Category · 4 posts

Poverty

1. Last Two DollarsFebruary 21, 2017

   I was having trouble understanding the man, but I believe his last words as the police walked up were, “I’m down to my last two dollars.” One of my favorite workouts is a five mile or so walk in the City of Columbia at a 17 minute per mile pace. It is a good time…

2. Confessing Failure to HelpMay 23, 2016

   It’s 10pm in the parking lot of a hotel, and we are just arriving, tired and looking for a good night’s sleep. A minivan pulls up, window down, and a young Black woman says, “Sir, I’m not asking for any money or anything but we just need a place to sleep tonight. We can check…

3. Commitment to Social Spending: More Than a TitheOctober 28, 2013

   Sometimes it helps to provide some historical context for currently observed phenomena. The chart below shows total federal, state, and local social benefit spending, as a percent of GDP, for the United States since 1960, the 25th anniversary of Social Security and five years before Medicare and Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” which featured “Guns…

4. The Pope and the PoorMarch 21, 2013

   From an AP news story about Tuesday’s public appearance of Pope Francis: “Francis said the role of the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics is to open his arms and protect all of humanity, but “especially the poorest, the weakest, the least important, those whom Matthew lists in the final judgment on love: the…