{"id":9464,"date":"2014-09-03T08:17:04","date_gmt":"2014-09-03T15:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=9464"},"modified":"2014-09-15T13:53:44","modified_gmt":"2014-09-15T20:53:44","slug":"abilitys-muse-working-poor-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2014\/09\/03\/abilitys-muse-working-poor-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Ability\u2019s Muse<\/em>: Working poor students"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came to the conclusion this year that I\u2019m a member of the working poor. Sadly, I\u2019m not alone and, because of that, I\u2019m surely becoming an antipoverty activist.<\/p>\n

Many will argue poverty doesn\u2019t exist in the western world and that we have to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and find work. Well, there\u2019s a sobering reality out there that most postsecondary students know all too well.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A familiar sight for the working poor (photo by Greg Pratt\/Nexus<\/em>).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The US Department of\u00a0Labor suggests that in 1978 a college student could work a minimum wage job all summer long to pay for the next year\u2019s tuition and fees, plus 50 percent of that year\u2019s rent. By today\u2019s standards, you would have to continue working another 4.5 months more just<\/i> to cover tuition and fees.<\/p>\n

While colleges have managed to find clever ways to raise tuition in response to declining government subsidies, they don\u2019t address the growing social inequality that most political pundits would have us ignore.<\/p>\n

The prevalence of a part-time, lower-paid workforce is even more distressing for those on razor-edge budgets.<\/p>\n

Far too many friends of mine have suffered years of indignity due to precarious employment or unemployment, income or social assistance, mental illness or disability, high student-loan debt coupled with consumer debt, and so forth.<\/p>\n

Trickle-down economics really isn\u2019t what we need. Fairer distribution of wealth ensures society\u2019s continued success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came to the conclusion this year that I\u2019m a member of the working poor. Sadly, I\u2019m not alone and, because of that, I\u2019m surely becoming an antipoverty activist. Many will argue poverty doesn\u2019t exist in the western world and that we have to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and find work. Well, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-september-3-2014"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9464"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9529,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9464\/revisions\/9529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}