New Findings From War on Poverty: Just Give Cash. There is a typical debate that tends to happen whenever people start talking about poverty.
Conservatives try to blame poverty on the bad behavior of the poor. If lower-income people would just get married, stay married, avoid drugs, work hard and not commit crimes, say the conservatives, the poor would make a lot more money. Liberals typically assert that it’s the structures of society that cause poverty, not individual failings. Poor kids start with a disadvantage because of residential segregation and bad schools. Welfare drug tests fail to save expected cash. The State Capitol PHOENIX — In 2009, Arizona became the first state in the country to require drug tests for welfare recipients in effort to save the state dire-needed cash and ensure taxpayer dollars won’t go to drug users.
The results, however, haven’t come to meet those expectations. In the five and a half years since Arizona began the drug tests for adults receiving funds from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the state’s welfare program, 26 people have lost benefits due to the drug tests, three of whom for actually failing the drug test, according to figures provided by the Arizona Department of Economic Security, which administers the program. When applying for TANF benefits, 42 people have been asked to take a follow-up drug test and 19 actually took the test, 16 of whom passed. The other 23 were stripped of their benefits for failing to take the drug test. Recipients are taken off welfare benefits for a year if they fail a drug test or do not take a required test. A Prejudicial Policy Toward The Poor. By Jonah Shepp In an interview with Nora Caplan-Bricker, Harold Pollack explains why drug testing welfare applicants, as Mississippi is set to start doing, is “among the worst ideas in American social policy today”: NCB: What’s the greatest harm you see programs like this cause?
HP: These programs build upon, and perpetuate, harmful myths about parents who seek cash assistance. Illicit drug disorders can certainly be found among TANF recipients. Yet these disorders are not particularly widespread among participants in this program. Like Mississippi, most of the nine other states that have adopted drug testing regimes are deep red, and all have Republican governors. Locked Up In America. New Report Slams “Unprecedented” Growth in US Prisons May 1, 2014, 2:34 pm ET · by Jason M.
Breslow Despite a dramatic boom in incarceration rates, a new report finds that the deterrent effect of tough-on-crime policies remain “highly uncertain.” CANCELLED: Live Chat: Can America Kick Its Addiction to Incarceration? April 29, 2014, 9:41 pm ET · by Patrice Taddonio Filmmaker Dan Edge and Huffington Post justice reporter Ryan Reilly will answer this question — and take yours. For Some Felons, a Better Chance to Break the Re-entry Cycle April 29, 2014, 9:40 pm ET · by Sarah Childress. A Homeless Man and His BlackBerry. Just becomes he doesn't have a home mean he doesn't deserve a life.
I could tell he was different the moment he walked in the coffee shop. It wasn’t his appearance. He looked presentable, if a little rough around the edges, clutching an old BlackBerry to his barrel chest. It was how he moved: warily, shoulders hunched over and eyes darting. The body language would read as suspicious, if not for the flicker of fear and apprehension in his eyes — as if he was scared of being noticed, vigilant to his surroundings and desperately trying to blend in at the same time. He ordered a coffee, carefully counting out coins on the counter. The psychology of poverty. Imagine this: You’re at your child’s baseball game.
You’ve got a deadline coming up tomorrow and its been a hard day. You want to focus on your child’s game, but you can’t. To some, you may seem like a bad parent, but you can’t shake the fact that you have things to do. This is something we can all relate to. Meaganmcgovern - Blog - Choices and habits. Poverty is caused by bad choices.
Good choices and good decisions and habits can get people back into the middle class. That’s the most recent message of Dave Ramsey, who is a great guy apparently, and who is very good at helping middle-class people get out debt. He says that three things cause poverty: 1. Personal habits, choices and character; Tough Choices: How the poor spend money. Being poor changes your thinking about everything. Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir are two leading figures in the hot (if occasionally oversold) field of behavioral economics.
Mullainathan teaches economics at Harvard and is a MacArthur Fellow. Shafir teaches psychology and public policy at Princeton. America's Real Criminal Element: Lead. Illustration: Gérard DuBois When Rudy Giuliani ran for mayor of New York City in 1993, he campaigned on a platform of bringing down crime and making the city safe again.
It was a comfortable position for a former federal prosecutor with a tough-guy image, but it was more than mere posturing.