poverty

"The tramp's real means of livelihood is begging. He can tell at a glance a house where he will get a "hand-out." A "hand-out" is a parcel of food, which derives its name from being handed out through a half-opened door. Yes, the tramp develops into a skillful and expert beggar. Some people may think that there is no art in begging, but if they do they are much mistaken. It takes a clever man to know what stranger to ask for money. As he goes along the street he must be able to single out at a glance the giving type of man; for, as the tramp will inform you, there are really in existence men who like to give money to anyone who asks for it. They are rare, but they do exist. The thing is to be able to single out this man, and then to know if he has money in his pocket, and if he be in the right mood. To do this requires genius."

"It has become a common expression to say "dirty tramp," or, "as dirty as a tramp"; but this is not always true, except occasionally in the large cities; although such a term may be applied morally to them all. There is one species of tramp who wanders from workhouse to workhouse; and this man, having every night to conform strictly to the laws of cleanliness, is no less clean, often cleaner, than a number of people whose houses contain bath rooms which they seldom use. Another species of tramp is proud of being a good beggar, who scorns the workhouse, but who knows well that a clean appearance is essential to his success."

"One day my friend the barber called me aside: "Say, kid, I've been delegated to tell you that you've got lice." ... ... I could scarcely have felt more beyond the pale, more a pariah. I had not detected them before, because I was ignorant of the thought of having them, and because their grey colour was exactly that of the inside of my woolen shirt. ... I look back with a shudder even yet to that experience. During my subsequent tramp-career I never could grow callous to vermin, as a few others that I met, did. Once I met a tramp who advised me not to bother about 'em .. and you would soon get used to 'em .. and not feel them biting al all .. but most tramps "boil up"—that is, take off their clothes, a piece at a time, and boil them—whenever they find opportunity."

"Every once in a while, in newspapers, magazines, and biographical dictionaries, I run upon sketches of my life, wherein, delicately phrased, I learn that it was in order to study sociology that I became a tramp. This is very nice and thoughtful of the biographers, but it is inaccurate. I became a tramp—well, because of the life that was in me, of the wanderlust in my blood that would not let me rest. Sociology was merely incidental; it came afterward in the same manner that a wet skin follows a ducking. I went on "The Road" because I couldn't keep away from it; because I hadn't the price of the railroad fare in my jeans; because I was so made that I couldn't work all my life on "one same shift"; because—well, just because it was easier to than not to."

"Protesters chanted songs similar to those sung during the liberation struggle. They sat in the middle of the road, in an act of peaceful protest. As they sat, a wave of baton-wielding riot police charged at them in an attempt to disperse the growing crowd. Many, including older people and women, who could not run away as fast as the more youthful protesters, were badly beaten. The violent police clampdown is just the latest action in a tale of unbroken state repression that continues from Mugabe’s era."

"People are increasingly dissatisfied with the impact of failing economic policies, a broken public health system, the soaring prices of basic goods and the collapse of . They had been waiting in preparation for a protest march organised by the Movement for Democratic Change at Africa Unity Square, a garden in the heart of . In this same garden, just a few years ago, stood as a lone protester calling for Mugabe to go."

"The perpetrators have yet to be indicted or held accountable for the loss of life, despite a theatrical commission of inquiry launched by Mnangagwa in a bid to repair his already crumbling international image."

"In the , Nyamavhuvhu (August) signals the end of winter. The strong winds carry away the frost as they usher in the warmth of summer. With the silent strength of a new season, public discontent towards President ’s failing policies sweeps across Zimbabwe, manifesting itself through mounting displeasure and the growing threat of civil unrest. On the streets of the capital, , a middle-aged woman lies unconscious on the asphalt. An uncanny silence hangs in the air, punctuated only by the sound of water cannons patrolling the street and a sea of riot police conversing in hushed tones with each other. The blue-helmeted police, a signature of the Robert Mugabe era, march in straight lines through the central business district. Businesses are closed. Thick clouds of off-white teargas fill the sky. An old, grey-haired man who is left behind by the fleeing crowd is kicked in the ribs by two police officers and dragged by his side. A young man who tries to assist the stricken woman is arrested and bundled into a police truck. Elsewhere, Red Cross volunteers attend to an old woman who has suffered injuries to her head after being beaten."

