The Poverty Trap

Joan DeMartin
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A Podcast for those who are fed up with the inequality baked into America's system and want to collectively make change. povertytrap.substack.com

  1. Oct 13

    September—Mid-October 2026 Reading Round Up:

    Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a Newsletter and Podcast About the Politics And Policy Choices That Create a Cycle of Economic, Racial and Environmental Inequality...and What We Can Do To Change It. Thinking about subscribing? Here’s what one paid subscriber recently had to say about The Poverty Trap: “You do great work, Joan. I don’t always get to read your newsletter, but when I do, I leave more informed and more compassionate…” Amy B. With the mid-term elections fast approaching, there is a lot of physical campaign work to be done by the candidates, and both paid staff and volunteer workers. But we voters still need to “read up” on the issues the candidates discuss, so our votes reflect the issues we care about individually and have the greatest, positive impact on our communities . That’s why I’ve put together a short list of recent articles by reporters and other writers who are whipped into a frenzy, facing massive amounts of pre-election information to pull together and analyze. Let’s start with some good news first. — According to several recent polls, the number of likely voters who support “medicare for all” has gone up considerably in the last few years and now has reached about two-thirds or approximately 66% of those surveyed. The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) conducted a tracking poll in September of this year and released this report detailing the top voter concerns heading into the mid-term elections. No surprise that health care costs and gas prices lead the way: Although Senator Bernie Sanders (I.,Vt.) was not the first elected official to propose a single payer health care system, he certainly has been the most persistent and consistent proponent in the last 25+ years. Congressman Bernie Sanders Introduces National Health Care HR 2530 JUNE 17, 1991 — I’m going to count this next issue as one of several “October Surprises”, adding insult to injury for three quarters of a million Americans. As if eliminating Affordable Care Act (ACA) enhanced subsidizes that helped lower and middle class Americans pay for their skyrocketing insurance premiums wasn’t enough, the Trump Administration proudly announced it had canceled the health insurance of 750,000 people registered on the ACA exchange: for alleged “fraud”. According to an article published by NBC on September 22: Vice President JD Vance and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz — who have teamed up on a broader push to root out fraud in government health programs — said Tuesday that roughly 750,000 people have had their ACA coverage canceled. The administration did not provide details about who lost coverage or how those individuals were informed. The cuts, Vance said, would save U.S. taxpayers $2.2 billion. Seven hundred and fifty thousand people committing fraud? And Dr. Oz doesn’t have enough to do running Medicare and Medicaid that he spends his time trying to root out alleged fraud in a totally separate health insurance program? We, the people should be demanding proof of this “fraud” for each of the 750,000 people now without health insurance.. — Let’s not forget the legal immigrants being booted from Medicaid while waiting over a year for their Green Cards. The New York Times reported in an article published September 30, that nearly 150,000 currently legal immigrants, mostly the humanitarian population of refugees, have green card applications pending. Because these immigrants are refugees fleeing persecution, and sex trafficking victims, they were previously entitled to receive health insurance under Medicaid until their Green Cards were approved. The so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed last year terminates Medicaid coverage for these vulnerable populations as of October 1, 2026. The irony of this cruel situation is that the Trump Administration also slowed approval of Green Cards to a crawl, from 8 months approval time in 2024 to currently 18 months time to receive a Green Card after application. Where will these refuges go for even routine health care? They’ll clog either local urgent care clinics or emergency rooms, possibly delaying immediate treatment for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who visit emergency rooms across the country each day…for emergency medical care. I’ve mentioned this forced overcrowding of emergency rooms for people without health insurance numerous times, most recently here and here. — Finally for today’s reading round-up, let’s circle back to the fast-approaching mid-term elections, where the”affordability” issue looms for the Democrats’ taking—President Trump promised he would lower the price of everything, but instead his administration’s policies have increased the price of everything. According to recent polls, the top voter affordably concerns they will be taking into the voting booth are health care costs and transportation costs. And the astronomical price of diesel fuel has reverberated throughout the economy to increase the price of food, goods and services to the highest level in decades, ensuring that everyone but the wealthiest feel the pain. According to a NYTimes opinion piece published on September 28, the author, Tim Wu, “a law professor who worked in the Biden administration on economic competition and tech policy", agrees that hammering home the affordability message is a winning strategy for Democrats in the mid-terms. But Mr. Wu suggests an even more important strategy for Democratic messaging, and that is what underlies affordability: inequality caused by a system rigged to favor the wealthy. I agree and so do you, judging by the popularity of this post published on The Poverty Trap in January 2024. Here’s a quote from Mr. Wu’s opinion piece in The Times, just a few weeks ago: A recent CBS News poll found that some 60 percent of Americans think the economy is “unfair” and that most people under 45 say they have fewer economic opportunities than their parents did. In a recent Economist/YouGov poll, 66 percent of Republicans said that the gap between rich and poor is a “big problem.”…. To run a proper affordability campaign — one that taps into a discontent even deeper than that over high prices — Democrats should cater to this widespread sense of unfairness. The key message is rebalancing: a promise to level out a lopsided economy that favors huge concentrations of wealth. _________________________________ I’d love to hear what you think about these issues. The affordability crisis: healthcare, gas prices, food, goods and services out-of-reach for most Americans, whether affordability and baked-in inequality are winning messages for Democrats in the upcoming mid-term elections. Please share your ideas with The Poverty Trap Community in the Comment Section below: The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Poverty Trap at povertytrap.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Sep 27

