Poverty in The United States of America Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Poverty in The United States of America - Essay Example The federal government of US has taken some major steps in order to address the problem of poverty. From its initial stages back in 2001, it has come up with many plans that include the progressive income tax, public assistance programmes and economic development programmes. (infoplease.com, 2007) The Progressive Income tax levies higher tax on people with higher income rates and vice versa. All citizens avail the same services. However the tax payable differs. The public assistance programmes extend medical facilities and services like food stamps and medical aid that allow the poor to meet their basic needs. Economic development programmes provide financial aid to help working women and unemployed to establish self employment schemes. These also assist small businesses that cannot face the financial deficit. Money is flooded into training programmes and steps have been taken to reduce the imbalance in income levels. The steps taken by the federal government to generate full employment are appreciable. In spite of all these measures by the government, the citizens are not happy about the way reforms are working and the steps taken by the government. ... The assistance by the government for families with income group below the dynamic threshold calculated. Every year is not doing any good. A better measure would be to keep it as low as 40000 US dollars. (Sawhill, 2006) Statistics show that about 1.7 million poor youth (futureofchildren.org, 2006) came out of school and work by 2005. The steps taken by the government to aid the youth by having self-employment programmes are weak. A major contribution to unemployment is the problem of the former prisoners. These do not find stable way to become a part of the society. The country with highest incarceration rate hardly took major decision to re-integrate the former prisoners as working labor. The concept of providing unemployment insurance is appreciable. However, this being forwarded to only 35% of unemployed is an unhealthy sign. (Sawhill, 2006) Fewer steps have been taken to reduce costs and improve the financial assistance. The budget proposal of 2007 also has been unjust. It demands the poor, children and elderly to pay for no returns. This approximately eliminates around 300000 people in poor working families from using food stamps and more than 35000 children would be losing the free meals and more than 40000 poor aged would be deprived on supplementary food distribution. (Kuroiwa, 2007) This also implies a reduction of around $600 million as grants for the poor and also pressing hard on the eligibility criteria for TANF scheme (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families). (Kuroiwa, 2007) All this indicate that the welfare reforms of US failed to work efficiently. More than 60% of citizens are not happy about the