are more serious. It is a big problem when numerous economies decline simultaneously. The world is more interdependent and interconnected than ever. What happens in one region necessarily affects other regions.
One could easily go country by country and region by region and document many tragic economic developments that are still unfolding and worsening. Argentina, Lebanon, Colombia, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, Jordan, South Africa, Nigeria, and dozens of other countries are all experiencing major economic setbacks and hardships that will take years to overcome and will negatively affect the economies of other countries in an increasingly interdependent world. And privatization schemes around the world are just making conditions worse for the majority of people. Far from solving any problems, neoliberalism has made everything worse for working people and society.
It is too soon for capitalist ideologues to be euphoric about “miraculous economic growth and success.” There is no meaningful evidence to show that there is deep, significant, sustained economic growth on a broad scale. There is tremendous economic carnage and pain out there, and the scarring and consequences are going to linger for some time. No one believes that a big surge of well-paying jobs is right around the corner. Nor does anyone believe that more schemes to pay the rich under the banner of high ideals will improve things either.
Relentless disinformation about the economy won’t solve any problems or convince people that they are not experiencing what they are experiencing. Growing poverty, hunger, homelessness, unemployment, under-employment, debt, inequality, anxiety, and insecurity are real and painful. They require real solutions put forward by working people, not major owners of capital concerned only with maximizing private profit as fast as possible.
The economy cannot improve and serve a pro-social aim and direction so long as those who produce society’s wealth, workers, are disempowered and denied any control of the economy they run. Allowing major decisions to be made by a historically superfluous financial oligarchy is not the way forward. The rich and their representatives are unfit to rule and have no real solutions for the recurring crises caused by their outmoded system. They are focused mainly on depriving people of an outlook that opens the path of progress to society.
There is no way for the massive wealth of society to be used to serve the general interests of society so long as the contradiction between the socialized nature of the economy and its continued domination by competing private interests remain unresolved. All we are left with are recurring economic crises that take a bigger and bigger toll on humanity. To add insult to injury, we are told that there is no alternative to this outdated system, and that the goal is to strive for “inclusive capitalism,” “ethical capitalism,” “responsible capitalism,” or some other oxymoron.
But there is an alternative. Existing conditions do not have to be eternal or tolerated. History shows that conditions that favor the people can be established. The rich must be deprived of their ability to deprive the people of their rights, including the right to govern their own affairs and control the economy. The economy, government, nation-building, and society must be controlled and directed by the people themselves, free of the influence of narrow private interests determined to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone and everything else.
The rich and their political and media representatives are under great pressure to distort social consciousness, undermine the human factor, and block progress. The necessity for change is for humanity to rise up and usher in a modern society that ensures prosperity, stability, and peace for all. It can be done and must be done.
To conceal the economic and social decline that continues to unfold at home and abroad, major newspapers are working overtime to promote happy economic news. Many headlines are irrational and out of touch. They make no sense. Desperation to convince everyone that all is well or all will soon be great is very high. The assault on economic science and coherence is intense. Working in concert, and contrary to the lived experience of millions of people, many newspapers are declaring miraculous “economic growth rates” for country after country. According to the rich and their media, numerous countries are experiencing or are on the cusp of experiencing very strong “come-backs” or “complete recoveries.” Very high rates of annual economic growth, generally not found in any prior period, are being floated regularly. The numbers defy common sense.
In reality, economic and social problems are getting worse nationally and internationally.
“Getting back to the pre-Covid standard will take time,” said Carmen Reinhart, the World Bank’s chief economist. “The aftermath of Covid isn’t going to reverse for a lot of countries. Far from it.” Even this recent statement is misleading because it implies that pre-Covid economic conditions were somehow good or acceptable when things have actually been going downhill for decades. Most economies never really “recovered” from the economic collapse of 2008. Most countries are still running on gas fumes while poverty, unemployment, under-employment, inequality, debt, food insecurity, generalized anxiety, and other problems keep worsening. And today, with millions of people fully vaccinated and trillions of phantom dollars, euros, and yen printed by the world’s central banks, there is still no real and sustained stability, prosperity, security, or harmony. People everywhere are still anxious about the future. Pious statements from world leaders about “fixing” capitalism have done nothing to reverse the global economic decline that started years ago and was intensified by the “COVID Pandemic.”
In the U.S. alone, in real numbers, about 3-4 million people a month have been laid off for 13 consecutive months. At no other time in U.S. history has such a calamity on this scale happened. This has “improved” slightly recently but the number of people being laid off every month remains extremely high and troubling. In New York State, for example:
the statewide [official] unemployment rate remains the second highest in the country at just under 9%. One year after the start of the pandemic and the recession it caused, most of the jobs New York lost still have not come back. (emphasis added, April 2021).
In addition, nationally the number of long-term unemployed remains high and the labor force participation rate remains low. And most new jobs that are “created” are not high-paying jobs with good benefits and security. The so-called “Gig Economy” has beleaguered millions.
Some groups have been more adversely affected than others. In April 2021, U.S. News & World Report conveyed that:
In February 2020, right before the coronavirus was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization, Black women had an employment to population ratio of 60.8%; that now stands at 54.8%, a drop of 6 percentage points.
The obsolete U.S. economic system has discarded more than half a million black women from the labor force in the past year.
In December 2019, around the time the “COVID Pandemic” began to emerge, Brookingsreported that:
An estimated 53 million people—44 percent of all U.S. workers ages 18–64—are low-wage workers. That’s more than twice the number of people in the 10 most populous U.S. cities combined. Their median hourly wage is $10.22, and their median annual earnings are $17,950.
The Federal Reservereports that 37 percent of Americans in 2019 did not have $400 to cover an unanticipated emergency. In Louisiana alone, 1 out of 5 families today are living at the poverty level. Sadly, “60% of Americans will live below the official poverty line for at least one year of their lives.” While American billionaires became $1.3 trillion richer, about 8 million Americans joined the ranks of the poor during the “COVID Pandemic.”
And more inflation will make things worse for more people. A March 2021 headline from NBC Newsreads: “The price of food and gas is creeping higher — and will stay that way for a while.” ABC News goes further in April 2021 and says that “the post-pandemic economy will include higher prices, worse service, longer delays.”
Homelessness in the U.S. is also increasing:
COVID-driven loss of jobs and employment income will cause the number of homeless workers to increase each year through 2023. Without large-scale, government employment programs the Pandemic Recession is projected to cause twice as much homelessness as the 2008 Great Recession. Over the next four years the current Pandemic Recession is projected to cause chronic homelessness to increase 49 percent in the United States, 68 percent in California and 86 percent in Los Angeles County. [The homeless include the] homeless on the streets, shelter residents and couch surfers. (emphasis added, January 11, 2021)
Perhaps ironically, just “Two blocks from the Federal Reserve, a growing encampment of the homeless grips the economy’s most powerful person [Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell].”
Officially, about four million businesses, including more than 110,000 restaurants, have permanently closed in the U.S. over the past 14 months. In April 2021 Business Insiderstated that, “roughly 80,000 stores are doomed to close in the next 5 years as the retail apocalypse continues to rip through America.” The real figure is likely higher.
Bankruptcies have also risen in some sectors. For example, bankruptcies by North American oil producers “rose to the highest first-quarter level since 2016.”
In March 2021 the Economic Policy Institutereported that “more than 25 million workers are directly harmed by the COVID labor market.” Anecdotal evidence suggests that there are more than 100 applicants for each job opening in some sectors.
Given the depth and breadth of the economic collapse in the U.S., it is no surprise that “1 in 6 Americans went into therapy for the first time in 2020.” The number of people affected by depression, anxiety, addiction, and suicide worldwide as a direct result of the long depression is very high. These harsh facts and realities are also linked to more violence, killings, protests, demonstrations, social unrest, and riots worldwide.
