Essay - Poverty in America How can it be Dealt With? Four...

POVERTY IN AMERICA

How Can It Be Dealt With?

***** decades after President Lyndon Johnson called for a "War on Poverty," poverty remains a m*****jor social issue in the United States. Taken as a whole, the United St*****tes is one of ***** world's wealthiest large countries, and undoubtedly even many Americans whom we would regard as poor live better than hundreds of millions ***** people in the world's poor nations. However, the US h***** a poverty rate that is strikingly high by ***** standards of its peer group, the advanced industrial *****. According to official government figures, some 11 percent of Americans live in poverty, and many experts consider the real poverty rate to be higher (Montiero and Silva, n.d., pp. 3-4).

In American popular culture ***** public discourse, poverty and "welfare" are commonly associated with absence of a work ethic (Handler, 1997, pp. 293-94). In addition, poverty is widely associated ***** a disrupted family structure. Both of these assertions, for example, are found conjoined in a *****ation ***** the conservative Heritage Foundation: "There are two main reasons that American children are poor; their parents don't work much, and fathers are absent from the home" (Rector and Johnson, 2004, p. 4).

These believes carry strong overtones of moral judgment; in effect the poor are condemned as lazy and shiftless, and immoral to boot. ***** fact, however, a large proportion of the adult poor do work, not infrequently at two jobs (Montiero ***** Silva, n.d., p. 4). I*****eed, "most welfare recipients are indistinguishable from the low-wage workers -- the working poor" (Handler, 1997, p. 303). They are ***** because ***** work available to them does not pay enough ***** sustain them ***** anything like the standard ***** living associated with the middle class and the "***** way of life."

Even critics who make this point also acknowlege, however, that many of ***** poor are ill-equi*****ed to pursue opportunities ***** might otherwise lift ***** out ***** poverty. Many are functionally illiterate, or suffer from conditions such as chronic depression. From a prospective employer's point of view, they are not attractive employees (Handler, 1997, p. 296).

What happened to the War on Poverty? Some observers attribute the persistance of large-scale poverty in ***** United States ***** a cultur*****l resistance toward positive government intervention to alleviate ***** (Montiero and Silva, n.d., p. 14). Some ***** ***** specifically to the "Moynihan Rep*****t" of 1966 as a turning point at which the liberal perspective of "structural inequality" ***** ***** root of poverty gave way to a conserv*****ive ***** of a "***** of *****" (Yu, 2003, p. 1).

No doubt there is ***** "culture of poverty," as crime rates in high-poverty neighborhoods attest. However, is this a cause of poverty, or a consequence? It has been suggested that the political attacks on "welf*****" are rooted in the pressures that a ********** option places on lab***** markets (*****, 1997, p. 290). When even ***** barest necessities ***** life are available outside the labor market, em*****loyers must raise wage