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poverty

Thursday 25th of April 2024

Academic achievement The fact is that good teachers get bad results in poor zip codes and bad teachers get good results in wealthy zip codes. That should be the starting point for any debate about performance. Richard Rothstein © 2017 Kwiple.com
Adapting to circumstances The human organism, however, is remarkably tenacious of life, and miraculously adapted to it. In the course of adapting, it may be forced to sacrifice a few side issues, such as the capacity of thinking, of feeling emotion, or of discerning any possibilities of joy or goodness in living: but it lives. James Agee, Cotton Tenants: Three Families © 2015 Kwiple.com
American exceptionalism Mass incarceration © 2015 Kwiple.com
American exceptionalism Widespread persistent poverty © 2016 Kwiple.com
Bankers say Give poor people credit cards © 2015 Kwiple.com
Bread bags cast upon waters Growing up, I had only one good pair of shoes. So, on rainy days, my mom would slip plastic bread bags over them. But I was never embarrassed because the school bus would be filled with rows and rows of young Iowans with bread bags slipped over their feet. Joni Ernst, Tea Party Republican Senator, in her rebuttal to President Obama's 2015 State of the Union speech, after Party leaders asked her to “humanize” Republicans © 2015 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Even more serious is the ever-increasing number of people in extreme poverty — people living below half the poverty line, or below $9,500 for a family of three. An astonishing 20.6 million people lived in extreme poverty in 2011, up by nearly 8 million in just ten years, and 6 million had no income other than food stamps. … The near poor — those with incomes below twice the poverty line, or $46,000 for a family of four — brings the total of the poor and the near-poor to more than 106 million people Peter Edelman, So Rich, So Poor © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Factor by which the poverty rate has grown faster in U.S. suburbs than in cities since 1990: 2 Harper's Index, September 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Factor by which a U.S. Christian is more likely than a nonreligious person to think poverty is a personal failure: 2 Harper's Index, November 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Marriage has become a mark of status, increasingly the preserve of the wealthy and educated. Today, 26% of poor, 39% of working-class, and 56% of middle- and upper-class adults aged 18 to 55 are married, according to research by Opportunity America and the American Enterprise Institute. This compares with 51%, 57% and 65% respectively in 1990. The Guardian, October 7, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Number of U.S. states in which the poverty rate increased last year: 0 Harper's Index, December 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Percentage change since 2006 in the number of U.S. cities that have banned living in vehicles: +143 Harper's Index, March 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers The richest 1% of Americans can now expect to live up to 15 years longer than the poorest 1%. The Guardian, April 11, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
By the numbers Up to two-thirds of adults live with alcoholism. One in four children are born with with fetal alcohol syndrome. Life expectancy is just 66.8 years. Fueled by poverty and addiction – the unemployment rate  hovers  around  80% – the suicide rate is over four times the national average. The Guardian, September 29, 2017, on Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota © 2017 Kwiple.com
Capitalism In capitalism, the progressive is the one who slows down the rate at which you get poorer. Ted Rall, September 2, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Charity An American household with an income of $50,000 spends around $30,000 annually on necessities, according to the Conference Board, a nonprofit economic research organization. Therefore, for a household bringing in $50,000 a year, donations to help the world's poor should be as close as possible to $20,000. The $30,000 required for necessities holds for higher incomes as well. So a household making $100,000 could cut a check for $70,000. Again, the formula is simple: whatever money you're spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away. Peter Singer © 2017 Kwiple.com
Children Poor kids who do everything right don't do better than rich kids who do everything wrong. Advantages and disadvantages, in other words, tend to perpetuate themselves. Washington Post, October 18, 2014 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Citizens United Proverb affirmed: The voice of the poor has no echo © 2015 Kwiple.com
Class struggle I used to believe that the debate over wealth distribution should be conducted separately from the poverty debate in order to minimize attacks on antipoverty advocates for engaging in “class warfare.” But now we literally cannot afford to separate the two issues. Peter Edelman, So Rich, So Poor © 2016 Kwiple.com
Criminal justice Wealthy murder suspect freed on bail as man accused of welfare fraud stuck in jail — — — — — — — — — — — California woman whose friends raised $35m for her is on house arrest as a man who can't afford $75,000 bail has two options: plead guilty or stay behind bars headline, The Guardian, April 25, 2017 [She murdered her father and children] [His bail is more than 15 times the amount of the alleged fraud; he lost his job, housing and possessions while jsiled awaiting trial] © 2017 Kwiple.com
