A New Food Stamp Program ... Designed by People Who are Clueless About Foodstamps

Poor People Deserve Better Than Food in a Box (Bobbi Dempsey) from the New York Times
"As someone who grew up needing food stamps and free school lunches, I cannot understand the logic or lack of empathy behind this plan.  I spent my entire childhood in poverty, reliant on public assistance from the day I was born until my high school graduation and with a few brief sporadic returns after that. Some of my most vivid childhood memories involve accompanying my mother to the store, where she exchanged food stamps for the groceries our family needed."

TODAY'S SECOND BIG NUGGET: Trump's Implacable Opposition within the GOP:

The Dilemma of Conservatives Who Say They’ll Never Vote for Donald Trump (Ryan Lizza) from the New Yorker
"If Trump succeeds in capturing the Republican nomination, the debate that is now playing out on the margins of the right will be front and center for every elected Republican. They may soon have to choose: Would they rather have as President an enemy they can oppose, or one for whom they are—in more ways than one—responsible?"

"Good Factory Jobs" - Not What They Used to Be

'Good' Jobs Aren't Coming Back (Alana Semuels) from the Atlantic
"In the last several years some American companies have moved their operations back to the states, but the resulting factory work isn't providing the prosperity and security that such work once did."

America's New Centers of Poverty: The Suburbs

Suburbs and the New American Poverty from the Atlantic
"More people with low incomes now live outside of cities, and some areas are ill-equipped to deal with the influx of the poor."

The Link Between Segregated Housing and Poverty

Is Ending Segregation the Key to Ending Poverty? from the Atlantic 
"Chicago's experiment in relocating poor African American families to rich white suburbs seems to be a success. So why are so few other cities doing the same?"

New Measure of Poverty is Depressing ... and No Surprise

More Than Half Of American Schoolchildren Now Live In Poverty from the Huffington Post
"For the first time, more than half of U.S. public school students live in low-income households, according to a new analysis from the Southern Education Foundation. Overall, 51 percent of U.S. schoolchildren came from low-income households in 2013, according to the foundation, which analyzed data from National Center for Education Statistics on students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches."
The "no surprise" piece of this comes from the fact that we have one party that is absolutely, positively committed that poor people will get NOTHING to alleviate their poverty.  Indeed, the GOP seems to mark as a seminal victory when they can make the lives of these people worse. -- Nuggetsman

Employers' New Higher Wage Dodge: "Associate in Need" Programs

Walmart employees holding food drives for their own colleagues who can't put food on the table for the holidays from the Daily Mail [of the UK] 
"A picture was posted online on Thursday of a green box at an Oklahoma City store asking employees to donate canned for 'associates in need' One employee said today: 'We work hard and we don't want charity. We just want a fair wage."

Number Of Homeless Children In America Surges

Number Of Homeless Children In America Surges To All-Time High: Report from the Huffington Post
"The number of homeless children in the U.S. has surged in recent years to an all-time high, amounting to one child in every 30, according to a comprehensive state-by-state report that blames the nation's high poverty rate, the lack of affordable housing and the impacts of pervasive domestic violence."

The Problem of Homeless Children in School

Number Of Homeless Students In America Is Rising Rapidly from the Huffington Post
"The number of homeless students in the United States reached a record high during the 2012-13 school year, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Education. The report released Monday shows that homeless children enrolled in public preschool and grades K-12 jumped 8 percent from the previous school year to hit 1,258,182."

The Economic "New Normal" = A Lower, Poorer Quality of Life

Most Americans Think The Economy Is Permanently Damaged from the Huffington Post
""Looking at the aftermath of the recession, it is clear that the American landscape has been significantly rearranged," Rutgers professor Cliff Zukin said in a press release. "With the passage of time, the public has become convinced that they are at a new normal of a lower, poorer quality of life.""

