As I was reading
through the acritical that I discovered on google, “Everything you need to know about the war on poverty” by Dylan
Matthews, I almost instantly began to realize that this war on poverty and its success
is still, to this day, a debatable/unanswered question. My article that I found
really lays the war on poverty out plain and simple. Word for word explains a
who, what, when, where, why and how; straight facts. Matthews, actually right
at the beginning, explains to his readers Lyndon Johnson’s “unconditional war”
on poverty, stating that it was basically something people would either hate or
love, Johnson just wanted a governments help and this article explains what he
got.
I feel this acritical
was very useful to me, in ways that helped me realize that programs like Medicare/aid
and social security really have helped our nation grow positively as a whole over
time. Because there is such a lack of “good jobs” that people can build a life
off of, the poor population continues to grow larger and larger. In a society
without the special care we Americans have, that would e a problem and poverty
would over rule wealth quickly. But because we have the advantage of helping
fix/change the community’s struggling
lives, we do, and we do so because America is all big on growing as one. We are
united and equal, and as this strong country we dislike being seen as poor, or
at a disadvantage, that is weak in society’s eyes and because of that we create
help (anti-poverty programs). This acritical
obviously communicated well, it’s a list of information. The only thing I feel
it fails to approach is the actual failure some of these programs have conducted.
The debt some of these programs have put this country in, along with the laziness
they continue to create in Americans everyday. Because systems like Medicare
are so easy to get your hands on, a large amount of our community uncovers desire
in obtaining this “easier way of living”, ultimately putting America in debt
because of all the money going towards people who don’t necessarily need the
care that others (the actual poor, not people who just classify for it) do. So,
just depending on how you look at the whole situation, war on poverty can be a positive
and/or negative thing. Did it and does it continue to help decrease the amount
of poverty in out nation? Yes. Is it adding more, serious problems to America? Could
be. It all just how you want your perspective of war on poverty to be.
Dylan Matthews. "Everything you need to know about the war on poverty." The Washington Post. The Washington Post Company, 8 Jan. 2014. Web. 29 Feb. 2016
Dylan Matthews. "Everything you need to know about the war on poverty." The Washington Post. The Washington Post Company, 8 Jan. 2014. Web. 29 Feb. 2016
ReplyDeleteMcWhinnie Eric. “5 Reasons Why We’re Losing the War on Poverty.” usatoday.com.
Wall St. Cheat Sheet, 1 Mar. 2016. Web. 27 Sep. 2014.
The article “5 reasons why we’re losing the war on poverty”, on usatoday.com is written by Eric McWhinnie. It gives five reasons explaining why McWhinnie believes we’re losing the war on poverty. Her points are real median household income, wealth accumulation, employment0to-population ratio, food stamps, and wages. The article shows pictures of homeless men asking for spare change and laying on a garbage bag for comfort. McWhinnie claims that despite the economy doing well in certain areas, an alarming amount of money is still being spent on food stamps, and the adult population increases by about 200,000 people each month, while the economy has only averaged a monthly gain of about 219,000 jobs in 2014. The war on poverty according to McWhinnie is not over or even getting better.
The article “5 reasons why we’re losing the war on poverty”, is useful because it gives an insight on all the things we don’t hear about in our daily news. To me this article is convenient to come across since ill be voting in the next election, so i’m glad to be able to have some background on where we really stand as far as poverty in the U.S.. To me the article communicates very well by giving a list of reasons why poverty is still an issue and backing it up with statistical data. It shows a wages and salaries percentage of GDP and how they have been declining for over four decades. Through the observation of charts and data, it is clear that the war on poverty is such a big issue. As a reader I felt empathy and a further understanding after reading this article.
Matthews, Dylan. "Everything You Need to Know about the War on Poverty." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 8 Jan. 2014. Web. 01 Mar. 2016.
ReplyDeleteThe war on poverty is, as my source describes, a set of proposals by President Lyndon B. Johnson to “cure” the symptoms of poverty. These proposals include The Social Security Amendments of 1965, The Food Stamp Act of 1964, The Elementary and Secondary Education act of 1965, and The Economic Opportunity Act of 1964. Many of these poverty programs are still very much in use today.These proposals actually did help reduce poverty in America. Since 1967, poverty has dropped from 26% to 16%. My article talks about how many people do not this poverty has been reduced due to the official poverty rate, which excludes income received from major programs like food stamps. It is also talked about how much more the country could be doing to fight poverty. We could expand existing poverty programs and do things like cutting taxes on the working poor. The articles goes on to state that we could cut down marginal tax rates, invest into education and even raise the minimum wage, which is says research shows would reduce poverty numbers.