Deindustrialization The staffers [at Community Action, an anti- poverty program] are now seeing new poor who, unlike the old poor, don't want to hear about FoodShare, as food stamps are called in Wisconsin, or Badgercare, as Medicaid is called, or any other kind of government help for people low on money. These new poor are stressed to the max, having topped out their credit cards and raided their 401(k)'s and sometimes moved out of where they were living and moved in with relatives. In their stress, there is one very specific kind of help that these new poor want, and that is leading them to swallow their pride and call Community Action. Almost all of them want advice on how to find a J-O-B. Amy Goldstein, Janesville,  where 1.200 lost good-paying jobs when a GM plant closed © 2018 Kwiple.com
Democracy In the 1990s, the wealthy backed democracy more strongly than any other income group in America and Europe. That has turned upside down. The poor are now democracy's strongest fans, the rich its biggest skeptics.  Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Despair Despair so far invading every tissue has destroyed in these the hidden seats of the desire and of the intelligence. W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, The Dog Beneath the Skin, or Where is Francis? A Play in Three Acts © 2015 Kwiple.com
Food Public health officials here describe a crisis of poverty and malnutrition among the tens of thousands of farmworkers and their families who tend to the fields of lettuce, broccoli, celery, cauliflower and spinach, among many other crops, in an area called the salad bowl of the nation. New York Times, November 24, 2016, on conditions in California's Salinas Valley, where farmworkers and their families subsist on a diet of soda and fast food because they can't afford the food they pick © 2016 Kwiple.com
Globalization We see repeatedly that when people anywhere are desperate, people everywhere are at risk. In a world where pandemic disease spreads from one continent to another in the span of a few hours, where terrorist attacks are more random and frequent, and where political crises trigger mass migration, it is in our collective interest to fight against the daily reality of poverty, sickness and frustration. Bill and Melinda Gates, Wall Street Journal, September 16-17, 2017 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Government  As long as there is plenty, poverty is evil. Government belongs wherever evil needs an adversary and there are people in distress. Robert F. Kennedy © 2021 Kwiple.com
Government For decades we have attacked it, redirected it, outsourced it, and filled it with incompetents and cronies. Yes, it still works well enough when we need it to blow up some small country, but those branches of it designed to help out Americans of “lower socioeconomic status,” as the scientists would put it, are now bare. Thomas Frank, Rendevous with Oblivion © 2018 Kwiple.com
Healthcare – Cost of iPhone: $399 – Cost of healthcare for 1 year: $10,345 – Hearing @jasoninthehouse compare the 2 as if they are the same: priceless Gavin Newson, @GavinNewsom, 7 Mar 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Healthcare So maybe rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and want to spend hundreds of dollars on that, maybe they should invest in their own health care. Jason Chaffetz, who believes iPhones and healthcare cost the same © 2017 Kwiple.com
Housing I wish the rent Was heaven sent. from “Aspiration” by Langston Hughes © 2017 Kwiple.com
Hypocrites say Voter ID laws don't suppress voting by minorities and the poor © 2017 Kwiple.com
Income inequality A far simpler and much bolder approach [to reducing income inequality] … would be to set a new income maximum as a multiple of the existing minimum wage Any income above that multiple would face a tax of 100 percent. … A “maximum wage” set in this fashion would immediately intertwine the economic fates of society's poorest and society's most privileged. Sam Pizzigati, The Case For a Maximum Wage  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Income inequality I was once told by the head of a prestigious think tank … [that its] board was very unlikely to fund any any work that had income  or wealth inequality  in its title. Yes, they would finance anything that had to do with poverty alleviation, but inequality was an altogether matter. Why? Charity is a good thing … But inequality is different: Every mention of it raises in fact the issue of the appropriateness or legitimacy of my income. Branko Milanovic, The Haves and the Have Nots © 2015 Kwiple.com
Income inequality The poorest American ventile [bottom twentieth or bottom 5%] is at the 68th percentile of the world income distribution … This means that the poorest Americans are better off than more than two-thirds of the world's population. People in all other (higher) U.S. ventiles are, of course, even better off, and the richest Americans belong to the top world percentile. Branko Milanovic, The Haves and the Have Nots © 2019 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Since 1978. the poorest 50 percent of Americans have seen their real incomes shrink, by 1 percent. By contrast, America's most affluent 1 percent, over that same span, have seen their real incomes nearly triple. Sam Pizzigati, The Case For a Maximum Wage  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Income inequality What if each of our societies set a ceiling on the annual income any one individual could pocket — and linked this maximum to an existing wage minimum? … In any nation that linked minimum to maximum, society's richest would be able to increase their own personal income only if the incomes of society's poorest increased first. Sam Pizzigati, The Case For a Maximum Wage  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Inequality [T]hose who find themselves in the worst positions have the most pressures to find legitimacy in the social order. The alternative —believing that the system is unjust, unfair, or even random— is in fact painful and generates more stress. Approving of the system  therefore serves a “palliative function,” even though in practice it discourages seeking beneficial changes that might concretely redress exising inequalities.  Francesco Duina, Broke and Patriotic, summarizing social justification theory  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Measure poverty relative to median income instead of relative to a dollar amount © 2017 Kwiple.com
