I'm reading a depressing book right now. It's called "The Working Poor." Can you see how it would be depressing? These people do work. They work a lot. But they don't have life skills, and they don't have medical insurance or enough money to buy a car that won't break down, so they start to get ahead, only to get hit with something big and suddenly there they are back on the edge again. A lot of them do make dumb choices, but everyone makes dumb choices. They just don't have the cushion of savings or family to bail them out when they're dumb.
I'm only half-way through, but it's got me thinking. The people the author describes are needy in so many ways. Government programs can only do so much, but some kind of emergency health insurance would bloody well help a lot. A raise in the minimum wage would help too, since it has not gone up since 1996. (A proposal to raise the minimum wage was defeated by something like five votes just a month ago. This bloody Republican Congress has got to go.)
They also need more life skills training, in simple things like calling in if you're sick, and they need more people willing to hire ex-welfare people.
Fun quote from the book (someone speaking to the author):
"You [employers] say she ought to get a job. How are you going to make that happen? If they say, 'We can't hire them' I say, 'So you want to perpetuate welfare?' 'Well, no.' 'Well take your choice. The only thing missing is a job, and you can provide that."
I'm also tossing about the merits of quotas, which is terribly un-capitalist of me. How shocking coming from a borderline socialist, neh? So on the one hand, import quotas protect our minimum wage jobs that the poor and recent immigrants (or illegal immigrants) rely on. It keeps our market wages up because in theory our manufacturers then have to make the goods here instead of setting up shop in China. On the other, quotas drive up the prices on the goods that the poor buy, meaning they have to work more to get what they need, etc. Correct me if I have this wrong, I'm remembering from my economics classes in college five (!!!) years ago. No, quotas aren't mentioned in the book. In my angst over the problems being described, I tried to think up solutions and few were forthcoming.
I also find the idea that illegal immigrants are taking our jobs. There's a whole section in here about illegal immigrants. I can't imagine too many citizens taking those kinds of jobs and living in those kinds of conditions.
I'm very frustrated. Everyone vote Democratic next year. Then at least we can block dumb Republican cuts into Medicare.
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