"13 million children are hungry in America. Yet most politicians do not even talk about it. Children aren’t old enough to vote, nor old enough to work therefore they have no financial leverage. They’re not old enough to advocate for themselves. That’s our job. The political establishment has simply normalized the despair of millions of American children who are chronically traumatized by poverty, hunger, and all manner of violence. This is what happens when government becomes more an instrument of corporate profits then of conscience. The vulnerabilities, challenges and chronic trauma of millions of American children should be recognized as a social justice issue. An economic system with no particular use for children - or for older people - has left both groups underserved. This country shouldn’t be run like a business, it should be run like a family. First we should take care of our children & older people, making sure they have everything they need to thrive. Everything else would then heal itself from there. Moral repair precedes societal repair."

"One in five American children live in poverty, even as s tout employment highs."

"Imagine, for a moment, this scenario: a 200-meter footrace in which the starting blocks of some competitors are placed 75 meters behind the others. Barring an Olympic-caliber runner, those who started way in front will naturally win. Now, think of that as an analogy for the predicament that American kids born in poverty face through no fault of their own. They may be smart and diligent, their parents may do their best to care for them, but they begin life with a huge handicap. As a start, the nutrition of poor children will generally be inferior to that of other kids. No surprise there, but here’s what’s not common knowledge: A childhood nutritional deficit matters for years afterwards, possibly for life. [...] Indeed, the process starts even earlier. Poor mothers may themselves have nutritional deficiencies that increase their risk of having babies with . That, in turn, can have long-term effects on children’s health, what level of education they reach, and their future incomes since the quality of nutrition affects , concentration, and cognitive capacity. It also increases the chances of having and experiencing mental health problems. Poor children are likely to be less healthy in other ways as well, for reasons that range from having a greater susceptibility to asthma to higher concentrations of lead in their blood. Moreover, poor families find it harder to get good health care. And add one more thing: in our zip-code-influenced public-school system, such children are likely to attend schools with far fewer resources than those in more affluent neighborhoods."

"Can children born into poverty defy the odds, realize their potential, and lead fulfilling lives? Conservatives will point to stories of people who cleared all the obstacles created by child poverty as proof that the real solution is hard work. But let’s be clear: Poor children shouldn’t have to find themselves on a tilted playing field from the first moments of their lives. Individual success stories aside, Americans raised in poor families do markedly less well compared to those from middle class or affluent homes—and it doesn’t matter whether you choose college attendance, employment rates, or future household income as your measure. And the longer they live in poverty the worse the odds that they’ll escape it in adulthood; for one thing, they’re far less likely to finish high school or attend college than their more fortunate peers. [...] Yet childhood circumstances can be (and have been) changed—and the sorts of government programs that conservatives love to savage have helped enormously in that process."

"Programs that reduce child poverty help even in years when poor or near-poor parents gain and, of course, are critical in bad times, since sooner or later booming job markets also bust."

"Our own history and that of other wealthy countries show that child poverty is anything but an unalterable reality. The record also shows that changing it requires mobilizing funds of the sort now being wasted on ventures like America’s multitrillion-dollar forever wars."

"Our national opioid problem also affects the well-being of children in a striking fashion. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), between 2008 and 2012, a third of women in their childbearing years filled -based medication prescriptions in pharmacies and an estimated 14 percent–22 percent of them were pregnant. The result: an alarming increase in the number of babies exposed to opioids in utero and experiencing withdrawal symptoms at birth, which is also known as neonatal abstinence syndrome, or NAS, in medical lingo. [...] At this point, you won’t be surprised to learn that NAS and child poverty are connected. Prescription opioid use rates are much higher for women on , who are more likely to be poor than those with private insurance. Moreover, the abuse of, and overdose deaths from, opioids (whether obtained through prescriptions or illegally) have been far more widespread among the poor."