In terms of physical health, “Sixty-one percent of U.S. adults report undesired weight changes since the COVID-19 pandemic began.” This will only exacerbate the diabetes pandemic that has been ravaging more countries every year.
On another front, the Pew Research Centerinforms us that, as a result of the economic collapse that has unfolded over the past year, “A majority of young adults in the U.S. live with their parents for the first time since the Great Depression.” And it does not help that student debt now exceeds $1.7 trillion and is still climbing rapidly.
Millions of college faculty have also suffered greatly over the past year. A recent survey by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) found that:
real wages for full-time faculty decreased for the first time since the Great Recession[in 2008], and average wage growth for all ranks of full-time faculty was the lowest since the AAUP began tracking annual wage growth in 1972. After adjusting for inflation, real wages decreased at over two-thirds of colleges and universities. The number of full-time faculty decreased at over half of institutions.
This does not account for the thousands of higher education adjuncts (part-time faculty) and staff that lost their jobs permanently.
In April 2021, the Center on Budget & Policy Prioritiesstated that, “millions of people are still without their pre-pandemic income sources and are borrowing to get by.” Specifically:
54 million adults said they didn’t use regular income sources like those received before the pandemic to meet their spending needs in the last seven days.
50 million used credit cards or loans to meet spending needs.
20 million borrowed from friends or family. (These three groups overlap.)
The pandemic’s disruption has created inescapable financial strain for many Americans. Nearly 2 of 5 of adults have postponed major financial decisions, from buying cars or houses to getting married or having children, due to the coronavirus crisis, according to a survey last week from Bankrate.com. Among younger adults, ages 18 to 34, some 59 percent said they had delayed a financial milestone. (emphasis added)
The U.S. economy has seen a long-term decline in capacity utilization in manufacturing, which has averaged 78 percent from 1972 to 2019—well below levels that stimulate net investment. (emphasis added, January 1, 2021).
Capitalist firms will not invest in new ventures or projects when there is little or no profit to be made, which is why major owners of capital are engaged in even more stock market manipulation than ever before. “Casino capitalism” is intensifying. This, in turn, is giving rise to even larger stock market bubbles that will eventually burst and wreak even more havoc than previous stock market crashes. The inability to make profit through normal investment channels is also why major owners of capital are imposing more public-private “partnerships” (PPPs) on people and society through neoliberal state restructuring. Such pay-the-rich schemes further marginalize workers and exacerbate inequality, debt, and poverty. PPPs solve no problems and must be replaced by human-centered economic arrangements.
The International Labor Organizationestimates that the equivalent of 255 million full-time jobs have been lost globally as a result of government actions over the past 13-14 months.
In March of this year, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations reported that, “Acute hunger is set to soar in over 20 countries in the coming months without urgent and scaled-up assistance.” The FAO says, “”The magnitude of suffering is alarming.”
And according to Reuters, “Overall, global FDI [Foreign Direct Investment] had collapsed in 2020, falling by 42% to an estimated $859 billion, from $1.5 trillion in 2019, according to the UNCTAD report.” UNCTAD stands for United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
The international organization Oxfamtells us that:
The coronavirus pandemic has the potential to lead to an increase in inequality in almost every country at once, the first time this has happened since records began…. Billionaire fortunes returned to their pre-pandemic highs in just nine months, while recovery for the world’s poorest people could take over a decade. (emphasis added, January 25, 2021)
According to the World Bank, “The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed about 120 million people into extreme poverty over the last year in mostly low- and middle-income countries.” And despite the roll-out of vaccines in various countries:
the economic implications of the pandemic are deep and far-reaching. It is ushering in a “new poor” profile that is more urban, better educated, and reliant on informal sector work such as construction, relative to the existing global poor (those living on less than $1.90/day) who are more rural and heavily reliant on agriculture. (emphasis added)
Pew Research Center, using World Bank data, has estimated that the number of poor in India (with income of $2 per day or less in purchasing power parity) has more than doubled from 60 million to 134 million in just a year due to the pandemic-induced recession. This means, India is back in a situation to be called a “country of mass poverty” after 45 years. (emphasis added)
In Europe, there is no end in sight to the economic decline that keeps unfolding. The United Kingdom, for example, experienced its worst economy in literally 300 years:
The economy in the U.K. contracted 9.9 percent in 2020, the worst year on record since 1709, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said in a report on Friday (Feb. 12). The overall economic drop in 2020 was more than double in 2009, when U.K. GDP declined 4.1 percent due to the worldwide financial crisis. Britain experienced the biggest annual decline among the G7 economies — France saw its economy decline 8.3 percent, Italy dropped 8.8 percent, Germany declined 5 percent and the U.S. contracted 3.5 percent. (emphasis added)
Another source also notes that, “The Eurozone is being haunted by ‘ghost bankruptcies,’ with more than 200,000 firms across the European Union’s four biggest nations under threat when Covid financial lifelines stop.” In another sign of economic decline, this time in Asia, Argus Mediareported in April 2021 that Japan’s 2020-21 crude steel output fell to a 52-year low.
Taken alone, on a country-by-country basis, these are not minor economic downturns, but when viewed as a collective cumulative global phenomenon, the consequences are more serious. It is a big problem when numerous economies decline simultaneously. The world is more interdependent and interconnected than ever. What happens in one region necessarily affects other regions.
One could easily go country by country and region by region and document many tragic economic developments that are still unfolding and worsening. Argentina, Lebanon, Colombia, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, Jordan, South Africa, Nigeria, and dozens of other countries are all experiencing major economic setbacks and hardships that will take years to overcome and will negatively affect the economies of other countries in an increasingly interdependent world. And privatization schemes around the world are just making conditions worse for the majority of people. Far from solving any problems, neoliberalism has made everything worse for working people and society.
It is too soon for capitalist ideologues to be euphoric about “miraculous economic growth and success.” There is no meaningful evidence to show that there is deep, significant, sustained economic growth on a broad scale. There is tremendous economic carnage and pain out there, and the scarring and consequences are going to linger for some time. No one believes that a big surge of well-paying jobs is right around the corner. Nor does anyone believe that more schemes to pay the rich under the banner of high ideals will improve things either.
Relentless disinformation about the economy won’t solve any problems or convince people that they are not experiencing what they are experiencing. Growing poverty, hunger, homelessness, unemployment, under-employment, debt, inequality, anxiety, and insecurity are real and painful. They require real solutions put forward by working people, not major owners of capital concerned only with maximizing private profit as fast as possible.
The economy cannot improve and serve a pro-social aim and direction so long as those who produce society’s wealth, workers, are disempowered and denied any control of the economy they run. Allowing major decisions to be made by a historically superfluous financial oligarchy is not the way forward. The rich and their representatives are unfit to rule and have no real solutions for the recurring crises caused by their outmoded system. They are focused mainly on depriving people of an outlook that opens the path of progress to society.
There is no way for the massive wealth of society to be used to serve the general interests of society so long as the contradiction between the socialized nature of the economy and its continued domination by competing private interests remain unresolved. All we are left with are recurring economic crises that take a bigger and bigger toll on humanity. To add insult to injury, we are told that there is no alternative to this outdated system, and that the goal is to strive for “inclusive capitalism,” “ethical capitalism,” “responsible capitalism,” or some other oxymoron.
But there is an alternative. Existing conditions do not have to be eternal or tolerated. History shows that conditions that favor the people can be established. The rich must be deprived of their ability to deprive the people of their rights, including the right to govern their own affairs and control the economy. The economy, government, nation-building, and society must be controlled and directed by the people themselves, free of the influence of narrow private interests determined to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone and everything else.
