Living Below the Line
The media I chose to watch was a documentary called The Line: Poverty in America. In this documentary they follow four people and they tell their stories and how they ended up being below the line. The key points I took away from watching this is that anyone can end up below the poverty line and all of the people discussed in this documentary did in different ways. Some people are born into poverty after generations of it and they continue to stay there, some people had high paying jobs, and anything can happen to cause you to lose that job and all sources of income causing them to fall below the poverty line. The documentary not only discussed how people fall into poverty, but they also discuss what comes of being in poverty. Many people lose all hope and cause them to fall into situations that would be considered out of character for them, like committing crimes.
This documentary put forth cases showing how one of the men had children who were on Medicaid and many of the people living in poverty presented in this video were living off of public benefits, including welfare, food stamps, unemployment and disability. Hearing their stories expands on what we have read and discussed in class. “No wonder we have 15 million people whose only income is from food stamps-which is just over $6,000 a year for a family of three, less than a third of the poverty line.” (Edelman, 2017, p. 96). This documentary helps put this quote to light, for these people that is their only source of income for their entire family, for an entire year, and it is well below the poverty line. I believe this documentary went along with everything we have discussed in class about poverty regarding how easy it is to get there and more importantly how difficult it is to escape it. One specific issue we talked about in class was unemployment which some people in the video relied on. “Unemployment insurance has always firmly been seen as assistance for the “deserving poor.” In today’s world, though, slashing the length and the amount of benefits is prevalent, along with other steps to keep the rolls down” (Edelman, 2017, p. 98). I think this is an important thing to understand and how many individuals do not make that much off of unemployment and a lot of the time the benefits run out and they are left with nothing yet again.
In the video they discuss how difficult it is to find a job to not only to support the individual but their families as well. I think it is important to understand that a great deal of people below the poverty line do not just sit around all day collecting benefits but many of them are actively looking for jobs which is a difficult thing to do if you have money and a degree, let alone people in poverty who do not have much experience or schooling to back them up, making it more difficult for them. “We urgently need to invent a new, decent system, one that is connected to the realities of the job market and how much it costs to live at even the most rudimentary level” (Edelman, 2017, p. 96).
As for solutions, I think it is important to realize that where someone lives, how many people they are supporting, how much help they can get from others is all very important to consider and be included with the benefits they receive. In the documentary these people had 3-4 kids and received such little support from benefits they had to choose what they absolutely needed for their children and that was all they could afford. The system needs to reevaluate their standards of what people receive and base it off of the cost of living in that particular area and possibly give them the resources and means to help them find a job.
The documentary added to my understanding of how difficult life is for people living below the poverty line and how little people think about them or do anything to help them in a reasonable way. I would recommend this documentary to others for the reason that I think it is important to realize the stigma around homeless people and people in poverty is not always accurate and I feel those stigmas are the reason they do not get much help. People believe that they put themselves into that situation and that they do not do anything to get themselves out of it but that is where people fail to realize how difficult it is to get out of poverty when the system seems to be working against them at every turn and making them seem like criminals who abuse their benefits. In the video they explain how hope is so important to help get them out of these situations and kids who grow up in poverty and have been below the line for generations lack hope because they feel that this is all the world has to give to them and that they do not deserve anything more, and when they have hope and resources to help them they can see that there is a way out.
References
Edelman, P. B. (2017). Not a crime to be poor: the criminalization of poverty in America. The New Press.
Documentary Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHyNBGIFYl8
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