Tag: Low Income Families

Trump’s Family Attacks

The final push for the vote in 2020 and I want to just help the info out if you are still trying to decide which old fart gets your vote.

Let’s look at Trump policies toward families and then you tell me where he has done a good job…..we all have heard the horror story about the missing children from the border….545 to be honest….probably more…..but here is what Trump has had to say about this situation….

In response to a question about the more than 500 parents who have yet to be found after they were separated from their children under Trump administration’s “zero tolerance policy”—which forcibly broke up thousands of families before it was halted in June of 2018—President Donald Trump said that “children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels,” a claim immigrant rights groups rejected.

“Fact check: Migrant children separated by the Trump administration during Zero Tolerance came with their families, not coyotes,” the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services tweeted. “We know. We worked with the children who were sent to shelters after being separated. Facts matter.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/23/cruelty-was-always-plan-pressed-mass-family-separations-final-debate-trump-smears

Center for American Progress has done a look around at the Trump family policies…..

The long-term well-being of the United States is rooted in how well we invest in young children and prepare them to lead the country, drive economic growth, and build strong families. This requires children to have their basic needs met: food, housing, safe caregiving, and adequate medical care. Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s policies have undone many of these goals.

For the past four years, the administration has undermined basic supports—in particular, targeting Black families, Indigenous families, and other families of color, as well as families with low incomes and immigrant families. Now, as the nation faces a pandemic that is disproportionately affecting these same communities, the administration’s unique failure to respond to the coronavirus crisis is exacerbating existing harms that will negatively impact a generation of children.

Here are five ways that the Trump administration’s policies are harming children:

5 Ways the Trump Administration’s Policies Have Harmed Children

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I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–30Jun20

This pandemic has proved to be a bitch for us mere mortals……the loss of employment and such has done nothing to improve the inequalities of our system…..

The idea of a minimum income goes back as far as the 1500s…..

The idea of an unconditional basic income has three historical roots. The idea of a minimum income first appeared at the beginning of the 16th century. The idea of an unconditional one-off grant first appeared at the end of the 18th century. And the two were combined for the first time to form the idea of an unconditional basic income near the middle of the 19th century.

History of basic income

Even the US is thinking along the UBI line…..

Public support for a national universal basic income has grown significantly in the last decade, and recent studies indicate that Americans are now split with roughly equivalent support for and against UBI. Indeed, some scholars argue that the damage caused by COVID-19 has revealed a fragile and inequitable economy and that the recent one-time payment should become a regular feature to give everyone basic financial security going forward. 

Other scholars are less convinced, maintaining that partial or conditional UBI would not reduce poverty and inequality and that a system sufficiently generous to ensure a basic standard of living for all would be prohibitively expensive. These critics assert that it is more efficient for the government to invest in better quality public services and improve existing social welfare systems.  

Universal Basic Income After COVID-19

Now one country has grab the bull by the horns and worked for the people……Spain.

Spain has done something that goes a way to helping the mere mortals of the nation…….they have now a minimum income…..

Spain’s cabinet has approved the creation of a national minimum income, according to a government spokesperson.

Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias told a news conference on Friday the creation of a minimum income worth €462 (£416.92) a month will target some 850,000 households or 2.5 million people.

The government would pay the monthly stipend and top up existing revenue for people earning less so that they receive at least that minimum amount every month, he said.

The minimum income would increase with the number of family members, up to a maximum of €1,015 (£916.30) each month. The programme would cost the government about €3 billion a year.

Mr Iglesias said: “Today is a historic day for our democracy. Today this government is showing that its political choice is social justice and that it takes the [Spanish] Constitution seriously.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spain-national-minimum-income-universal-basic-coronavirus-ubi-economy-a9538606.html

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

The Promise Of Wages

I follow Speaker Ryan on Twitter because his daily Tweets can get a real person laughing for most of the day.  His Tweets since the tax cuts of 2017 are about how much better off the economy is at this point and occasionally he offers some vague promise of wages.