The rich and their political and media representatives are under great pressure to distort social consciousness, undermine the human factor, and block progress. The necessity for change is for humanity to rise up and usher in a modern society that ensures prosperity, stability, and peace for all. It can be done and must be done.
The disconnect between poverty and unemployment is not surprising but as of last month, the U.S. poverty rate has been on an upward trajectory. It is a call for action around UBI.
Between February and March, the rate of poverty in the U.S. increased by 0.5 percentage points to 11.7%, resulting in the highest level since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, though the change wasn’t statistically significant. The second-highest rate of 11.6% was recorded in November 2020. These estimates were taken before the rollout of the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan.
Since spring of 2020, real-time poverty data in the U.S. has been tracked every month by economists Bruce Meyer, from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, and James Sullivan of the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Economics and the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities.
More than 100 million claims for unemployment insurance have been filed over the last year, the economists wrote with co-author Jeehoon Han of Zhejiang University in China, describing the government’s three stimulus packages.
“While new UI claims fell sharply from April through July of last year, weekly claims have remained high since then at more than 1 million claims each week, about 5 times the pre-pandemic rate,” they added.
‘Many government benefits expired, unemployment insurance benefits are typically only about half of pre-job loss earnings, and nearly 5 million people have left the labor force since the start of the pandemic and, therefore, are not counted as unemployed.’
Those who experienced the sharpest rise in poverty included children, white people, women, those with low education, and those in nearly half of U.S. states that have more restrictive unemployment-insurance payment policies. Last month marked the first time that poverty has been so acute for children, non-minorities and women, the report added.
Under the American Rescue Plan, individuals making less than $75,000 a year in adjusted gross income received $1,400. The payments decreased for individuals earning $75,000 and up — and phased out completely for those making $80,000 or more and couples making $160,000 or more in adjusted gross income. It was the third such relief package over the last year.
Unemployment fell to 6% in March 2021 from a seasonally adjusted 14.8% in April 2020, as poverty rose. Initial jobless claims filed traditionally through the states fell to a seasonally adjusted 576,000 from 769,000 in the prior week, the government said last week, marking the largest decline since August. Yet 16.9 million people are still reportedly collecting benefits.
“This disconnect between poverty and unemployment is not surprising given that many government benefits expired, unemployment insurance benefits are typically only about half of pre-job loss earnings, and nearly 5 million people have left the labor force since the start of the pandemic and, therefore, are not counted as unemployed,” the economists added.
In the last week of March, 20 million Americans getting by primarily due to the generosity of friends and family were more likely to be suffering from food insecurity, according to a separate analysis by Claire Zippel, a research analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a think tank focused on the impact of budget and tax issues on inequality and poverty.
With 8.7 per cent of Canadians living below the poverty line and thousands more struggling to make ends meet, backers of this policy say a UBI would “ensure that communities at risk are able to feel financially secure.”
Liberal delegates to the party’s policy convention have overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution calling for the establishment of a universal basic income (UBI) in Canada, while also rejecting a call to hike the capital gains tax.
By a vote of 77 per cent, Liberal members on hand for the policy plenary today backed a call to permanently implement an income program similar to the Canada emergency response benefit (CERB), which kept millions of people afloat with monthly cheques during the first wave of the pandemic.
With 8.7 per cent of Canadians living below the poverty line and thousands more struggling to make ends meet, backers of this policy say a UBI would “ensure that communities at risk (including Indigenous peoples) are able to feel financially secure.”
“Given the success of the CERB program, a UBI will assist seniors and low-income Canadians maintain an adequate standard of living, regardless of working status,” the resolution reads.
Speaking to delegates assembled online, Alex Spears of the Young Liberals of Canada said a UBI would ensure the country’s “strong and robust social safety net is adapted to the 21st century,” adding that a program to send cheques to all families is “completely consistent with our values as a party.”
He said the program would “put more cash in the hands of working Canadians and families” and could lift millions out of poverty.
“UBI is not a silver bullet and it ought to be done in conjunction with many other progressive policies, but it is a critical step,” he said.
Would a UBI work?
The resolution does not say how such a costly program would be designed and implemented.
Few jurisdictions around the world have successfully enacted programs that make regular payments to all citizens without means tests or work requirements.
The parliamentary budget officer last week concluded that a universal basic income could almost halve Canada’s poverty rate in just one year, but at a steep cost: $85 billion in 2021-22, rising to $93 billion in 2025-26.
While the resolutions are non-binding — the government ignored a 2018 convention vote to decriminalize all illicit drug use, for example — the policy endorsements could help inform future government spending and the Liberal Party’s election platform.
The government has said it’s preparing to spend up to $100 billion this year to kick start the post-pandemic economy even after it reported a record-high deficit of $381 billion in the last fiscal year.
While the idea of a UBI has gained traction in progressive circles — supporters maintain the massive price tag of such a program could be offset by dismantling existing provincial social welfare schemes — academics who study poverty reduction are split on its value.
A 529-page report authored by researchers at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University and the University of Calgary concluded after a three-year investigation that a basic income for all is not the best way to address poverty and other social problems.
Instead, the report said, governments should boost existing social support programs for vulnerable groups through improved disability assistance, dental care programs and more money to help the working poor pay rent. A more targeted approach to help the disadvantaged, as opposed to a universal program like UBI, would do more to lift people out of poverty, the report concluded.
Conservative MP Ed Fast, the party’s finance critic, said pursuing a UBI would be a “risky and unknown experiment that will leave millions more Canadians behind.”
He said the Liberal Party is trying to “reimagine” the Canadian economy while the country is still struggling with the pandemic.
“The fact that UBI was supported at the convention this weekend is par for the course with Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. Instead of focusing on creating jobs, they are fixated on implementing risky, expensive and untested economic policies,” Fast said.
Delegates endorse pharmacare, ‘green new deal’
Liberal delegates also supported other progressive policies, such as the creation of a national pharmacare program and a “green new deal” to dramatically lower greenhouse gas emissions.
B.C. members backing the new green-friendly policies say Canada needs a “10-year national mobilization” plan to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 because “a changing climate threatens human life, healthy communities and critical infrastructure.”
While this proposal is also light on specifics, its supporters are calling for an “urgent, transparent and inclusive consultation process” with workers, labour unions and businesses affected by the shift to cleaner fuel sources. Delegates agreed there should be a “just transition” for energy workers who will lose their jobs as a result of move to renewable energy.
Inheritance tax, capital gains hike rejected
At a time when all levels of government are searching for new revenue streams to offset the costs of the COVID-19 pandemic, Liberal delegates rejected a resolution from the party’s Ontario chapter to hike the capital gains tax.
Currently, when an investment is sold — a stock, a mutual fund or any one of a number of other assets — 50 per cent of any increase in value is taxed as income.
For example, if a person buys a share in a publicly traded company for $20 and sells it for $40 at a later date, then $10 will be added to a person’s income for tax purposes; the other $10 earned goes untaxed.
This preferential tax treatment is designed to encourage people to make investments to drive economic growth and provide companies with easy access to capital. Critics maintain this unfairly benefits the rich.
The Ontario chapter proposed reducing the capital gains tax exemption to zero — meaning all investment gains would be taxed as income.
As part of the same proposal, the Ontario chapter pitched an “inheritance tax” on all assets over $2 million. That proposal did not specify the rate at which these assets should be taxed, or how and when such a system would take effect. Delegates rejected the idea along with the suggestion to increase the capital gains tax by a 62-38 margin.
‘Please make me pay more taxes’
One delegate, Jake Landau, the president of the Don Valley West Young Liberals, said he considers himself “upper middle class” and he believes the current system is tilted toward the wealthy.
