I took the phrase “grow the middle class” from section 6 of Heise’s book and typed it into Google, and the second link that popped up was a list of the top 10 solutions for cutting poverty and growing the middle class.
Reading through the article there is definitely some overlap with Heise. Both talk about creating more jobs, raising the minimum wage, increasing earned income tax credit, reducing funding cuts to programs that help low-income families, supporting pay equity, and investing in high-quality childcare and early education. The four solutions talked about in the article that Heise doesn’t mention are: providing paid leave and sick days, establishing functioning work schedules, expanding medicaid, and reforming the criminal justice system.
Ten solutions may sound like a lot, but frankly these things aren’t that hard to do. Take supporting pay equity for example. This article believes closing the gender pay gap would cut poverty amongst working women and their families in half, and add half a trillion dollars to America’s GDP. With many of the presidential candidates focusing on economic growth it seems we can hit two birds with one stone by simply accepting gender equality. Having paid leave and sick days is something many countries have been doing for some time already and proves to be effective, most our own population disagrees with reducing government spending by cutting programs like food stamps that help low-income families, and reforming the criminal justice system can help over one million incarcerated Americans get jobs after their sentences.
Throughout our class I kept asking myself why nobody is doing anything about the issues of poverty and homelessness. But after reading section 6 of Heise and this article I ask myself HOW we haven’t made the changes needed to address these issues; its astonishing to me that we have all the information we need to make the necessary changes, we have people attempting to make those changes, yet somehow these changes are not nationally supported. I think this goes back to public awareness, if the idea that the impoverished are the scum of society can be changed I don’t think poverty would be an issue.