Category Archives: Poverty

Thank You, SCOTUS

When the Supreme Court voted that Obamacare was constitutional, they also held that states didn’t have to expand Medicaid as the law intended.  About 25 states, with GOP governors or legislatures or both, have so far refused to expand Medicaid.

This leaves us with the bizarre anomaly that more prosperous people will be eligible for health insurance subsidies, while poorer people still won’t be able to get health insurance.

The NYT* points out that the head of a family of four making $14 an hour will qualify for subsidies, but someone making $10 an hour won’t be able to get any help at all.

This is what happens when the law is an ass, and one of our two major political parties hates poor people.

*  “States’ Policies on Health Care Exclude Poorest,” Robert Pear

Policy of the One Percent, by the One Percent, for the One Percent

From “The 1 Percent’s Solution,” Paul Krugman, NYT:

“Thus, the average American is somewhat worried about budget  deficits, which is no surprise given the constant barrage of deficit scare stories in the news media, but the wealthy, by a large majority, regard deficits as the most important problem we face.  And how should the budget deficit be brought down?  The wealthy favor cutting federal spending on health care and Social Security — that is “entitlements” — while the public at large actually wants to see spending on those programs rise.

“You get the idea:  The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor.  What the top 1 percent wants becomes what economic science says we must do.

“[T]he years since we turned to austerity have been dismal for workers but not at all bad for the wealthy, who have benefited from surging profits and stock prices even as long-term unemployment festers.

“And this makes one wonder how much difference the intellectual collapse of the austerian position will actually make.  To the extent that we have policy of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, for the 1 percent, won’t we just see new justifications for the same old policies?”

 

My Yellow Brick Road

I would be heartbroken if yesterday’s bombing had happened in Boise or Birmingham.  But to have it happen in Boston is like breaking my heart and then stomping on it.

I grew up believing that I was incredibly lucky to be born an American and especially to be born a Bostonian.

If you were a bookish child in the 50′s and 60′s, especially a girl, Boston was a welcoming place to be.  Give us your near-sighted, your uncoordinated, your always-picked-last-for-sports…

I grew up not just in Boston, but in Dorchester, where Martin Richard was from.  It didn’t matter that I was poor because I knew that when I grew up, I would never again live in an apartment like my parents’.

When I passed through the doors of the Boston Public Library in Copley Square, where I spent many Saturdays between 7th and 12th grades, I wasn’t just  on my way to whatever research I was doing that day, I was on my way to my future life.   Boylston Street was my yellow brick road.

At the library, I did the research and analysis and writing that didn’t just get me into Wellesley and then Yale when it went co-ed, but also made it easy to excel once I got there.  I was a student at Girls’ Latin School, but I became a scholar at that library,  learning to use and value original sources, learning to think critically and draw my own conclusions.

To see death and blood and severed limbs right outside my library, this home to all the wisdom men and women have achieved, this sanctuary where the poorest of the city can enjoy the same resources as the richest, is unbearable to me.  My brain and body ache.

Quote of the Day

“Yes, total debt in the U.S. economy, public and private combined, has risen dramatically relative to G.D.P. No, this doesn’t mean that we as a nation have been living far beyond our means, and must drastically tighten our belts. While we have run up a significant foreign debt (although not as big as many imagine), the rise in debt overwhelmingly represents Americans borrowing from other Americans, which doesn’t make the nation as a whole any poorer, and doesn’t require that we collectively spend less. In fact, the biggest problem created by all this debt is that it’s keeping the economy depressed by causing us collectively to spend too little, with debtors forced to cut back while creditors see no reason to spend more.

“So what should we be doing? By all means, let’s restore the kind of effective financial regulation that, in the years before the Reagan revolution, helped deter excessive leverage. But that’s about preventing the next crisis. To deal with the crisis that’s already here, we need monetary and fiscal stimulus, to induce those who aren’t too deeply indebted to spend more while the debtors are cutting back.

“Unemployment, not excessive money printing, is what ails us now — and policy should be doing more, not less.”  Emphasis added.

