During the Progressive Era, citizens were praising the government for creating more jobs and fixing flaws that the muckrakers have addressed. However, there was a huge flaw in this success. The praises were only addressed towards the more financially stable. However, with all of the urbanization and industrialization, there were many people who got the short end of the stick. There were almost no laws regulating their job rights. They often worked in unsafe and poor conditions in places such as sweatshops and factories. These workers had to deal with this because there were limited things they could do to move up in opportunities because of their low wages.
The Problem With Poverty Today
Frankly, the government does take action to care for its inhabitants. But, there’s a twist– they are biased towards the upper class. In the Progressive Era, the causes of poverty mostly lead to the government. Almost a century later, that has not changed. According to Causes of Poverty, the government’s policies are most directly to help the wealthier. “By contrast, the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to benefit from economic or political policies. The amount the world spends on military, financial bailouts and other areas that benefit the wealthy, compared to the amount spent to address the daily crisis of poverty and related problems are often staggering.” To name a few of these laws that leave the middle and lower class isolated: the wealthy are acquitted from paying payroll taxes, sales taxes on everything but bonds. and mortgage on a house. There are actual cases where wealthy companies got benefits from the government, benefits that are not given to
everyone. According to Studies Show, Congress Favors the Rich, “Jetblue Airways made $615 million in U.S. profits last year, but paid just 0.4 percent of that amount (less than half of 1 percent) in federal income taxes. The toy maker Mattel made $268 million in profits last year, but received a tax rebate of $46 million from the IRS, and Pacific Gas and Electric not only paid nothing in federal income taxes last year, it received a tax rebate of $84 million from the IRS, even though it made $1.8 billion last year.” In general, poorer countries are looking for ways to stabilize their debt and climb their way out of poverty. The most common way for this is to export resources to decrease their debt. However, as more countries start to use this method, a fight rises for the cheapest resources. Resources become cheaper, meaning workers get paid much less. In most cases, the debt costs only increase. The results of this– almost half of the world lives on less than $2.50 a day.Most of these citizens in poverty are illiterate and were never given an education, giving them little opportunity to depart from poverty. The government can pretend to offer solutions and projects to help the lower class, but these projects are often a fail because the money is usually embezzled (by the government).
Progress Through Poverty 