{"id":12065,"date":"2025-05-21T22:38:15","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T02:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/?p=12065"},"modified":"2025-10-13T15:12:55","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T19:12:55","slug":"whats-the-biggest-problem-of-this-political-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/2025\/05\/whats-the-biggest-problem-of-this-political-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s the biggest problem of this political moment?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Back in 2018, I wrote about some of the challenges the Baby Boomers face<\/a> \u2014 including financial challenges. We hear over and over again how the Boomers are inheriting a ton of money from their parents, so of course all Boomers must be financially secure. Well, not exactly true…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s an article in today’s Boston Globe titled “Mass. officials are scrambling to stem the wave of older adults losing their homes.”<\/a> In the article, reporter Kay Lazar reports on “an ominous wave of older adults who are losing their homes or just scraping by.” Lazar cites some depressing statistics:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Adults 50 and older are the fastest-growing age group experiencing homelessness, comprising nearly half of the country\u2019s homeless population, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services. Federal data show a 17 percent jump in the number of Massachusetts adults ages 55 and older counted as homeless from 2023 to 2024, the most recent numbers available. Nationally, that increase was 6 percent.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This reminds me of a book by Elizabeth White titled 55, Underemployed, and Faking Normal: Your Guide to a Better Retirement<\/s> Life<\/a><\/em>. White’s book, published a decade ago, showed that many 55 year olds simply didn’t have enough money to retire \u2014 and that included people like White herself, a highly educated woman who at age 55 found herself working low-paying jobs because that’s all she could get.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White’s book is still in print \u2014 because it’s still relevant. White wrote: “This is why the budget battles on Capitol Hill \u2014 which until recently only threatened<\/em> to cut social security and other social-insurance programs like Medicare and Medicaid \u2014 are so ludicrous. What we\u2019re really talking about is dooming millions and millions of women to misery and destitution.” And here we are, ten years later, hearing exactly the same claptrap from political leaders, including from our elderly (78 years old) president. Yes indeedy. I’m so glad we live in a Christian nation where our leaders devoutly follow the teachings of Jesus: “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” (Matt. 19:21, NIV) I’m just so<\/em> glad we have good Christian leaders who read their Bibles and decide to cut aid to poor elders so they can doom millions and millions of women to poverty and destitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OK, that’s enough sarcasm for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My real point is that the current culture wars are actually being fought over whether we help poor people move on up out of poverty, or whether we push more people into poverty. Rev. William Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign<\/a> make the point that there are 140 million Americans who are functionally living in poverty. Nor do I see either major political party facing up to the magnitude of this issue. Actually, I don’t see Unitarian Universalists at the national level facing up to the magnitude of poverty in this country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to the Boston Globe article for some insight into just how bad the problem is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“‘I am finding more seniors living in their cars,’ said Sheri Miller-Bedau, a city health inspector in Attleboro. ‘We are in Massachusetts. We have great schools. We are supposed to be leading edge. How is this happening?’ She said local shelters were so full this past winter that even older adults living in their cars were not considered an emergency and were told they had at least a six-month wait.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And to drive the point home, here’s another quote from the Globe article:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“[Julian] Cyr [D, Provincetown], whose district \u2014 Cape Cod, Martha\u2019s Vineyard, and Nantucket \u2014 is home to the state\u2019s oldest population, said it\u2019s becoming increasingly common to see seniors living in their cars. ‘It\u2019s a housing crisis on steroids,’ he said. ‘When I stop at a park or restroom [on the Cape], I will often see a car, a sedan packed to the gills, and there is an older person, usually an older woman, who is living in the car.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it just might be that the biggest problem of this political moment is not fascism, or racism, or sexism, or homophobia, or immigration, or global climate change \u2014 the biggest problem of this political moment just might be poverty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in 2018, I wrote about some of the challenges the Baby Boomers face \u2014 including financial challenges. We hear over and over again how the Boomers are inheriting a ton of money from their parents, so of course all Boomers must be financially secure. Well, not exactly true… There’s an article in today’s Boston … Continue reading “What’s the biggest problem of this political moment?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[430,21],"tags":[1161],"class_list":["post-12065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecojustice","category-political-culture","tag-poverty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12065"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12474,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12065\/revisions\/12474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/yauu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}