Paul Krugman, from “The Urge to Purge,” NYT

The Epidemic of ADHD Diagnoses

How can this be?

Almost one in five of American high school boys is being diagnosed with ADHD.  In the South, it’s almost one in four.

Children on Medicaid are diagnosed at rates about one-third higher than those who are not.

Taking ADHD medication can result in drug addiction and even psychosis.

Diagnoses have gone up more than 50% in the last decade.

Something is disturbingly, dangerously wrong here.  And I think it’s with our parents, schools, and doctors, not with our children.

For more see “More Diagnoses of Hyperactivity Causing Concern,” Alan Schwarz and Sarah Cohen, NYT

Fathers and Sons

From “Study of Men’s Falling Income Cites Single Parents,” Binyamin Appelbaum, NYT:

“The decline of two-parent households may be a significant reason for the divergent fortunes of male workers, whose earnings generally declined in recent decades, and female workers, whose earnings generally increased, a prominent labor economist argues in a new survey of existing research.

“David H. Autor, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that the difference between men and women, at least in part, may have roots in childhood. Only 63 percent of children lived in a household with two parents in 2010, down from 82 percent in 1970. The single parents raising the rest of those children are predominantly female. And there is growing evidence that sons raised by single mothers ‘appear to fare particularly poorly,’ Professor Autor wrote in an analysis for Third Way, a center-left policy research organization.

“In this telling, the economic struggles of male workers are both a cause and an effect of the breakdown of traditional households. Men who are less successful are less attractive as partners, so some women are choosing to raise children by themselves, in turn often producing sons who are less successful and attractive as partners.

“’A vicious cycle may ensue,’ wrote Professor Autor and his co-author, Melanie Wasserman, a graduate student, ‘with the poor economic prospects of less educated males creating differentially large disadvantages for their sons, thus potentially reinforcing the development of the gender gap in the next generation.’

“The fall of men in the workplace is widely regarded by economists as one of the nation’s most important and puzzling trends. While men, on average, still earn more than women, the gap between them has narrowed considerably, particularly among more recent entrants to the labor force.

“For all Americans, it has become much harder to make a living without a college degree, for intertwined reasons including foreign competition, advancements in technology and the decline of unions. Over the same period, the earnings of college graduates have increased. Women have responded exactly as economists would have predicted, by going to college in record numbers. Men, mysteriously, have not.

“Among people who were 35 years old in 2010, for example, women were 17 percent more likely to have attended college, and 23 percent more likely to hold an undergraduate degree.”

Having raised a son in a two-parent household, this theory makes sense to me on a gut level.  I was the one who made sure my son had the latest video game he wanted, my husband was the one who made sure he did his homework.

Let Them Eat Cat Food

Y’all will recall that GOP presidential primary debate where candidates were asked to raise their hands if they would accept a budget deal that had $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases.  Not a single hand went up.  It was pretty breathtaking.

Well, today on “Meet the Press,” House Majority Whit Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said there is no ratio the GOP would accept — not $100 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases, not $1,000 in spending cuts to every $1 for tax increases.

He said, “There are no new tax increases because you don’t need it.”  Translation — “Hey, old people, have you tried some of those new cat foods?  They’re quite tasty.”

 

Shame on You, Rick Perry

What state has the highest percentage of residents without health insurance?  You might expect Mississippi or Alabama or Arkansas, which usually win these dubious-distinction contests, but in this case it’s Texas.

Twenty-four percent of Texans don’t have health insurance, and the federal government is offering expanded Medicaid that would insure more than one million of them.  Plus, it wouldn’t cost Texas anything for the first three years, and after that, Texas wouldn’t have to pay more than 90%.

You’d think any governor would jump at the chance to have a healthier work force and give kids a better start in life, but if your governor is Rick Perry, not so much.  Because, you know, the Medicaid expansion is part of evil Obamacare.

Somebody seems to be thinking more about 2016 GOP primary voters than about his own citizens.  Very sad, very shameful.