This is a huge underclass that rarely comes to anybody's attention as a group:


This is a posting that I put on the online cafe (Boycott) thread; veering off onto the issue of national health care.



"Get a job at WalMart (or equivalent place), make just enough money to be below poverty level. It is possible to live like this Live in a state-funded shelter, a motor vehicle, or if really lucky a Section 8 apartment. Get food stamps and food bank donated nonperishables. For health care get Medicaid or hospital free-care. Walmart seems a bit more grotesque than other businesses that operate the same way because they are a huge very public company that puts local concerns out of business and are de-facto subsidized by the government.

Day labor pools found in almost every city are less visible but another source of walking around money that is defacto subsidized by the taxpayer. The day labor pools have been around a long time, but they have exploded in size in recent years.

This all could be seen as preferable to pure welfare, but since this underclass is so huge it creates a competitive race to the bottom for employers that would otherwise provide workers with a living.

Fixing our dysfunctional health care system could mitigate this race to the bottom. Big employers like GM that can't get away with paying workers below poverty would get a huge bottom line improvement if they could off-load their health insurance obligations.
I think that a national health care --> like Medicare (as flawed as it is) would be better than the convoluted situation we have now."

There are a lot of roadblocks to the idea of a national health care plan that would probably make it politically impossible. It wouldn't do much for companies that pay less than poverty wage and it would be opposed by drug companies and insurance companies.

I doubt that I will be able to keep up with this topic but it may be a start for folks who are interested.