Lies If I ever thought of these as lies, I soon came to see them as part of the etiquette of poverty — a means of getting by for the poor and also a gift we give to the rich, a practice that lets us avoid talking about the uncomfortable differences between us. Over time, it becomes second nature. Observing this etiquette doesn't feel dishonest because its falsehoods recognize the deeper truth that many of society's institutions are hostile to the poor. Lying to the landlord keeps a roof over our heads. Lying to the social worker keeps our family together. Lying to ourselves allows us to believe it's all going to be OK, somehow, someday. Joshua Hunt, New York Times, July 13, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Lobbyists In 2006 … more than half of all registered lobbying organizations represented corporations or business associations, while a bare 1 percent each represented labor unions and poor people. Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America? © 2019 Kwiple.com
Lobbyists Less than 1 percent of organizations represent the poor. Although blue-collar workers are 24 percent of the population, they are only 1 percent of economic organizations in Washington. White-collar workers make up less than 10 percent of the public, but they are represented by almost 74 percent of economic organizations in DC. Ganesh Sitaraman, The Great Democracy © 2070 Kwiple.com
Longevity  If you’re among the most fortunate in America, you will live about as long as the most fortunate anywhere in the world. … But sifting through the [death] certificates, it will become clear that the fates of the dis-  advantaged are much more country-dependent. Even the most disadvantaged in Japan and Switzerland typically make it to 60. In France, Germany and Britain, they die at about 55. In the US, it’s just 41. … For men at the bottom of the US economic ladder, it’s even worse. My calculations suggest the average age of death in that group is just 36 years old, compared with 55 in the Netherlands and 57 in Sweden. John Burn-Murdoch, Financial Times, October 13, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Longevity Over eight years, I conducted an ethnographic study examining the lives of children growing up in Kensington, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Philadelphia. Babies born in the neighborhood are expected to live to 71, which is 17 years less than babies born no more than four miles away in the affluent, predominantly white neighborhood of Society Hill — and a life span on par with countries such as Egypt, Bhutan and Uzbekistan. Nikhail Goyal, New York Times, September 25, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Longevity The rapid decline of life expectancyv for America's poorest has come against a backdrop of falling poverty [rates] and rising [disposable] incomes. … In most wealthy countries, if you’re desperately unlucky in the longevity stakes, you succumb to cancer before you reach 60. But if you’re unlucky in the US, you die from a drug overdose or gunshot wound by 40. Which brings us again to the most shocking statistic: among the least fortunate 10 per cent of American men, the average age at death is 36. John Burn-Murdoch, Financial Times, October 13, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Contract with a developer of luxury apartments to sell it a building restricted for use as a not-for-profit healtcare center for the surrounding poor neighborhood, buy the building saying it will be a nursing home, pay $16.15 milllion to have the deed restrictions removed, then sell it to the developer for $116 million, making a tidy $72 million profit for reducing services to the poor and dumping high-priced housing where it's not wanted © 2016 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Legalized usury / payday lending © 2016 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Maximizing overdraft fees by reordering transactions to ensure that larger ones are charged before smaller ones © 2016 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Redlining by online lenders © 2016 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Wage theft © 2016 Kwiple.com
Making money the new-fashioned way Working two or more part-time, minimum-wage jobs with no benefits © 2016 Kwiple.com
Minimum wage A single parent with one child working a full-time minimum-wage job will earn below the federal poverty threshold of $16,070, according to the University of California's Center for Poverty Research. Washington Post, November 1, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Opportunity Them that's got are them that gets Ray Charles © 2015 Kwiple.com
Political parties … political parties have no reason to care for those who don't care to vote; this in turn strengthens the impression of the poor (to extent that they can afford any attention at all) that there's nothing in it for them when it comes to politics. Jan-Werner Müller, Democracy Rules © 2021 Kwiple.com
Poor Whites They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them. Barack Obama © 2015 Kwiple.com
