The recession in 2007 made our economy suffer tremendously. My father, for instance, was working in the mortgage business for over ten years and lost his job. Thankfully, we never faced poverty but our economy is still suffering and hasn’t fully recovered yet. Poverty is an issue that countless administrations have tried to solve. And each one has come up with different ways to combat poverty. Considering poverty is still so prevalent today, there hasn’t been any policy or program that has been able to win the “war on poverty”. Poverty is caused by “racism, crime, unemployment, poor schools, family breakdown, high incarceration rates…” There are food stamps and lower-cost housing for people living in poverty, but public assistance isn’t helping them become independent. Instead, they remain dependent on the government; something they themselves don’t want.

The thing that strikes me about poverty is that people who are working full-time jobs cannot support themselves. Working minimum wage, as I’ve said in past responses, is not sufficient to live off of. Both democrats and republicans agree that our economy needs to grow and that there need to be more, better-paying jobs in order to help alleviate poverty. But the parties don’t agree when it comes to raising the minimum wage. Democrats make a good point that the minimum wage should reflect the times and the inflation rates. More than 40% of employable working-age adults are working full-time and they should be able to live off of their salary. Those opposed to a minimum wage raise, explain that a raise could get rid of the number of entry-level jobs. They also see the salary that workers are being paid lining up with their value, and their output. When their value increases, their salary will increase. They believe that people living in poverty won’t be hired at all for jobs because they won’t be willing to pay them the new minimum wage.