Bryan Terschan's Arnold and Velazquez Response

I think that both of these authors had a very interesting view about poverty in our society. They used some key points and rhetorical strategies that really hit home what they were trying to say.

First, I think it was interesting that Kathleen Arnold was arguing that the real purpose of welfare programs was to maintain a supply of cheap labor while disciplining and closely monitoring the recipients. The rhetorical strategy that I noticed straight away was on page 362 and 363 when she used parentheses to make her point about the present day. She would say something about welfare and then say how it was relevant in today's society. For example, "aid is not viewed as an entitlement in the United States (and never has been, and furthermore, this is truer today than it was in the early part of the twentieth century)"(363). In this example she uses her parentheses to show how the society's welfare is getting worse than it ever was. She then mentions two crucial assumptions behind workfare: participants must be forced to work; and they have no motivation to do so and thus must be guided, shaped, and disciplined. Although it sounds bad, I think that a lot of Americans would agree with these assumptions. However, I think that sometimes people truly need welfare to help them, not just because they don't have the desire to work. Finally, her greatest argument is when she says that "workfare is not about creating jobs for people that don't have them; but creating workers for jobs that nobody wants(363)." She then mentions how they have almost become slaves which I think is a very bold statement to make. Yes, during those jobs they may be treated poorly, but they are not completely stripped of their rights as the slaves were.

The next reading by Nydia Velazquez also makes some interesting points about poverty, but in a different direction than Arnold. She starts off by saying that people living in poverty today have by far the worst living conditions of anyone because of the build up of pollution over the years. I would agree with this statement. I think because Americans keep putting the poor aside and never really do anything about it, their conditions are just going to get worse and worse as the years go by. She expands on this idea by saying the difference between the rich and poor in our country is the greatest of any. To back this idea up she states the astonishing fact that the richest 196 people in America have more wealth than the poorest 56 million Americans. This is proof that the poverty situation in America is getting way out of hand. Velazquez thinks that part of this difference is due to the environment that the poor live in. I completely agree with what she is saying. How can you ever expect a child to succeed if he is diagnosed with some disease at a young age because of all the waste plants near his or her home? What gives middle class or rich people the right to live in a better environment just because they have money? I'm not saying to build big huge homes for the poor, I am just simply agreeing with the fact that the environment that they live in is harmful to anyone and should not have to be endured. Overall, I think the two authors have very distinguished and both valid views about poverty in the United States.