(Written by an American expat living the European Union)
This diary offers a review of the German magazine Spiegel - November issue entitled The Nouveau Poor: Recession Shadows America's Middle Class.
This insightful and well written, well researched article covers a variety of topics. Unlike part 1 of the series, this article moves away from secondary source statistical analysis to primary source first person research with a human face. In this case it is a single parent college educated woman by the name of Pam Brown in New York city whose account provides heartbreaking anecdotal evidence with a human face.
She is a college educated former executive assistant who worked on Wall Street who speaks candidly of her fear of homelessness for her and her family. She also speaks of her unemployed friend who has an MBA degree presently residing in a homeless shelter that resembles a prison cell with bars on the windows. As such this tale of the Nouveau poor documents the weak American social safety net and a superpower in decline, wherein for too many the American dream has turned into the American nightmare.
Based on the empirical evidence and statistical analysis in the previous issues of the American Dream VS the European Dream series published here at the Daily Kos, we are able to axiomatically look at the case of Pam Brown as someone who is allowed to fall straight to the bottom and living with the fear of homelessness for her and her family.
Its the opinion of this review that this is the context of how the readership in the European Union will read this Spiegel article, (translated into English) because they understand implicitly. For example this could not happen to Pam Brown and her family if they were living in an EU country such as Germany, where given its strong social safety net, the fear of homelessness that haunts Pam Brown would in fact virtually be nonexistent (given the German HarzIV long term unemployment benefit).
During her period of unemployment wherein her grocery allowance budget which in America is colloquially called "Food Stamps" runs out after 2 weeks, at which point her family is dependent on the generosity of food banks. That's something that couldn't happen with Pam Brown's grocery budget if she were living in a European country like Germany, under the German HarzIV system, which also would provide medical and dental insurance for people like Pam Brown and her family.
HarzIV includes a clothing allowance and other necessary amenities to provide for a minimum humanitarian social safety net as provided by the German Constitution. It is in the context of this background that we start our review.(A note to American readers: Unemployment benefit#2 known a HarzIV never runs out. Also HarzIV offers medical insurance free of charge for the whole family).
The Nouveau Poor
Recession Shadows America's Middle Class
Pam Brown is one of millions of Americans who, during the recession, tumbled from their idyllic middle-class existence to near-poverty -- or beyond. For many, like Brown, the downfall is a Kafkaesque odyssey, a humiliation hard to comprehend. Help is not in sight: their government and their society have abandoned them.
Franz Kafka was a Austro-Hungarian author whose name transcends literature. Pam Brown is someone whose whole world has been turned upside down.
The term Kafkaesque has come to be known (in the context of the above quote) as being incomprehensibly bizarre. The tattered American social safety net is seen as a crime of moral turpitude against a vulnerable single parent family being thrown to the wolves. Therefore like the wolves, this family in order to survive must resort to scavenging for food in food banks and sometimes even in garbage cans. As such this marks the decline of a superpower and the beginning of the abandonment of the American dream.
For Pam Brown, last winter was the worst. One day she ran out of food completely and had to go through trash cans. She fell into a deep depression.
A non-existent social safety net indicative of the social Darwinism that has become America. It has become a dehumanizing pariah state without a social conscience or regard for the human dignity of its poor. This fact will certainly be exacerbated under a Republican led Congress.
And nobody seems to care. Poverty wasn't an issue during the midterm elections -- and it won't be an issue now that the spendthrift deficit hawks of the Republican Party have reclaimed the House of Representatives.
At the core of the American dream was the idea; that if you worked hard, got a good education and played by the rules, you had a chance at the American dream.
With the de-industrialization of America and job shifting, it's no longer possible to be certain of a middle class life style. Not unless you can sing really well, or play sports professionally etc..
American society is breaking apart. Millions of people have lost their jobs and fallen into poverty. Among them, for the first time, are many middle-class families.
The American Dream has turned into a nightmare for millions of working people who don't see a way out.
Last year the US poverty rate reached 14.3 percent, 1.1 percent higher than in 2008. Almost five million Americans skidded below the poverty line ($22,050 annual income for a family of four). Worst off are families with children. Every fifth child in the US lives in poverty today.
"But this time, it could happen to anybody."
Indeed, what Washington is debating now is not more help for the poor -- but extending the former President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich.
To be clear the tax cuts for the rich will continue to be paid for by selling debt to dictatorships such as China and Saudi Arabia, all because the US Congress will not make the rich pay their fair share of taxes. This means the American deficit will grow even larger and that to be clear that deficit is sinking the American dream.
(Please note the chart below is from part 1 of the series from the Spiegel articles being review)
Downsized Jobs and Privatized Welfare.(Only in America)
Bill Clinton's "Welfare Reform" of 1996 privatized welfare in the US, turning it into a for-profit business.
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This from a country that sports 403 billionaires (according to Forbes magazine) ,is in the process of making America in to a social pariah for having a complete callous disregard for poor and vulnerable families that it treats with reckless abandonment. We can do better than this!
Brown is terrified of homeless shelters. Just the other day she went to visit a girlfriend in a shelter: "It was like jail, with steel bars and a curfew." Her friend had lost her home in spite of her MBA.
To read the whole Spiegel article click here!
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Let's be clear, the campaign for a second Obama term has already started, as has the campaign for the Democrats to retake the House in 2012.
Did you know that the United States is the only major industrial country in the world that doesn't offer universal medical access, paid sick leave, paid maternity leave and paid annual leave to all workers by right of law? No country in the European Union does this. While it is true we can all be proud Americans, clearly we don't have to be proud of the broken American social safety net. We can do better than this. That is why the Democrats have to win in 2012!
(Reuters) Wed Nov 10, 2010
Nearly 59 million Americans went without health insurance coverage for at least part of 2010, many of them with conditions or diseases that needed treatment, federal health officials said on Tuesday.
http://www.reuters.com/...
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In collusion: For anyone who hasn't read part 1 of this series, I would like to offer a link below. From part 1 of the series, I'd like to offer a quote from Manfred Heningson, a German political scientist who commented on the most well known supporter of the Tea Party: Glenn Beck. This is from part 1 of the Spiegel series that was reviewed entitled "A Superpower in Decline."
"Agitators like Glenn Beck are "nationalist, racist and proto-fascist," says Henningsen. They take advantage of the economic situation, almost the way the right wing intelligentsia did back in the Weimar Republic."
http://www.spiegel.de/...
For other diaries where I gratefully received support of Kos community on this and other issues, please feel invited to follow the link below.
http://democrats-ramshield.dailykos.com