American Compassion Podcast | Season 1, Episode 1: Imagining a Safety Net

In 1929, the booming prosperity of the flapper era vanished in the wake of a catastrophic stock market crash. Banks failed, and millions of people lost their life’s savings. Poverty rates soared, and a ten-year depression crippled towns across the globe, setting the stage for the second world war.
But what if poverty wasn’t just a result of sudden economic upheaval? Before the Great Depression, many Americans, including children, labored under grueling conditions for 12-15 hours a day. Work came with risks-threatening workers’ safety, and even their lives. At a time when debt could lead to a prison sentence, most people had little choice but to work to survive.
What if the tale of poverty devouring Americans’ wealth overnight is a myth-or only half the story? In the first episode of the American Compassion podcast, we uncover the lives of the many Americans who never lived in avant-garde mansions or purchased opulent yachts. Most Americans didn’t lose the American dream in the Depression era, since it had always failed to catch them when they fell deeper into poverty.
Our story begins with Erine Gray’s inspiration to rebuild the American Safety Net. We’ll start in the early 2000s, before turning back the clock to the early 20th-century to explore how profound changes in technology, communication, farming, and industrialization reshaped the ways that people thought about wealth, poverty, and how to catch Americans in freefall.
Join executive producer Rebecca McInroy, historian H.W. Brands, historian, and journalist Marvin Olasky, and farmer, journalist, and agricultural writer Tom Philpott as we begin the story of the American Safety Net.

[@TheRantingRooster]

The "root cause" of poverty & homelessness is the combination of 2 essential factors.
1. The private sector can not create enough jobs.
2. The government refuses to implement a job guarantee.
Until we address these 2 factors noting will change.