Americans are not looking back very far when they make economic comparisons. The stellar growth of the economy from 1985 to 2007 was for the most part based on anomalies like cheap oil, consumer credit and the addition of everyone’s mom to the workforce. It was never sustainable. Now Americans have become accustomed to gas guzzling vehicles, big houses and multiple cash munching data contracts. The plateau is much higher now. Now the good news. If the Mideast war stays away from the big oilfields, if China doesn’t suffer a meltdown, and if the rains finally arrive in the American Southwest, things might get better.

Posted by: hopeandespair

The Health Care "Free Market"'s Predictable Effect in Poor Countries

Transplant Brokers in Israel Lure Desperate Kidney Patients to Costa Rica from the New York Times
"Facing the prospect of impossibly long waiting lists for organs, some Israelis are turning to an underground trade that pairs them with people willing to sell an organ."
Now, there you go!  The elegant simplicity of free market solutions!

Technology's Impact on Part-time Work

Why Being a Part-Time Worker Is Miserable (Virginia Postrel) from Bloomberg
"Scheduling software now lets employers constantly optimize who’s working, better balancing labor costs and likely demand. The process demands enormous flexibility from part-time workers, sometimes requiring them to be on call all the time without knowing when they’ll work or how much they’ll earn."

Higher Minimum Wage CAUSES Employment Growth?

2014 Job Creation Faster in States that Raised the Minimum Wage from the Center for Economic and Policy Research
"Of the 13 states that increased their minimum wage in early 2014, all but one (New Jersey) are seeing employment gains. Furthermore, nine of the remaining 12 states are above the median for this period."

Areas of Most Republicans = Areas of Most Poverty

The South Is Essentially A Solid, Grim Block Of Poverty from the Huffington Post
"The Great Recession and Not-So-Great Recovery have been bad news for most Americans, but some people have suffered more than others. We call those people "Southerners." North Carolina and a handful of other Southern U.S. states saw the biggest increases in the number of people living in what are known as "poverty areas" between 2000 and 2010, according to a new Census Bureau report."

Downward Mobility Moving Upward

The Downward Ramp (Thomas Edsall) from the New York Times
"New evidence produced by Paul Beaudry and David A. Green of the University of British Columbia, and Ben Sand of York University, demonstrates that the collapse, between 1980 and 2000, of mid-level, mid-pay jobs — gutted by automation or foreign competition (and often both) — has now spread to the high-skill labor market."

Lives Still Collapsing in the "Recovering Economy"

This Is What Barely Making Ends Meet In America Sounds Like from the Huffington Post
"The responses voice the anxiety and exhaustion of living in the space between just getting by and watching your life collapse -- a gap so narrow that bringing toilet paper home from work can help make ends meet, while any unexpected expense can send you over the edge."

Playing the Tough Hand Life May Have Dealt You

If You're Born Poor, You'll Probably Stay That Way (Stephanie Mencimer) from Mother Jones Magazine
"Alexander set out to look at how family influences the trajectory of a low-income child's life. Thirty years later, he's decided that family determines almost everything, and that a child's fate is essentially fixed by how well off her parents were when she was born."

Poverty ≠ Lack of Character

Poverty Is Not a State of Mind (Charles Blow) from the New York Times 
"... the statement makes a basic and demeaning assumption about the poor: that they suffer a deficiency of friendship, accountability and loving relationships. That, sir, has not been my experience. Poverty is demonstrative not of a lack of character, but a lack of cash."

New Mayors and Expanding Opportunity

Will Liberal Cities Leave the Rest of America Behind? (Thomas Edall) from the New York Times
"Decades of globalization have been accompanied by diminishing opportunity for those in midlevel jobs; by stagnant wages, especially for men without college degrees; and by the virtual collapse of private-sector unionization. Standing in opposition to these adverse trends, a wave of newly elected mayors from New York to Seattle has taken office committed to deploying the power of city government and aggressive wage and tax policies to attack inequality and revive social and economic mobility."

The Poor: Falling Further Behind

Changed Life of the U.S. Poor: Better Off, but Far Behind from the New York Times
"Despite improved living standards, the poor have fallen further behind the middle class and the affluent in both consumption and income, and crucial services remain unattainable."