{"id":705,"date":"2006-09-21T07:54:41","date_gmt":"2006-09-21T12:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=705"},"modified":"2006-12-21T10:07:11","modified_gmt":"2006-12-21T15:07:11","slug":"structural-barriers-to-poverty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=705","title":{"rendered":"Structural barriers to poverty"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting column on Poverty by economist Bradley Schiller<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0contends that for the vast majority of impoverished Americans their condition is short term. Schiller pointed to a study by the University of Michigan which found that only 5% of poor Americans stayed poor for ten years out of the 13 years they were studied. That means that 19 out of 20 poor people were<\/em> able to escape extreme poverty most of the time.<\/p>\n

Democrats would be well advised to pay attention to this because it helps explain why America continues to be a place where optimism sells. In many ways the Democrats are too steeped in the Era and ethos\u00c2\u00a0of the Depression.<\/p>\n

Schiller suggests that the best thing to do is to work on eliminating the structural barriers which make it difficult for people to escape poverty. One of those is a very Republican barrier. Usurious interest rates of short term loan business like title loans have become\u00c2\u00a0widespread as they left the Republicans Deep South in search of new customers in Republican leaning states. They are very much like the company stores\u00c2\u00a0of the coal fields or tenant farming which replaced the plantations after the Civil War.<\/p>\n

In Republican\u00c2\u00a0eyes if a good ole boy can get rich by earning a 100 or 150% return on a loan to some poor desperate person so be it. Not exactly a family value – usury. Apparently it doesn’t make any difference how you make a buck so long as the law allows it and keeping it legal is what the Republicans want.<\/p>\n

Yet a ruinous loan is a structural barrier. It should also be noted that\u00c2\u00a0Republicans have also\u00c2\u00a0 become the primary champions\u00c2\u00a0for gambling which provides a sin tax for government. Gaming in America reminds me of the failing Soviet Russian’s dependence in the late 1980’s\u00c2\u00a0on revenues from vodka sales which helped to keep the population in a compliant stupor.<\/p>\n

Schiller also mentions the 5 million low achieving students who drop out of school every year. This is another critical barrier because poorly funded school systems drive\u00c2\u00a0kids out before they can get the tools to help them achieve success.\u00c2\u00a0This too is an outcome of\u00c2\u00a0Republican politics because Republicans champion “local control” of schools which all too often means localalized financing<\/em> of schools.<\/p>\n

I’ve thought for years that Congress\u00c2\u00a0should withold federal education revenue from states which refuse to implement some financial equity\u00c2\u00a0between their rich and poor school districts. I suggested this to Paul Wellstone a few months before he died.\u00c2\u00a0The Senator\u00c2\u00a0didn’t disagree with me but\u00c2\u00a0told me\u00c2\u00a0that too many Congressmen would fight such a plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting column on Poverty by economist Bradley Schiller\u00c2\u00a0contends that for the vast majority of impoverished Americans their condition is short term. Schiller pointed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,31,4,60,54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-gods-own-party","category-my-gop-defection","category-rich-vs-poor","category-the-poor-are-always-with-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}