Poverty Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor; and if one is a member of a captive population, economically speaking, one's feet have simply been placed on the treadmill forever. James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Poverty Being poor is like trying to climb out of a pit while roped together with your family. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, September 24, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Poverty A call girl is simply someone who hates poverty more than she hates sin. Sydney Biddle Barrows, Mayflower Madam © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty Everyone is happy talking about eliminating poverty, because this looks like an admirable and ethical response to the problems of inequality, while leaving the structures of power untouched. David Kynaston © 2019 Kwiple.com
Poverty Generally speaking, the poorer person summers where he winters. Fran Lebowitz, “How Not to Marry a Millionaire” © 2015 Kwiple.com
Poverty A human body doesn't care if acute stress is caused by almost getting your electricity shut off or by a looming deadline on a million-dollar contract. The reason that poor people wind up coping in ways that seem pointlessly self-destructive is that all the constructive stuff costs money. I can't afford to join a gym. I can't just pay a shrink to listen to me vent. I can't go shopping or find an accupuncturist or good masseuse or whatever else it is that the people above me do to cope. Linda Tirado, Hand to Mouth © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. Stephen Jay Gould © 2017 Kwiple.com
Poverty It doesn't make sense to hire people at wages that guarantee they'll be desperate and then be disappointed when they're not always capable of pretending otherwise. Linda Tirado, Hand to Mouth  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty It is hard for an empty Sack to stand upright. Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography © 2020 Kwiple.com
Poverty It is the practice of what has unjustly obtained the name of civilisation … to make some provision for persons becoming poor and wretched only at the time they become so. Would it not, even as a matter of economy, be far better to adopt means to prevent their becoming poor? This can best be done by making every person when arrived at the age of twenty-one years an inheritor of something to begin with. Thomas Paine, Agrarian Justice © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences – deep, corrosive, obstinate differences – radiating painful roots into the community, and into the family, and the nature of the individual. The differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice. They are anguishing to observe. For the Negro they are a constant reminder of oppression. For the white they are a constant reminder of guilt. But they must be faced and they must be dealt with and they must be overcome. Lyndon Johnson, 1963, Howard University Commencement Address © 2017 Kwiple.com
Poverty The next time you feel as though you're shouldering more than your fair share of society's burdens, ask yourself: How badly do I have to pee right now, and do I need permission? Linda Tirado, Hand to Mouth  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty One must always have in mind one simple fact – there is no literate population in the world that is poor, and there is no illiterate population that is anything but poor. John Kenneth Galbraith © 2019 Kwiple.com
Poverty Our obligation to the poor is not just one of providing assistance to strangers but one of compensation for harms that we have caused and are still causing them. Peter Singer, “What Should a Billionaire Give – And What Should You?” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Poverty Personally I couldn't care less. One man's as good as another as long as they pay their way. Only there's people around that don't feel that way. So if an undesirable asks you for the key, the shitter's out of order. Mario Florestano, owner of a gas station with a restroom, to Ernie Munger, his employee, in Leonard Gardner's Fat City © 2015 Kwiple.com
Poverty Poor people have gotten the message loud and clear. The powers that be are not concerned about us. Meanwhile, wealthier people get all exercised about a poor person dropping a cigarette butt on a city sidewalk, as if this is proof that poor people just don't care. Linda Tirado, Hand to Mouth  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty Poverty is a denial of rights sold as a character flaw. Sarah Kendzior, The View From Flyover Country  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Poverty Poverty is bleak and cuts off your long-term brain. Linda Tirado, “Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, poverty thoughts” © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty The reason for the disconnect between the actual housing nightmare of the poor and “poverty,” as officially defined, is simple: the official poverty level is still calculated by the archaic method of taking the bare-bones cost of food for a family of a given size and multiplying this number by three. Yet food is relatively inflation-proof, at least as compared with rent. In the 1960s … food accounted for 24 percent of the average family budget … housing 29 percent. In 1999, food … 16 percent … while housing … soared to 37 percent. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty [T]he single best predictor of going broke in America was [found by analyzing data] to be a woman with a child. Not a woman alone. Not a couple with no kids. Not elderly or African American or Latina. One kid. Two kids. It didn't matter. The strongest  predictor was to be a woman with at least one child. Elizabeth Warren, Persist  [2021] © 2021 Kwiple.com
