Nobody in America who works should be poor

“We need a new language for talking about poverty. “Nobody who works should be poor,” we say. That’s not good enough. Nobody in America should be poor, period. No single mother struggling to raise children on her own; no formerly incarcerated man who has served his time; no young heroin user struggling with addiction and pain; no retired bus driver whose pension was squandered; nobody. And if we respect hard work, then we should reward it, instead of deploying this value to shame the poor and justify our unconscionable and growing inequality. “I’ve worked hard to get where I am,” you might say. Well, sure. But Vanessa has worked hard to get where she is, too.

But they’re working too many jobs to vote, they don’t buy enough important stuff, they live in “that” part of town so they must be “those” kind of lazy druggies and welfare queens, they are transparent and can be safely underpaid, politically ignored, and blamed for their fecklessness.”