"These are Americans who clearly play by the proverbial rules, and we see just as clearly that the rules don’t count for much if the game is rigged."
One of our favorite poverty blogs comes from The Nation's Greg Kaufmann, who recently wrote about a must-see film called two American families.
The film, over 20 years in the making, follows the lives of the Neumans and the Stanleys from the early 1990s into the present. Their story is shocking to say the least.
By film's end, 3 of the 4 adults of the families consider themselves failures. After losing their financial security to outsourcing and, more recently, the economic downturn of 2008, each family jumps from low-wage job to low-wage job. The American dream of financial security no longer appears possible to either family. As Terry Neuman puts it:
“The way the economy is going now, I don’t think anybody is going to be financially secure. And we’ll just work until we collapse and keel over and die.”
Read more: Watch This: Two American Families | The Nation http://www.thenation.com/blog/175159/watch-two-american-families#ixzz2YfXpCewq Follow the Nation: @thenation on Twitter | TheNationMagazine on Facebook
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Photo by: AP/Ric Francis