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Redefining poverty won’t make American collapse go away.
The Trump Administration is considering adjusting the poverty line while ignoring the realities of poverty.
“I actually make good wages now,” my neighbor tells me. He’s gotten on as a foreman at a fencing company where he is leading a crew six days a week. “But we are still losing it. We just couldn’t make it all work.”
He’s talking about the house he rents. He and his kids are loading bedding, lamps, a plastic tub of dishes into our other neighbor’s pickup truck. A lot will have to be left behind; the entire family is moving into his sister’s two bedroom apartment.
Despite a booming economy and the lowest unemployment rate in half a century, neighborhoods like mine remain pock-marked by curbside piles of mattresses and children’s toys — the tell-tale signs of evictions.
My neighbor’s situation is not surprising to me and it should not be news to you: Wages have not kept up with the cost of living and families cannot afford their basic needs even on working-class wages. If you have never watched a day-labor crew shovel the contents of a home onto a curb, then you’ve only managed to skim the surface of America.
