Edwards does remind me a lot of Bill Clinton, who I had the chance to hear/"meet" several years ago. But he's a little warmed over. He has the openness and ease that Bill Clinton does, but he doesn't inspire me like Clinton did or even hold my attention. Even those who disliked and hated Clinton could see his appeal when they actually heard him (or so some of my conservative friends tell me).
This speech was on poverty and was timely given the country's awakening post-Katrina. It was about the working poor and the cycle of poverty. I would like to share a few things from the talk with you...
- The net worth of the average African American family is $6000. The net worth of the average Latino family is something like $8000. The net worth of the average white family is $80,000. To me this is just incredible. ($6000!) He definately got my attention with this statistic.
- Edwards talked a lot about increasing the minimum wage and allowing labor to organize. While morally and intellectually, these ideas appeal to me. I wonder how practical they are. Organized labor has served a vital function in America. If you disagree, please please read the Jungle by Upton Sinclair. It convinced me. But now that there are certain government enforced standards, do we need the Unions? Have the Unions crippled Big Business and forced bankruptcies and off-shoring? I am of two minds on this. But it definately something worth thinking about.
- Other countries in the world are working to eradicate poverty (namely Britian which is hoping to eliminate it by 2020 and then there is Sachs millenium initiative), but the US has yet to make any real commitment to the effort. In Edwards opinion the world is watching and waiting for us to take moral leadership. I question whether or not this is actually true. After Iraq and after the "underbelly" of American society was exposed during the Hurricanes, does anyone really want our moral leadership?
As I said, John Edwards doesn't inspire me the same way Bill Clinton did. But he does recognize there is a need and desire for Americans to have a "national community" and referred to it multiple times in his speech. Erasing poverty is one way to build such a community. But how we do that is still a mystery to me.
2 comments:
Interesting. I didn't realize the discrepancy was so HUGE.
On a related note, did you know that the Senate voted down two possible increases to the minimum wage? So it is unlikely that the minimum wage will rise at least for a little while. The minimum wage has not risen since 1997 and thus sits at $5.15/hour or about $10K a year. Regardless of what you think of the economic impacts of increasing the minimum wage, it is about time to increase it again since that is not enough money for one person to live in. Incidentally, the second bill that was shot down by the Senate included provisions for exemptions for small businesses if the minimum wage was to be increased. Ted Kennedy mentioned in the time that the minimum wage has stayed the same, Senators have voted to increase their own paychecks by an average of $28,000. Interesting indeed.
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