“Big wheels roll through fields
Where sunlight streams
Oh meet me in a land of hope and dreams”
“Land of Hope and Dreams”, Bruce Springsteen
Living in poverty in our country doesn’t have to look like this photo, although it certainly can, and in fact does, in many of our largest and wealthiest cities. It can be a single mother working a couple of low-wage jobs to pay for a too small apartment and too little food in the fridge. Or your neighbor who lost his job six months ago and can’t find another. Or debt accumulated through years of illness, or a single accident, and too high insurance premiums and deductibles. Poverty doesn’t have to be seen on the streets, but can remain hidden in the secret despair of every man and woman who want more for their lives, but never get that one break or the help they need and deserve.
We are sold an America that is “the land of hope and dreams”, and it certainly can be for many. If you work hard for years, are incredibly persistent and add a hefty portion of luck to that mixture, you can succeed from humble beginnings. But in a country that is one of the richest on Earth, why do we make it so damn hard?
President Biden said in his recent State of the Union speech and earlier in an interview with Heather Cox Richardson, just published today on Substack, that he can define the United States in one word: “Possibilities”. And I agree that we are a country that holds nearly endless possibilities for many of us. But as I made note in my last post:
“The United States is the only advanced industrial nation that doesn’t have national laws guaranteeing paid maternity leave. It is also the only advanced economy that doesn’t guarantee workers any vacation, paid or unpaid, and the only highly developed country (other than South Korea) that doesn’t guarantee paid sick days. In contrast, the European Union’s 28 nations guarantee workers at least four weeks’ paid vacation.”
The New York Times
We’re also the only industrialized nation on the planet that doesn’t provide affordable healthcare for all of its citizens through a national system, and permits the drug companies to raise prices for ordinary, life-saving medicine to exorbitant levels. And none of this is by accident —these are all cruel and purposeful policy choices.
This opinion piece published in Common Dreams in 2018, titled: “What Does Poverty Feel Like” hits the mark exactly. Poverty isn’t just a status some 38 million Americans achieved in 2021, it is a state of being, a feeling that doesn’t go away and includes plenty of anger, despair, hopelessness and dread—not qualities that propel us to grab for all of the possibilities our country offers.
Another article published in 2015 from the Brookings Institution also places the ‘costs” of poverty in a different category than economics. It’s all about stress, physical and emotional pain and persistent worry. Yet our government’s relationship to poverty is all about statistics: creating poverty “thresholds” to allocate resources, breaking down those living in poverty by region and state and calculating how much money helping the poor adds to our debt.
The problem with this approach is that 38 million people (plus millions more an accident away from poverty) are not statistics and neither are the very real, debilitating emotions they feel. Our country has the responsibility and moral obligation to do a better job putting our great possibilities within reach of all of our people.
At President Biden’s Inaugural celebration, “The Boss” introduced his song, “Land of Hope and Dreams” as “a small prayer for our country”. Enjoy his performance here.
Are we a nation of possibilities, a “land of hope and dreams”?
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Additional Reading
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/poverty-america-2021-covid-pandemic/
What Poverty Looks Like In America