A.J. Murray's Response to Velasquez and Arnold

I found both the readings to be very eye opening especially Velasquez's view on how the poor are treated in this country. Both authors express their opinion on the government and society's treatment of the poor in this country.

In Arnold's piece "From America's New Working Class" he states that in the government's attempt to help the poor community by offering them welfare and workfare that they are ultimately weakening their situations. People on welfare are still living below the poverty and struggle to find work so there is limited room for improvement. The most interesting comparison he made in this piece was between the workfare and parolees, if parolees do not comply with their officers, they simply go back to jail but if people on workfare do not comply they run the rick of becoming homeless, malnourished ,and falling deeper into poverty. Although workfare is a good system providing low paying labor that most job seekers would not want to do but it also does not improve out nations lower class. Welfare is the same, some people simply need to be on welfare for specific reasons that affect that keep them out of work, but in some cases people are playing the system almost in order to receive limited benefits like food stamps. Both systems have flaws due to the lack of improvement for the poor

Velasquez's "In search of Justice" to me was the more powerful article because it deals with not only the economically poor but the health of the lower class living in certain toxic ares. The poor living condition are a result of the environmental hazards that exist in their communities. The people living in these communities are mostly races other than white and cannot afford to live any where else so they are stick living in highly polluted ares where garbage dumps could be in your backyard and waste removal pits could be a block away. All these factors make it an unhealthy place to live and is affecting the youth in those communities. When young children are being diagnosed with disease and asthma along with many other medical conditions that it is time for the government to step in and clean up the areas before more people get affected. Our country needs to fix these poverty problems with a safe form of aid for people of the lower class.