Reading Notes

$2.00 a Day: living on almost nothing in America.

ISBN 978-0-544-30318-8

2015,  Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer.

The Alarmist

introduction. 'In early 2011, 1.5 million households with roughly 3 million children were surviving on cash incomes of no more than $2 per person, per day in any given month. That's about one out of every twenty-five families with children in America... the number of families in $2-a-day poverty had more than doubled in just a decade and a half.'
[Not including SNAP food stamps. With SNAPS counted, the numbers are halved]

'Although the rate of growth was highest among African Americans and Hispanics, nearly half of the $2-a-day poor were white.'

Food stamps about $200 a month, about $7 a day in groceries. That amounts to $9 a day, which is enough food to survive. Plus if you get lunch at a soup kitchen and free bread from a pantry, that's like 1/3 of your meal cost provided for. So, no. Not '$2-a-day' as the book misleads, and likes to repeatedly mis-terminolog-ize.

I'm getting so sick of seeing this '$2-a-day' branded like a trademark all over their 'let's sell a book' book. Look at all this phony bologna self promotion of its product. It's like those pyramid scheme self-help seminars that repeat how great its results are, and that's the entire meeting, to get you to pay admission to more meetings. 

'$2.00 a Day shows that the transformation of the social safety net is incomplete, with dire consequences.'

LOL fuck you. Get outa office ya stupid Bushleaguer. And take your dire consequences Cheney with you. Fucking toxic.

Actually living on $2 expenditure a day as an adult is not possible

It's not possible to eat on $2 a day, 365 days a year. If somebody gives you food that's worth more than $2, and you didn't pay for it, that doesn't count. The worth of the food and services you receive cannot exceed $2.

Sustaining an adult with that budget is just impossible. That translates to $1.00 bread from Walmart and $0.72 can of black beans a day. I've been eating this diet and no, it is not sufficient. It only accounts for something like %50 of the day's recommended carbohydrates, 20g of protein, and 15% iron.

A can of spinach would add vitamins k, a, a meager amount of calcium and iron. But that would break the bank at $0.80 extra. Plus, that stuff tastes gross from a can.

What's more, you can't make any variation from this menu, because there is no alternative food choice when your budget is absolute minimum. You have to eat the exact same meal every day, so nutritional gaps in your diet exacerbate. You can't say, substitute your can of protein for some needed vitamins A, C, E, calcium, because nothing is available at an equivalent price!

Haters gonna hate

This book seems to enjoy suggesting that Clinton's 1996 welfare reform act caused this situation (Let's Blame the Democrats), but turns a blind eye to the vastly different economic environment of the 90s under Clinton vs the 2000s under Bush, and the benefits they had TO THEIR OWN TIME.

'extreme destitution had been growing, especially since the mid-1990s, when the country's main welfare program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), was replaced by a system of temporary, time-limited aid...'

'$2-a-day poverty among households with children had been on the rise since the nation's landmark welfare reform legislation was passed in 1996...'

'Was the landmark welfare reform of 1996 partly to blame?...'

'The main government program that caught people when they fell - was not merely replaced by the 1996 welfare reform; it was very nearly destroyed... [replaced by a welfare system that requires the poor to be employed in an economic situation lacking jobs] it is this toxic alchemy, we argue, that is spurring the increasing numbers of $2-a-day poor in America.' intro

How can you criticize this reform, which helped break the cyclic reliance of the poor on welfare by collecting checks by producing more children, during an economic boom, using criticism based on conditions AFTER an economic depression AND Clinton left office?! At least have the guts to put your case out in discussion to have it critiqued, rather than taking oblique potshots here and there in the midst of other topics, without giving substantial justification!

Instead of presenting material evidence 

'like any good social scientist' (intro xvii) 

- you appraise yourself worthy to judge others on! - instead, you just repeat one same message over and over without evidence in the hopes your audience gets convinced. You're employing subliminal propaganda like any paid liar does.

The stupid unspoken claim goes like '1996 reform took away cash payout benefits, now look what happened! These people are struggling. it's to blame'. When it's more like, 'The reform got people into the workforce, making more money and headed toward a better future. Then Bush came into office, declared war, country went into economic depression, jobs weren't available to the poor, and no effort was made to help them.'

If you want to discuss the '96 welfare reform, you ought to be phrasing the question in terms of 'why wasn't the subsequent Bush administration making any similar social reform FOR ITS OWN TIME to make things better?'. The answer is obvious, they were busy with fear-mongering and profiteering off two phony 'wars', Terror and Iraq to care about the American people.

Milking emotions off the Human Interest story

The book is so formulaic, like a Kidz Newz edition of Bart's People. Each chapter starts with a 'personal' description of some poor family's home, modeled after 'Human interest stories - they cloud the issues and fog the mind' explains Kent Brockman.

Bart: "Joe Banks, 82 years young, has come to this pond everyday for the past 17 years to feed the ducks. But last month Joe made a discovery: the ducks were gone. Some say the ducks went to Canada, others say Toronto. And some people think Joe used to sit down there near those ducks. But it could be that there's just no room, in this modern world, for an old man and his ducks."

'You don't care about any of these people. that wasn't news, it was sappy, manipulative drivel' as Lisa Simpson poignantly characterized. 

This book:

"Chapter 1 Welfare is dead

It is only 8:00 a. m., half an hour ahead of opening time, but already a long line has formed outside Illinois Department of Human Services (DHS) office, which sits on a barren block west of Chicago's Loop. It is a wet summer, morning one of those odd times when the rain is falling but the sun still shines."

