John Edwards on Poverty

[JohnLocke]

John Edwards on Poverty
From the New York Times:

More than any of the presidential candidates, John Edwards has come up with a specific and plausible plan that provides for health care coverage for all Americans. And he followed that up yesterday with an excellent speech on poverty at home and abroad, with some good and specific ideas.

For starters, he said he would appoint a cabinet secretary for global poverty efforts and hold a worldwide summit on improving sanitation and drinking water. At a time when global poverty is justifiably gaining increased visibility and resonance, these are excellent ideas. Edwards also urged a big U.S. push for primary education around the globe, and he's right that that should be an absolute priority.

Edwards also (like Obama) frames these humanitarian issues as security matters as well. He said: "Global poverty is not just a moral issue for the United States—it is a national security issue for the United States. If we tackle it, we will be doing a good and moral thing by helping to improve the lives of billions of people around the world who live on less than $2 per day—but we will also begin to create a world in which the ideologies of radical terrorism are overwhelmed by the ideologies of education, democracy, and opportunity. If we tackle it, we have the chance to change a generation of potential enemies into a generation of friends. Now that would be transformational. I also want to say that this is personal for me, in part because of what I saw and heard during the time I spent in Africa."

Domestically, Edwards proposed that the U.S. would help finance the first year of a college education for anyone who lacked the funds but agreed to work part-time.

Let's hope the campaign over the next 18 months produces more specific ideas like these and raises the visibility of poverty and health care generally.

http://johnedwards.com/news/headlines/nyt20070316-onpoverty/

[silverojo]

1. He's the best Dem candidate we have

So of course the media does its best to ignore him completely. God forbid we help the poor and working class. :mad:

[JNelson6563]

2. The root of the problem!

So glad someone's addressing it for what it really is!

Julie

[tblue37]

3. In most other advanced countries, young people do not

have to go $30,000-$40,000 (or more) into debt to get a degree that might get them a $27,000-$30,000 a year job with dwindling benefits and little or no security. Nowadays, a college education is too expensive for most young Americans--even the ones who actually go on to get one. And now that even white collar and technical jobs are being outsourced, taking on that debt doesn't seem wise for most of them.

My daughter, who was a Fulbright Fellow last year, no less (i.e., among the "best and the brightest"), is in her third year of medical school. She wants desperately to serve in clinics in this country and elsewhere (including Doctors without Borders) that offer medical care to the poorest, especially children, but she will leave med school with a quarter-million-dollar debt, so she will have to spend the first ten years of her career making enough money to pay off that debt. By the time she is financially safe enough to follow her humanitarian dream, she will probably have kids and a practice that will make it hard for her to do so, except as a sideline to her real practice. The first ten years after graduating are the time when a doctor is not only young enough, but sufficiently untied down to kids, a mortgage, etc., to be free to follow a dream of humanitarian service, yet medical school debt forces them to chase the bucks rather than the dream.

Those who want to become teachers are in the same sort of bind. They end up so far in debt that it is almost impossible to pay off loans that amount to more than their yearly salary. And they, unlike doctors, don't even have the prospect of high-paying jobs to help take care of that debt.

As a nation, we make our incentives quite clear. Be a cutthroat, self-serving bastard. That's almost the only way to get any sort of security at all. Having a sense of decency, community, moral obligation--those things will keep you poor and vulnerable, and now that we have shredded the social safety net, your vulnerability won't be mitigated in any significant way if you don't make damned sure to take care of Number One.

[NMMNG]

5. You hit the nail on the head

As a nation, we make our incentives quite clear. Be a cutthroat, self-serving bastard. That's almost the only way to get any sort of security at all. Having a sense of decency, community, moral obligation--those things will keep you poor and vulnerable, and now that we have shredded the social safety net, your vulnerability won't be mitigated in any significant way if you don't make damned sure to take care of Number One.


19 years ago I chose a career in Human Services. I've had to work either considerable overtime or a second job ever since in order to stay afloat. Such is life when one chooses to help humanity. :-(

[Czolgosz]

4. Edwards and Kucinich are the only candidates really making a priority of this key issue