“I am asking everyone, please make me pay more taxes. I want to pay my fair share,” he said.
Another delegate named Linda — who also did not give her last name — said she worries that a change to the capital gains tax might open the door to the federal government taxing the sale of primary residences.
In the last election, the Conservative Party warned that a Liberal government would look to cash in on rising home values by levying a capital gains tax on home sales to raise funds — a charge the Liberals have denied.
Right now, sales of primary homes are exempt from capital gains taxes — meaning the owners don’t have to pay taxes on any increase in a home’s value when it’s sold. The same rules do not apply to secondary, seasonal or investment properties, which are taxed like other investments.
“My concern with this is it is a blanket resolution,” said Linda. “There are many people relying on capital gains in their home in order to retire and not live in poverty.”
‘Long-term care can be a nightmare’
Party members also overwhelmingly backed a policy proposal — with 97 per cent in favour — to reform the country’s long-term care home system, which has been hit hard with death and disease throughout this pandemic.
“The pandemic has shown us that long-term care can be a nightmare,” said one unnamed Liberal delegate. “Seniors will do anything they can to stay out.”
The policy calls on the federal government to introduce new legislation to set “enforceable” national standards to prevent a repeat of the COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care facilities that have claimed the lives of thousands.
Kathleen Devlin of the Senior Liberals’ Commission said Canadians have been “horrified” by the conditions reported in long-term care homes throughout this health crisis.
She said the Canadian Armed Forces report last summer from the pandemic front lines “embarrassed us all.” Soldiers reported that residents in some long-term care homes were bullied, drugged, improperly fed and in some cases left for hours and days in soiled bedding.
“While it’s a provincial responsibility to deliver it, there needs to be federal leadership to give all Canadians equity when they’re at their most vulnerable,” Devlin said. “Sometimes we need a crisis to face what we already know.”
According to the resolution, these new standards would address accommodation conditions, staffing levels, qualifications and compensation. The proposed legislation also would demand greater transparency in how homes are operated “and public accountability through random inspections and annual public reporting.”
About the Author: John Paul (J.P.) Tasker is a reporter in the CBC’s Parliamentary bureau in Ottawa. He can be reached at john.tasker@cbc.ca. Follow J.P. on Twitter
On 10 April 1981, young Brixton residents rose up in response to police oppression, entrenched inequality, and marginalisation. The unrest soon spread to urban centres across the UK.
The Scarman Report went some way to identifying the root causes of the rebellions. But successive governments have failed to deal with these issues, and have exacerbated them in many cases. 40 years of cuts and privatisation, an increasingly fascist state, and a devastating pandemic have resulted in a frustrated, volatile population with little to lose. If plans for the proposed Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill go ahead, we could see history repeat itself.
The battle for Brixton
In 1981, the New Cross fire exacerbated community mistrust of the police. The arson attack – which killed 13 young Black people – was one of a series of racist attacks in the area and across Britain. Despite this, the police dismissed claims that the fire was an act of racial violence. After years of marginalisation, heavy-handed policing, and alienation, the community rose up on 2 March 1981, the Black People’s Day of Action. An estimated 20k people marched through London to demonstrate against Britain’s indifferent police, media, and government.
Met Police’s ‘Operation Swamp ’81‘ further aggravated tensions in Brixton. The force used the ‘sus laws’ to harass young Black men in the area. These were laws which increased police powers to stop, search, and arrest anyone deemed ‘suspicious’. In early April 1981, plainclothes officers stopped and searched nearly 950 people in 5 days, often without reason. Following the stabbing of a young Black man, and increased police presence in the area on 10 April 1981, young people in Brixton rose up. The unrest in Brixton lasted for two days, but spread to urban centres across Britain. Namely Moss Side (Manchester), Toxteth (Liverpool), and St Paul’s (Bristol).
“We’re just as powerless”
Many of these uprisings were sparked by attempts to challenge arrests, raids, and assaults on young Black people. Hundreds were injured. The Runnymede Trust highlights that the Scarman Report – commissioned in response to the urban rebellions – “stressed the importance of tackling racial disadvantage and racial discrimination”. Black Past adds that the report “blamed the police for escalating the tensions”.
Tony Cealy, who took part in the uprising as a 15-year-old, told theVoice:
I suppose, looking back now it was an opportunity to tell the British state that we had had enough of being victimised by the police. It was an opportunity to fight back and let people know that enough was enough.
Reflecting on the rebellion’s legacy, he added:
We’re just as powerless as we were during the 1981 uprisings.
Lessons learned
Since the 1981 urban rebellions shook the nation, Britain has seen numerous major uprisings. These include the 1991 Handsworth uprising, the 2001 race riots in Bradford, and the 2011 Tottenham uprising following the police shooting of Mark Duggan. While varying in scale, location, and demographics, the causes of each violent uprising were essentially the same. Entrenched inequality, marginalisation, and unjust, heavy-handed policing.
And now the government plans to thrust the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill upon us. The draconian bill seeks to further increase police powers and criminalise vast swathes of the population. This includes children and young people, Traveller communities, rough sleepers, and anyone who dares to publicly protest against the encroaching police state. The breadth of the proposed bill’s impact is reflected in the diverse range of organisations that have come together to form a “massive coalition” to oppose it. Meanwhile, the police have met peaceful ‘Kill the Bill’ protesters with brutality, while the mainstream media has told a different story.
If the government enshrines its draconian bill in law, rather than supporting communities and dealing with poverty, trauma, and unmet needs, it’s likely that we’ll see yet another long, hot summer of violent discontent.
The world has turned a blind eye to Denis Sassou Nguesso’s controversial re-election, which will extend his iron-fisted reign to more than 40 years
The result of last month’s presidential election in Congo-Brazzaville brought no surprises. After 36 years in power, Denis Sassou Nguesso, 77, clinched 88% of the vote with a turnout of more than 67%. Accusations of vote irregularities, including ballot box stuffing, were widespread. His closest rival, who had urged for a “vote for change” died of Covid on the day of the vote.
Television showed a triumphant Sassou at home with his smiling henchmen, as the interior minister, Raymond Zéphirin Mboulou – instead of the head of the electoral commission – announced the win. The question now is whether or not the African Union, the US, the EU, the UK and former colonial power France will simply turn a blind eye to another disputed election result while Congolese are dying from extreme poverty?
An election brings legitimacy, even if it is as blatantly see-through an exercise as the emperor wearing his new clothes
A national guaranteed basic income modelled after a pilot program that once existed in Ontario could cut poverty levels nearly in half, according to Canada’s spending watchdog.
The overall cost of the program would be $85 billion in 2021-22, increasing to $93 billion in its fourth year, although eliminating a wide array of federal and provincial tax credits no longer needed could fund much of the project through new personal income-tax revenues.
In its estimate, the parliamentary budget officer (PBO) used parameters in Ontario’s 2017 basic-income pilot project, which was later cancelled by the Ford government.
A single person would get up to $16,989 a year and a couple would get $24,027. Disabled Canadians would receive a $6,000 top-up. The more someone earns, the less he or she would receive, at a rate of $0.50 for every dollar earned.
Providing Canadians a basic income could cut poverty by almost half in 2022, based on the federal poverty line.
The decrease would be most felt in Manitoba and Quebec, where 60 per cent fewer people would find themselves living below the poverty line.
In Ontario, poverty would decrease by 49 per cent, close to the national average. In Newfoundland and Labrador, it would fall the least, by 13.5 per cent.
Canadians in the lowest income quintile would benefit the most, with disposable household incomes increasing by $4,535, or 17.5 per cent.
