Water. Food. Housing. The most basic and crucial needs for survival, yet forty percent of people in the United States don’t have the resources to get them. With key policy changes, we could eradicate poverty in this country within our lifetime‚ but we need to get started now. Nearly forty million people in the United States live below the poverty line. Low-income families and individuals are everywhere, from cities to rural communities. While poverty is commonly seen as a personal failure, or a deficiency of character or knowledge, it’s actually the result of bad policy. Public policy has purposefully erected barriers that deny access to basic needs, creating a society where people can easily become trapped – not because we lack the resources to lift them out, but because we are actively choosing not to. Poverty is close to inevitable for low-wage workers and their children, and a large percentage of these people, despite qualifying for it, do not receive government aid. This book is a perfect companion for a social action committee, a congregation wide book club and any Synagogue focused on tzedakah.
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