Download or read book Trapped in America s Safety Net written by Andrea Louise Campbell and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “remarkable” look at the flaws of the social safety net through one family’s personal tragedy and the Catch-22 financial disaster that followed (Deborah A. Stone, author of Policy Paradox). When Andrea Louise Campbell’s sister-in-law, Marcella Wagner, was run off the freeway by a hit-and-run driver, she was seven-and-a-half months pregnant. She survived—and, miraculously, the baby was born healthy. But that’s where the good news ends. Marcella was left paralyzed from the chest down. This accident was much more than just a physical and emotional tragedy. Like so many Americans, neither Marcella nor her husband, Dave, who worked for a small business, had health insurance. On the day of the accident, she was on her way to class for the nursing program through which she hoped to secure one of the few remaining jobs in the area with the promise of employer-provided insurance. Instead, the accident plunged the young family into the tangled web of means-tested social assistance. As a social policy scholar, Campbell thought she knew a lot about means-tested assistance programs. What she quickly learned was that missing from most government manuals and scholarly analyses was an understanding of how these programs actually affect the lives of the people who depend on them. Using Marcella and Dave’s situation as a case in point, she reveals the programs’ shortcomings in this book. Because American safety net programs are designed for the poor, the couple first had to spend down their assets and drop their income to near-poverty level before qualifying for help. What’s more, to remain eligible, they’ll have to stay under these strictures for the rest of their lives, barred from doing many of the things middle-class families are encouraged to do: Save for retirement. Build an emergency fund. Take advantage of tax-free college savings. And, while Marcella and Dave’s story is tragic, the financial precariousness they endured even before the accident is all too common in America, where the prevalence of low-income work and unequal access to education have generated vast—and growing—economic inequality. The implementation of the ACA has cut the number of uninsured and underinsured and reduced some disparities in coverage, but continues to leave too many people open to tremendous risk. Behind the statistics and beyond the ideological battles are human beings whose lives are stunted by policies that purport to help them. In showing how and why this happens, Trapped in America’s Safety Net offers a way to change it. “An engaging narrative account of how social assistance programs shape real people’s lives. Campbell is authoritative and scholarly, yet warm and personal—a rare combination one sees in the likes of Oliver Sacks and Barbara Ehrenreich.” —Deborah A. Stone, author of Policy Paradox “Makes a compelling case for a stronger, more integrated, and ultimately more effective strategy for helping the millions of Americans who find themselves plummeting out of the insecure middle class.” —Jacob S. Hacker, New York Times–bestselling coauthor of Winner-Take-All Politics
Download or read book The Safety Net written by Heinrich Böll and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2010 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the center of a terrorized society buttressed by oppressive police protection and surveillance is the Tolm family, Fritz, the father, the elected head of the Association, and the children, part of the counter-culture.
Download or read book The Welfare State Nobody Knows written by Christopher Howard and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description
Download or read book The Captured Economy written by Brink Lindsey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-10-13 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For years, America has been plagued by slow economic growth and increasing inequality. In The Captured Economy, Brink Lindsey and Steven M. Teles identify a common factor behind these twin ills: breakdowns in democratic governance that allow wealthy special interests to capture the policymaking process for their own benefit. They document the proliferation of regressive regulations that redistribute wealth and income up the economic scale while stifling entrepreneurship and innovation. They also detail the most important cases of regulatory barriers that have worked to shield the powerful from the rigors of competition, thereby inflating their incomes: subsidies for the financial sector's excessive risk taking, overprotection of copyrights and patents, favoritism toward incumbent businesses through occupational licensing schemes, and the NIMBY-led escalation of land use controls that drive up rents for everyone else. An original and counterintuitive interpretation of the forces driving inequality and stagnation, The Captured Economy will be necessary reading for anyone concerned about America's mounting economic problems and how to improve the social tensions they are sparking.
Download or read book Elder Care Journey written by Laura Katz Olson and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2016-04-21 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of a Gold Medal, 2017 Living Now Book Award in the Caregiving category Shortlisted for the 2016 Sarton Women's Book Awards in the Memoir category presented by the Story Circle Network For millions of Americans caregiving is the "new normal." For Laura Katz Olson, a respected researcher of long-term care for the aging, Elder Care Journey chronicles the disruption of her world and how it is upended by the ever-increasing long-distance needs of her own mother. A healthy, Senior Olympics medal winner, Olson's mother is slowly and steadily incapacitated by Parkinson's disease and a gradual loss of vision. Thrust into a long-distance caregiving role, Olson finds her previous academic notions about assisting a frail parent increasingly at odds with the reality of the lived experience. In a narrative full of "ah-ha!" moments, tears, sighs, and outrage that will be familiar to many, Olson opens a window into the nursing home and home care industries that consume much in the way of taxpayer dollars, but often fail to deliver quality care. Olson's personal story vividly demonstrates not only the overwhelming bureaucratic barriers faced by care-dependent seniors but also their beleaguered adult children's attempts to ensure their parents' health, safety, and well-being.
