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       #Post#: 4686--------------------------------------------------
       Edin and Shaefer, $2.00 A DAY: LIVING ON ALMOST NOTHING IN AMERI
       CA 
       By: agate Date: January 22, 2025, 12:18 am
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       [font=arial]I keep a blog where I comment on books I've read.
       Below is a somewhat modified version of a blogpost about an
       interesting book.[/font][font=arial]
       EDIN, KATHRYN J. AND H. LUKE SHAEFER[/font]
       $2.00 A DAY: LIVING ON ALMOST NOTHING IN AMERICA (2015)
       Kathryn Edin is a Princeton University sociologist who has been
       studying poverty for many years, and this book focuses on a few
       situations where someone in the US is getting along on $2.00 a
       day. To be sure, the book is now ten years old, but the
       information may not be so very different today. If anything, the
       situation is worse.
       One point made in the book is that when "welfare as we know it"
       was ended (TANF--Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) some
       years ago, many people in the US were thrown into extreme
       poverty, usually with no recourse except SNAP benefits (formerly
       Food Stamps) as a path to cash.
       The lives described by the authors are the narratives of people
       down on their luck, sometimes people who have made unfortunate
       choices as people so often do. They  have resorted to ingenious
       ways of surviving in spite of their situations.  They barter.
       They sell their plasma regularly. They take what jobs they can
       find. The authors do not pretend that these people are perfect
       human beings but the general conclusion is that most
       impoverished people would prefer to be paying their own way in
       the world, having jobs that would pay them enough to live on.
       These are tragic stories and all too real. This very rich
       country has been letting many people down, and their numbers
       have been increasing alarmingly as the 21st century moves
       forward.
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