HERE'S WHAT
What is it that 'incarcerates' them there? Certainly not other people keeping what they earn. Tens of trillions of dollars have been transferred from rich to poor over the last couple of generations and poverty remains the same. Perhaps it is you who needs to look for another solution rather than expanding a practice that has not worked.
Maybe you need to "be one" to understand what incarcerates them there. It's damn easy, with a nation transiting from the Industrial Age into the Information Age, that a higher level of smarts is necessary in order to obtain jobs that have higher qualification-requirements.
What? you ask. Herefollows what!
Why do you think, for example, all those top-notch Computer People - mostly from India - are flocking into America to take the jobs that Americans cannot fill. Because it's too damn expensive for Americans to get the same education that they got free, gratis and for nothing back in India!
When 8% of high-school students do not get a high-school degree and then another 40% do not get a post-secondary degree, what do YOU THINK is happening to them? They shuttle from low-paid-jobs to low-paid-jobs that come and go with regularity.
America is responding to external competition by automating its production-lines. It is the ONLY ALTERNATIVE AVAILABLE in the Manufacturing Industries in order to compete. (Especially as the Japanese open up their production lines in India and China.) So, all those jobs that were once filled by local-yokels are gone, gone, gone.
Lord knows what they are doing with their time, but gainful employment is not one of them.
Which is the key-reason we as a nation are unable to lower the 14% of our population incarcerated below the Poverty Threshold into gainful employment. It would also help if the Minimum Wage, which has not changed in a donkey's age were doubled in order that those working at that level would "earn a decent living". (Not to worry, it would cost you only 30-cents more on your next BigMac.)
The Real Value of the Minimum Wage in an infographic (from
here):
Read the rest of that linked article (from the UofCal in Davis "Poverty Research Center) to understand how poverty is
self-perpetuating ...
Furthermore, from the above linked article on poverty:
Do workers at the minimum wage still need government assistance?
With a minimum wage income, even working full time, many workers will qualify for most federal safety net programs in the United States. Eligibility guidelines for government assistance are based on the Census Bureau thresholds, but are developed and updated annually by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Those with incomes below a certain percentage of their poverty guideline will qualify.
Federal assistance programs all have eligibility requirements that are in part based on the proportion of household income to the federal poverty guideline. For example, the SNAP nutritional assistance program is available to those with a gross household income of up to about 130 percent of their federal poverty guideline.
For a family of three, this means an annual income of $26,124 or less will qualify them for SNAP benefits. A full-time worker supporting this household alone will have to earn $12.56 hourly working 40 hours each week—or about 70 hours each week at the current $7.25 minimum wage—before the household loses eligibility for benefits.
Wakey, wakey ...
