'Working Poor in America\r'

' working(a) to be pitiable in the States A single breed of three works two jobs at lower limit engage chamberpot be only if she takes advantage of food stamps and lives with a roommate to help pays the expla soils. This is the case with near of the â€Å"working silly” in America. In 2006, a family of four with iodin lower limit- salary net earner had a total income (including food stamps and the decipherable Income Tax Credit) of $18,950, some $1,550 below the exiguity air. America is single of the richest countries in the do main of a function and yet harmonise to the US numerate role, in 2010 21 one thousand thousand of its creation lived in working- despicable families.This translates into to the highest degree 9. 6 part of wholly American families reenforcement below 100 percent of destitution make at least one family portion working. How can this be? Some large add gestate that the actors atomic number 18 to reprobate; they believe t hat it is the workers’ drop of ambition and drive to damp themselves that causes them to be in such horrific conditions. spot this might be rightful(a) in very few cases, I don’t believe that it paints the complete picture as to why there could be a â€Å"working brusque” class in America.Despite what clubhouse whitethorn think, the â€Å"working poor” exists because they atomic number 18 subjected to negligible betroth, insufficient hours, layoffs, lack of skills, expensive health tending and minor take, and inadequate housing. Society throws so many curve balls at low- pay workers that it has be bunk very nearly impossible for them to decease their situations. One common misconception is that the answer to scantness is to get a job. We assume that if soulfulness is hungry, it is because they are unemployed and are living on the streets. The reality is that over 49 million Americans are upholded by hunger.Does this mean that they a ll are loose and homeless(prenominal)? As the article â€Å"25 million wager on necessity food tending” reports, about third of the adults between the ages of 18 and 65 needing extremity food-aid are employed. Thirty-six percent of all families seeking assistance reported that at least one family member was working. As Michelle Conlin and Aaron Bernstein explain, today to a greater extent than 28 million race, about a quarter of the manpower between the ages of 18 and 64, earn less than $9. 04 an hour, which translates into a full- time salary of $18,800 a yearâ€the income that marks the national scantiness thread for a family of four. â€Å"The working(a) Poor Are Not acquire By in America”) The Census Bureau lists that overall 63% of U. S. families below the federal poverty line permit one or more workers. How is it that such a large percentage of the U. S. population can be considered as poor or hungry? Is it that all these people lack ambition or is it society that places the bear down of poverty on these workers? The primary and main reason for the rut the â€Å"working poor” find themselves in is the minimum occupy. While profits and productivity soar in today’s economy, the minimum wage hasn’t kept pace with inflation.Opponents of a raise in the minimum wage very much make dire predictions about supposed adverse impacts on craft rates and the economy. But contract afterward study shows that there is simply no evidence that raising the minimum wage has led to high unemployment, and there is firm evidence that a responsible minimum wage gain does not affect employment rates at all. consort to the New York Times editorial Board, if the minimum wage had kept pace with the modernise in executive salaries since 1990, America’s poorest paid workers would be making more than $23 an hour.In 1956, the federal minimum wage was a dollar an hour; that same dollar when adjusted for inflation would be $10. 55 an hour in todays dollars, sort of today the actual federal wage is $7. 25 and for tipped workers a profane $2. 13. This amounts to about $1. 50 an hour less, in today’s money, than it did in 1968. In â€Å"Raising the minimum wage get out reduce poverty” it states that even off with a $7. 25-an-hour minimum wage, a family of five with a full-time, minimum-wage earner that regains food stamps and the refundable tax attribute would fall $1,139 below the poverty line in 2009.In the past 30 historic period, relation has passed legislation to increase the minimum wage exactly 3 times. With politicians and employers fighting furiously to keep this minimum wage down, low-wage workers are forced to work two, sometimes even three jobs in plus to depending on judicature handouts in order to and get by. While their income is kept at a minimum, their expenses continue to soar: health care, churl care, gas prices, housing, the list goes on. The monetary value of living has been constantly rising for years while the minimum wage lags behind. The number of people who lack health redress is about 49. million. In 2010, the percentage of people who had health insurance by their employers expend to 55. 3% while 31% of Americans relied on the government for health insurance. (Les Christie) However, while closely kidskinren in families with a full-time minimum-wage worker are eligible for free or low- embody health insurance through Medicaid or the State Children’s wellness Insurance Program, their parents are not. In fact, correspond to the Census data, in 25 states a parent in a three- soul family with a full-time, minimum-wage job earns too much to do for Medicaid.As a result, about 41 percent of all parents with incomes below the poverty line were uninsured in 2005. In addition to this, many working poor families front strong childcare costs. harmonize to the matter Association of Child Care resource and Referral Age ncies, in the median state in the 2004-2005 academic year, full-time infant care in a licensed child care center cost an mediocre of $7,100 per year, while full-time care for preschoolers in a licensed child care center cost an average of $5,800.Without a child care subsidy, a family earning at or near the minimum wage is un ilkly to be able to yield such a tuition bill for one child, let alone two or more children. housing cost burdens for poor families are often severe. Expenditures on public housing excite fall since the 1980s, and expansion of public rental subsidies came to a halt in the mid-1990s. Actual rents have to be less than 30% of one’s income to be considered ‘affordable’. Ehrenreich 201) Housing analyst Peter Dreier reports that 59% of poor renters, amounting to a total of 4. 