    How Older Homeowners Are Losing Their Biggest Asset...

    Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a Newsletter and Podcast About the Politics And Policy Choices That Create a Cycle of Economic, Racial and Environmental Inequality...and What We Can Do To Change It. Thinking about subscribing? Here’s what one paid subscriber recently had to say about The Poverty Trap: “You do great work, Joan. I don’t always get to read your newsletter, but when I do, I leave more informed and more compassionate…” Amy B. Before I get to the meat of this post, I’d like to introduce my new research and writing assistant. I’ve been “training” him the last month, thus my delay in posting. With his help, we should return to weekly posts starting today. Meet Willie — a very good boy! Meanwhile, I bookmarked an article published a few months ago in The New York Times titled: “Retirees Expect Their Home to Be a Financial Safety Net. They Shouldn’t” because it resonated with me and the financial situation I was in when I sold my home. I did not have the money to make needed repairs, sold it at the worst possible time near the beginning of the Covid shutdown when home prices had plummeted, and for exactly the amount I owed on the mortgage. This outcome left me with no money to pay rent, except what I borrowed from friends and charged on credit cards. I can’t help but believe many Americans over 55 will relate to this scenario as do their grown children who desperately try to convince their parents or grandparents to make needed repairs, or if possible, update the home to 21st century tastes. But many either can’t afford it, or don’t see the relationship of even a modest upgrade to resale value. And as a result, older sellers get less equity and consequently have less money to pay for assisted living care, often the next step after leaving their home. The Times article makes a good case that elderly homeowners should not rely on their home as a financial fall-back, even if it is mortgage free. It lists several reasons, culled from real estate specialists, financial advisors and data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia: A paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that older homeowners, particularly those 70 and up, earn lower prices when they sell than their younger counterparts [and] One reason behind the age-price gap identified by researchers is that, compared with younger homeowners, older homeowners don’t invest as much in their properties. This can take the form of less renovation, more deferred maintenance and higher rates of disrepair. About 25 percent of the difference in sale prices is attributable to this discrepancy. The Times article also notes that older homeowners sometimes just want out of their homes with an immediate need to get into assisted living, or are just too tired or impatient to go through a traditional real estate broker that comes with listing, showings and inspections. That’s where housing “investors” enter the picture and offer cash for an “as is” sale, often if not always, with a much lower sale price: A bigger issue identified by researchers is that older homeowners are more likely to sell to investors paying cash, or via “pocket” listings, which bypass real estate multiple listing services. While these methods may yield quicker, more straightforward sales, less competition can mean a lower selling price. But there are more issues that complicate home sales for the elderly, especially for those with little money. Costs to complete even minor