Poverty Sure, we can beat the odds. Your're reading this book by a service worker, after all. But the irony of my success here is that I didn't get this chance because I worked my balls off for some asshole who thought me ungrateful for my sub-living wage. You're reading this book by me because lightning struck, because my story went viral. And by definition, that can't happen for everyone. Linda Tirado, Hand to Mouth  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty There are no special economies that nourish the poor; on the contrary, there are a host of special costs. If you can't put up the two month's rent you need to secure an apartment, you end up paying through the nose for rent by the week. If you have only a room, with a hot plate at best, you can't save by cooking up huge lentil stews that can be frozen for the week ahead. You eat fast food or the hot dogs and Styrofoam cups of soup that can be microwaved in a convenience store. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty This is my bottom-line point about work and poverty. It's far more demoralizing to work and be poor than to be unemployed and poor. Linda Tirado, Hand to Mouth  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty The tremendous Labour question remains absolutely untouched — the question whether the toil of life is not to provide a sufficiency of bread. No thoughtful man can suppose for a moment that this question can be put aside. No man with a head and heart can suppose that any considerable class of a nation will submit for ever to toil incessantly for bare necessaries – without comfort, ease, or luxury, now – without a prospect for their children and without a hope for their old age. A social idea or system which compels such a state of things as this must be, is in so far, worn out. Harriet Martineau, History of England During the Thirty Years’ Peace © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty We will never feel hopeful. We will never get a vacation. Ever. We know that the very act of being poor guarantees that we will never not be poor. It doesn't give us much reason to improve ourselves. Linda Tirado, “Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, poverty thoughts” © 2016 Kwiple.com
Poverty When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatize those who let people die, not those who struggle to live. Sarah Kendzior, The View From Flyover Country  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Poverty The “working poor,” as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our ociety. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed © 2022 Kwiple.com
Public discourse The pronouns “we” and “they” are the most important of all political words. They demarcate who's within the sphere of moral responsibiity, and who's not. Someone within that sphere who's needy is one of “us” – an extension of our family, friends, community, tribe – and deserving of help. But people outside that sphere are “them,” presumed undeserving unless proved otherwise. The central political question for any na- tion or group is where the borders of this sphere of mutual responsibility are drawn. Robert Reich, Christian Science Monitor, February 15, 2014 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Punt returners say Really? When my landlord comes, can I just give him a hug? Carmella Salinas, an early-childhood-education teacher in New Mexico who, after teaching 14 years, earns just $12.89 an hour for work capped at 32 hours per week, lobbied her state legislature for more education funding, responding to a legislator who told her, “You didn't get into this for the money; you're paid in love.” © 2016 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Blocking women on Medicaid from using their insurance at Planned Parenthood is change we believe in  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Cut down safety nets © 2016 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Denying food stamps to anyone capable of doing any kind of work, regardless of whether it's available, what it pays, or what it costs them or their families is change we believe in  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Get people working and make them happier by denying them Medicaid  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say The poor must suffer disease that the rich may flourish © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Poor people? We don't need no poor people! © 2016 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Slashing funding for food stamps is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Thank God poor people are too depressed to defend themselves © 2016 Kwiple.com
Resisters say A tax on the rich Not attacks on the poor Placard, Paris, France, Women's March, January 21, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Resisters say They got money for war but can't feed the poor Placard, Los Angeles International Women's Day March, March 8, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Right-wing populists say Elites and the poor can't keep mooching off us © 2017 Kwiple.com
Science education Government-supported early education [in the United States] is funded mainly at the state and local level … and because science courses are the most expensive per student, few schools in relatively poor districts can afford to offer many of them. Students from these districts therefore end up being less prepared for university-level science than are their wealthier peers, many of whom attended well-appointed private schools. Nature, Vol. 537, 22 September 2016 © 2016 Kwiple.com
Selfie What took me from the kitchen to Congress was knowing that one in five children in America lives in poverty. I just can't stand that. Nancy Pelosi, who first ran for Congress at the age of 47 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Selfie They're people just like me, only they're poor. Donald Trump, when asked to define “white trash” © 2018 Kwiple.com
