The Poverty Trap

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! After the City of Springfield, Ohio received over thirty bomb threats requiring the evacuation...

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! “[Vice President Kamala Harris] understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace o...

I have been inspired by many of the speakers at the Democratic National Convention this week and was particularly taken with Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s discussion of inequality. The line that rang true for me and millions of others is likely to be remembered for a long time: Harris “understands that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward,” Obama said. “We will never...

“The more you pay in rent, the more likely you are to have bad health and die earlier, a recent study found…The study, called "The impacts of rent burden and eviction on mortality in the United States," was published in the journal "Social Science and Medicine" in January [2024] . To reach their findings, researchers studied 38 million eviction records from 2000 to 2019.” Columbus Dispatch, Februa...

The data on the color-coded map below is taken from the USDA which runs the EBT (food stamp) program, including the special, Summer EBT program implemented this year for the first time. The funds for this new program, that helps feed children in poverty during the summer months, comes from The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, signed by President Biden in late 2022, separately from the omni...

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 a HUGE THANK-YOU to the flurry of new paid subscribers I’ve had recently! Your financial s...

“ALICE” is an acronym for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, and represents the growing number of families who are unable to afford the basics of housing, child care, food, transportation, health care, and technology… The ALICE research quantifies and describes the number [four in ten] of households that are struggling financially…[and] raises awareness about a huge but hidden segment of...

“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...