The truth is these cuts have done little to raise the wages of the working class but did everything to raise the wealth of the already wealthy.

The real truth is that all the tax cuts for the last couple of decades have done nothing to raise the wages of the average working stiff.

The graph on wages is flat and has been that way for many decades……follow the graphs on wages……there are 9 of them that prove my point…..https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

After checking out the graphs……read this report from the Pew Research……

On the face of it, these should be heady times for American workers. U.S. unemployment is as low as it’s been in nearly two decades (3.9% as of July) and the nation’s private-sector employers have been adding jobs for 101 straight months – 19.5 million since the Great Recession-related cuts finally abated in early 2010, and 1.5 million just since the beginning of the year.

But despite the strong labor market, wage growth has lagged economists’ expectations. In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

So to taunt the tax cuts as working for the working class is a damn lie….a lie that the GOP has become master at selling to the unwitting public.

To fight this growing story…the public is starting to see just how much of a lie the GOP is spreading…..the Right needs a theory to explain the lagging wages…..

Once upon time, when the GOP was still attempting to dress itself up as a party of ideas, Yuval Levin was considered one of its star intellectuals. As editor of the conservative policy journal National Affairs, he was a wonkish prophet of fiscal doom, who argued that the U.S. would soon face a reckoning over its national debt, and that the only way to avert catastrophe was to radically curtail the modern welfare state. Levin was once described as Paul Ryan’s own “personal philosopher,” and was the sort of guy who could get David Brooks hot and bothered by writing a long-winded argument for slashing entitlement spending.

If a politician like Sen. Marco Rubio or Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had become president in 2016, Levin might still be playing a starring role in Washington’s policy discourse. But of course, Donald Trump is president, and Republicans have dropped the charade that they sincerely care about the deficit, or whatever the heck got written about in ponderous thinky policy rags. Levin still gets cited by columnists like Brooks, but his star is a bit fallen.

https://slate.com/business/2018/09/wage-stagnation-new-conservative-theory.html

An interesting read and very eye opening……

The GOP has always been a party for liars and when it comes to screwing the public they are masters at making the public smile while getting humped.

Why Do Some Americans Stay Poor

There is one aspect of American society that confuses many people especially those in other countries…..American poverty.

Many sociologists, economist and other social scientists have tried to explain this situation….few succeed.  This blogger tried to answer the question of Why Poverty 10 years ago….as I said….tried.

https://lobotero.com/2008/09/29/why-is-poverty-a-dirty-word/

It is a nagging question.  There are many myths to go with the question….the biggest of these is the answer that these poor people are freeloaders that do not want to work and all they do is take from the taxpayer.

It is a simple explanation that fits the narrative from the Reagan conserv years.  It was a myth then and it remains a myth today.  So why do some Americans stay poor?

In his State of the Union address, President Trump said “there has never been a better time to start living the American Dream.” But the new 2018 Prosperity Now Scorecard and its accompanying report says that isn’t so for low-income Americans.

“The system is, by just about all measures, stacked against those with low incomes and low wealth for the benefit of the wealthiest,” says the report from the nonpartisan but left-leaning Prosperity Now nonprofit, which provides research and recommendations regarding Americans with limited incomes.

One example: low-income people are ineligible for federal programs such as SNAP (food stamps) and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) if they amass “even modest savings,” the report noted. Prosperity Now calls policies like this “a roadblock on the path to saving.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-the-real-reason-many-americans-stay-poor-2018-02-13

There is a considerable controversy about poverty and its relationship within inequality. From one point of view, any society with inequality is bound to have poverty. In other words, poverty is more likely to occur in a society which accepts inequality. Sociologists who adopt a relative definition of poverty accept that for the eradication of poverty, it is necessary to first abolish all inequality in income.

Now we know that the abolition of inequality in this country is never going to occur under this governmental standard.  Not too damn many Americans are poor because they want to be so…the system is the problem and a system change is not very damn likely.  Ergo the poor will remain poor and the wealthy will just continue to be exploitative and wealthier.

