Is poverty really immutable according to an article titled 4 myths about poverty by David B. Grusky, he explains 4 myths people have believed about poverty for many years. One myth he talked about was is poverty immutable. A second myth he talked about was is poverty a natural outcome of a competitive economy. The third myth he talked about was is full employment policies to costly to consider. Finally the last myth he talked about was poverty is just too complicated to understand. Are any of these myths really proven.
In myth one he talked about is poverty really immutable. Before I start talking about the article let me explain what immutable mean, immutable is unchanging over time or cannot be changed ever. Many people believe that poverty is immutable because the intransigently high poverty rate in the U. S. This high rate remains so high and continues to grow so much because there are no jobs being handed out to the poor and poorly educated populations. Many people believe that big government anti poverty agencies are a huge failure because the rate of poverty continues to grow.
It seems to me that this rate continues to grow because many teens choose to drop out of school and they believe that school education isn’t important at all and so they remain jobless or poorly paid jobs such as field laboring because they have no education. One statistic show that the safety net provides about one-third of the income support that allows low-income households need to reach 150 percent of the poverty line, the safety net is doing real anti poverty work.
So is the claim that poverty immutable true, I wouldn’t consider it fully true but it does seem to be partly true no one knows what will happen with poverty in the future all they can guess is the probability of the poverty rate. In the second myth he talked about is poverty the natural outcome of a competitive economy? According to the article he stated that the United states runs a high-poverty economy.
The U. S. poverty rate comes in at fifteen percent for the full population and 21. 8 percent for children in the U. S. this adds up to 36. 8 percent of the U. S. in high poverty and more still growing in the U. S. It seems the U. S. economy runs a spectacular poverty generating machine. It seems the U. S. has no choice but to opt for European style regulations and taxes so the population growing in poverty will soon be reducing the growth rate of poverty. It is typically taken for granted that poverty is just a byproduct of a competitive economy, but all you have to do is try new things. How to proceed?
We can reduce the number of uneducated employees by providing quality schooling to all children from preschool on. Citizens with a better education would earn more, ones who don’t take advantage of their newfound education opportunities would still benefit their former competitors. In the third myth he talked about full employment policy is too costly to consider. He stated that they cannot recalibrate their training systems over night. If there were more college educated opportunities they would definitely equalized the effect on labor supply.
We need supplement education reform with a short term jump starts that provide jobs to reserve army soldiers with poorly trained labor, this is troubling because the number of nonworking poor is on the rise everyday higher and higher. The amount of adults between 25 and 54 years old who held jobs was almost 5 percent lower than the last great recession. For along time it has been simply assumed that we can’t get it done because full time employment policy either costs to much or generates too many side effects.
The poverty rate continues to grow because the amount of high school teenaged pregnancy and child rearing, drug and alcohol abuse, crime and incarceration rates continue to grow higher every day. We all pay the everyday price of running a high poverty regime. The final myth he talked about in the article talked about poverty being so complicated. The causes of poverty are hardly opaque. First the economy just seems it isn’t delivering the jobs the U. S. needs the jobs they deliver the workers aren’t receiving the right education for the job.
Poverty is always treated as some complex matter that will remain with us until hard working scholars discover that elusive magic bullet. The disease model of poverty is treated like a rare incurable form of cancer. This clearly suggest we don’t understand what causes poverty and how to end poverty. Poverty is made between two sources, upstream and downstream. the up streams are job disaster and labor market disasters of epic proportions. The downstreams effects are by contrast indeed complicated and multifarious.
When people say poverty is complicated they are mixing up the causes and effects which make thing difficult and complicated to understand. The 4 myths David B. Grusky talked about proudly states myths that have been strongly believed. Many of these myths are clearly wrong, however many people believe they are true. so what are really the true facts about poverty. I would suggest that to find the true facts of poverty go on to stanford university center study for poverty and inequality in order to find the real truth about poverty.
Stanford University has tons of studies on poverty. I suggest to look up the facts before believing some myth people tell you. Remember poverty has been immutable in the past but this doesn’t mean it will always me this way. The poverty rates could rise and they could fall it is all a chance of probability until everything happen and proves the probability was right or wrong. To find out more information on poverty or inequality visit http://web. stanford. edu/group/scspi/ with great information and statistics on poverty and inequality.
