"Poverty a state of mind"
In a radio interview, Trump's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson said: "I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind." Aid to the poor, says the Trump team, does not work. The poor must be made to "go to work," said Trump's Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. But how to go to work when jobs are simply unavailable, as Trump himself has said on many occasions?
In fact, the office that helps the poor find jobs has also been slated to be cut. That means even those few programs to assist the unemployed to find work will no longer be available. In fact, as New York University Professor Jonathan Morduch and Rachael Schneider say in their new book The Financial Diaries: How American Families Cope in a World of Uncertainty, even those who have jobs at low pay struggle to make ends meet. Many of them rely on government assistance to get by. If they do not get access to government programs, they turn to credit card loans and payday loans to cover their bills. There is great fragility in the budgets of the working poor.
There is cruelty in Trump's vision. It throws the poor to the lions of desperation. The remnants of liberalism are being withdrawn. This is the end of the social contract.
This article originally appeared in Frontline (India).
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
2
1
