$2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America

This book is excellent. Of all people to kick the poor people when they are down leave it to Bill and Hillary who OVERTURNED a 60 year law that was lifting up the poor for decades. Wow. If you bless the poor as an individual then you are blessed by God as an individual. Therefore, who can argue against----- if we bless the poor as a nation then God will bless us as a nation???? It's Psalm 41:1-3. It's in the Bible people. The cuts affect children the most because many single moms have more than one kid. So if you got 15 million on welfare ---- 5 million are moms and 10 million are kids, roughly. You gotta think about who you are starving out. It were better for a millstone to be hung around your neck than to harm some of these kids (Math. 18:6). If you loan to the poor it costs you nothing. Nothing because God pays it back and then some (Prov. 19:17) - both to individuals and nations. Granted If you don't work--- you don't eat, but for single moms raising kids is a job in itself and the only job they should have to worry about. Able bodied adult males is a different story. Welfare reform cut off single moms in the millions. It's fruit is untold misery and its initiators were unmerciful.

Nothing new under the sun, as they say. Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" (2001) focused on her undercover work as a low-wage employee. This book, by scholars Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer is not undercover investigative reporting, but just as worthwhile in its study of a handful of familieses who either do not work, but work off the books in essentially making less than $2 a day. From undocumented ride sharing to selling home-made snacks out of a dining room at a small mark-up, they are, to paraphrase Ehrenreich, "not getting by in America." Some are youngsters, minor children, who sell their bodies to put food on the family table. Others to the almost-timeless (by now) job of selling their food stamps. Parents and children bounce from family to family when they can't pay the rent - sometimes at great cost to the children, such as the young teen in this book who was molested by a relative her mother had trusted. Other mothers meet so-called "friends" (as the families call them) to consensually trade sex for a few dollars (minors can't consent in the United States, even when they are are on cusp of age 18). What is not mentioned is the people who sell their-anti-depressants and other life-saving medications. In my work as a food pantry volunteer, I've know a smattering of such people, seen the drug deals go down; seen the young woman go off with other food pantry guests to trade sex for money, for who knows what the former want and need. The authors should have cited the prescription sellers as well. It's not a new phenomenon. Still, overall thorough research leading from the Middle West to the Mississippi Delta, north to south and back again, focused on a handful of families. Equity is a large and important focus of this study, although whites and Blacks are given equal shrift. Inadequate explanation of why the authors didn't include a coastal community but included two mid-west states (Illinois and Ohio). Cf: David Bowie's song "This Is Not America," for an artistic interpretation of this problem - his song was released more than a decade before President Clinton's so-called 'welfare reform," for defines, in lyrical form, the $2/day problem. The authors don't cite Bowie, but they do cite - extensively - Clinton's disastrous policy on the working and non-working poor. Book needs a 2022 update to cover Covid19's effects on the economy and the $2/day poor, but extensive bibliography and footnotes are very helpful for the reader's future readings and research.

Got the book for class & learned a lot about welfare policies and how it looks like in practice.

Here's my Goodreads review of this timely and important book:When I listen to the debate over voting laws, I've always thought that there must be Americans who for some reason can't/don't get an identity card, but I didn't really know why. I figured maybe they were not physically able to get one, didn't understand that they needed one, or just didn't bother. $2.00 a Day is about many these people, although the book never once mentions voting requirements or identification cards.Edin's book takes some time (although not in great depth) to walk her readers through the history of the U.S. government's efforts to help the poor. Born in 1967, I know that my divorced mom accessed some services (food stamps for one) but by the time I was in middle school she had a college degree and a full time job and we were out of the system. When Clinton became president and changed the welfare system, I wasn't paying attention to the monumental changes he made. So most of Edin's information was, I'm afraid to say, new to me.The best part of the book is at the end, where Edin discusses numerous ways to help this desperately poor American population. Surprisingly most if not all of her ideas are simple and revolve around what most Americans believe in--the opportunity to work, putting the family first, self autonomy, and joining a community (157-158)I highly suggest that if you're reading my review and aren't an expert on welfare reform in the past 30 years, you read this book. Read it especially if you believe that the poor are poor because they are lazy.

It is a book which describes the other face of the U.S. It shows you how people live with 2 dollars o less per day. The author supports his statements with real cases, and put on the table the problem of the inefficient of the social government departments and highlights the importance of enhancing some essential public services.

The question that came to me reading this is:Where are the fathers? Why would you have eight children by an abusive man who does not support his own children? I empathize with the unfair practices like unpaid overtime and unreasonable firings, but think that many of these problems were self inflicted.

Littered with racism. America, you want to know why you have a race problem, why you have a crime problem? Read this book!!!

It was a good book with a lot of good points but was a little dry at time. Still interesting to read.

Very powerful reading! As a student of environmental issues and international relations and politics, this is a very good book to read.