repairs, let alone updates, have soared because of the Iran war-related rise in fuel prices and the cost of goods. Some have to sell their homes to just keep up with today’s soaring inflation, and as mentioned earlier, to meet the increasing costs of retirement, assisted care, or nursing home facilities. Last week, CNBC published a good analysis of the ripple effect of rising diesel prices on costs of goods and services, which hasn’t yet fully kicked in. Here’s an excerpt: It can take awhile for the diesel cost to work its way through the economy and into your bank account. “Consumers feel it last but not least,” Glik [Carmit Glik, CEO of Ship4wd] said. “It shows up in grocery prices, delivery fees, and anything seasonal that depends on trucking to move fast, usually a few weeks after the spike, once surcharges work their way through the supply chain. That’s different from gas, where drivers see the pain immediately at the pump,” Glik added. In addition to maintaining their home, affordability of pretty much everything “is the Top Stated Concern [of American adults] age 50 plus” according to an AARP Foundation report from this spring. Share of Low-Income Adults 50+ (LI50+) Reporting Each Financial Concern, Spring 2026 Affordability is the Top Stated Concern. This horizontal bar chart shows the share of low-income adults age 50 and older (LI50+) who reported each financial concern in Spring 2026. Rising prices was the most commonly reported concern at 88%, followed by retirement savings (80%) and medical debt or care (72%). Smaller shares reported concern about losing public benefits (56%) and housing costs (54%). Source: AARP Foundation Economic Security Monitor, Spring 2026. (Note: I was not able to copy the “horizontal bar chart”, but included the data in text form.) Source: AARP Foundation Economic Security Monitor, Spring 2026 Why It Matters: According to an NPR piece published days ago, the fastest growing segment of Americans in poverty are seniors, age 65 and older: The poverty rate among seniors rose for the fifth straight year in 2025, “a trend no other age group experienced,” according to an AARP Foundation analysis of a new Census Bureau report. And because more seniors live in poverty, they are the fastest growing segment of the homeless population in the United States, according to several reputable sources, including the most recent report from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Although most seniors own homes, 27% or so still have a mortgage, but regardless, pay property taxes, home insurance and HOA fees in certain areas. And each of these costs is increasing, as is the cost of needed repairs and renovations. At the same time, rising prices of food, utilities and other necessities are eating into seniors’ fixed incomes. Millions of senior citizens, most of whom have worked their entire adult lives and paid into the government system end up in poverty, and worse yet, homeless? In the richest country on Earth? Why isn’t every elected official and those running for office discussing their plans to end this embarrassment? ________________________________ What are your ideas to stem the rising number of senior citizens living in poverty and without a place to live? I would love to see a discussion with your thoughts in the Comment Section below. Another photo of my new assistant hard at work on The Poverty Trap… I’ve trained him well! The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Poverty Trap at povertytrap.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Sep 6

