No one says that government handouts are bad. In fact most people applaud the United states government for being so proactive in helping out its people. but the fact remains that people aren’t using entitlements as help but rather as their way to live without working and this is obvious by the fact that

Spending on entitlements is the highest in American history. In 2010, entitlement spending had grown to be almost 100 times higher than it was in 1960; it has increased by an explosive 9.5 percent per year for 50 straight years. Entitlement transfer payments to individuals (such as for income, healthcare, age, and unemployment) have been growing twice as fast as per capita income for 20 years, totaling $2.2 trillion in 2010 alone—which was greater than the entire gross domestic product of Italy and roughly the same as the GDP of Great Britain.

source: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2012/12/19/the-shocking-truth-on-entitlements

The system is meant to keep you poor by working against you. Dont believe me? take the word of someone who had the system work against her and by it lost her car, jobs, and home.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2014/12/linda_tirado_on_the_realities_of_living_in_bootstrap_america_daily_annoyances.html

In this article the author describes the way the system works against poor people and is designed to make it harder for them to save money and to plan ahead because the poor have to buy only what they need.

Take this example from a reddit thread by user:  “DrStephenFalken”:

I’m making $150- $200 a week and I need new shoes. So I can buy $60 shoes that will last or $15 walmart shoes. So I buy the walmart shoes and some groceries instead of just the $60 shoes and no groceries. Three months later I’ll need new shoes again. But I’ll also have to pay rent and my light bill is due. So I’ll pay the light bill and buy some “shoe glue” for $4 to fix my shoes for another few weeks until I can buy the $15 ones again.

 

What is social change?  Wikipedia defines social change “Social change refers to an alteration in the social order of a society. Social change may include changes in nature, social institutions, social behaviours, or social relations.”

Is that what social change is? Everyone might have a different change but my definition of social change is not when laws are passed to change the actions of the previous government. its not when people go for a march and the news shows them getting beat and sprayed high pressure hoses.

Social change is when people change for the better, it is when gay people can come out and say they love another sex then what is socially accepted and not be treated differently by that. Social change is when you can get married to whoever you want and wherever you want.

Changing social problems isn’t just having someone writing a piece of legislation and hoping people start enacting it. You have to have people on the ground and they have to believe in the change that’s going on. The civil rights movement was successful in its own right but because they saw that the civil rights bill was passed they took it as a sign of success. 

It takes a lot for a movement to be successful and for social change to be successful it takes a lot more.

When you see any movies or any type of graphic showing the inside of prison, what do you see? What is the demographic most talked about? Most shown? Most represented in the prison system? by far its the African American demographic.

Demographics of race in prison.

source: http://www.prisonpolicy.org/graphs/raceinc.html

African Americans are the most targeted by police and given harsher sentences for the same crime as compared to their counterparts of the white race or latino race.

The Center for American Progress made a list that points out some of the racial disparities in our criminal justice syste,

1. While people of color make up about30 percentof the United States’ population, they account for 60 percent of those imprisoned. The prison population grew by 700 percent from 1970 to 2005, a rate that is outpacing crime and population rates. The incarceration rates disproportionately impact men of color: 1 in every 15 African American men and 1 in every 36 Hispanic men are incarcerated in comparison to 1 in every 106 white men.
2. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics,one in three black mencan expect to go to prison in their lifetime. Individuals of color have a disproportionate number of encounters with law enforcement, indicating that racial profiling continues to be a problem. A report by the Department of Justice found that blacks and Hispanics were approximately three times more likely to be searched during a traffic stop than white motorists. African Americans were twice as likely to be arrested and almost four times as likely to experience the use of force during encounters with the police.
3. Students of color face harsher punishments in school than their white peers, leading to a higher number of youth of color incarcerated.Black and Hispanic students represent more than70 percent of those involved in school-related arrests or referrals to law enforcement. Currently, African Americans make up two-fifths and Hispanics one-fifth of confined youth today.
4. According to recent data by the Department of Education, African American students are arrested far more often than their white classmates.The data showed that96,000students were arrested and 242,000 referred to law enforcement by schools during the 2009-10 school year. Of those students, black and Hispanic students made up more than 70 percent of arrested or referred students. Harsh school punishments, from suspensions to arrests, have led to high numbers of youth of color coming into contact with the juvenile-justice system and at an earlier age.
5. The war on drugs has been waged primarily in communities of color where people of color are more likely to receive higher offenses.According to theHuman Rights Watch, people of color are no more likely to use or sell illegal drugs than whites, but they have higher rate of arrests. African Americans comprise 14 percent of regular drug users but are 37 percent of those arrested for drug offenses. From 1980 to 2007 about one in three of the 25.4 million adults arrested for drugs was African American.
6. Once convicted, black offenders receive longer sentences compared to white offenders.The U.S. Sentencing Commission stated that in the federal system black offendersreceive sentences that are 10 percent longer than white offenders for the same crimes. The Sentencing Project reports that African Americans are 21 percent more likely to receive mandatory-minimum sentences than white defendants and are 20 percent more like to be sentenced to prison.

Source: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/news/2012/03/13/11351/the-top-10-most-startling-facts-about-people-of-color-and-criminal-justice-in-the-united-states/

Even while our crime rate has fallen, our incarcerated population has climbed.

This is a in issue in America, and one we need to talk about as a society. One of the biggest issues we face today is the for profit prison systems lobbying to change laws to make it easier to put people into jail.

One example of how the private prison system uses laws to their advantage is the “three strikes law”, in which you receive life in prison after being convicted of three felonies.

the following are examples minor felony violations that are used to keep minorities in prison for an extended period of time.

• Curfew and Loitering- This is considered a felony and imagine if you are convicted of this three times while walking back from work. This is an example of how the system doesn’t care about the people but rather the profit.
• Vandalism- I know this doesn’t sound as a minor felony but in some cases vandalism isn’t destruction of property but rather a utilization of it to make public art.
• Possession of marijuana- In states where millions are being made and crime has gone down regarding Marijuana  people are receiving felonies off of a gram of this substance that shouldn’t be illegal.

another statistic is that in between the periods of 1990 and 2010 the number of private prisons increased by 1600%

This graph show the increase by how much money the private prisons are putting into lobbying and then the percentage of prisoners in their prisons increase.

This is a video by PBS discussing the private prison system

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/419/video.html

We all hear about the increase in College tuition and how it affects the middle class and how loans are rising but something that is not really addressed is how much the increase has negatively affected poor people. A lot of factors go into paying for college and most families start saving up from an early age as to have a foundation to go from when that age finally comes but middle class and low income families are finding it more and more difficult to have that cushion since college tuition is rising by the semester. Families are also having to borrow a lot more for college and it is having a negative affect on finances even after college since the interest rates on loans are incredibly high and a degree isn’t even a guaranteed return anymore in this economy and market.

Average Annual Increase in College Costs

This is just the Humble musings of a college student who wants to better themselves before they better the world.