Shipler: “I’ve seen a resentment of the larger society toward the poor, and it’s a feature of the United States that may be unique in the world.

Is there perhaps a sense that such people need to be punished, that they’re perceived as lazy, inept, or dishonest?

Whereas if you were poor, or even near poverty, you would find that a potentially devastating event.”īull: It seems that among some politicians, and parts of society too, that there is almost a judgment against the poor, even sort of a backlash to the point where programs that support the poor are cut, or heavily criticized. Or we can afford to rent a car for a few days if necessary, and we can also afford to have the car fixed. You know, if our car breaks down, we’ve another car, we’ve a second car that she can use. Or even problems that are not in their control, for example, a car breaking down can really start a chain reaction that could lead to serious consequences. So when they make a mistake, a bit of bad judgment about how to spend money, and that sort of thing, it has a much more devastating effect. Shipler: “Well, people who have low incomes don’t have a cushion, generally. The percentage of people below the poverty line for the last two years has been about 15 percent and that’s quite high.”īull: And while many of us can afford things like sick days and vacations, maybe even being laid off for a spell, the existence of the working poor seems so much more precarious that an illness, a late bill, a car breakdown…any of those can render disaster for them. “There’s no question that there’s been a real downturn, and you can see it in the statistics. So they were experiencing some of the same fears and anxieties and traumas you could say, that the poor have experienced. And lots of people who were comfortably in the middle class - or felt they were - fell into poverty or near poverty by losing their jobs, often in professional areas that they couldn’t find work in again. Shipler: “Well the recession, the huge recession that we’ve had and we’re just climbing out of, of course expanded the ranks of the working poor.

The working poor david shipler