forgetting pre-recession poverty.

by Hunter Morrison

The headline of CNN.com’s international page as I write this currently reads:  ”Recession pushing families on to streets.”  It chronicles the story of, you guessed it, a woman struggling to make ends meet, who got evicted, and now lives in her car.  There are no shortage of stories like this in the media, nor from the lips of politicians eager to tell heartbreaking stories from their electorate in order to gain an image of having sympathy and an understanding of the common man’s struggles.  Indeed, the media, politicians, and others have latched onto the stories of people who are now out of work, who are now struggling to find a job, a house, or support their kids.  Or the stories of those that lost their retirement fund, lost their house, lost their insurance, lost their car.   There’s been a lot of focus on the “new poor” in this recession.

Truth be told, I find that there’s nothing arguable reporting on the situation of those who have had hardship as a result of this economy.  It highlights how truly broken the system is, and how a great deal of lives are being ruined, or lived on the extreme edge.  The problem is that it’s taken the creation of a new poor class in America for people to start actually caring; to start actually noticing.  A lot of the reporting and coverage in this country is acting as if the problems people are facing now are somehow unique or somehow only a recent phenomenon.  This attitude continues the longstanding tradition of ignoring America’s most ignored class, the poor.  The way the media is talking about struggling people now, it seems as if it would shock some people if you told them that poverty existed in this country before the economy began its decline last year.  Some of the discussion that is now making the rounds is downright insulting to these people who were poor before, as well. Continue reading this article.