105 - Poverty and Profit (Homelessness and Smithy on Predatory Lending)

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Episode #105 - Poverty and Profit (Homelessness and Smithy on Predatory Lending)

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⌚ Sat 9 March 2002  ☻The Street Sheet (reading), Various, Jerry Messman, Smithy

Download Hour1 Download Hour2This week we look at some of the aspects of poverty in America. The first hour focuses on homelessness, a phenomenon caused by the uneven "economic boom" and in our second hour Wizards of Money returns to discuss the growing tide of bankruptcies and the role of the credit industry in this trend.

The belief that poverty is a result of the personal failings of an individual or group has been fostered by politicians who have repeatedly framed the debate, and ensuing legislation in terms of so-called personal responsibility . This has been echoed by corporate media outlets so relentlessly that a sizeable number of Americans have been convinced that single teen mothers and alleged welfare queens are the source of the economic difficulties faced by so many hardworking Americans.

What is scrupulously avoided is direct the relationship between some people's increase wealth and other people's fall into poverty, a relationship that exposes recent so-called economic booms as a transfer of wealth from a large group with little money into the hands of a small already affluent group. To explain this dynamic would shatter the myths about the economic system, and those myths are used to manipulate the electorate into accepting the situation.

In our first hour we hear Summer of Fear about the experience of being homeless in San Francisco. We continue with a report about the editor of Street Sheet. In our second hour, episode 13 of Wizards of Money, Bankruptcy Bill's Shootout at The Social Safety Net.
Music: Phil Free and Just Kiddin
Thanks to Wizards of Money
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