    Corporate Welfare — Explained for Everyday Folks

    Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a Newsletter and Podcast About the Politics And Policy Choices That Create a Cycle of Economic, Racial and Environmental Inequality...and What We Can Do To Change It. Thinking about subscribing? Here’s what one paid subscriber recently had to say about The Poverty Trap: “You do great work, Joan. I don’t always get to read your newsletter, but when I do, I leave more informed and more compassionate…” Amy B. I’m including the “trailer” for the 2021 PBS documentary, “Corporate Welfare, Where’s The Outrage” again, along with the direct link to the hour long, PBS documentary here: https://www.pbs.org/video/corporate-welfare-ptwdrw/, because it is essential viewing if you want to sort out the ‘double talk” leading up to the mid-term elections and make better choices as you go to the polls this November. It’s even more important to understand why our system continues to favor subsidies to businesses (aka Corporate welfare) over help to individuals and communities, and how the numbers actually break-down, so you have a better idea of where your tax dollars are going and who benefits from this windfall. I don’t believe it’s as simple as corporations benefit and individuals and communities suffer. Although this is true, it’s more complicated and maybe more insidious than that statement implies. Take this data from a Good Jobs First article published a little over a month ago: The [list below shows] September 2025 data from 11 states, [Government Accounting Office ] GAO identified 46 companies that ranked among the top 25 employers of Medicaid or SNAP recipients in at least two states. Seventeen were among the 50 largest Fortune 500 employers. The state data are not nationally representative, but the pattern is unmistakable: large, profitable corporations are among the leading employers of workers who need public assistance. Good Jobs First’s Subsidy Tracker adds another dimension. Eight prominent companies appearing in GAO’s employer tables have received at least $16.5 billion in disclosed state and local subsidies. This data are from both the GAO and the Good Jobs First data research team. Here’s how it breaks down according to the Good Jobs First article: Corporation Disclosed Subsidies: Examples From GAO Employer Lists: Amazon $15.16 Billion—Major Employer Of Medicaid And SNAP Recipients In Multiple States FedEx $660.5 Million—Among Tennessee’s Top Employers Of SNAP Recipients (The Company Has A Huge Hub In Memphis) Walmart $287.2 Million—Top Employer Of Medicaid Recipients In Georgia And Oklahoma Target $189.8 Million—Appears Among Large Employers Of Benefit Recipients Kroger $87.4 Million—Appears Among Major Grocery-Sector Employers Dollar General $59.7 Million—Among Tennessee’s Top Employers Of SNAP Recipients Dollar Tree $55.8 Million—Appears In State Employer Rankings McDonald’s $11.8 Million—Among Tennessee’s Top Employers Of SNAP Recipients Total $16.51 Billion Source: Good Jobs First Subsidy Tracker and GAO-26-108703. Subsidy totals are cumulative disclosed awards nationwide and exclude awards for which dollar values were not disclosed. And here are recent numbers from the GAO (Updated and released on July 22, 2026) that shows more specifically how many American workers are employed (both part-time and full-time) and still qualify for Medicaid and/or SNAP: This is a taxpayer double whammy. We are paying corporations directly to continue to exist in our communities in the hope they will provide jobs. As I wrote in my previous post on corporate welfare, not only don’t the companies provide all the jobs promised, they many times abandon their factory and its community for cheaper locales, ripping away their meager paying jobs with little notice. And here is the second insult, speaking of meager pay: The jobs pay so little that millions of workers who are employed by these companies across the country— even full-time workers— qualify for and receive Medicaid and SNAP food benefits. The taxpayers pay twice, while the corporations raking in billions of dollars in profits a year on the backs of low wage workers and inflated prices, get even more money…from you. Although the United States has been using direct incentives, tax breaks and tariffs on imported goods to protect its businesses since the late 1700’s, this help usually resulted in investments for the general public and the public good, like railroads, sewage treatment and later, highways as good examples. Today, corporate subsidies benefit companies much more than the general public. Fortunately, Robert Reich has written (and produced clever and informative videos) about this issue. The first video below was produced in 2019 during the first Trump Administration, but holds true today. The second video explains how and why government subsidies and incentives to big business have changed over the years, and why a clear understanding of “corporate welfare” helps us cut through the double talk of politicians today. You also should read this post from Substack’s own Judd Legum, author of Popular Information who published this post in July, discussing exactly how much taxpayers subsidize two of the biggest employers in the United States: Amazon and Walmart.: The amount of taxpayer money paying just for Medicaid alone annually is $2 billion! ———————————————— Thoughts on your money subsidizing big corporations…twice? Please share your ideas in the Comment Section, below. All are welcome! The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Poverty Trap at povertytrap.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Aug 22

