Sasha Abramsky Quotes
There are people with no high school education who are poor. but there are also university graduates on food bank lines. There are people who are poor because they have made bad choices, gotten addicted to drugs, burned bridges with friends and family — and then there are people who have never taken a drug in their lives, who have huge social networks, and who still can’t make ends meet.
Sasha Abramsky, Journalist & Essayist, The American Way of Poverty, How the Other Half Still Lives, 2013
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
profit making schools of higher education The latter years of the 20th century saw a large increase in the number of proprietary, profit making colleges and other institutions of higher education. These were able to utilize the Federal student loan programs. However, many were fraudulent rip-offs. Most were unaccredited. The average proprietary school obtained more federal student loan money per student than non-profit schools {639817}, and did not train their students as well. A smaller percentage of their students get their degrees and find jobs. When they do obtain employment they make less money. Congressional pressure, induced by heavy lobbying, stopped Department of Education efforts to make schools with poor graduation or employment rates ineligible for use of Student Loan Programs.
The cycle of poverty of 20th century America was not new. It has existed for centuries in most cultures and countries.
What was so unusual about Mrs. Roosevelt was that she came from a very wealthy, upper class, family. She never had to work a day in her life; nor did the men in her family. Yet she learned about, understood, and empathized with the poor and their problems in a way that few “aristocrats” and politicians ever did.
Sasha Abramsky is a British-born Jewish freelance journalist and author who now lives in the United States. His work has appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, New York, The Village Voice, and Rolling Stone. He is a senior fellow at the American liberal think tank Demos, and a lecturer in the University of California, Davis's University Writing Program.
