Jobs and Poverty essays

Jobs and Poverty essays Poverty is defined as having a standard of living below the minimum needed for the maintenance of adequate diet, health, and shelter. With this definition the answer to ending poverty might seem easy. Just create enough jobs so that people are over the poverty line. If we lived in a simple world that might work, but there are many circumstances that will prove that the theory of just creating jobs will not work. Barclay, in his article talks about how he can not keep employees because of the fact they do not have good work ethics, the ability to handle life stresses, or the want to stay clean. He states that he can train them to do a job, but can not make them show up for work, be there on time, or to be clean. With this example just the creation of jobs will not work. Also, if we look at if the world as if it had enough jobs, and the employees showed up on time, would this eliminate poverty? If a person is making minimum wage working 40 hours a week, they will only make $210 a week before taxes are taken out. This works out to be just under $11,000 a year. These numbers are under the minimum requirement for a family of three. Now if the family was made up of two adults, theoretically both adults could work, bringing their standard of living level up above the poverty line, but if you look at the statistics, most families in poverty are of single parents, therefore there is only one working adult. Also with two adults working, the cost of child care is very expensive and it would be more cost efficient for one of the parents to stay home. With the two examples I just presented, we can see that the simple creation of jobs will not eliminate poverty. However, I do feel there are steps to bring down the amount of families below the poverty line in the theory. In order for some of this to work there would need to be some changes in the social welfare system and in the idea of minimum wage, and the allotment of part t...