Rethinking Poverty: A Letter to the Law
I have posted a number of videos that focus on what is commonly termed “foreign aid” or “foreign relief” specifically in Africa. In this Rethinking Poverty thread I am going to begin to move into poverty as it relates to the United States. Much of what I will be focusing on are the every day realities of our own country.
I chose the following video to open the first post because it paints a lyrical picture of a person’s journey out of poverty and into the American spotlight. I will seek to use a variety of different mediums to form a holisitc view of the many complex facets of poverty that exist in our country. After watching the video read the questions. The questions are designed to stimulate a deeper level of thinking about some of these issues.
How can America fix poverty in other countries when we can’t even figure it out in our own?
What role does poverty play in your everyday life?
What does poverty look like to you?
How do you define poverty?
I think it is important to establish a distinction before attempting to define poverty. When you look at the developed world (ie america) poverty looks very different than it does in the less developed world. What poverty is and the role it plays in peoples lives changes for those in a given country when their per capita income per year reaches and suparses the $10,000. standard of living increases incremently and consistenly to that point and then after that point there is littlel to no connection between income and standard of living. Note that my idea of standard of living might be differnet from yours. I am not looking at standard of living in a pure economic since but instead more holitically, encompassing all that “living” can mean. So poeverty in places like america where almost everyone makes over $10,000 a year, poverty is a state of mind that is influenced by the society in which americans live. Where so much emphasis is placed on the individual to the detrement of the community and materials to the detrement of relationships.