Why it's so hard to get out of poverty

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/sep/21/linda-tirado-poverty-hand-to-mouth-extract?CMP=fb_gu

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/07/14/330434597/this-is-your-stressed-out-brain-on-scarcity

The situations and constraints that the poor find themselves in often lead to short-term thinking and counter-productive behaviors. They don't do it because they're irrational and/or like being poor. Even the "self-made Masters of the Universe" (conservatives like Romney, Ryan, Hannity, Trump, etc. who blame the poor for being poor) would likely do no better in their shoes.

Also, the ludicrous propaganda that the poor somehow live large off the rest of us and strategically exploit social programs when they could be working is really backed by no statistical evidence (but of course anecdotes exist). But stereotypes like that make it easier for society to ignore/dismiss/hate the poor, against our compassionate tendencies and the teachings of virtually every religious/moral code known to man.

The biggest civil rights violation you've never heard of

http://www.npr.org/2013/07/10/200644779/history-professor-kept-mexican-repatriation-alive
http://public.csusm.edu/frame004/history.html

"If we were rid of the aliens who have entered this country illegally since 1921, stealing in as burglars might enter our homes, our present employment problem would shrink to the proportions of a relatively flat spot in business." - J Quinn, LA Supervisor

CA and the US southwest have historically had a higher % of Latino residents due to proximity to Mexico and former Spanish-Mexican sovereignty. Since the first days the US settled the West, we have been importing cheap Mexican laborers. Some of those people had children here who were born US citizens, supposedly with full legal rights on paper. They didn't sneak in here... they were asked to come here and had families in accordance with US laws. They helped Americans survive and prosper, despite often being treated inferior.

The "Mexican Repatriation" under Hoover during the Depression was an outrageous response by a desperate nation to keep "American jobs in the hands of REAL Americans." Where have we heard that before? As if getting rid of Mexicans would have ended the Depression - it probably would have exacerbated it! Next there was the illusion of immigrants "sucking America dry" and living off the gov't teat. People of Mexican descent were only 12% of the welfare rolls, consuming on average $20/month of gov't assistance (and that assistance was passed on in the form of consumer spending, often to white businesses). Yet deporting them cost taxpayers $68/family. So what were we gaining? Some of the people we kicked out were taxpayers and "job creators" too.

During 1929-1944, over 2M people were deported under this program, and 1.2M of them (60%) were US CITIZENS. It's not like they got rid of all Latinos, so in some cases families were broken up in the indiscriminate dragnet and never reunited (like ICE's rounding up of illegals today). The social climate was so hostile to Latinos that many of them voluntarily left the US too, at the rate of 10K/month in 1931. Similar to the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Latinos who weren't rounded up were often blocked or intimidated away from gov't services and employment. So if US society wasn't letting them make a living, is it any wonder why some of them ended up on welfare? A self-fulfilling racist prophecy. The "we're getting rid of criminal Mexicans" myth was pervasive, but it was likely that more crimes were being committed against Latinos than by Latinos at that time (Latinos rarely reported crimes against them to authorities, and witnesses would rarely stick their necks out for them).

The program explicitly targeted Latinos, and I am sure they were dispossessed of their legal property like what happened to the interned Japanese-Americans (we often forget that they were US citizens too). It is a tragedy of our education system that me as a US-born citizen didn't learn of this until I was 34. Speaking of Japanese Internment, some speculate that the Mexican Repatriation was a "warm up" and learning experience for the US gov't so they were more able to efficiently handle the Japanese-Americans.

After what happened during the Depression, it is an amazing display of grace and forgiveness that Latinos still want to live here, especially when they have had to put up with similar shit over the decades (physical laborer and domestic worker abuse, prop 187, border fence, Arizona law, the Tea Party, etc.).

And here is the official US gov't response:

In February 2005, California State Senator Joseph Dunn (D-Garden Grove) introduced Senate Bill 670 to apologize for the "unconstitutional removal and coerced migration" of Californians during the Great Depression. Before "The Apology Act for the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Program" was passed on February 22, it had twice been vetoed by Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis. - C Frame, CSUSM

They were supposed to erect a plaque commemorating this tragedy, but so far nothing has been done.

Disability coverage masks US labor force problems

http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/

Starting with the Bush I recession in 1990, the numbers of Americans on disability rolls has surged. The Great Recession has further accelerated the trend. Now disability spending > (food stamps + welfare combined), with 14M Americans participating (9% of the labor force).

Of course some people are truly disabled and need public assistance to survive, but many others suffer from the same "ailments" that working people have. I am not saying that these people are lazy "takers", and in fact there is a higher prevalence in southern Red states (and of course is correlated with education levels and local economic conditions). And that is kind of the point - due to structural changes in the US economy and labor force, tens of millions of Americans are now effectively unhirable in the 21st Century. Often they come from blue-collar non-desk jobs that are more physical, so it is likely that they have various pains and elements. So it is easy for a physician to approve many of them for disability. But the problem is that once they are approved and on the rolls, there is next to zero incentive for them to find a job and go through the effort of retraining. It's not like welfare and unemployment with a finite time span of benefits. And speaking of welfare - that is a driver too. "Reforms" under Clinton and Newt effectively shifted people on welfare to other programs such as disability, so it didn't really save the country much money or motivate the labor force. Probably America would get more bang for its buck if it invested in worker transition and retraining programs rather than just hide/relegate these people to the disability space (the US spends about $260B/year on the 2 major disability programs). I am not advocating kicking legitimate people off these programs, but I think it behooves us to at least perform a cost and impact analysis, and propose improvements/alternatives. Disability is just a band-aid to mask our larger labor and health care problems.

There is even a cottage industry now ("disability industrial complex") to advise and help people to get approved for disability - similar to the folks who help kids get into college or help immigrants get their green cards (one firm took in $70M in fees in 2012 alone). And some families may now see their kids as "cash cows" too, by enrolling them and collecting additional benefits. The number of kids on disability has grown 4X since 1990. Clearly medicine has improved since then, and doctors are better able to diagnose disabilities, but it is pretty much impossible to attribute that huge rise to actual increases in disability diagnoses and incidence.