Poverty
What does it mean to be living in poverty?
What is the poverty line; that line that differentiates between living in poverty and just being poor?
Well the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) for 2020 for a family of 2 is $17,240. For a family of 4 it’s $20,200.
In 2000 there was a low of 31.5 million after a 7 year drop from a high of 39 million in 1993. In 1990 there were over 33 million below the poverty line. (Add another 20 million give or take a few above this line to those that are just “poor” in any given year.)
As best I can determine from ALL of the various information available the number of people living in poverty had been dropping since 2014. There were approximately 46.6 million people living in poverty then. That run is over.
For the last 30 years we’ve had at least 31 million people living in poverty on a yearly basis. 31,000,000. That’s the number of people living below the FPL. The number of people at the FPL in 2019 was just shy of 34 million.
These aren’t small numbers.
Crackers
None of this really addresses the question that this started off with though. What does it mean to be living in poverty? Again we’re talking about poverty not about being poor (low income).
I’ve been poor both as an adult and as a child but we always had food to eat. We were never impoverished. Not poor now though. Caught some breaks unlike so many others and made it to a comfortable retirement. (Union wages and benefits.)
My first wife remembered growing up when the only food that they had in the house to eat was crackers. Her Dad growing up had to wear a dress to school for a time because that was all the clothes his parents had and his pants were worn completely out. They literally couldn’t afford to buy clothes.
That was poverty.
Then there’s homeless poverty. Not just individuals either but entire families. There’s poverty that spans generations; one hopeless generation followed by another. Year in. Year out. No way out. There’s inner city poverty. There’s geographical poverty like what exists in the Appalachia region.
Who are these people? Do you see them in your day to day life? Are they waiting on you? Are they serving your food? Are they working to bring your food to the table? Are they cleaning? Are they working the hard physical labor jobs at the bottom? Are they working in meat packing plants, driving cabs, cooking food, waiting tables, picking crops, cleaning rooms? Yes is the answer. All these and more. They also populate the medical field.
Poverty
It doesn’t make any difference whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge. The numbers may go up a little or down a little but things stay the same for tens of millions living in poverty and tens of millions more that are poor. It’s little wonder that many or most of them don’t vote. Why should they participate in a process that makes no difference in their lives?
I stayed away for the most part about the state of poverty in 2020. We have a few million additions to the ranks of the poor and desperate because of the pandemic. Millions who have had their lives destroyed for all practical purposes. How do they build back to subsistence living? What happens when there’s nothing left to lose?
Capitalism has failed
Thirty million people living in poverty decade after decade is not a success story for the current oldest Constitutional democracy. It doesn’t speak well for our system of government or the two main parties.
The rich, however, have done great under this system. They have done it on the backs of the poor and the shrinking middle class. The poor do the grunt work of society. They handle the ugly stuff, the work that others don’t want to stoop to do. They will accept desperation wages. They are what have been known as “essential workers” during the pandemic.
What does it mean to be living in poverty during a pandemic?
They will die in greater numbers.
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