While the House of Representatives and therefore the media is consumed by the toxic democracy-threatening Republican circus, American society is undergoing major financial stress as this article spells out. It appears that the House is simply not going to get anything done that fosters wellbeing before the 2024 election. Instead all we are going to get from MAGAt cretins like Jim Jordan is schemes to corrupt our democracy.
Inflation, economic instability and a lack of savings have an increasing number of Americans feeling financially stressed.
Some 70% of Americans admit to being stressed about their personal finances these days and a majority — 52% — of U.S. adults said their financial stress has increased since before the Covid-19 pandemic began in March 2020, according to a new CNBC Your Money Financial Confidence Survey conducted in partnership with Momentive.
Anxious and uncertain about whether they can get a better handle on their money, some may be intimidated by the prospect of creating a budget or unsure of where to stash their cash to get the highest returns. Others may be wondering how to begin saving for retirement when they’ve gotten off to a late start.
“People are worried that the money they’ve saved won’t last and are worried they’re going to have to lean more on their credit cards and other sources of debt just to get by,” said Bruce McClary, a senior vice president at the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.
Two years ago when this Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration or SEED began I did a story on it. Now the data concerning the effect of the program is in, and once again we have confirmation that even small programs that foster wellbeing can have significant positive effects. That being so, why is it so hard in this country to implement such programs?
SEED participant Susie Garza shows off the debit card she got each month through the program. Credit: Rich Pedroncelli/AP
Results are out from a two-year experiment testing the effects of guaranteed income on residents of Stockton, California – but the findings were complicated by the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers say.
The program, dubbed the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration or SEED, gave monthly payments of $500 to 131 people starting in February 2019. There was also a control group of 200 Stockton residents.
A little over a year later, the Covid-19 pandemic began, launching a domino effect of lifestyle changes as more people stayed home under lockdown orders.
Researchers Dr. Amy Castro and Dr. Stacia West, from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Tennessee, found that people who received the money were more likely to be able to handle a $400 emergency, according to the analysis, published Monday in the Journal of Urban Health.
The extra $500 a month also “permitted judiciousness about COVID and what conditions workers would tolerate for poorly […]
It isn't getting much comment from the media but I think one of the most important things going on in the United States today is the glaring difference between the Republican and Democrat Parties. While the Republicans are gutting any form of gun control, gutting a woman's right to control her own body, and gutting child care, and this just in a single week, at the same time the Democrats are seeking to establish gun control and the protection of schools, relieve child poverty, assure a woman's right to have access to the drugs to give a woman the right to control her own body, and put in place programs to assure American children have enough to eat. I understand why oligarchs support the Republican Party; what I find surprising is that middle and working-class people by the millions still support and vote for Republicans. They literally don't seem capable of understanding that the Republicans are committed to degrading their personal wellbeing, ending democracy, and turning them into peasants.
A woman with a child carries a box of food she received from the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida at a mobile food drop event on April 6, 2020 in Orlando, Florida. Credit: Paul Hennessy / NurPhoto / Getty
“Poverty is a policy choice,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib argued. “The End Child Poverty Act will create a universal child assistance program and ensure that every child has the resources they need to reach their full potential.”
A trio of progressive U.S. lawmakers on Thursday reintroduced legislation that advocates say would slash the nation’s child poverty rate by nearly two-thirds.
If passed and signed into law by President Joe Biden, the legislation would replace the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and the child provisions in the Earned Income Tax Credit with a Universal Child Benefit paying families $393 per month per child.
Henry A. Giroux, Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department, McMaster University and the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. - truthout
Stephan:
Americans just don’t seem to get that they are being played by a well-organized multi-aspect strategy designed to dismantle our democracy and turn America into an anocracy. It also seeks to transform our educational system from kindergarten to university in order to indoctrinate our children into a fascist worldview, thus preparing for the next generation. The Republican Party is just the cult manifestation of this strategy. This all dates back at least to the Reagan administration when this group changed the tax code so that a small group could become richer than anything ever seen before, then they started restructuring the courts. Next, they began what has become the Great Schism Trend. The only thing that can stop this is the American people voting Republicans out of office while democracy still exists. It is all going to depend on how the election of 2024 comes out.
Great Oak High School students leave campus in protest of the district’s ban on “critical race theory” curriculum at Patricia H. Birdsall Sports Park in Temecula, California, on December 16, 2022. Credit: Watchara Phomicinda / The Press-Enterprise / Getty
In the present political and ideological climate, far right political leaders, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) have declared a war on institutions of public and higher education, which they’ve identified as centers of “unpatriotic education.” Most far right Republicans fear higher education as a bulwark against their authoritarianism and hence see students as a threat to their propaganda machines and fascist politics. As a result, the right wing has kicked into overdrive in an attempt to target educational institutions as a site for policing dissent, eliminating unions, indoctrinating faculty and students, and for normalizing white Christian nationalism, white supremacy and pedagogies of […]
Amanda J. Calhoun, MD, MPH, Adult/child Psychiatry Resident at Yale School of Medicine-Yale Child Study Center - MEDPAGE TODAY
Stephan:
I have suspected that the American Illness Profit System was racist for some time, but getting reliable actual data is not easy. Well, here is some from a physician inside the system. As we are becoming racially a majority-minority culture the fear this is producing is making a portion of our White society ever more racist. And while the Republicans focus on their evil circus, which has nothing to do with social wellbeing only with power and greed, the lives of millions particularly people of color are being made ever more miserable, most notably children.
Credit: MEDPAGE TODAY
My Black patient spent most of February in a locked inpatient psychiatric ward. Well, he wasn’t my patient anymore, but he had been at one time. As a resident working with hospitalized children with severe mental illnesses, he was one of my very first patients. He helped me to become a better doctor. I wish I could have helped him more, too. But the medical system failed him.
He was only 9 years old then, and I’d spent weeks advocating for him, encouraging the medical team to understand him as a little boy who struggled with transitions, possibly with a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, rather than a “violent terror.” Even though he was a child, he was often described as if he were a tyrannical adult, capable of making the same decisions and given the same emotional tools to handle life’s challenges as a privileged health professional with no mental illness.
In reality, he was a rosy-cheeked child with sad eyes. He had a substantial family history of severe mental illness, and desperately needed help. I had managed to form a good […]
