Title: The American way of poverty : how the other half still lives /
Authors: Abramsky, Sasha
Year: 2013
Subjects: Poverty United States; Poor United States; Equality United States; SOCIAL SCIENCE / Poverty & Homelessness.; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Economic Policy.; HISTORY / United States / 21st Century.; United States Politics and government
Abstract: "Fifty years after Michael Harrington published his groundbreaking book The Other America, in which he chronicled the lives of people excluded from the Age of Affluence, poverty in America is back with a vengeance. It is made up of both the long-term chronically poor and new working poor-the tens of millions of victims of a broken economy and an ever more dysfunctional political system. In many ways, for the majority of Americans, financial insecurity has become the new norm. The American Way of Poverty shines a light on this travesty. Sasha Abramsky brings the effects of economic inequality out of the shadows and, ultimately, suggests ways for moving toward a fairer and more equitable social contract. Exploring everything from housing policy to wage protections and affordable higher education, Abramsky lays out a panoramic blueprint for a reinvigorated political process that, in turn, will pave the way for a renewed War on Poverty. It is, Harrington believed, a moral outrage that in a country as wealthy as America, so many people could be so poor. Written in the way of the 2008 financial collapse, in an era of grotesque economic extremes, The American Way of Poverty brings that same powerful indignation to the topic"--
Contents: A scandal in the making -- The voices of poverty. Poverty in the land of the plutocrats ; Blame games ; An American dilemma ; The fragile safety net ; The wrong side of the tracks ; Stuck in reverse -- Building a new and better house. Why now? ; Shoring up the safety net ; Breaking the cycle of poverty ; Boosting economic security for the working poor ; Attention must be paid.