Meanwhile, the disposable household incomes of Canadians in the third, fourth, and fifth income quintiles would fall by at least $1,371.
In total, the disposable income of 6.4 million Canadians would go up under a basic income program. However, it would fall for about 16.8 million people, due largely to the loss of tax credits, such as the basic personal amount.
The increase among the lowest income quintile would be felt most acutely in Manitoba, where disposable incomes would increase by $6,094, or 23.7 per cent.
Elsewhere, the household disposable incomes of the lowest quintile in Ontario would go up by 20 per cent, or $5,369. In Prince Edward Island, the average disposable income would increase by $2,966, or 11.4 per cent.
However, the guaranteed basic income’s effect on labour supply would be “small,” the PBO wrote.
The reduction in hours worked ranges from a high of 1.5 per cent in Nova Scotia to a low of 0.7 per cent in Alberta. Similarly, payroll costs would fall by 1.3 per cent nationally.
Behavioural changes, such as employees working fewer hours, would increase the program’s costs by more than $3 billion a year, however.
The idea of a basic income has grown in popularity, especially during the pandemic, which proponents say has exposed major flaws in Canada’s social safety net.
The Green Party has endorsed a guaranteed livable income, while the NDP has voiced its support for a basic income pilot in P.E.I.
At their convention starting Friday, New Democrats will debate a resolution to implement a guaranteed basic income in Canada.
The Trudeau government has set a goal to cut the 2015 poverty level in half by 2030. Ottawa managed to reduce poverty by 30 per cent in 2019, surpassing its target to cut it by 20 per cent in 2020, according to federal figures.
Not everyone is on board, though. An expert panel appointed by the B.C. government concluded last January that “moving to a system (with) a basic income for all as its main pillar is not the most just policy option.” It would be too costly, and wouldn’t necessarily help the non-financial problems that cause people to need money in the first place, the report said.
Instead, the panel says the B.C. government should bring in improvements and targeted actions, including a basic income for certain vulnerable groups.
The federal deficit is expected to reach $363.4 billion in 2020-21, the PBO said last week.
Home to nearly one-fifth of the world’s population, China’s social policies have a dramatic effect on humanity as a whole. Despite a shift toward allowing capitalist markets in the late 1970s, the socialist state has still accounted for nearly three-quarters of global poverty elimination since then.
China’s State Council Information Office has published a white paper outlining how the socialist country can teach the rest of the world about how to alleviate poverty. In the last 40 years, China has lifted 770 million people out of poverty, declaring an end to its most extreme forms in November.
Titled “Poverty Alleviation: China’s Experience and Contribution,” the Tuesday document lays out some of the ways China’s decades-long struggle can help other parts of the globe.
We can now properly analyse the effect of a four-year-old Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) policy. It’s caused poverty to increase. And the policy may also have caused an increase in abortions. But exclusive research by The Canary has also found birth rates among the poorest women have dramatically fallen; potentially also due to the policy. Yet so far, the DWP maintains that there isn’t a problem.
The two-child limit
The two-child limit is a DWP policy. The then Tory government brought it in on 6 April 2017. It meant the DWP would only pay Child Tax Credit and Universal Credit for two children in a family; any more than this the DWP would not count in benefits calculations.
The policy has been controversial. A court ruled in June 2017 that the policy was “discriminatory” against single mothers with children under two. Then, in April 2018, another court said the cap was unlawful. This was in relation to young carers. The so-called ‘rape clause‘, where women have to prove they’ve been raped to get an exception to the two-child limit, also sparked outrage.
Now, four years on, the long-term effects of the two-child limit are clear.
Massive growth
The Canaryreported in 2018 that the number of households likely to be hit in the future by the cap would explode. In April 2018, just under 71,000 households were subject to the limit. Now, as of April 2020, the number has rocketed to 250,000:
In April 2018, around 200,000 children were affected. Now, this figure is over 900,000:
Meanwhile, the DWP has effectively cut over £5bn from people’s social security with the policy. And the real-world impact is very concerning.
Increasing poverty
According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) data on poverty, there has been a four percentage point increase in the number of households below average income where three or more children live; up four percentage points from 43% to 47%. That’s nearly a 10% increase:
estimates suggest that by the end of this Parliament, more than 600,000 families are likely to be subject to the limit, pushing an estimated 1.3 million children into, or deeper into, poverty.
The CPAG also looked at abortions.
Increasing abortions
It found that there was a “sharp” overall increase after 2017:
In 2016 in England and Wales there were just over 185,000 abortions. By 2019, this had increased by 11.74% to just over 207,000.
But crucially the CPAG said that abortion rates for women who already had two or more children increased “most rapidly” after 2017:
The Canary analysed the birth rates for women by socioeconomic status; that is for the richest and poorest women.
Poor people: not having kids
Our research found that birth rates fell generally. This was comparing 2017 and 2019 figures. The biggest falls have been among the poorest households. In the table below, 1.1 is the richest, 8 is the poorest:
We cannot directly say that the falls are due to the two-child limit. But given the effect of the policy on abortion and poverty rates – this additional impact is likely. Moreover, the reduction in birth rates in the poorest groups is sudden.
As The Canary previously reported, between 2013 and 2016 birth rates in groups 5-8 fell overall by 0.9%. Now, between 2017 and 2019 this accelerated to a 12.4% fall. But this drop also correlated with the 11.74% increase in abortions. Because the poorest women are having abortions at over twice the rate of the richest:
There is no comparative yearly data for abortion rates per socioeconomic status prior to the two-child limit being introduced. But abortion rates had been rising across all groups between 2013-2018. It appears from the data that between 2018 and 2019, increases in abortion rates were most marked in the poorest groups (a 0.9 point increase in the poorest versus a 0.4 point increase in the richest):
The DWP says…
The Canary asked the DWP for comment. A spokesperson told us:
Universal Credit has provided a vital safety net for six million people during the coronavirus pandemic and is supporting people back into work through our comprehensive Plan for Jobs.
In 2020, 85% of all households had two or fewer children, which is reflected in our policy. There are appropriate exemptions in place.
But the DWP’s own research shows that these exemptions are tiny. In April 2018, the number of households with three or more kids the DWP gave an exemption from the limit to was just over 2,800. By April 2020, the number was around 12,500; an average of 4.75% of households hit by the policy across the UK. This is actually a reduction on 2018, where the percentage was around 8% of the total households having an exemption.
Intentional eugenics?
The two-child limit has been perhaps the Tories’ most noxious policy. It’s hard not to look at it and think that the DWP and government intentionally designed it to stop poor people having children. Because as the CPAG noted:
If these findings are related to the two-child policy, it is horrifying. China’s one-child policy was driven by burgeoning birth rates. We have sub-replacement fertility. There is no other country in history that has adapted social security policy to increase child poverty to reduce fertility or encourage abortion. It is a completely outrageous assault on liberty.
The word for this would be eugenics. And successive Tory governments and the DWP have meted it out, without recourse.
Internal report reveals risk to migrant rough sleepers in crackdown
The Home Office has admitted that a new immigration rule to criminalise and deport migrant rough sleepers may discriminate against ethnic minorities, including Asian women who have survived domestic violence.
An internal document outlines the department’s analysis of how the new power – which prompted widespread outrage when it came into force four months ago – would also indirectly affect at-risk groups, including people with disabilities.
Priti Patel’s ministry has quietly relaunched a covert programme exposed in 2019 by the Observer
The Home Office has quietly relaunched a controversial programme that uses councils and homelessness charities to obtain personal data that could lead to the deportation of non-UK rough sleepers.
Two charities and six councils have signed up to the scheme since it was relaunched six months ago, according to documents obtained by Liberty Investigates, a journalism unit of the human rights organisation Liberty.