    The Real Welfare Queens

    Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a Newsletter and Podcast About the Politics And Policy Choices That Create a Cycle of Economic, Racial and Environmental Inequality...and What We Can Do To Change It. I originally published this post a few months after I started The Poverty Trap, way back on September 15, 2021. I’m re-posting it today with a few tweaks and an updated preface because it remains a major topic of discussion as our mid-term elections approach, but it’s rarely acknowledged directly. In fact, the concept of corporate welfare is the argument that clearly counters the conservative rantings against the progressive agenda, an agenda that the majority of democrat and independent voters seem to favor. An updated post, following shortly, will detail why the democrats should use our “corporate welfare system” like a battering ram against the current conservative agenda to slash social safety net programs. In the meantime, enjoy re-reading or reading for the first time this discussion of our real “welfare queens”. JOAN DEMARTIN DEC 09, 2021 This is the trailer for the PBS film that explores the concept of Corporate Welfare and how it helps corporations to thrive, and allows average, working taxpayers to suffer. I first heard the words “corporate welfare” when Senator Bernie Sanders was campaigning for President in 2015, although the concept had been discussed for easily 50 years before I heard it put into context. Although I had closely followed politics for decades and worked on a few campaigns, I never heard this concept mentioned, let alone explained and made an integral part of a presidential campaign. Senator Sanders described how workers for Walmart, as an example, made so little in wages as full time employees, that they still qualified for food stamps and other forms of government aid for the poor. In other words, the taxpayers were subsidizing Walmart’s low wages with taxpayer funded government programs. I probably hadn’t heard of corporate welfare because I was watching and reading what now is dubbed “mainstream media”, which not only didn’t cover this issue, but repeatedly branded Senator Sanders as a socialist “kook” for daring to call attention to our government’s hypocritical entanglement in this scheme. What I did know is that our government’s social safety net was too lean, and the constant complaining, mostly from the right, that cuts had to be made to these “handout” programs, and the talk of “welfare queens” were thinly-veiled, racist code. But this disingenuous scapegoating of the poor continues today with Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), for one example, and many others. “I don’t believe that we should turn our society into an entitlement society,” Manchin said, as he was whittling down the “Build Back Better” bill of his own party’s President. And then I learned about the grotesque amount of money in the form of tax abatements, incentives and bailouts that federal, state and local governments provide large companies for the pleasure of gracing their communities with factories, warehouses and mega stores. This 2020 article from Business Insider cites a Princeton study that “finds that most states and local governments offer $30 billion a year in welfare — as a ‘low-end estimate’ — to corporations, and in some states the outgoing incentives exceed corporate tax revenues.” So our government is losing money — your money — on these “incentives” to draw businesses to local communities. But wait, there’s more. This 2014 article from Forbes, probably one of the antecedents to this year’s PBS film “Corporate Welfare: Where’s the Outrage?”, gives a few frightening examples of government subsidies to corporations. Here’s just one: “The 965 companies in the [ Good Jobs First Report prepared in 2014] received over $110 billion of public money. Berkshire Hathaway, a company with $485 billion in assets and $20 billion in profits, received over $1 billion of that money. Its chair, Warren Buffett, is worth about $58 billion.” It’s true that at least some of these companies never provide the jobs and tax base they promise in exchange for the subsidies they receive. In 2019, for example, General Motors decided to close its auto making plant in Lordstown, Ohio, allegedly because of the decline in demand for the small cars it was making there. But the state had signed several economic development agreements with GM which specified that the Lordstown plant would remain open until 2027 in exchange for tens of millions in tax breaks. As early as 2017, however, GM started cutting jobs and shifts at this plant and “announced it would build its new Chevrolet Blazer in Mexico.” The partial good news from this scenario is that Ohio’s Tax Credit Authority demanded its $60 million back, and in September 2020, GM agreed to repay $28 million and contribute $12 million in community support where the plant was located, presumably leaving the state about $20 million in the hole from it’s broken economic development agreements. Now that’s an entitlement society, Senator Manchin. You can watch this excellent film: “Corporate Welfare, Where’s the Outrage” on PBS by checking your local PBS guide for days and times or by accessing specific segments here: https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=PBS+corporate+welfare&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 ________________________ Let me know what you think about the idea of corporate welfare, and whether we should continue on this path. Is it outlandish to suggest our government help individuals a bit more and corporations quite a bit less? Leave your ideas in the Comment Section below: The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Poverty Trap at povertytrap.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Aug 2

    July Reading Round-Up...

    Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a Newsletter and Podcast About the Politics And Policy Choices That Create a Cycle of Economic, Racial and Environmental Inequality...and What We Can Do To Change It. Thinking about subscribing? Here’s what one paid subscriber recently had to say about The Poverty Trap: “You do great work, Joan. I don’t always get to read your newsletter, but when I do, I leave more informed and more compassionate…” Amy B. The Poverty Trap’s most recent post laid out a slew of statistics about the impact of ending the enhanced premium subsidies on the Affordable Care Act insurance marketplace. These extra subsidies are what made health insurance actually “affordable” for millions of Americans. And now this help is gone. Here’s what I (and other dedicated prognosticators) said would happen when millions went without health insurance: When adults are sick and can’t receive medical treatment, they work less, maybe even get fired from their jobs, qualify for other types of government assistance, burden already overcrowded emergency rooms and contribute much less to the overall economy. — And first up for our July reading round-up is what is actually happening right now as millions more people go without health insurance, reported in this New York Times article posted on July 30: More and more uninsured patients are showing up in hospital emergency rooms and clinics, having lost their coverage under the Affordable Care Act. Executives running some of the biggest hospital systems, including large for-profit chains spanning many states, expressed concern over the unexpectedly sharp rise in uninsured patients and the costs associated with treating them…And many executives said that the hospitals were also reporting more unpaid medical bills and providing more in the way of charity care. I’m struggling to understand why this rise in uninsured patients was seen by hospital executives as “unexpectedly sharp”. The ACA statistics are public and a massive loss of coverage was predicted last year. Where else will people go except an urgent care or hospital emergency room when they have no doctor and no money to pay for medical services? — And then there is the increasing number of people losing their access to food stamps because of new work requirements, increased paperwork to prove employment hours and routine household information like the number of people living in a household (can you say letters from neighbors attesting to the number of people living in a residence?) Mr. Rogers and his neighbors would be appalled. A New York Times article published July 20 discusses the impact of the major changes to the food stamp program (now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), enacted through the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The changes now require proof of 80 hours a month work for 19-64 year olds to remain on or obtain food benefits, more paperwork to prove nearly every bit of information required on the application and large monetary penalties on states for error rates in awarding too little or too much benefits. The article focuses on residents of Arizona struggling to keep alive without enough to eat, like a cancer survivor weighing 69 pounds who has to skip meals, a deaf woman and her hearing impaired children whose eldest daughter sells her plasma each week to buy food and a young mother who “fantasizes’ about stealing a grocery cart loaded with food. Both those seeking the benefits and officials call it “bureaucratic chaos”: Alarmed at the caseload [of food stamp applicants] decline, Arizona rehired some staff and relaxed some paperwork demands, and the rolls grew modestly in May and June. Still, Michael Wisehart, who runs the Arizona Department of Economic Security, which administers SNAP, said, “It’s frankly sickening to me the number of individuals that continue to struggle with the added bureaucracy.” — Adding insult to much injury, the manufacturing jobs President Trump promised would return while campaigning are in fact fleeing from the small towns in states like Ohio and heading to China. A Washington Post article published August 1 described the last day of operations in the Conn Selmer factory (whose parent company was Steinway) in Eastlake, Ohio, a town northeast of Cleveland. The factory made some of the best brass musical instruments in the world, was in operation for over 61 years and in its heyday, employed 334 workers. On June 30, it closed its doors, laying off 150 remaining workers and transferring almost all of its production to a 21 million dollar manufacturing facility in Jiangsu province, China. …there was something inside the plant that Hines [Rob Hines, the current union president] had not experienced elsewhere. In a word, it was pride.He saw it in his co-workers, who would stop and stare in appreciation at a finished French horn or sousaphone. He saw it in the schoolchildren who sometimes toured the factory, where instruments used in the Cleveland Orchestra and the Ohio State University Marching Band were made. “It’s truly amazing, what we do here,” Hines said. ____________________________________ Join The Poverty Trap community and share your thoughts about this reading round-up in the Comment Section below. What do you make of emergency rooms across the country overwhelmed with uninsured patients, the cruelty of the added work requirements and paperwork burdens that are throwing hundreds of thousands of otherwise eligible people off food assistance, and the factory closings that leave people and their communities bereft? The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Poverty Trap at povertytrap.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Jul 22