Selfie I identify with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree. To these folks, poverty is is the family tradition— their ancestors were day laborers in the Southern slave economy, sharecroppers after that, coal miners after that, and machinists and millworkers during more recent times. Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends and family. J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy © 2016 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind. You take somebody who has the right mindset, you can take everything from them and put them on the street, and I guarantee you, in a little while, they'll be right back up there. And you take somebody with the wrong mindset, you could give them everything in the world – they'll work their way back down to the bottom. Ben Carson © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Increasing aid to the poor reduces economic growth  © 2015 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say A job is the ticket out of poverty © 2016 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say The poor have no one to blame but themselves © 2015 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say A rising tide lifts all boats © 2015 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say The rugged individualism that defines America has always been bound by a shared set of values, an enduring sense that we're in this together, that America is not a place where we simply turn away from the sick or turn our backs on the tired, the poor, the huddled masses. It is a place sustained by the idea “I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper.” Barack Obama © 2015 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say You can't be imprisoned for being poor © 2016 Kwiple.com
Social Security In the United States, the poverty rate among older adults is now just 9 percent; if Social Security were not included in their income, it would be 40 percent. Almost one third of beneficiaries rely on the program for at least 90 percent of their income. Cass Sunstein, New York Review of Books, April 4, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
Socio-economic mobility Since most of Washington's spending on economic mobility comes through tax expenditures – subsidies that individual filers claim via their IRS returns – there is clearly foreknowledge of the outcome. The poor do not file tax returns. The rich have accountants. Edward Luce, Time to Start Thinking  © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union About 78 per cent of US workers live pay cheque to pay cheque, according to a 2017 study by CareerBuilder, a jobs portal. A survey the same year by the Federal Reserve found that nearly half of American families could not cover a $400 emergency expense without borrowing or selling something to do so. Financial Times, January 20, 2019 © 2019 Kwiple.com
State of the union People are continually pointing out to me the wretchedness of white people in order to console me for the wretchedness of blacks. But an itemized account of the American failure does not console me and it should not console anyone else. James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Saying, “Let them eat munitions,” Trump administration officials defend increasing military spending by $50+bn by eliminating or severely reducing anti-poverty programs, including programs providing after-school food aid to low-income kids and Meals on Wheels for seniors An alternative fact [White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said, “We can't spend money on programs just because they sound good” and reducing anti-poverty programs is “one of the most compassionate things we can do” because they are an onerous burden on taxpayers] © 2017 Kwiple.com
Tax audits What county in the United States has the highest rate of tax audits? The answer is Humphreys County in rural Mississippi, where three-quarters of the population is Black and more than one third lives below the poverty line, according to ProPublica and Tax Notes. Tax collectors go after Humphreys County, where the median annual household income is $28,500, because the government targets audits on poor families using the earned- income tax credit, an antipvoerty program, rather than on real estate tycoons who pay their daughters (that's you, Ivanka!) questionable consulting fees. Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, Oct. 10, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Tech bros say We don't help you make a living wage, we help you supplement income from one job with income from other jobs © 2016 Kwiple.com
Trumpism In 2016, after several counties in North Carolina suffered severe flooding, the state tried to distribute federal disaster-relief food-benefit cards on the day of the presidential election, to give poor people a choice between eating and voting. Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk © 2019 Kwiple.com
Voter suppression I had to put the $42 where it would do the most good. We couldn't eat the birth certificate. An elderly African-American Texas woman living on a monthly income of $321 who was disenfranchised because she couldn't afford to pay for a copy of her birth certificate, which Texas requires to get a voter ID Quoted in The Great Suppression, by Zachary Roth © 2016 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality  Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor saying © 2017 Kwiple.com
Work requirements On welfare, Angie was a low-income single mother, raising her children in a dangerous neighborhood in a household roiled by chaos. She couldn't pay the bills. She drank lots of beer. And her kids needed a father. Off welfare, Angie was a low-income single mother, raising her children in a dangerous neighborhood in a household roiled by chaos. She couldn't pay the bills. She drank lots of beer. And her kids needed a father. Jason DeParle, American Dream  © 2018 Kwiple.com
 
Working class We call [our customers] Alice. It's an acronym standing for Asset-Limited, Income-Constrained, Employed. Jeff Weiss, CEO of DFC Global, a payday lender, 2011 © 2018 Kwiple.com