Bestiality Equals Higher Minimum Wage

The weekend begins and I was searching for something interesting for my readers….other than the mindless crap that the news produces daily…..something strange and unusual….something that would have my reader sitting there asking….WTF?

By George I think I found something…..and I ask any of my readers in Ohio that reads this and may have an inside track on this situation to clarify it for my other readers…..(I do attempt to be accurate)

Can you appreciate the games politicians play?  Their creativity is just amazing sometimes……

Most of my readers are aware of the movement to make $15 an hour the new minimum wage….of course most everyone in the GOP is having a stroke trying to find ways to avoid raising it…..

I believe that the good reps in Ohio have found a unique way to do so……

It is currently legal to have sex with an animal in nine states, but it seems Ohio may want off that list. The Guardian reports Ohio’s state legislature passed a bill this week that would outlaw bestiality and the selling of animals for sex. Gov. John Kasich has 10 days to sign or veto the bill. “The passage of animal sexual abuse legislation is a great victory for the animals of Ohio,” says a policy director at the Humane Society, which campaigned for the bill. The senators who sponsored the bill argued that sexually abusing animals can be a stepping stone to sexually abusing children.

But of course it’s not as simple as making it illegal to have sex with animals. WHIO reports the bill originally sought to stop local governments from regulating large-scale dog breeders, meaning animal-rights groups opposed it. Then Republican legislators added a section to the bill to stop cities like Cleveland and Cincinnati from raising the minimum wage, according to the New York Daily News. Now the bill was now also unpopular with workers’ rights groups. To make the controversial bill more palatable, Republican legislators then added the anti-bestiality legislation. And that’s how 40 legislators, mostly Democrats, ended up voting against making it illegal to screw animals while the state made it easier to keep screwing workers.

Ah!  The games our politicians play….how original of them.

Thoughts?

Paul Ryan’s sorry invention: The GOP’s self-appointed poverty warrior coins “envy economics” – Salon.com

You want a good chuckle today?

Remember back when Ryan was the VP candidate?  He called people that need help as “TAKERS”…..remember?

Anyway he is the GOP’s point man on the “income equality” issue…..and he has some good, humorous stuff here…..damn!  the GOP has it’s moments….unfortunately….this is NOT one of them.

 

Paul Ryan’s sorry invention: The GOP’s self-appointed poverty warrior coins “envy economics” – Salon.com.

The Increasingly Unequal States of America: Income Inequality by State, 1917 to 2011 | Economic Policy Institute

I know that there are some that do not want to hear this….that some of these people are lazy or fraudulent……but the fact is whether anyone wants to hear it or not…….the inequality is growing…..and if you pay attention to history that inequality could lead to much more than we are willing to handle……

The Increasingly Unequal States of America: Income Inequality by State, 1917 to 2011 | Economic Policy Institute.

Income Inequality

It seems that the more the term is used the more it is becoming the latest buzz term….a dog whistle for the Left…..the Left?  I am so tired of that term!  There is NO one in Washington that is on the Left.  At best the ass clowns are solidly in the middle….with that said I will move on……

For the last couple of months the term “income inequality” has been batted around and used for talking points……..but is any of this going to do any good?  Or is it just something to talk about until a bigger news story breaks?

Any way….the prez has jumped onto the subject……

President Obama raised this issue yesterday in a speech to a progressive audience so I think it’s a worthy topic for discussion. In the President’s view, income inequality and disparity are issues which only the government can “solve” by some sort of redistribution scheme. However, the President offered no specifics, he only encouraged congress to […]

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As an old hippie commie pinko and about a hundred other adjective that people used in the past to describe me and people like me………I have been bitching about income inequality for decades…..usually to deaf ears until recently…….there seems to be a growing concern over something that has plagued American workers for years……but what if anything will be the answer to solving the problem?  I have a plan but NO one will like it…….and then I will once again be bombarded with the insults on my political beliefs…..cool, huh?