    Rising Health Care Premiums And Deductibles Equal...

    Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a Newsletter and Podcast About the Politics And Policy Choices That Create a Cycle of Economic, Racial and Environmental Inequality...and What We Can Do To Change It. Thinking about subscribing? Here’s what one paid subscriber recently had to say about The Poverty Trap: “You do great work, Joan. I don’t always get to read your newsletter, but when I do, I leave more informed and more compassionate…” Amy B. One (Maybe Two) Big Things: The enhanced premium tax credits expired at the end of 2025, thanks to the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”. As a result, ACA monthly premiums have soared an average of 58% from 2025 to 2026. ACA insurers also raised premiums in 2026 by an average of 18%, with another 14% raise expected in 2027. Plus, ACA plan deductibles rose about 37%, or more than $1,000 per individual policy on average. Older and middle-income adults will be hit the hardest because of the “subsidy cliff”, which leaves all ACA enrollees making 400% or more of a state’s poverty level ($62,600—$63,840 for an individual) without any government subsidies to help pay premiums. Analysis of data gathered by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and other organizations show a precipitous drop in 2026 enrollment within the ACA marketplace, largely attributable to the shocking increase in insurance premiums from both insurer premium increases and loss of premium insurance credits, together with rising deductibles for various policies: * Based on reports to date of sign-ups and premium payments, average monthly effectuated ACA Marketplace enrollment could fall to about 17.5 million people in 2026 and could be as low as 16.5 million people, down from 22.3 million people in 2025. * Premium payments from enrollees increased by an average of 58% from $113 to $178 per month. This is lower than the 114% increase KFF projected if everyone had stayed in the same plan because many people bought down to higher-deductible plans and because those just past the subsidy cliff with the steepest increases dropped ACA coverage at higher rates. * Average ACA Marketplace deductibles increased by 37% (or $1,027 per person) to a record high of $3,786 in 2026. This is the steepest increase in deductibles ever seen in this market and largely reflects the shift from silver plans with reduced deductibles for lower-income enrollees to bronze plans with very high deductibles. A report published by Wakely Consulting Group early this year analyzed the impact of falling enrollment in the ACA market place. Although the reduction in enrollment so far in 2026 was less than projected in 2025, many who stayed with an ACA plan traded premium costs for higher deductibles by switching from higher cost plans like the most popular Silver tier, to Bronze plans with lower out-of-pocket premiums and less coverage, but much higher deductibles. The Wakely report also projected additional enrollment losses throughout this year: Effectuated enrollment (the number of people who pay premiums and maintain effective coverage) is expected to fall even further than previous years as 2026 unfolds and many enrollees are unable to afford higher premium payments without enhanced tax credits, signaling significant mid-year attrition on top of already declining sign-ups. Why It Matters: The massive jump in 2026 premiums and deductibles for health insurance purchased through the ACA Market Place (with another planned 14% increase in 2027) is not affordable for tens of millions of Americans, now or in the future. These individuals and families with children already have dropped health insurance altogether, or switched to ACA plans that have less coverage and higher deductibles, setting them up for massive medical debt if they dare to get sick or have an accident. When adults are sick and can’t receive medical treatment, they work less, maybe even get fired from their jobs, qualify for other types of government assistance, burden already overcrowded emergency rooms and contribute much less to the overall economy. And they will die. The U.S. Senate Committee on Finance says that 8, 811 Americans will die each year from this Administration’s failure to extend the ACA premium tax credits, alone. Here’s more on what the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance had to say about American deaths resulting from this year’s changes to the ACA, after analyzing studies conducted by the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics (Penn LDI) and the Yale School of Public Health’s Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis: * 11,300 deaths per year from the loss of Medicaid or Affordable Care Act Marketplace coverage due to 7.7 million people losing coverage. * 18,200 deaths per year due to the loss of Medicaid coverage among 1.38 million low-income Medicare beneficiaries, causing loss of access to low-income prescription drug assistance. * 13,000 deaths per year among Medicaid enrollees in nursing homes due to the rollback of the 2024 nursing home minimum staffing rule. * 8,811 deaths per year from the proposed bill’s failure to extend the enhanced ACA premium tax credits. What We Must Do: We must expand Medicare to cover every American citizen and those people living in the United States legally. We also must expand Medicare to include dental, vision, hearing and full coverage of prescription drugs. There must be no more subsidies paid by taxpayers to insurance companies in a vain effort to keep prices down and keep their profits up, no uninsured people, no one forced to declare bankruptcy for medical debt only billionaires could pay, and most importantly, no one dying because they can’t afford health care. This is the least we must do in the wealthiest country on Earth. ——————————————————— The question for this post is: Are you in favor of an expanded Medicare system that covers all of our citizens and legal residents? Please feel free to leave any thoughts and ideas in the Comment Section below. And please don’t forget to share, like and restack this post as you can—every share helps grow our Poverty Trap community—thanks! The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Poverty Trap at povertytrap.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Jul 5