People living in the most deprived areas of England face a gap of almost two decades of life in good general health compared with those in the least deprived areas, new figures show.
Office for National Statistics (ONS) data published on Monday shows healthy life expectancy at birth among men living in the most deprived areas was 52.3 years in 2017 to 2019, compared with 70.7 years among those living in the least deprived areas.
This amounts to a difference of 18.4 years in “good” general health between these populations across their life course.
Women in the most deprived areas could expect to live 51.4 years in “good” health compared with 71.2 years in the least deprived areas – a difference of 19.8 years in “good” general health.
Healthy life expectancy is an estimate of lifetime spent in “very good” or “good” health, based on how individuals perceive their general health, the ONS said.
(PA Graphics)
In Wales, healthy life expectancy at birth for females living in the most deprived areas was 50.2 years compared with 68.4 years in the least deprived areas – a difference of 18.2 years.
For males there was a 16.8-year gap from 51.8 in the most deprived areas to 68.6 years in the least.
Better off people add a decade to life expectancy
The figures also showed that those living in the most deprived areas in England could expect to live 74.1 years compared with 83.5 years in the least deprived areas – almost a decade less.
Women living in the most deprived areas could expect to live 78.7 years, the ONS said, whereas females in the least deprived areas could expect to live 86.4 years – a difference of almost eight years.
But the ONS said there were “significant improvements” in male and female life expectancy at birth in England in 2017 to 2019 compared with 2014 to 2016.
Among women living in the least deprived areas there was a “statistically significant” improvement in life expectancy of 11 weeks while there was an improvement of 12.5 weeks for men in the least deprived areas.
(PA Graphics)
There were significant improvements in male and female life expectancy at birth compared with 2014 to 2016 in most deciles. The exception was the most deprived decile (decile 1) and decile 4, which showed no significant change, the ONS said.
The largest improvements were 18.3 weeks for males in decile 3 and 17.7 weeks for females in decile 8.
Women in the most deprived areas saw their life expectancy fall by 4.2 weeks in 2017 to 2019 compared with 2014 to 2016, but the ONS said this was not “statistically significant”.
In Wales, life expectancy at birth among males living in the most deprived areas was 73.3 years compared with 82.3 years in the least deprived areas – a difference of nine years in length of life.
There was a seven-and-a-half year difference for women in Wales, with life expectancy for females in the most deprived areas at 78.2 years compared with 85.7 years in the least deprived areas.
“Oh, my God, it smells so good!” Sierra, 39, said of the bounty she’d just picked up at a food pantry, pulling out a ready-made salad and a container of soup.
Sierra unpacked the donated food and planned lunch for Rachell and her siblings, ages 9 and 2, as a reporter watched through FaceTime. She said she doesn’t know what they’d do without the help.
The family lives in Bergen County, New Jersey, a dense grouping of 70 municipalities opposite Manhattan with about 950,000 people whose median household income ranks in the top 1% nationally. But Sierra and her husband, Aramon Morales, never earned a lot of money and are now out of work because of the pandemic.
The financial fallout of covid-19 has pushed child hunger to record levels. The need has been dire since the pandemic began and highlights the gaps in the nation’s safety net.
While every U.S. county has seen hunger rates rise, the steepest jumps have been in some of the wealthiest counties, where overall affluence obscures the tenuous finances of low-wage workers. Such sudden and unprecedented surges in hunger have overwhelmed many rich communities, which weren’t nearly as ready to cope as places that have long dealt with poverty and were already equipped with robust, organized charitable food networks.
Data from the anti-hunger advocacy group Feeding America and the U.S. Census Bureau shows that counties seeing the largest estimated increases in child food insecurity in 2020 compared with 2018 generally have much higher median household incomes than counties with the smallest increases. In Bergen, where the median household income is $101,144, child hunger is estimated to have risen by 136%, compared with 47% nationally.
That doesn’t mean affluent counties have the greatest portion of hungry kids. An estimated 17% of children in Bergen face hunger, compared with a national average of around 25%.
But help is often harder to find in wealthier places. Missouri’s affluent St. Charles County, north of St. Louis, population 402,000, has seen child hunger rise by 69% and has 20 sites distributing food from the St. Louis Area Foodbank. The city of St. Louis, pop. 311,000, has seen child hunger rise by 36% and has 100 sites.
“There’s a huge variation in how different places are prepared or not prepared to deal with this and how they’ve struggled to address it,” said Erica Kenney, assistant professor of public health nutrition at Harvard University. “The charitable food system has been very strained by this.”
Eleni Towns, associate director of the No Kid Hungry campaign, said the pandemic “undid a decade’s worth of progress” on reducing food insecurity, which last year threatened at least 15 million kids.
And while President Joe Biden’s covid relief plan, which he signed into law March 11, promises to help with anti-poverty measures such as monthly payments to families of up to $300 per child this year, it’s unclear how far the recently passed legislation will go toward addressing hunger.
“It’s definitely a step in the right direction,” said Marlene Schwartz, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut. “But it’s hard to know what the impact is going to be.”
Need Grows in Places of Plenty
After the pandemic struck, the federal government boosted benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and offered Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer cards to compensate for free or reduced-price school meals while children were schooled from home.
Sierra’s family saw their SNAP benefits of about $800 a month rise slightly and got two of those P-EBT payments, worth $434 each. But at the same time, they lost their main sources of income. Sierra had to leave her Amazon warehouse job when the kids’ school went remote, and Morales stopped driving for Uber when trips became scarce and he feared getting covid on top of his asthma.
Federal relief wasn’t enough for them and many others. So they flocked to food pantries.
In theory, pantries and the food banks that supply them are part of an emergency system designed for short-term crises, Schwartz said. “The problem is, they’ve actually become a standard source of food for a lot of people.”
In Bergen County, the Center for Food Action helped 40,500 households last year, up from 23,000 the year before. In Eagle County, Colorado, where the tony ski resort Vail is located, the Community Market food bank saw its client load nearly quadruple to 4,000. And outside Boston, in the affluent Massachusetts county of Norfolk — where Feeding America data shows child hunger jumped from an estimated 6% of kids to 16% — Dedham Food Pantry’s clients tripled to 1,800.
“This is just out of control compared to other times,” said Lynn Rogal, vice president of the Dedham pantry, which opened in 1990.
Pantry managers said a disproportionate number of clients are from minority groups. Many lost jobs in the eviscerated service sector that undergirds the wealthier parts of their counties. Julie Yurko, CEO of the Northern Illinois Food Bank, said up to half of her current clients have never sought help before.
“In early January, we had a white minivan pull up with three kids, 5 and younger. It ran out of gas sitting there,” Yurko said. “The mom was sobbing, and her beautiful children were sitting there watching her.”
Kelly Sirimoglu, spokesperson for New Jersey’s Center for Food Action, said the stigma around seeking help can be worse in wealthy areas. She said some people tell her, “I never thought I would be in line for food.”
Advocates said the reluctance to seek help means the need is likely even larger than it appears.
Katie Wilson of St. Charles, Missouri, said she heard about a food pantry run by the Sts. Joachim & Ann Care Service from a friend of a friend. She almost didn’t go. The single mom of two children, 11 and 9, lost her job as a hotel auditor in June and tried to squeak by without her income for two months.
“We found ourselves in a situation where it was a ‘heat or eat’ kind of thing,” said Wilson, 42, describing having to choose between heating her home or buying food. “It took me looking around and saying, ‘There is nothing to eat.’”
Struggling to Meet the Need
As hunger has become more visible, donations to food charities have risen. But they don’t address the core problem of an infrastructure that doesn’t match the new need. Some pantries are open just a few hours a week in church basements, a far cry from those that operate regularly and look like supermarkets. Many small pantries struggled to shift to outdoor food distribution during the pandemic or find new helpers when the few, often senior, volunteers felt unsafe doing the work.
