Reddit reviews $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America

> Welfare and despair has disincentivised migration to seek other work

Does welfare even give any payments there outside of SNAP?

I just read "$2 a Day" (https://smile.amazon.com/2-00-Day-Living-Nothing-America/dp/054481195X?sa-no-redirect=1) and it talked about the poor in the MS Delta and how they hardly get any govt subsidies

I think it's naive to say the rich conspired in some form as an attack on the poor and middle class. However the fact is that the income gap between rich and poor is widening by nearly every metric. The rich are getting richer.

It's also extremely difficult for poor people to get by in America. Here's a good book describing the broken policies that make the cards stacked against the poor.

Tied into that is institutional racism. Minorities, especially blacks, are unfairly targeted by the war on drugs, incarcerated, then labeled a felon and stripped of their rights. The New Jim Crow describes the policies and reasons that the war on drugs is effectively enforcing racial caste in America.

It's important to gain a deeper understanding of these issues if they are to be solved. All of these issues are visible to us on a surface level, but without a deeper understanding it can seem that the rich are actively trying to bleed out the poor.

These issues are not so much an agenda as they are something that emerges from our collective behavior. For example, studies have shown that many of us who do not identify as racist still exhibit conscious and unconscious biases. Our biases affect our society. Cynicism and pointing fingers gets us nowhere. Change starts with ourselves and we are all responsible.

1. So if you agree, don't you think we should set a minimum wage that is livable for single parents before these benefits are widely available?
   
2. You are heavily misinformed about unemployment benefits. Currently the only cash-based assistance families can get is from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which serves about 600,000 people, the majority of them children. To qualify for TANF you much be very low income, which varies by state but is typically under the minimum wage. Any countable income that you then receive is deduced from your TANF benefits. The upper limit of TANF benefits amounts to 10k a year per family, and more than half of states have the upper limit at $2500 a year per family,, far below the Federal Poverty Level for even an individual (~12k). TANF is also temporary--even if you don't find a job within the time limit, you will lose your benefits, and many very poor in the US (which also goes hand-in-hand with lack of education/skills) live on no income at all other than food stamps.
   
3. Two people also have two mouths to feed.
   
   I think that you, like many people, have a lot of engrained beliefs about poverty that aren't fact-based but learned from a lifetime of media angles, biased and anecdotal accounts, etc that you haven't questioned yet. If you'd like some good reads to expand your education on the poor in the US, $2 A Day and Nickled and Dimed are great reads.

Don't know what you are specifically looking for, but I would venture into the area of sociology more if I was you since you are starting to see a pure financial/economic analysis of the world is incomplete:
Hottest book right now is Evicted:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0553447459/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Just won a Pulitzer.

More books focused on poverty and societal issues:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/054481195X/ref=tmm_pap_title_sr?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr=

The New Jim Crow, more focused on racial inequality:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1595586431/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492095495&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=the+new+jim+crow&dpPl=1&dpID=51GxNVbFjCL&ref=plSrch




If you are looking for more historical stuff biographies are always good.

I hear what you're saying! Thanks. I do disagree with you on your perception of taxation, but I think that's a worldview thing where neither of us are going to change the other's mind :)

It sounds like you believe that there should be a safety net as a fallback, but not to be abused: does that sound fair? I think most (vast majority?) of Americans, myself included, would agree with you. You may already be familiar with this already, but if you aren't, I would recommend digging into what the safety net looks like in practice in the US. This is an exceedingly well-researched source for me that helped me understand what it looks like in practice (if I taught a course on the US safety net, this would be required reading): https://www.amazon.com/2-00-Day-Living-Nothing-America/dp/054481195X

I'm currently reading Psychodynamic Formulation and College Student Mental Health. The former for getting a better grasp of applying theory to practice, the latter in preparation for a college counseling internship :)

For non-therapy books, I'm reading $2.00 a Day and it is a harrowing experience :(

If you found that shocking, you might want to look up the book "$2.00 A Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America" by Kathryn J. Edin (professor of sociology and public health at Johns Hopkins) and H. Luke Shaefer (assoc. professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work). {That link is a non-affiliate link to the book at Amazon.com} I, personally, borrowed this book from my local library. Here is a link to the book's website and here is a link to the review of it in the Sept. 6, 2015 edition of the New York Times Book Review.