The Poverty Trap

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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...

Photo: Library of Congress. Some of the first recipients wait to receive [unemployment] benefits at the State Employment Service in San Francisco, California, 1938. Marketplace, 2020 Last week, I wrote a post critical of how the unemployment compensation system is being administered, particularly the expansive leeway given to states, and the disparity in the amount and distribution of benefits tha...

The federal law establishing unemployment compensation was part of the 1935 bill signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt which created the Social Security system. It was designed not just to pull our economy out of the Great Depression, but to provide a safety net going forward for average working Americans, specifically when things got economically tough through no fault of their own. Unemploym...

Earlier this week, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, gave a speech at the New York Stock Exchange where he discussed (in incredibly vague terms) the Republican party’s proposal to raise the debt ceiling so our country doesn’t default on its financial obligations. This proposal is conditioned with all sorts of budget cuts, including repealing parts of the Inflation Reduc...

“In February, Natee Amornsiripanitch, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, published an analysis of more than 9 million mortgage applications collected through the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act from 2018 to 2020. He found that rejection rates rose steadily with age, particularly accelerating for applicants over 70.” The New York Times, April 8, 2023 The reason mortgage rejectio...

“ …Cards with the highest value rewards are often available only to the rich. First, you’ll need a credit score of at least 700 to qualify for a premium card. That eliminates half the country….Second, issuers consider your income and debt-to-income ratio, which can be used to disqualify card applicants with high credit scores.” The New York Times , March 4, 2023 (T hanks to Jan Peppler, PhD, who w...

“IRS Audits Poorest Families at Five Times the Rate for Everyone Else." Based on IRS data reported to The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse ( TRAC) for FY 2021 I’m not going to comb the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) code for each section that hurts the poor or benefits the rich, because that would, well, take too long. But I will explore a few areas of the tax code that don’t seem to hav...

“A condo deconversion is a real estate transaction in which a savvy investor acquires an entire condo building through a bulk sale to turn into rentals. This investment trend has been seen in Florida and California for a number of years and is picking up steam in other coastal metros and even in the Midwest.” Forbes, July 22, 2019 It is startling for someone like me, who has never been a part of a...

“Three weeks after the toxic train derailment in Ohio, an independent analysis of Environmental Protection Agency data has found nine air pollutants at levels that, if they persist, could raise long-term health concerns in and around East Palestine…The analysis by Texas A&M University researchers stands in contrast to statements by state and federal regulators that air near the crash site is compl...

“They [Researchers for the Oxford Review of Economic Policy] find that monopolistic pricing takes a bite out of every income group’s share of national income, with the notable exception of the top 20 percent, whose incomes rise. In effect, companies are using their market power to extract wealth from poor and middle-class households and deposit it in the pockets of the wealthy, to the tune of abou...

“The Biden administration is prioritizing the investigation and prosecution of corporate crime and is giving DOJ prosecutors broader power to do so.” The National Law Review , November, 2021 Unless it’s a major Ponzi scheme, we don’t hear too much about what has been dubbed “white collar crime”. And that’s a shame, because it costs its victims and the American taxpayers between $300 and $800 billi...

“Critical thinking” is a term thrown around so much it has become almost meaningless. It is embedded deep into the Common Core State Standards for public schools across the nation, which set standards for English and math. And it is discussed in countless articles by educators and for educators that attempt to evaluate and then decide how our students learn. Despite this talk, however, it also is...

This 30 minute documentary prepared by the “Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth” House Select Committee of the 117th Congress seems to suggest there are ways to close the income and wealth gap and help our economy bend toward fairness. Warning: Some of the proposals include government-sponsored programs! While the committee did prepare a robust report of it’s accomplishments, it also produce...

“…our founding concept of universal equality, in a country where one-fifth of the population was enslaved, led to an increase in racial prejudice by creating a cognitive dissonance — one that could be resolved only by the white citizenry’s assumption of Black inferiority and inhumanity. It’s an unsettling idea, that the most revered ideal of the Declaration of Independence might be considered our...

“Research and development is only about 17 percent of total spending in most large drug companies,” he [Gerard Anderson, professor of health policy and management at John Hopkins University], says. “Once a drug has been approved by the FDA, there are minimal additional research and development costs so drug companies cannot justify price increases by claiming research and development costs.” Qtd....

It’s easy to think that if you have health insurance, you will not have medical bills to pay out of pocket — that’s why you’re paying those hefty premiums, right? Unfortunately, medical bills, regardless of insurance coverage, often turn into medical debt . Get full access to The Poverty Trap at povertytrap.substack.com/subscribe

“…what looks like sprawl is healthier for the middle class and conforms to what most families want anyway.” Joel Kotkin, CEOof a Houston-based think tank called “Urban Reform Institute”. The New York Times, Sept. 4, 2017, one week after Hurricane Harvey struck Houston Houston isn’t the only city in the U.S. with urban sprawl, but it is known in some circles as a “model” city for rapid, supposedly...

I believe I can speak for Bella (she’s napping at the moment), when I say this : We have never understood why citizens of the United States choose not to vote. We are fortunate to live in a participatory democracy, at least for the time being, and that good fortune comes with some responsibilities. Perhaps the most important of those responsibilities is to research the issues and the candidates ru...

“Between soaring prices and rising rates, the typical home buyer in October paid 77 percent more on their loan, per month, than they would have last year, according to Realtor.com. With a national median asking price of $425,000 and a 10 percent down payment, that works out to an additional $1,117 every month.” The New York Times , November 4, 2022 Get full access to The Poverty Trap at povertytra...