“It definitely is harder in these places,” said Yurko, whose food bank distributes to Kendall County, Illinois, which has just three pantries for its population of 129,000. “The safety nets are not as robust.”
A strong safety net also requires pantries to cooperate with one another and the broader array of local social services. That’s been happening for years in Flint, Michigan, said Denise Diller, executive director of Crossover Downtown Outreach Ministry, which runs a pantry. Agencies and community leaders banded together in 2014 when lead poisoned the drinking water.
“When covid occurred, we were already kind of ready,” Diller said.
So was Atlanta. As in Flint, hunger was never hidden there; 15% of children in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, faced hunger before the pandemic. After covid suspended volunteer shifts, the Atlanta Community Food Bank asked the Georgia National Guard to help sort, pack, warehouse and deliver food to help meet the needs of the estimated 22% of kids experiencing hunger. The food bank also partnered with seven school districts on more than 30 mobile pantries.
Such coordination and connections were lacking in Bergen County, where 80 pantries worked mostly in isolation when the pandemic hit, County Commissioner Tracy Zur said. “They weren’t collaborating. They were going along the same path they had for decades,” she said. “There was this need to break out of the old way of doing things and work together to be more impactful.”
Zur spearheaded the creation of a food security task force in July, reaching out to municipal and faith leaders. Goals include feeding people, connecting them to other services and turning some emergency food programs into full-fledged pantries. “Building an infrastructure is painstaking and ongoing,” she said.
Now, Zur said, pantries are starting to share with one another when one gets a large donation of perishable items such as eggs or milk.
With the need so widespread, residents do much the same.
During a recent pantry trip, Sierra, the New Jersey mom, opened the trunk of her 1999 Toyota and rummaged through the two big boxes volunteers had just placed there. She pointed to eggs, chicken, bread, butter, cheese and apples, observing, “I have more than I need.”
But she said it would never go to waste. Any extra would go to neighbors and their hungry children.
Midwest correspondent Cara Anthony and data editor Elizabeth Lucas contributed to this story.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
The final report on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) concludes that the project has been ‘the most successful anti-poverty movement in history’. Two key claims underpin this narrative: that global poverty has been cut in half, and global hunger nearly in half, since 1990. This good-news narrative has been touted by the United Nations and has been widely repeated by the media. But closer inspection reveals that the UN’s claims about poverty and hunger are misleading, and even intentionally inaccurate. The MDGs have used targeted statistical manipulation to make it seem as though the poverty and hunger trends have been improving when in fact they have worsened. In addition, the MDGs use definitions of poverty and hunger that dramatically underestimate the scale likely of these problems. In reality, around four billion people remain in poverty today, and around two billion remain hungry – more than ever before in history, and between two and four times what the UN would have us believe. The implications of this reality are profound. Worsening poverty and hunger trends indicate that our present model of development is not working and needs to be fundamentally rethought.
— Jason Hickel, Third World Quarterly , Volume 37, 2016 – Issue 5
*–*
How could these two cohorts, the 85 richest and 3.5 billion poorest, have the same amount of wealth? The great majority of the 3.5 billion have no net wealth at all. Hundreds of millions of them have jobs that hardly pay enough to feed their families. Millions of them rely on supplements from private charity and public assistance when they can. Hundreds of millions are undernourished, suffer food insecurity, or go hungry each month, including many among the very poorest in the United States.
Most of the 3.5 billion earn an average of $2.50 a day. The poorest 40 percent of the world population accounts for just 5 percent of all global income. About 80 percent of all humanity live on less than $10 a day. And the poorest 50 percent maintain only 7.2 percent of the world’s private consumption. How exactly could they have accumulated an amount of surplus wealth comparable to the 85 filthy richest?
Staggering, no, the memory hole shoveling going on and perpetrated by elites in commerce, weapons, media, education, a la industrial complexes in the second decade of the 21st Century? Like plagues of locusts. Leeches two hundred worth per hominid, and the tapeworm eats the last, next and current generation like a desiccating alien of our nightmares.
The more light shining on the criminals, spotlights onto the military war lords, floodlights on the entire punishment cabal in governments, in corporations, in policing and uniformed military agencies, the more that bearing witness just peters out. It flags the average Yankee, and the doodle dandy is football, flicks and frolicking with furious caloric intent.
Welcome to the West. Then, the mind-numbing retorts to the initiation of discourse, of legitimate discussion about the ails of the world, largely set loose by the captains of industries — the military-media-legal-medical-penal-computing-financial-education-energy-AI-real estate-poison-agriculture COMPLEX. And, boy, is it never really “complex” — it’s about the art of the steal, the art of the scam, the art of the grift, the art of the toll-fine-fee-garnishment-penalty-tax-attachment set forth by the lobbies of the lords of death with the Eichmann’s of Bureaucracy greasing the skids and oiling the wheels. Keep those hedge funds going, the trains running, the profits heaping.
“We can only take so much trauma.”
“The human brain can’t take so much truth.”
“Trigger Warning; The Following Stories About Wealth for the Rich and Poverty for the rest of Us Might Cause Spasms of Collective Amnesia, Anxiety, Animosity.”
“There is no meek shall inherit the earth. We are talking about the meek and the poor inheriting the toxins, pollutants, the penury, the profound suffering inflicted upon them generation after generation by the rich and their enablers, the ultimate evil — those turning a blind eye to suffering, raping, razing, murdering.”
I’m getting it from all angles, really, the tired, the over-educated (in terms of college but not in terms of smarts). The tired middle class. Retired and one-trick phony environmentalist ponies. All those huffing and puffing and blowing down the Trump Towers, folk who are self-blinding themselves, as if bearing the truth of Biden et al, as well as bearing the weight of protecting Everything/Anything Empire, while the chorus of War Mongering Democrats a la LGBTQA-+ sing ‘Hallelujah, No More Trump’ puts them right smack where Oedipus was, exposed to the truth and overcome with shame, grief, and remorse. Poking eyes out is the least the people who follow the perverse leaders should do.
Except, their blinding is symbolic, life-long, from womb to cradle to grave, as in turning a blind eye to the roots, the very radical cause of all the suffering, the police no-knocks, the cesium floating in lungs and bellies, and a dozen other micro-particles from this or that nuclear fallout incident. Symbolic and demonstrative of the kill-for-profits Capitalism.
It is too too much for the masses — The Truth — so we all have to gather round the Zoom screen, tune into Amazon Prime, and sing, Give Peace a Chance while the world is fleeced by the billionaires, but also those millionaires (we tend to give millionaires, multi-millionaires a get-out-of-jail pass, when they too are the culprits helping spread that poisonous fallout).
Professor Bernd Grambow (co-author from IMT Atlantique) added “the present work, using cutting-edge analytical tools, gives only a very small insight in the very large diversity of particles released during the [Fukushima] nuclear accident, much more work is necessary to get a realistic picture of the highly heterogeneous environmental and health impact.”
Lockdowns for a flu virus, lockdowns for free thought, lockups for free speech, lock and loaded for the Empire, shackled to bills-mortgages-policies-ballooning debt…. BUT for fuck’s sake, we can’t lock-down the fossil fuel monsters, lock-up the Fukushima shills, shutdown the Olympics, punish and quell the military saber rattlers (read: purveyors of nuclear- chemical-bacterial-viral-digital-intergalactic weaponry).
Business as usual is a trillion easy dollars in Pandemic Profits, and a cool several trillion more with mandatory masking, Zooming, SARS-CoV2,3,4,5,6 annual vaccinations and semi-annual boosters.