"The conservative response to all this remains predictable: You can’t solve complex social problems like child poverty by throwing money at them. Besides, government antipoverty programs only foster dependence and create bloated bureaucracies without solving the problem. It matters little that the success of American social programs proves this claim to be flat-out false."

"[O]n my measure, if you have hundreds of thousands of children living in homes without enough to survive, that’s a blatant failure. What else could you describe it as?"

"The plight of impoverished children anywhere should evoke sympathy, exemplifying as it does the suffering of the innocent and defenseless. Poverty among children in a wealthy country like the United States, however, should summon shame and outrage as well. Unlike poor countries (sometimes run by leaders more interested in lining their pockets than anything else), what excuse does the United States have for its striking levels of child poverty? After all, it has the world’s 10th highest per capita income at $62,795 and an unrivalled gross domestic product (GDP) of $21.3 trillion. Despite that, in 2020, an estimated 11.9 million American kids—16.2 percent of the total—live below the official poverty line, which is a paltry $25,701 for a family of four with two kids. Put another way, according to the Children’s Defense Fund, kids now constitute one-third of the 38.1 million Americans classified as poor and 70 percent of them have at least one —so poverty can’t be chalked up to parental indolence."

"Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to children: they have not much idea of industrious, working, respectable poverty; they think of the word only as connected with ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners and debasing vices: poverty for me was synonymous with degradation."

"The COVID-19 outbreak is yet another demonstration of how the Indian poor are systematically excluded from the government’s policy-making. A case in point is the government’s failure to account for the 40 million poor and homeless children before declaring the lockdown."

"There should be no place in a wealthy society like ours for children to grow up without their being met."

"From the months before birth on, poverty diminishes opportunity, capacity, and agency and its consequences reach into adulthood. [...] Child poverty certainly does ensure a future-rigged society. The good news (though not in Donald Trump’s America): The race to a half-decent life (or better) doesn’t have to be rigged."

"There is nothing to which men cling more tenaciously than to their class privileges and vested interests except perhaps to their illusions."

"In classical cultures, an ascended class had to justify itself before those now below in the social structure. But the culture revolution of our time has eliminated this need for class- as well as self-justification. Nevertheless, those below still seek to emulate the ascendant social class, without being convinced of its superiority."

"The institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the transition from primitive savagery to barbarism; or more precisely, during the transition from a peaceable to a consistently warlike habit of life."

"And when you have a society where 50 million people work for a living but have no health insurance, where millions have lost their savings and pensions to the Wall Street scandals, where no one feels secure that his job will be his job a year from now-well, those aren't race issues, (although African-Americans are the ones hit the hardest) those are bread-and-butter nightmares facing all Americans who are not privileged to be in the upper 10 percent. They are issues of class, and once the discussion turns to class, those in charge seek to shut it down as quickly as possible. Why? Because class is what will unite white and black and brown in this country and, God forbid, if that day ever comes ... well, let's just say the powers that be will be wringing there hands over much more than some smart-ass comic strip."

"Scientific observers often view living systems as existing in spaces which they conceptualize or abstract from the phenomena with which they deal. Examples of such spaces are:"

"# Social class space..."

"In all sectors of society there should be roughly equal prospects of culture and achievement for everyone similarly motivated and endowed. The expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class."

"Art is neither the monopoly of a nation, nor of a social class, or the major age. People of outstanding talents and fine feelings, people who are not lacking in imagnation and the sense of creation, as well as good will-power. They are privileged to be involved in ART."

"The great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the first step in doing so, as we have seen, is to deny the economic basis of social class. After all, you can hardly deride liberals as society’s "elite" or present the GOP as the party of the common man if you acknowledge the existence of the corporate world — the power that creates the nation’s real elite, that dominates its real class system, and that wields the Republican Party as its personal political system."

