Have or Have Not

In their book $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America, authors Kathryn Edin and Luke Shaefer report that extreme poverty has “more than doubled since 1996, placing 1.5 million households and 3 million children in this desperate economic situation.”  1996 is when Aid for Families with Dependent Children was eliminated.

Meanwhile, Hanna Brooks Olsen contrasts the fact that the rich are getting richer with polling results showing that most Americans identify themselves as "haves".

Class is a hidden topic in American political discourse. Olsen:

As long as we Americans continue to see ourselves as “haves” in the economic system, we’ll continue to think that this degree of economic inequality is normal and unavoidable. But the extreme bounties of the ultra-wealthy should be a clear indicator that, even though there’s enough wealth to go around, most of us are being screwed out of seeing any of it.