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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Admonishing the poor to live within their means is clearly oxymoronic in today’s world, not to mention that, as the national debt’s growth shows, our government rarely follows its own adage.
And the wealthy? Given the prior president’s fiscal history, the ostensibly well-to-do may have the ability to access money and the financial institutions may be more willing to lend to them and carry these large debts longer but, in the end, a surprising large percent of such sums are not repaid.
Usury is the unreasonable profiting off of money loaned, so why can payday lenders charge poor people 400%-600%-1000% for the short-term when the wealthy get sweetheart rates under 10%. Yes, 8.5% of a million nets a bank a bunch more than 850% of $100.
True, the banks’ costs are greater for multiple small loans than one big one but they also historically stand to lose less. Just ask those who are owed money by Donald Trump, George W. Bush, George Santos, Matt Gaetz or Rudy Giuliani.
The pandemic brought the instability of people on the brink of eviction or foreclosure, victims of landlord and corporate greed, into the headlines. But the housing crisis has been percolating up for decades as Wall Street has morphed shelter into a commodity.
Redlining ensured that many were unable to jump on the escalator of net-worth appreciation that goes with buying a house in a decent neighborhood.
As property prices escalated, those with the wherewithal to jump on that elevator made out like bandits. And the poor got even poorer as more and more of their income was sucked up by rent.
Between 2021 and 2022, average rents across the country for one- and two-bedroom apartments jumped 24 percent; 51 percent of American households now spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent.
The 2021 census showed that the number of Angelenos living in poverty was 34.96% higher than the California average, and 29.69% higher than the national average. In a city with one of the highest costs of living in the country.
The U.S. Census Bureau recently released data documenting that child poverty had doubled in the one year after removal of pandemic support for families. It was farworse in California where public funds cut the child poverty rate by over two-thirds in 2021 to 7.5%. But when that support ended, the State’s child poverty rate soared to 16.8%.
SAT scores track family wealth. The children of the well-to-do score higher on average, and the divide is increasing, making it less likely for children raised in poverty to gain the opportunity for a prize position in a school where the education and connections will give them the edge to climb out of the circumstances of their birth.
Nationally, 135 million Americans – over 40% of the population – are living below the poverty line or very precariously just above it now – that one extra expense away from losing the battle to stay afloat in the current economy.
The government’s definition of would not include an individual making just $20,000 a year or a family trying to scrape by on $35,000.
Over three million Americans are homeless, living on the streets or in shelters. Millions more suffer from housing insecurity from rising rents, threats of eviction due to gentrification, or the squalid maintenance of many properties – lack of heat, water and health hazards ranging from rats to mold to flaking lead paint.
Prior to the pandemic, a study at the University of California, Riverside identified poverty as the fourth leading cause of death in 2019; Covid has disproportionately harmed communities of color since, and the crisis in healthcare costs across the country means significantly more of the poor continue to suffer.
Rising rents forcing the working poor to live further and further away from their jobs have led to longer commutes and shorter lives. Hours sitting in traffic contribute to less time and energy for exercise and quality time with their families, more exposure to pollution, and omnipresent stress impacts sleep and leads to more friction at home.
Micro loans: if the poor are capable of paying 200% and more to payday lenders, why do the banks not consider them credit-worthy? When a Rudy Giuliani can owe $550 thousand in back taxes – just how much has he made to run up such a debt? – and a Donald Trump – who knows?
The so-called “Welfare Queens”? The reality is that many of those without would not be quite so poor it they availed themselves of what is already on the table, sums that high net-worth people wouldn’t bat an eye at grabbing if they qualified.
In aggregate, approximately seven million Americans pass up $17.3 billion a year in unclaimed Earned Income Tax Credits. Another $125 billion in other government assistance – health insurance aid, Supplemental Security Income, SNAP benefits (food stamps), and unemployment insurance sits untapped by those truly in need.
Many of the wealthiest Americans, on the other hand, have become masters of pulling every possible nickel and dime from the system, and scream bloody murder every time one of their pet loopholes comes on the chopping block. And they are the ones have their elected officials ear.
The cost to the taxpayer of federal homeowner subsidies – primarily to people with six-figure incomes – is approaching $200 billion, about four times what goes to direct housing assistance for low-income families.
The mortgage interest deduction lasts for the length of the mortgage, often three or four decades, while cash welfare for poor parents caps at five years.
On paper, America's welfare state as a share of its gross domestic product is the second largest in the world, but if benefits for those substantially above the poverty line are excluded the United States invests far less than other developed countries on poverty reduction.
Not unsurprisingly, being poor tracks with race. Nearly 50% of all poor and low-income Americans are white but, unsurprisingly, the other half includes 60% of Latinos, 54% of Blacks, and 58% of American Indian/Alaskan Natives.
They don’t get the parks and organized sports with new uniforms. They don’t get the corporate perqs and year-end bonuses. Their kids don’t get cutting-edge equipment in schools where PTA moms can call in favors and adjust their hours to volunteer on class trips. Their kids don’t get class trips.
Those mired in poverty lack power because their focus is day-to-day survival with no time to strategize how to get out of their predicaments and make those responsible pay.
And now cities across the states face increased pressure from refugees being bussed north from southern border crossings.
The United States is suffering from massive inequality.
To reverse its oppression of those who live in poverty, the country must give every American an equal opportunity to advance. And that means ensuring that each and every one has equal and equitable access to the building blocks of basic human needs – affordable housing, quality education, healthy food, clean air, potable water, labor protections, and healthcare.
This will come at a cost politically as well as to the wealthy and corporatocracy.
FDR saw one-third of his nation as ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished, and proclaimed: “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”
But the alternative is a country sinking into the swamp of fear, violence and suffering seen in Gaza and Israel today.
(Liz Amsden is a contributor to CityWatch and an activist from Northeast Los Angeles with opinions on much of what goes on in our lives. She has written extensively on the City's budget and services as well as her many other interests and passions. In her real life she works on budgets for film and television where fiction can rarely be as strange as the truth of living in today's world.)
