The Poverty Trap

“For applicants with the same SAT or ACT score, children from families in the top 1 percent were 34 percent more likely to be admitted than the average applicant, and those from the top 0.1 percent were more than twice as likely to get in.” The New York Times, July 24, 2023. Maybe it’s because I still carry a chip on my shoulder that the recent report from researchers at Opportunity Insights , str...

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) is one of the many programs President Franklin Roosevelt funded to put people back to work and pull the U.S. out of the Great Depression. The WPA was funded by the Emergency Relief Appropriations Act signed in 1935, two years after Roosevelt was sworn in as president. It put to work over 8.5 million people on 1.4 million public projects like “creating parks,...

”The U.S. Interior Department on Friday [April 19, 2024] essentially rejected the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority’s proposal to build the Ambler Road, a 211-mile industrial road that would have cut through Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve to access copper and zinc deposits in Northwest Alaska…the Biden administration said the road, also known as the Ambler Access P...

This post goes out to both free and paid subscribers, but if you are not already a paid subscriber and value this effort and our growing community, please consider upgrading to a paid membership. Thanks in advance for your financial support of my work —it’s what allows me to keep researching and writing. And thanks to all the new, paid yearly subscribers who signed up during our winter sale! You a...

This post goes out to both free and paid subscribers, but if you are not already a paid subscriber and value this effort and our growing community, please consider upgrading to a paid membership. Thanks in advance for your financial support of my work —it’s what allows me to keep researching and writing. And thanks to all the new paid yearly subscribers who signed up during our winter sale! You ar...

This post goes out to both free and paid subscribers, but if you are not already a paid subscriber and value this effort and our growing community, please consider upgrading to a paid membership. Thanks in advance for your financial support of my work —it’s what allows me to keep researching and writing. And thanks to all the new paid yearly subscribers who signed up during our winter sale! You ar...

“When asked what drives the economy, many Americans have a simple, single answer that comes to mind immediately: “greed.” They believe the rich and powerful have designed the economy to benefit themselves and have left others with too little or with nothing at all.” The New York Times, February 21, 2024 I was checking out at a grocery the other day during a time when almost no other customers were...

This post goes out to both free and paid subscribers, but if you are not already a paid subscriber and value this effort and our growing community, please consider upgrading to a paid membership. But wait, there’s a sale going on at The Poverty Trap! For all NEW yearly Suscribers and NEW founding members, you will get 20% off if you sign up today through February 29, 2024. Thanks in advance for yo...

Here’s to A Happy and Healthy New Year to you and yours! Thanks so much for your support, and I hope you continue to enjoy The Poverty Trap in 2024. This post goes out to both free and paid subscribers, but if you are not already a paid subscriber and value this effort and our growing community, please consider upgrading to a paid membership. By the way, our annual sale continues through January 1...

This post goes out to both free and paid subscribers, but if you are not already a paid subscriber and value this effort and our growing community, please consider upgrading to a paid membership. Holiday Sale! From today through Sunday, January 14, 2024, I’m offering a 20% discount for all new, yearly subscribers (including founding member subscribers!). That means for $40 (or $80 for a founding m...

CNBC video on medical debt posted on January 23, 2023. It is well worth your 10 minutes and 39 seconds to watch… “Neither medical bills nor medical debt should exist in the United States in the twenty-first century. We do not need health insurance of any kind or cost, what we need is quality health care. If you are not wealthy enough to pay the exorbitant costs to for-profit companies to keep you...

This post goes out to both free and paid subscribers, but if you are not already a paid subscriber and value this effort and our growing community, please consider upgrading to a paid membership. By the way, a few days ago, I cross-posted to my subscribers an invigorating discussion I had with Carrie Lou Hamilton, author of the really cool Substack newsletter, Pen In Fist , but I understand that t...

“The car, her biggest investment, became her home — the roof turned into a dining table, the trunk a closet. And a weathered stretch of blacktop provided by a Methodist church became her yard, her neighborhood and her safe place.” Note: “Her” is Chrystal Audet, a social worker with a full-time job living in her car in Kirkland, Washington, and shadowed by a New York Times reporter for this story....

This post goes out to both free and paid subscribers, but if you are not already a paid subscriber and value this effort and our growing community, please consider upgrading to a paid membership. “During the past decade, the study of English and history at the collegiate level has fallen by a full third. Humanities enrollment in the United States has declined over all by seventeen per cent, Townse...

Friendly Reminder: This is the first post under this newsletter’s new name, The Poverty Trap: Why The Poor Stay Poor In America , and the new url is povertytrap.substack.com (Previously, Crime and Punishment: Why The Poor Stay Poor In America ) Your transition to the new url will be automatic! See my last post explaining the name and url change here . And… This post goes out to both free and paid...

I used the above photo in my first post for this newsletter on September 15, 2021, and a few other times in various posts in the last two years. I’m celebrating my second anniversary of writing Crime and Punishment: Why The Poor Stay Poor In America along with the Autumn Equinox with today’s post, and I thought it might add a bit of nostalgia to include this photo again. Besides, I love the silver...

This post goes out to both free and paid subscribers, but if you are not already a paid subscriber and value this effort and our growing community, please consider upgrading to a paid membership. “For many Americans, the middle class is a matter of identity, aspiration and lifestyle as much as it is about wealth.” NPR, July 7, 2016. I don’t have foolproof answers to the questions posed in this pos...

Crime and Punishment: Why the Poor Stay Poor in America explores how our laws and culture create a cycle of economic, racial and environmental inequality...and what together, we can do to change it. This post goes out to both free and paid subscribers, but if you are not already a paid subscriber and value this effort and our growing community, please consider upgrading to a paid membership. Bread...

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If you can afford it and are in the mood, why not… “Pain is always a form of motivation,” the training manual reads. “Once you find the Seller’s pain, you have a much better chance of buying the house.” ProPublica article, May 11, 2023, documenting its investigation into “We Buy Ugly Houses” and its corporate owner, HomeVesters of America I’ve written about predatory business practices several tim...

Although this post goes out to both free and paid subscribers, if you are not already a paid subscriber, why not take the opportunity to upgrade to paid, right here and now. Thanks! “Private health insurance companies paid by Medicaid denied millions of requests for care for low-income Americans with little oversight from federal and state authorities, according to a new report by U.S. investigato...

Although this post goes out to both free and paid subscribers, if you are not already a paid subscriber, take the opportunity to upgrade to paid, right now. “City planners must recognize that we all should be able to walk or ride a bicycle through our own neighborhood without fearing for our life.” The New York Times, April 26, 2023. In the last few months, every news outlet has been writing about...

President Reagan touted Florence Owens Thompson , the migrant mother in the photo, when she died in 1983: “Mrs. Thompson's passing represents the loss of an American who symbolizes strength and determination in the midst of the Great Depression.” In fact, Florence Owens Thompson’s heritage was Native American (Cherokee), and by written accounts, she lived in abject poverty at least for most of her...

“In a Clean Air Act overview report published by the EPA, the fact that we can't “see, taste or smell” sounds may explain why it has not received as much attention as other types of pollution, like air pollution. We are constantly surrounded by noise, yet many of us are unaware of the danger environmental noise poses to our health.”  Environmental Health Sciences Center at UC Davis, March 3, 2023...

“C.E.O.s may rant about lazy or (per Musk) “immoral” workers who don’t want to go back into their cubicles, but the purpose of an economy is not to make bosses happy.” Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist and NY Times opinion columnist. NY Times May 22, 2023 I read Krugman’s Times op-ed a few days ago and have been thinking about it ever since. He discusses a few ways remote work impacts ou...