LOL fuck you, human interest pulp. The 'cheap sentiments': ONLY 8:00 AM. WOW SO EARLY. 'HALF AN HOUR' before opening jeez they must've been out there for DAYS. rolls eyes. Rain is falling, oh boo hoo so sad. 'but the sun still shines', wow so human interest much symbolism of hope. Fuck you, this cock-sucking piece of toilet paper writing. 'Welfare is DEAD'. Many alarmist. Amaze.

And it continues with more sappy phony bullshit that makes me want to skin a live cat and castrate it (rather than swallow what they're selling)

'Modonna has a proud, even regal, air about her. Her voice is smooth and her diction precise. Her posture is perfect, her dark skin smooth, her smile warm.'

Is this a fucking book on real social issues, or a toadying servant favoring for a generous tip ('ahh excellent choice, sirrrh')? Or a cheap prostitute faking an absurdly immense attraction?

'One way the poor pay for government aid is with their time.'

This sentence is a paragraph on its own. LOL, fuck you. Wow so deep, its own paragraph! many profound.

Okay, I'm not reading the rest of this AIDS ridden contraceptive of a 'good social scientist' book. Skimming through the chapters betrays the same formulaic sentimentalist, issue clouding, self-help self-promoting rubric that characterized the intro and first chapter.

Why do I hate this book so much? 

1. For one reason, '$2-a-day' is written ON EVERY PAGE. AIDS, man!

I already bought your book, stop pestering me with your advertisement. I promise I will buy the next one, maybe even read some of it. I'll sign your petition, I'll donate to kids in Africa. Now will you get off my front porch, already!?

2. Talking to me like I was born yesterday about some profound Truth, like its the most touching personal insight.

'In the struggle to generate cash, sometimes the only asset available is your own body. Beyond trading her SNAP or selling plasma, a desperate mother may turn to selling sex.' p114.

Please, do enlighten me also on how the mechanics of sexual intercourse function. Does the man insert his penis into the woman's vagina, or does it go differently for the $2-a-day ™ poor?

3. Putting two and two together to make five:

p61 'Although the 1996 welfare reform pushed millions of low-income single moms into the workforce, it did nothing to improve the conditions of low-wage jobs.'

OK, IT'S NOT SUPPOSED TO! It's a SOCIAL WELFARE reform. LOL. It CAN'T fix the economy! It's not expected to. It's not a labor law. Labor laws HAVE BEEN CREATED to raise minimum wage, set minimum break hours, benefits for full time employees, etc. BUT that's NOT the job of the WELFARE. LOLOLOLOL. That's like saying, although this guy gave me a GREAT DEAL %70 off this brand new car, he didn't ALSO give me money to buy it from him, so he didn't help me at all!

4. Their sophomoric dilly dallying. Here's their insight from an Economic Theory angle: 
Why, it's a matter of Supply and Demand, of course!

'In fact, if anything, economic theory (and plain old common sense) might support the opposite conclusion: although we can't know for sure, it stands to reason that by moving millions of unskilled single mothers into the labor force starting in the mid-1990s, welfare reform and the expansion of the EITC and other refundable tax credits may have actually played a role in diminishing the quality of the average low-wage job in America.

As unskilled single mothers flooded into the workforce at unprecedented rates, they greatly increased the pool of workers available to low-wage employers. When more people compete for the same jobs, wages usually fall relative to what they would have been otherwise. Employers can also demand more of their employees."

DID YOU DO ANY ECONOMIC RESEARCH FOR THIS BOOK????? LOL?????!!!! Did you literally open an Economics 101 textbook to the second page of the introduction, look at section 1.1 entitled 'Supply and Demand' and arrive at this assessment? Is that the extent of your understanding of 'Economic Theory', an oversimplified and ridiculously inadequate model for American economy?

5. You keep demeaning the '1996 welfare reform' over and over!
With limp-dicked, unconfident thrusts marked by 'often', 'usually', 'might', 'although we can't know for sure' claims. Are you seriously Professors at Johns Hopkins University and University of Michigan?? Or did you teach two ad-hoc writing classes as students, then graduate with PHDs in Communications? Fucks sake. Grow some balls, learn yourself some books, and burn your diplomas, and stop selling this 'for-profit charity' sensationalism.

6. I checked the book for a bibliography. There was none!
A section for 'Notes' corresponding to each chapter mostly contained references to ONLINE NEWS ARTICLES, public government websites, and snippets of journal publications. Some examples: Rankings of cities by US News world report, NY Times reports of Starbucks employees working hours, a PBS website about president LBJ's famous speeches.

7. How little effort is reflected in a book they sell for $28.
Here's how they looked up one of the statistics they found: a government website that searches it for you automatically. Here's the data that took me all of three mouse clicks to research.

The acknowledgments section had this to say:

 "$2.00 a Day was a deeply collaborative work. Both authors contributed equally"

LOL. I guess zero divided by anything is still zero, so equal contributions are de facto guaranteed. I love the 'deeply' distinction. How deeply can a man and a woman collaborate? Please don't answer, I don't want to know.

And it's a demonstration of the 'let's fill up more space' skill that every high school senior has mastered in writing essays with nothing to say. Coulda been made into one sentence, 'This book was made by equal contribution from both authors.'

Plus, what the fuck does equal contribution mean? It's so vapid a statement. 

8. It smacks of 'let's sell a book to sell a book' then we'll write the thing after

No teamwork is exactly 50-50, unless you're talking quantifiable manual labor work of picking cotton or something. Each person wrote every other word, each person asked every other interview question?? The show of fair and equitable appropriation of shared glory is just unnecessary. Probably just a clause their lawyers demanded BEFORE THE BOOK WAS WRITTEN to split the money profits if it ever became a bestseller.

Besides, who cares, your book sucked.