Boston Globe
by Robert Kuttner

09/17/05

One thing we learned from Hurricane Katrina is that America still has a lot of poor people, who are disproportionately black, and mostly invisible to the affluent and to the media. Behind the glitzy stage set of the quaint New Orleans tourist economy was a grindingly poor city. Most poor people work for a living, just like most middle class people do. They are the people who the Rev. Jesse Jackson famously said 'take the early bus,' and take care of other people's young children and aging parents, sometimes at cost to their own families. In this decade, the working poor have not done well. The Labor Department reports that wages of nonmanagement workers have lagged behind inflation, and low-income workers in particular...

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Informant: Thomas L. Knapp