Free The Working Poor by David K. Shipler

giggle.
    “We’d put ourselves poor,” Willie echoed, “but I know if we were smart people, we could be very well off. Sometimes I bring home $700 a week. I know I could be very well off. But, you know, neither one of us can just sit home and say, OK, this is what we’ve got for dinner, and that’s it.” He smiled sadly. “If we had $10 in our pocket and we were sick and tired of sitting in the house, we’d go out and spend $10 on ice cream and supper. I guess it’s easier to make life easier by doing something that costs money.”
    Sarah offered her definition of being poor: “We don’t have any money saved. We don’t really have a home we can call our own.”
    “It’s our own fault,” said Willie. “I’m not blaming it on anybody else.”
    Willie’s earnings from working with sheet metal were high enough to put his family above the federal poverty line but low enough to get them some benefits. The children were eligible for SCHIP, the federally funded State Children’s Health Insurance Program, and Sarah got milk, cereal, peanut butter, baby formula, and other foods from WIC, the Special SupplementalNutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. Some years, when they filed their income tax return, they received not only a refund of taxes withheld, but the additional Earned Income Tax Credit.
    One year, they used part of their check from the IRS to get tattoos. “It’s like we’re still kids ourselves,” she said, “so we’ve got to act like kids once in a while.” Willie got a wizard etched on his arm. Sarah pulled her shirt up in back to show hers: a heart made of thorns.

Chapter Two

WORK DOESN’T
WORK
    It is not easy for men to rise whose qualities are thwarted by poverty.
                                                                  —Juvenal, Satires
    Christie did a job that this labor-hungry economy could not do without. Every morning she drove her battered ’86 Volkswagen from her apartment in public housing to the YWCA’s child-care center in Akron, Ohio, where she spent the day watching over little children so their parents could go to work. Without her and thousands like her across the country, there would have been fewer people able to fill the jobs that fueled America’s prosperity. Without her patience and warmth, children could have been harmed as well, for she was more than a baby-sitter. She gave the youngsters an emotionally safe place, taught and mothered them, and sometimes even rescued them from abuse at home.
    For those valuable services, she received a check for about $330 every two weeks. She could not afford to put her own two children in the day-care center where she worked.
    Christie was a hefty woman who laughed more readily than herpredicament should have allowed. She suffered from stress and high blood pressure. She had no bank account because she could not keep enough money long enough. Try as she might to shop carefully, she always fell behind on her bills and was peppered with late fees. Her low income entitled her to food stamps and a rental subsidy, but whenever she got a little pay raise, government agencies reduced the benefits, and she felt punished for working. She was trapped on the treadmill of welfare reform, running her life according to the rules of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. The title left no doubt about what Congress and the White House saw as poverty’s cause and solution.
    Initially the new law combined with the good economy to send welfare caseloads plummeting. As states were granted flexibility in administering time limits and work requirements, some created innovative consortiums of government, industry, and charity to guide people into effective job training and employment. But most available jobs had three unhappy traits: They paid low wages, offered no benefits, and led nowhere. “Many who do find jobs,” the Urban