Blog #5

Chaundry argues that “we are asking the least fortunate to strive and work harder” because the people living in poverty are essentially being asked survive off of what is not survivable. As a result of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, many working mothers were forced to enter the work place but without the adequate support system to enable them to enter the job market. Annette’s case for example is reality for many single mothers and they are not all fortunate enough to have an understanding prospective employer that is willing to wait for them to find child care arrangements in order to go to work. And although there are programs such as AmeriCorps that will train mothers with skills to enter the workforce, the waiting list for stable and quality child care to be able to join the program is often times lengthy and challenging to secure. The PRWORA took away the focus of the children’s wellbeing and instead shifted the focus on the mothers to take “personal responsibility” for their own children needs and the result has been devastating for children born in poor families. Just because children are born to a poor family or in a disadvantaged environment does not mean that they are any less worthy of having opportunities made available to them in terms of care, education and healthcare but the government has basically made poor people work harder to be able to provide for their family and they are still unable to due to the increasingly high cost of living and disproportionate wages. According the poverty guidelines a family of four is poor if they are making $20, 614 or less but the truth is, is that it is almost impossible for a family to survive on that income making them desperate rather than poor in my opinion. Annette worked her way up and found herself making from $16,000 to $22, 000 yet she still depended on public housing, food stamps and help with child care. If she was making well over the poverty level for her family of three, why was she unable to provide housing, food and care out of her income alone? Undoubtedly, the poverty guidelines are not realistic.
Interestingly, the public also understands that the working poor are essentially those that are working full time and still unable to provide for their basic needs. Some of the responses describe what is needed to be done in order for them to be able to go to work and make their income work to keep them out of poverty. Healthcare and minimum wage were two things that most people would change because without a decent pay it is impossible to make a living. We really need to visit these issues if the government’s intent is for people to “take responsibility” and provide for their kin. We need to ensure that the opportunities exist otherwise the new generations born into poverty will be unable to break the cycle. It sounds easy to say that we should all pull ourselves by our own bootstraps but what if you don’t have boots to begin with?