Rayan Demikhovskiy

Pan African Studies 113B

3/20/12

The War on Poverty

Throughout history poverty has always been an issue in our nation. This is because our country is constantly putting money into the wrong funds or where it does not belong. In today’s society, poverty has reached out so high in our nation, where our own government isn’t using real money anymore, and where they use bonds instead. This crisis has created a huge space, and void between people and their hopes for uprising from poverty. If we would understand the emotional impact towards poverty, then understand the physical and mental effects when dealing with poverty, and lastly compromising three changes in the system would illuminate this space.

            Since, the economic crises hit in 2007, the percentage of poverty has increased by 70 percent (Wiedy Thompson, CNN newsroom). Many people who were once lawyers or teachers, even scientist face poverty today.  At the Redeemer Lutheran Church, Bob Owens, a member and employee was once a successful English major that had a home until he lost everything because of the economic crises. He then became homeless for five years, which was a let down for him because he had thought that with a strong degree he would never be out of a job. Many of these people who were once successful must resolve to food banks and shelters for survival mainly because they have lost their home or their jobs. 

            When facing poverty, life is nothing but a fierce struggle of survival. You must ask yourself all these important questions that were not so important when didn’t have to faced being homeless, such as where do you shower? Where do you go to the bathroom? And most importantly where will you sleep tonight? These questions are incorporated on where you stand in your economy because if you are not dealing with poverty, then those questions wouldn’t be important to you. “It takes someone who was at the top in success, who loses everything because of the economic crises to understand the emotional impact on poverty, mainly because your values and perspective change when you lose everything.” (Bob Owens, employee of the redeemer Lutheran Church)

                        Poverty is the definition of creating space and void through people’s hopes and dreams from escaping poverty. Volunteering at the Redeemer Lutheran Church was an eye opener because you would see people that come for food, or to take showers, pick up shampoo and conditioner, and even get clothes. Seeing all these different people come in for different material shows that empty feeling and the hunger for need. Most of these people are not completely homeless, but live off on an extremely low income. When they come in and get toured around in all the different departments to grab items, it puts these people in silence because internally they don’t know what to do and they don’t always want help, but need it.

            Another case would be that some of these people just want someone to hear them out or talk to because they believe that they are not considered people anymore.  When you do not consider yourself as a person shows that you gave up on society and yourself. As more people give up on society because they have fallen through the cracks of poverty, only hurts our nation because it’s another person that the government needs to help and pay for. In the end it gave a clear understanding on the space between the one percent of people that are rich and the other 99 percent of people struggling and facing poverty.

Poverty affects you in two distanced ways such as mentally and physically.  Many individuals that face poverty must learn to let go of many things such as the life that they once had or the necessities they once owned. An issue that people must face when dealing with poverty is acceptance, living a life without denial on where they stand today in our economy. Bob Owens was living outside for 6 months before he found room in a shelter and felt a huge space between why has he reached rock bottom, and what needs to be done in order to get back on his feet.

Without acceptance can lead you to confusion and a life without improvement to your success. When you deal and accept poverty mentally it allows you to use your brain to a positive advantage. For example, if you accept on where you stand today, then you can lead your brain to use it for helping you with your struggle such as signing up for welfare, other government programs such as S.S.I, and food banks. “Many of the new faces that come into our food pantry or just to take a shower come in usually grumpy, or angry with themselves because they must face reality at that point to where they realize that they need help yet don’t really want it.” (Bob Owens)

Dealing with poverty, affects you very hard mentally, can affect you just as bad physically. When dealing with poverty you end up with a lot of things on your plate and one of those things is depression. Depression leads to lots of wrinkles and eyes bags because most of the time you cant sleep due to all the stress. Depression leads to aging faster as you’re your metabolism that can grow much slower.

            Poverty can give you many disorders such as Obsessive–compulsive disorder, paranoia,

Attention Deficit disorder, and other related sicknesses. When working in the food pantry department, walked in a woman who was greeted and was asked to shake hands.  The women refused and said “I don’t touch random strangers; in fact I don’t touch anything that has germs.” From her reaction it showed a huge space between the trust for people. One of the women who worked in this pantry for over thirty years told me that the women who refused to shake hands was not always like this, in fact she used to always give hugs when she first started coming in. Poverty can affect your eating habits because you must constantly be thinking of saving every penny you have left. Many live off fast food restaurants or food banks which are not always the best stuff for you. Overall, poverty can take all your values away and your health.

In order to help, and make our nation stronger and far richer for everyone, rather than all the money left upon corporate greed, there would be three things in the system that needs to be changed. The first option would consist of brining back all our labor work, as well as our manufactures back into the United States in China. Even though it is much cheaper to make and sell our products such as our metal, cars, oil, natural gas, energy, our mining, and electricity, it would be a better investment in giving jobs.  With all of our factories and manufactures that are being used in China and eventually brought over here, sets many of our citizens in United States to be out of work.

With just one factory we could give over one hundred jobs out. If we brought all of our factories and manufactures back it would give hundreds and thousands of jobs back into the United Sates. In order to make money you need to have it, and if you are jobless then you can’t make money to obtain it. Knowing that there are millions of jobs out in China that can be incorporated here can cause a huge space in finding a job, leaving more people without jobs and the need of support from the Government.

The second thing to make our nation stronger would be to reinvest in where our money is actually going. For example, our government claims that we have no money, yet if republicans and democrats did not spend millions of dollars on their campaigns in order to win elections then we wouldn’t keep running in circles through an economic crisis. If we spend our money on important issues then we would be able to use our money the right way. For example, education because in order to make good money you need to have a degree to back you up.

Knowledge is an important role in our nation because the more you know the more useful and a tool you are in society. Due to this our government keeps on making budget cuts for teachers and other school related figures to lose money and their jobs. Another way to reinvest would be increasing salary and wages because if you make more money it will allow you to spend more money and that’s how our capitalistic system works. If we increased our salary and wages then we could increase on taxes as well, which leads to more buildings and work that could be built.

            The last option for making our economy stronger would be to tweak the system rather than changing it completely. For example, if we passed a law that would enable all corporate America to stop saving all that money for them and to force them to spend more money on their workers for benefits as well as taxes, then we would have more money for other individuals. Most of the workers that work for any corporate America are living in the depths of poverty because they don’t pay them good enough as well as benefit them as much “because of the stock market crash in the late 1920’s Wall Street and other huge corporate companies are pulling their money out into a trust fund in order to avoid another situation like that, leaving them to have billions of dollars saved up just in case another crises happens(Allen Vector employee at the Redeemer Lutheran Church).

            The problem in our nation is that we do have money but it’s only in the hands of corporate greed. This is why most of our manufactures are being imported from overseas. These companies play an act in society to show that they are helping the poor by selling them their products for cheap, even though it is made two times cheaper in China. It all shows the values corporate America has over their money rather than their employee’s

            In conclusion, poverty affects you in all ways and it takes a lot from you when you end up in that situation. In order to make our nation stronger and far richer it takes cooperation on both sides such the people and our government. Changing the system does not work because that’s another way to run away from our problems, we need to tweak the system and work around it for improvement. Since 2008 our nation has felt a great loss, and currently 150.7 million people are struggling and dealing with the depths of poverty in the United States

Work Cited Page

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Ginsberg, Keren M. "A Measure of Poverty." General One File. State Legislatures, 14 Feb. 2012. Web. 16 Feb. 2012. <http://go.galegroup.com.libproxy.csun.edu/ps/i.do?&id=GALE%7CA279460987&v=2.1&u=csunorthridge&it=r&p=ITOF&sw=w>.