a reflection on my blogs

I have never been a blogger before i took this class and i have never shown any interest in this kind of activity even though i have had a twitter account for a very long time. I’m not a daily blogger by far, and usually average a post a month, but it’s true that I’ve been more silent lately. I don’t know how to write blog posts which for me have always been personal essays in an America that seems to be deeply divided on political and social grounds. On social media, I scroll quickly past the posts about socially relevant issues but writing these blogs for the past few weeks have made me realize that this is a way in which we could form our opinion and express ourselves.

I have lived my life mainly at the scale of private concern, and my thinking and writing have depended on those beliefs. But now the public opinion has overtaken everything. It’s where my attention goes, to those topics that is of social concern and importance and weather i can bring the attention of my fellow citizens by directing their opinion towards socially relevant topics. Social media has become an important media through which activism could be publicised on a large scale and thereby generating public opinion towards the cause.

racism and housing discrimination

Some of the most socially relevant topics that relates to social inequality is Racism and Housing discrimination since it is still widespread in the United States. Since the election of President Donald Trump, news outlets and social media accounts have swelled with reports of swastikas at schools, racist taunts, and other hate-fueled attacks and acts of intimidation. The Southern Poverty Law Center, is one of the organisations that keeps track and voice their concerns on racism. In the 1980s, the Southern Poverty Law Center  an organization born of the civil rights movement  began tracking extremist organizations they deemed “hate groups” in the United States.

Discrimination against blacks, Hispanics and Asians looking for housing persists in subtle forms, there is already considerable evidence that minorities have suffered significantly from predatory lending and were far more likely during the housing boom to be offered subprime loans even if they qualified for cheaper conventional mortgages. Even subtle discrimination like steering minorities to certain neighborhoods or failing to offer them the homes most likely to increase in value would result in substantially weaker accumulation of wealth, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, is an organization that seeks to improve housing in underserved communities and also conducts awareness programs about housing discriminations in the United States.

economic inequality in new jersey

The reports paint a bleak picture about the state of New Jersey and the fundamental problems it’s facing budget deficits, social inequality, decreasing income, decreasing tax revenues, increasing college expenses, failing to recover from the recession are all part of the problem were some the problems discussed in the reports. All these are some of the reasons cited as why there is a high number of outward migration from New Jersey. The most striking problem seen in the report that attracted my attention was the economic state of the state as if this keeps up the state would be essentially bankrupt in the foreseeable future.

 Although median household is almost 70,000 $ which is considerably higher than the national average the state financial condition is in pretty bad shape and the value of the state bonds is valued second lowest which is just above Ilinois. If the economic state of New Jersey does not improve it will essentially hit the social programs needed to help the middle class and the vulnerable sections of society like the poor. This would lead to more uncertainty and more social inequalities that could develop as state government programs could go bankrupt.

solutions for abandoned families and social isolation

Kristin Seefeldt mainly talks about different concepts of poverty in her webinar, in the introduction she talks about social isolation, which is the limited contact of marginalized groups with Mainstream America. Then she talks about social abandonment which is the various reasons like economic inequality lack of social protection that prevents low income Americans from moving up in society, most of the age group belonged to middle aged African Americans single mothers. Lack of employment generations is also one of the most important reasons leading to social abandonment. Kristin also talked about the workplace violations that is of common occurrence today as the labour market is more competitive and companies are more abusive to its workers. She also talked about higher education and home ownership as the way in which upward mobility could be achieved. Student debt and the tough process that single mothers faced was also talked in detail.

 Home ownership was also an important topic that came up especially bad lending practices that led to increased number of foreclosures. The failure of unemployment benefits as people are not able to count on such programs. The manner in which the system could be reformed was also talked in detail, social reform programs present in Western European countries like universal health care and guaranteed unemployment benefits was suggested. These suggestions can lead to upward mobility because higher education is the only guarantee that could provide it today and also making education more affordable by controlling the inflation in college tuition and student loan interest rates could control the problems to a certain extent.

presidential candidates on poverty

The presidential candidates basically talked about the ways to reduce poverty, education, creation of jobs and debt. Lindsey Graham basically talked about reducing poverty and what congress or the federal government can do to help poor people. He was more interested in talking about bipartisanship and the need to control national debt and how that today's generation of young americans are deep in debt.

 Marco Rubio mainly talked about giving the Americans more freedom to do business and take back regulations that effects free market elements to function properly. He also emphasised the need for the federal government to help single mother families with tax returns and incentives in order to elevate them from poverty.

 John Kasich talked about the complicated system that is used by the federal government to provide welfare programs and he talked about the ways to simplify it. Kasich was more interested in decentralization and the needs for simplification the manner in which federal programs are run. Tax reform was also talked about in detail and the need to simplify it so that it would be easier for ordinary Americans would find it easier to cope with the system

People living in poverty

It is becoming harder and harder for Americans to find money for their expenses as most families live from paycheck to paycheck and their chances of escaping poverty by moving into a higher income group is decreasing as the income for middle class Americans is not increasing because of a stagnation of the minimum wage which crushes low income families of their life chances.
  By playing spent, it conforms how low income families have to run on a budget throughout the months as expenses have increased at a steady pace and whereas the income has literally stagnated throughout the years, which increases the strain on low income families to meat their expenses. Most of these families have put away their small luxuries and prioritize on their most important needs.

Need to protect the middle class

The rich are getting richer and those in the middle class are getting poorer in the United States as one of the hardest hit among the population is the middle class. This can be attributed to a variety of reasons like loss of blue collar jobs, closing down of factories, stagnation of wages and the rise in living expenses. Although the income for the middle class has increased over the years people who fit the criteria of middle class has been consistently decreasing.
The disparities between the rich have been increasing over the years as more people are being kicked into poverty. Certain parts of the country which relied on the manufacturing sector for jobs like Detroit, Ohio, certain parts of Indiana were the hardest hit when the manufacturing plants closed down. The Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 also took a heavy toll on the middle class as more people lost their jobs and life savings.
If proper steps are not initiated to prevent the shrinking of the middle class, it would lead to substantial disproportionality in our society. A middle class is always needed to maintain the proper harmony within the society. Steps should be taken at a government level to save jobs and safeguard blue collar jobs.