DETROIT, MI – According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “Whatever definition one uses, authorities and laypersons alike commonly assume that the effects of poverty are harmful to both individuals and society.”
So, let’s use the Health and Human Services (HHS) definition of poverty: For one person, the poverty line is $12,060 per year, and for more than one person add $4,180 per member. For example, a family of eight would still be in poverty if their income is $41,320.
In 1965, when Medicaid was passed, five million people qualified. Today, 73 million qualify for it.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) makes everyone living below 138% of the poverty level eligible for Medicaid in the states that expanded Medicaid. The result is that those people’s poverty level for the purposes of Medicaid now runs between $16,642 and $57,021 (see example above).
We know that poverty causes all of this. So, what causes poverty?
We are more productive than ever. We have the capacity to feed, clothe, house, educate and provide medical care to every person who lives here and more.
The problem we are faced with is that we don’t own the technology we use to produce what we need. We don’t even own the products we produce. We are allowed to buy what our wages allow us to purchase and that includes a place to live.
If your wages are less than your rent or mortgage payment then you live on the street.
“On a single night in 2016, 549,928 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States” (2016 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress). They either sleep in the streets or in temporary overnight shelters across our country. They have no permanent homes.
In 1979, the United Autoworkers Union (UAW) had one million members working at GM, Chrysler and Ford. Today there are approximately 140,000 UAW members working at GM, Fiat/Chrysler and Ford.
Those 860,000 jobs did not go to Mexico. GM, Fiat/Chrysler and Ford employ 36,600 workers there, paying approximately $4 an hour.
At GM, Fiat/Chrysler and Ford, there is now an eight-tier wage system in this country. It starts at $14 an hour and takes eight years to reach 90% of the pay that existed before September 2007.
The “Motor City” is now a giant scrap yard. There is a 30% poverty level and 40% of the people living here cannot afford a car. The other 60% can barely afford auto insurance. Land speculators are salivating as poverty grows and 100-year-old houses are abandoned by absentee landlords.
Poverty is caused by a combination of private ownership of society’s productive capacity and increased productivity, which causes increasing unemployment and falling wages. That does not mean the answer is to get rid of technology, but instead to nationalize the technology in our own interest.
Our future is what we make it. We must agree on that future and learn to fight for it.
For us retirees, we have chosen the fight for healthcare access for everyone. That means a political struggle with the “new” government to win H.R. 676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare For All Act. In other words, Nationalize access to healthcare for all of us.