Download or read book AARP written by Christine L. Day and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This examination of the history, development, activities, successes, and limitations of the largest membership organization in the country will be of interest to anyone who belongs to or is curious about this sometimes-controversial group. AARP is one of Washington's most influential interest groups, but just who does it represent? To some, it represents the narrow special interests of older Americans who already consume more than their share of government benefits. To others, its advocacy encompasses everyone, including those with elderly parents and grandparentsand those who will comprise the older generations of the future. The most comprehensive volume ever written about AARP, the book begins with a chapter on the organization's history, going back to its founding in 1958 and its roots in the National Retired Teachers Association, established in 1947. Readers will learn about AARP's membership and chapter activities, including how it grew to be the largest membership organization in the country. Perhaps even more engrossing is the book's investigation of the nature and extent of AARP's political influence and its positions and priorities as it struggles to represent a large and diverse constituency. Finally, the study discusses AARP's organizational model, which combines political advocacy, business, and charity, and probes the controversies arising from what AARP's critics charge are conflicts of interest.
Download or read book White Working Class written by Joan C. Williams and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I recommend a book by Professor Williams, it is really worth a read, it's called White Working Class." -- Vice President Joe Biden on Pod Save America An Amazon Best Business and Leadership book of 2017 Around the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, members of the professional elite—journalists, managers, and establishment politicians--are on the outside looking in, left to argue over the reasons. In White Working Class, Joan C. Williams, described as having "something approaching rock star status" by the New York Times, explains why so much of the elite's analysis of the white working class is misguided, rooted in class cluelessness. Williams explains that many people have conflated "working class" with "poor"--but the working class is, in fact, the elusive, purportedly disappearing middle class. They often resent the poor and the professionals alike. But they don't resent the truly rich, nor are they particularly bothered by income inequality. Their dream is not to join the upper middle class, with its different culture, but to stay true to their own values in their own communities--just with more money. While white working-class motivations are often dismissed as racist or xenophobic, Williams shows that they have their own class consciousness. White Working Class is a blunt, bracing narrative that sketches a nuanced portrait of millions of people who have proven to be a potent political force. For anyone stunned by the rise of populist, nationalist movements, wondering why so many would seemingly vote against their own economic interests, or simply feeling like a stranger in their own country, White Working Class will be a convincing primer on how to connect with a crucial set of workers--and voters.
Download or read book Handbook on Urban Social Policies written by Kazepov, Yuri and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2022-07-22 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The importance of subnational welfare measures, and their complex embeddedness in wider multilevel governance systems, has often been underplayed in both urban studies and social policy analysis. This Handbook gives readers the analytical tools to understand urban social policies in context, and bridges the gap in research.
Download or read book The Delegated Welfare State written by Kimberly J. Morgan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-01 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are so many American social programs delegated to private actors? And what are the consequences for efficiency, accountability, and the well-being of beneficiaries? The Delegated Welfare State examines the development of the American welfare state through the lens of delegation: how policymakers have avoided direct governmental provision of benefits and services, turning to non-state actors for the governance of social programs. Utilizing case studies of Medicare and the 2009-10 health care reform, Morgan and Campbell argue that the prevalence of delegated governance reflects the powerful role of interest groups in American politics, the dominance of Congress in social policymaking, and deep contradictions in American public opinion. Americans want both social programs and small government, leaving policy makers in a bind. Contracting out public programs to non-state actors masks the role of the state and enlists private allies who push for passage. Although delegated governance has been politically expedient, enabling the growth of government programs in an anti-government political climate, it raises questions about fraud, abuse, administrative effectiveness, and accountability. In probing both the causes and consequences of delegated governance, The Delegated Welfare State offers a novel interpretation of both American social welfare politics and the nature of the American state.
Download or read book Gendered Citizenship written by Natasha Behl and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-03 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been shown time and again that even though all citizens may be accorded equal standing in the constitution of a liberal democracy, such a legal provision hardly guarantees state protections against discrimination and political exclusion. More specifically, why do we find pervasive gender-based discrimination, exclusion, and violence in India when the Indian Constitution supports an inclusive democracy committed to gender and caste equality? In Gendered Citizenship, Natasha Behl offers an examination of Indian citizenship that weaves together an analysis of sexual violence law with an in-depth ethnography of the Sikh community to explore the contradictory nature of Indian democracy--which gravely affects its institutions and puts its citizens at risk. Through a situated analysis of citizenship, Behl upends longstanding academic assumptions about democracy, citizenship, religion, and gender. This analysis reveals that religious spaces and practices can be sites for renegotiating democratic participation, but also uncovers how some women engage in religious community in unexpected ways to link gender equality and religious freedom as shared goals. Gendered Citizenship is a groundbreaking inquiry that explains why the promise of democratic equality remains unrealized, and identifies potential spaces and practices that can create more egalitarian relations.