Passports to their hell. Yet, when you talk to a Kamala Harris floozy, well, they get teary eyed, sing the All Spangled Banner of Buffoonery, and then tell you to hit the road, no more Haeder in their House.
Literally, people want nothing of politics, or the reveal — showing how their own colonized and kettled thinking under the guise of “liberal” looting under the Democrat Vote has always been part of the problem, not any solution to the world thievery or a pathway to world peace.
So What is The Answer?
It is not a $64,000 question, for sure, since the answer is collectively simple, easily repeated, easily understood, Yet, that is the jig, always looking for the messiah, or having their cake (capitalism) and eating it (profits-profits-profits) too. They are limited and limiting, and they gladly take the Kool-Aide and mix in a shot of Jack Daniels and a jigger of high fructose fizz.
Resisting for them is not an option. If they can’t converse, frame, contextualize, harmonize, recount, go back in history, recall the scene of the crime(s), then how the hell can these same folk who ask, Well, you sure know how to criticize and go on and on about the ills of Capitalism, but show me any other system that works. Humanity is humanity, whether in the center of Wall Street or out on the Rez?
This is their thinking, their great retort, and so, how do we get to that point where we just get to the basics, the Cornel West basics– Watch his rumble in the jungle: At Harvard, the worst kind of man-eating institution, along with a few hundred elite schools on this side and that side of the pond:
Listen to him, watch him, feel his presence of soul, Dr. West. Not a perfect man, thank god!
So, what is the answer? Justice. Social-spiritual-ecological-cultural-gender-age-racial-ethnic-ecnonmic-educational-food-energy JUSTICE? Using the inverse, the answer is the whole human-whole earth, toward holism, embedded in systems thinking, what it means to have the commons, what it is to be a society among other societies that is ecologically-based, agrarian-centered, humanistic-thriving, environmentally-aware, is, well, the opposite formulation of these Gandhian sins:
Wealth Without Work
Pleasure Without Conscience
Knowledge Without Character
Commerce (Business) Without Morality (Ethics)
Science Without Humanity
Religion Without Sacrifice
Politics Without Principle
It doesn’t take much K12 education and applied learning to understand that reversing these sins and following the antithesis would illuminate the bearable weight of being a human in the world, triggering change at a global and galactical level. Prometheus steals the fire from the gods and gives it to people. Bound to the mountain. Prometheus grows weary. The future, oh, the future, swallowed up by that lack of hope. Let us all be Prometheus, and help each other take from the thieves, the rich, and give warmth and fire to the world. Unbound us together. Break the chains of the illicit gods and their devils.
Really, though, one person’s hope is another person’s oppression. In capitalism, there is the king of the dung heap, the winner being the one who dies with the most toys. Dog-eat-dog, and survival of the most unfit (using the Seven Sins of Humanity above as illustrative of what makes capitalism really zip along).
In Western culture, it all might seem like a Greek Tragedy of Trailer Park or Mar-a-lago proportions. It might all seem like a hardscrabble blues tribute to American stick-to-it-ness. That hardened soul, as DH Lawrence ascribed —
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.
We know that Western soul is a killer from the womb — those royals and despicable ones from the Old World, those Belgium in the Congo, those Romans, those hard, soldiering, religious zealots, hand in hand with silver chalice and golden rosary, those kings and queens, launching the deplorable ones, the rabble into crusades of raping-ravaging-razing. There is no “American soul” without the British slave traders-merchants-purchasers; no American soul without the French and Spanish interlopers. The American soul is part and parcel those former Nazis and the money-changers, the globalists looking for a micro-penny for every human corpuscle exploited in their gaming humanity. This is Turtle Island, not some chunk of land named for an Italian map maker for the king.
Now that’s a dark dark killer that never melts — Capitalism. It is now cleaned up, a la Madison Avenue and slick green-blue-pink-white washing, no longer presented as cold, stoic, but happy, illustrious, coopting, brainwashing, gleeful, the ice cream truck coming to serve all the children with gooey goodies. Shifty, slick, liberal, slippery, hip. It is now a virus inside a thousand viruses —
A democratic society shapes itself – by means of the participation of its citizens in discussing and deciding how things should be organised and to what ends.
But, as even their name reveals, the Global Shapers want to “shape” society from above and in their own interests.
This is not the solution to global problems, and, the rockets and payloads of Bezos and Musk and DoD and the rest of the capitalists looking for lucre and gold on Mars and the Moon. Reset is not rebounding. Reset is not reconvening the true holistic way of life. Reset is not returning to a point in time in our civilizations where we come together in mutual aid, live a biodynamic present and future, hold onto sacred tribal principles, understand the soil-air-water. The reset is not a return to sanity, actualization for woman, man, child, ecosystem. This reset is the rich’s bargain basement theft of our agency, our independence, our collective will to strike at them as the felons of our time. Their reset is tracking our every movement, each blink of the eye, each snore and defecation. This reset is about pulling strings, forcing the Faustian Bargain each moment. They will fine-garnish-withhold-penalize-criminalize our unborn, and our dying parents. You get a universal income, but not to be spent on what they do not want you/us to spend it on.
The foregone conclusion is what the teachers teach the children. It is what the media paint around us. Each narrative directed and shot for Netflix or Amazon or Hulu or Vudu, they are set to propagandize for the rich, the resetters, the titans who want mars colonized, who want the moon for their private resort. Orbiting Club Meds in the ionosphere.
Yet, the Lesson is Dead Wolves, Manatees and Turtles
The very place of Trump and Spring Break, Florida, is emblematic of the fall, the disgusting imbalance of the world, of sanity, of thinking. Manatees dying off in unfathomable numbers. Turtles washing up sick and dead. The expansion of the ocean, wiping out much of Florida by 2100. The bastion of Spring Break and lust and speedboats and dream hoarding.
Something not to be proud of, and to lend pause for humanity, but not more than once, and give it to me once in that 24-hour news cycle, please. At least 432 Florida manatees have already died in 2021, well over double the state’s 5-year average for the same time period.
Hundreds of sea turtles washing up on Southwest Florida beaches this year in a mass mortality event that researchers say will impact the recovery of the protected species is not a good sign of HUMAN health. The Great Reset has nothing to say about the reality of our own commons.
Then you have Wisconsin, gun-toting AR15-loving murderers taking on a record 216 wolves killed in 60 hours. What does this say about this society, this blood sport society of high powered weapons, radar trackers, dually pick-ups, $340,000 campers, TV, booze, and a quick trip in the woods to murder wolves?
Or, the hard cold soul of the European, Italians, putting 20-year sentences on people working with charities to help stranded and sinking and drowning refugees from African countries. Imagine that world of the cold Great Resetters. Save the Children and MSF among dozens facing sentences of up to 20 years over humanitarian work
Humanitarian organizations are rejecting what they say is an attempt to criminalize lifesaving aid to migrants and refugees at sea after Italian prosecutors charged three groups with aiding and abetting illegal immigration through their rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
Over 20 people are facing up to 20 years in prison. — Source.
Each story of injustice is the tip of the proverbial iceberg, demonstrating the insanity of systems — legal systems of punishment-abandonment-unruly laws against the suffering, laws meant to pay the rich, pay off the rotting bureaucrats, the Eichmann’s, big and small, who keep the wheels and the gears of death grinding, whether those wheels are those of the Empire, or the Capitalists, or the Economic Hitmen-Frontmen-Debasers, or all the pigs who make money off the penury and punishment unleashed by Capitalism.
Not me. Not I. Over my dead body.
The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall. We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.
〓〓 
Defend the right to vote (@LouisHenwood) 
me/me (@SanguineNW) 
Meanwhile, the DWP has effectively 