"We must want equality, and we must grasp that equality does not coexist with class structure."

"Mimi used to tell me that anyone who said they were middle class probably wasn’t."

"In case you haven’t noticed, we … dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class. Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything. Piece of cake."

"Or les trois classes d'être créés par les mœurs sont : L'homme qui travaille ; L'homme qui pense ; L'homme qui ne fait rien."

"In the status game, then, the working-class child starts out with a handicap and, to the extent that he cares what the persons think of him or has internalised the dominant middle-class attitudes toward , he may be expected to feel some 'shame'."

"The dominant, almost general, idea of revolution — particularly the Socialist idea — is that revolution is a violent change of social conditions through which one social class, the working class, becomes dominant over another class, the capitalist class."

"The collectivity is divided into two classes of people: those who, by virtue of their ownership of the means of doing, command others to do, and those who, by virtue of the fact that they are deprived of access to the means of doing, do what the others tell them to do."

"Propriety requires respectable women to abstain more consistently from useful effort and to make more of a show of leisure than the men of the same social classes. ...Her sphere is within the household, which she should "beautify," and of which she should be the "chief ornament." The male head of the household is not currently spoken of as its ornament. ...attention to conspicuous waste of substance and effort should normally be the sole economic function of the woman."

"# Pecking order in birds or other animals."

"# among ethnic or racial groups."

"# Political distance among political parties of the right and left."

"It is wrong to think that the mixing of classes can affect the karma of people in a negative way. At the present time, quite often, the healthy, spiritually sound peasant family offers the best environment for a highly developed spirit. One's having been born in a palace or in a corner of a cobbler's shack should not be deemed the result of a mixing of classes, but, rather, to have been for the purpose of fulfilling a personal karma or else a certain mission. Thus, Boehme was a cobbler, but this was for the very reason that in those days this was the way in which he could best fulfil his great mission, in comparative peace. The dreadful karma of humanity is the result of the violation of cosmic laws, beginning with birth, but it is not the result of the mixing of social classes. Thus, marriage will be scientifically treated in the future. It is even said that people should conjoin according to their affinity with certain elements. 5 May 1934"

"Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are, That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these? O, I have ta'en Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou mayst shake the superflux to them, And show the heavens more just."

"In the last 30 years, there has been a massive redistribution of wealth. The problem is this redistribution has gone in the wrong direction."

"Nothing can you steal, But thieves do lose it."

"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."

"The free market’s the best mechanism ever devised to put resources to their most efficient and productive use. … The government isn’t particularly good at that. But the market isn’t so good at making sure that the wealth that’s produced is being distributed fairly or wisely. Some of that wealth has to be plowed back into education, so that the next generation has a fair chance, and to maintain our infrastructure, and provide some sort of safety net for those who lose out in a market economy. And it just makes sense that those of us who’ve benefited most from the market should pay a bigger share."

"Lacking much historical information and assuming (1) that victims of injustice generally do worse than they otherwise would and (2) that those from the least well-off group in the society have the highest probabilities of being the (descendants of) victims of the most serious injustice who are owed compensation by those who benefited from the injustices, ... then a rough rule of thumb for rectifying injustices might seem to be the following: organize society so as to maximize the position of whatever group ends up least well-off in the society. ... These issues are very complex and are best left to a full treatment of the principle of rectification. In the absence of such a treatment applied to a particular society, one cannot use the analysis and theory presented here to condemn any particular scheme of transfer payments, unless it is clear that no considerations of rectification of injustice could apply to justify it. Although to introduce socialism as the punishment for our sins would be to go too far, past injustices might seem to be so great as to make necessary in the short run a more extensive state in order to rectify them."

"Should the nation's wealth be redistributed? It has been and continues to be redistributed to a few people in a manner strikingly unhelpful."