Key Ideas
a) People that care about improving the state of poverty have a lot of work to do.
b) We know how to improve and/or reconstruct all of the factors that contribute to poverty in the U.S.
c) The will of the people who hold the power in this country must be combined with the will of those who are downtrodden in order to create the kind of dramatic change that is necessary. Everyone has a part to play in the transition from a system that isn’t working to one that is functional.
d) Those that are disenfranchised by the government lack the impetus to vote.
e) This results in a government filled with policy makers that represent the needs of those who are generally unconcerned with the issue of poverty.
f) Many voters are ignorant as to where they fall in the complicated economic system. This leads the uneducated to vote for policy makers whom they erroneously believe will benefit them.
g) The solutions for the wealthiest nation in the world to rid itself of poverty requires its power structure to have a balance between federal influence and state influence. We know for a fact that lending too much power to any side of the binary system results in disaster.
h) The concept of minimum wage is inherently flawed and cannot support this nation.
i) Setting the minimum wage based on regional cost of living or instituting the “living wage law” (Shipler, 291) are two effective ways to combat the dysfunction of the current minimum wage system.
j) The number of workers in labor unions has dropped more than fifty percent since 1950 (Shipler, 292).
k) In response to the lack of unions, education programs that facilitate upward mobility, such as job training programs and vocational training should be improved and increased.
l) The education system cannot facilitate necessary, improvement causing, changes due to a lack and/or poor distribution of finances.
m) The education system needs to pool and redistribute the property taxes that fuel it equally. Or, the education system needs to break away from its dependence on a financial structure that leads to the disenfranchisement of its people.
n) The current health care system in the U.S. is beyond improvement. If it is not replaced with a single-payer system it must allow for the private insurance companies to be regulated and subsidized by the federal government.
o) Programs that educate families and children are grossly under funded and short reaching. Teaching people how to change the negative life issues that they have control over will have a far reaching and beneficial effect on society.
p) Programs that provide interventions for children and families who are suffering are not meeting their potential to save people from the situations that they cannot change with knowledge and will power alone.
q) American society has been making slow, but steady, progress concerning humanitarian issues since the end of World War II.
Reaction
David Shipler’s mind awakening book, especially chapter eleven, left me with the ambivalent feelings of exacerbation and hope. In his final chapter Shipler illuminates the societal and economic issues, which more often than not go hand in hand, that he analyzes in the main body of the text. This book often left me frustrated at the amount of work that needs to be done by people in every position in society in order for positive and effective improvements to be made. Many of the systems used to run this country are flawed beyond repair and the systems that can be repaired lack the funding and man/woman power necessary to spark anything beyond slow and gradual change. The participation in voting, the current minimum wage system, the lack of programs that provide job/skills training, the need for careers that facilitate upward mobility, the current way of financing education, the private health care system, and the near absence programs for child and family education and interventions are all systems that need to be either smashed and rebuilt or problems that desperately need to be addressed.
Shipler’s book did not just shine light on the many problems that contribute to poverty in the U.S. It did an extraordinary job of illustrating the fact that our society is educated enough to solve the seemingly inexhaustible list of social welfare issues that effect the nation. We have been working for many years to gather and create the tools necessary to improve and advance our position. What all too many of those who seek change are lacking in, is the education and impetus to make an ideal, or at least acceptable society, a reality. Advancement can only be made if everyone works together to improve the many contributing factors to poverty all at once. The economic and social welfare issues cannot be ignored and have already improved dramatically since the twentieth century. However, the living condition for too many of this countrie’s citizens remains unacceptable.
