JUST IDEAS
Improving Policy, Improving Lives
Budget Cuts Would Leave Many Americans Hungry
Their bellies were swollen and their fragile limbs covered with sores that would not heal. Clothed in rags, these children of the Mississippi Delta huddled in crumbling shacks with empty iceboxes, not a morsel of food to be found. It was a level of human suffering and despair that brought a New York Senator to tears. Walking, stunned, from one hovel to the next, Senator Robert F. Kennedy saw conditions that rivaled what he’d seen in third-world countries.
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Please, un-black poverty: breaking down oppressive stereotypes
I grew up in South Carolina, one of America’s poorest states, with two high school-educated parents. My family has a long history of doing the best they can with the little they have.
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I Was Homeless in Rural America. Here’s How to Help Families Like Mine.
Source: AP Photo/Elaine Thompson Originally posted on Talkpoverty.org After we packed what was left of our belongings into our rusted-out minivan, my siblings and I loaded in to avoid the rain. We squeezed in among the garbage bags full of clothes, the kitchen...
read moreThe Tipped Minimum Wage Hasn’t Budged in 25 Years. That’s a Problem.
Originally posted on The Leadership Conference Education Fund After a quarter century, change has yet to come for tipped workers in the United States. Since 1991 – the last time the federal tipped minimum wage was increased – the first iPod was released and Google...
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What Candidates Should Say about Poverty and Opportunity at Ryan’s Forum
First published on TalkPoverty.org and cross-posted on BillMoyers.com. This Saturday, a number of Republican presidential candidates will converge in South Carolina to debate and discuss “fighting poverty and expanding opportunity in America.” We hope that they...
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New Research Documents Growth of Extreme Poverty
Cross-posted by several other media outlets, including Billmoyers.com and Commondreams.org. A new book by two of our nation’s foremost poverty researchers, Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, reveals the desperate circumstances that hundreds of thousands of children and...
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404 Error: Why Internet Access is Still a Problem for Many in Poverty
Originally posted on TalkPoverty.org When President Obama recently announced the ConnectHome initiative in the auditorium of Oklahoma’s Durant High School, he again stated that the Internet is a necessity, not a luxury. No kidding, Mr. President. This isn’t news to...
read moreWhy the wealthy always win
Inequalities in income, wealth, and opportunity have risen to virtually unprecedented levels. In Affluence and Influence, political scientist Martin Gilens demonstrates that in policy disagreements between the most well-off and everyone else, the wealthy consistently...
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50 Years Later: Why We Must Remember
Originally posted on TalkPoverty.org. Cross-posted on BillMoyers.com. This has been a summer of half-century commemorations, wonderful and gruesome. Last week we celebrated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the greatest and most important advance in civil rights...
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