4 million households, spend more than 50% of their income on shelter. (38) Nationwide, the average cost of a little two-bedroom apartment in 2006 was $821 per month, or $9 ,852 per year, according to the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban information (HUD). At this cost, rent and utilities consume nearly half (48 percent) of the income of a family of four at the poverty line. This calculation assumes that the family receives food stamps, the EITC and child tax credit. ) Rising rents are forcing the low-wage workers into motels with displace prices for the winter season and tourist seasons. By relying on the minimum wage, basic necessities such as health care and home-ownership have now become a luxuriousness to the â€Å"working poor” †a distant dream that can never be realized. We would assume that there is adequate represent for the â€Å"working poor” through government handouts, but even this system is flawed.Throughout the nation soup kitchens and food pantries are stretched beyond capacity, struggling and failing to meet natural need, much of it from working people whose bribe simply havent kept up. Barbara Ehrenreic h in her record book Nickled and Dimed reveals through her own experience as a low-wage employee just how difficult it is to receive help from the government and charity organizations and how express mail these options are. You would need to dedicate a significant amount of your time and energy to take root these options and even when you do manage to get in touch with the â€Å"right person” the help received can be useless.As a low-wage worker, where every hour of your time is money spent, devoting this amount of time to smell for government aid is a highlife as well. Therefore, they are prevented from receiving the little assistance available to them. Most of the time, they do not even qualify for public assistance because of the low-wage paid job that they have, even though they urgently need the assistance. Therefore, who or what do we blame for the devastating conditions of the â€Å"working poor” in our society?If there was a clear cut answer to this ques tion, then by chance this question would never need to be asked. We would just point a experience and work on getting the job fixed. Society strips the â€Å"working poor” of their dignity, self-worth, assumption and pride and leaves them naked to suffer these physically demanding, dead-end jobs where they are paid next to nothing and in the end, still condemned because they are thought of as lazy parasites that piece a strain on society through their addictions and their insistence on reproducing in unfavorable circumstances.Society is quick to judge these individuals and freeze off of their actions when in reality it is society’s fault that these people must depend on such things as welfare in order to minimally survive. According to Furman and Parrot in â€Å"Raising the minimum wage will reduce poverty”, raising the minimum wage would be an important first step and a useful complement to public policies like the EITC, food stamps, and child care subsi dies, which set up superfluous benefits and supports for low-income working families.They believe that a broader agenda is needed, however, to raise the prospects of low-wage workers and their families more significantly. much(prenominal) an agenda would need to include additional income supports, help in obtaining the health care, child care, and housing that these families need but often cannot afford, and new opportunities to attend college or encourage their skills so they can secure higher paying, more stable jobs. Works Cited â€Å"25 million depend on emergency food assistance. ” indemnity & employ June 2006: 7.Academic OneFile. Web. 22 June 2012. Bureau of Labor Statistics. get together States Department of Labor. May 2012. Web. 21 June 2012. Christie, Les. â€Å" add up of people without health insurance climbs. ” CNN Money. assembly line News Network 2012. Web. 21 June 2012. Conlin, Michelle, and Aaron Bernstein. â€Å"The Working Poor Are Not G etting By in America. ” Poverty. Ed. Viqi Wagner. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2007. opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from â€Å"Working … And Poor. ” Business Week (31 May 2004). Gale oppose Viewpoints In Context. Web. 0 June 2012. Dreier, Peter. Why America’s Workers Can’t ante up the Rent. Dissent 47 (3). Summer 2000. Ehrenreich, Barbara. atomic number 28 and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. New York: Henry Holt and Co, 2001. Print. Furman, Jason, and Sharon Parrot. â€Å"Raising the negligible plight Will Reduce Poverty. ” Poverty. Ed. Viqi Wagner. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2007. argue Viewpoints. Rpt. from â€Å"A $7. 25 Minimum Wage Would Be a Useful pervert in Helping Working Families consort Poverty. ” www. cbpp. org. 2007. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context.Web. 22 June 2012. Jeff Chapman. â€Å" custom and the Minimum Wage: Evidence from fresh State Labor Trends,” Economic Policy Institute, 2004. And in one of the most have studies, David Card and Alan B. Krueger find that the 1992 New island of tee shirt state minimum wage increase had no negative effect on employment in New tee shirt’s fast-food industry. David Card and Alan Krueger, â€Å"Minimum return and avocation: A case study of the fast-food industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania,” American Economic Review, vol. 4 (4), 772-793, 2004. Pimpare, Stephen. â€Å" welfare Reform Has Increased Poverty. ” Poverty and Homelessness. Ed. Noel Merino. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2009. reliable Controversies. Rpt. from â€Å"Why Welfare Reform Has Failed. ” ZNet. 2004. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 22 June 2012. RaisetheMinimumWage. com. National Employment Law Project. June 2012. Web. 21 June 21 2012. Rhoda Cohen, J. , Mabli, F. , Potter, Z. , Zhao. thirstiness In America 2010. Feeding America. February 2010.\r\n'