Download or read book Digesting the Public Sphere written by Sarah Marusek and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the routine spectrum of our lives, we inhabit the public sphere. Whether in the street, the shopping center, or on the bus, we engage with the empowered, the disempowered, the omitted, and the powerful. Within the public sphere, the notion of public involves a complexity of approaches to aspects of everyday practices of power, performance, and place. Through these approaches, that which is public can be visualized, experienced, and contested in the construction, ceremony, and design of buildings, institutions, and daily activities. In a variety of ways, the conceptualization and contextualization of the public contributes to identity formations, narratives of community, and manifestations of the political that materially and discursively transpire within the public sphere in the perceptions of inequality, metaphors for knowledge, and critiques of consciousness. For this volume focused on interpretive methods and methodologies that address the concept of public, we present a lively engagement with methodological insight into the political digestion of the public sphere. We delve into models of and approaches to conducting research, the analysis of findings, and the reaffirmation of enhanced techniques of related inquiry in public spaces. We seek to explore the following questions: What is the public? How do we visualize/understand/experience the public? What are the ways in which these insights connect to articulations of citizenship and democracy? How is the public implicated in the political? The chapters originally published as a special issue in Space and Polity.
Download or read book Trump and the Deeper Crisis written by Kevin A. Young and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2022-12-12 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As far-right forces cement their hold on the Republican Party, and as the Democratic Party appears unable to stop them, what lies ahead? The authors argue that confronting Trumpism requires a frontal attack on the conditions that incubated the monster.
Download or read book Someone Has to Fail written by David F. Labaree and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-01 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do we really want from schools? Only everything, in all its contradictions. Most of all, we want access and opportunity for all children—but all possible advantages for our own. So argues historian David Labaree in this provocative look at the way “this archetype of dysfunction works so well at what we want it to do even as it evades what we explicitly ask it to do.” Ever since the common school movement of the nineteenth century, mass schooling has been seen as an essential solution to great social problems. Yet as wave after wave of reform movements have shown, schools are extremely difficult to change. Labaree shows how the very organization of the locally controlled, administratively limited school system makes reform difficult. At the same time, he argues, the choices of educational consumers have always overwhelmed top-down efforts at school reform. Individual families seek to use schools for their own purposes—to pursue social opportunity, if they need it, and to preserve social advantage, if they have it. In principle, we want the best for all children. In practice, we want the best for our own. Provocative, unflinching, wry, Someone Has to Fail looks at the way that unintended consequences of consumer choices have created an extraordinarily resilient educational system, perpetually expanding, perpetually unequal, constantly being reformed, and never changing much.
Download or read book Measuring Distribution and Mobility of Income and Wealth written by Raj Chetty and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-11-16 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Economic research on the efficient allocation of resources has a long history. Increasingly, attention has turned to inequality in the distribution of personal resources and outcomes, and whether individuals or children are locked in their respective places in this distribution or whether mobility is possible. Research focuses not only on measuring inequality and mobility, but on understanding its historical, economic, and social determinants, and how policies might affect these distributions. This volume explores the latest developments in our understanding of income and wealth distribution and mobility. The first section addresses observed patterns of income inequality and shifts in compensation and fluidity that drive or reinforce income inequality. The next focuses on wealth inequality, including the difficulties of defining and measuring wealth. The third section presents new evidence on the intergenerational transmission of inequality and the mechanisms that sustain these patterns. A fourth set of chapters studies the mitigation of inequality, including variations in intervention strategies across time and geography. Finally, issues related to using national accounting data in comparison with survey and microdata are examined. Lack of data, particularly wealth data at the individual or household level in most countries, presents a challenge. Momentum has been building to link multiple sources of survey, administrative and other data in order to mitigate measurement problems in single sources and to provide more comprehensive data on income and wealth"--
Download or read book Double Standard written by James W. Russell and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2010-12-16 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of Double Standard analyzes how and why social policy and welfare states evolved differently in Western Europe and the United States. Exploring common social problems—from poverty to family support to ethnic and racial conflict—the book shows the disparate consequences to these different approaches. The new edition includes the latest available statistical information, an analysis of the 2010 health care reform in the United States, and a discussion comparing the social consequences of the recent recession in the U.S. and Europe.
Download or read book America s New Racial Battle Lines written by Rogers M. Smith and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-05-02 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sobering portrait of the United States’ divided racial politics. For nearly two decades, Rogers M. Smith and Desmond King have charted the shifting racial policy alliances that have shaped American politics across different eras. In America’s New Racial Battle Lines, they show that US racial policy debates are undergoing fundamental change. Disputes over colorblind versus race-conscious policies have given way to new lines of conflict. Today’s conservatives promise to protect traditionalist, predominantly white, Christian Americans against what they call the “radical” Left. Meanwhile, today’s progressives seek not just to integrate American institutions but to more fully transform and “repair” pervasive systemic racism. Drawing on interviews with activists, surveys, social network analyses, and comprehensive reviews of federal, state, and local policies and advocacy groups, Smith and King map the memberships and goals of two rival racial policy alliances and delineate the contrasting stories each side tells. They also show that these increasingly polarized racial policy alliances are substantially funded on both the Left and Right. Placing today’s conflicts in theoretical and historical perspectives, Smith and King analyze where these intensifying clashes may take the nation in the years ahead. They highlight the great potential for mounting violence, as well as the remaining possibilities for finding common ground.