    "The Happiness Of The People"

    Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a newsletter and podcast for people who are fed up with the inequality baked into America’s system and want to individually and collectively make change. Thinking about subscribing? Here’s what one paid subscriber recently had to say about The Poverty Trap: “You do great work, Joan. I don’t always get to read your newsletter, but when I do, I leave more informed and more compassionate…” Amy B. William Paca’s words, written in 1787, still ring true today, our country’s 250th Birthday. It is “we the people” who still speak at the ballot box to determine whether our government is being structured for our “happiness”, our common welfare, our common good. And we will soon see how the majority of Americans feel about that. Meanwhile, as you enjoy the holiday today, in your own fashion, I hope you find time to read and watch a few of the stories I put together—sort of a celebration of our country and an end-of-month roundup—combined. — I’ll start with a recent 60 Minutes segment with one of my favorite documentarians, Ken Burns, who contemplates what might surprise our founders about America, 250 years later: — Today, Wes Moore, democratic Governor of Maryland, gave a powerful speech at the Maryland State house in Annapolis, just one floor above the exact room where General George Washington resigned his commission as leader of the Continental Army. General Washington resigned with a letter and short speech before the Confederation Congress, which was meeting in Annapolis, our capital at the time. General Washington’s resignation has long been considered one of the “great acts of statesmanship” because he voluntarily resigned from power. Governor Moore’s speech today discussed the idea of patriotism and the substantive work required of each of us to guide our country to a more perfect union. “…we are a nation of sacrifice and service”, he said. Thanks for reading The Poverty Trap! This post is public so feel free to share it. — The New York Times Editorial Board published an excellent opinion piece today that laid out five questions it believes our country will have to confront and answer, if it survives for the next 50 years. I’m quoting the first question, below, because I think it’s the most important. Since our government has started lying to us without shame and without punishment, many Americans simply don’t know what to believe. And if we don’t share a common set of facts, how do we form opinions that stand up to reality? The first question is whether self-governing people still share a common reality. Democracy rests on something we rarely notice — a rough agreement about what is true and what happened. That ground is cracking, as trust erodes in the institutions that once settled fact, and artificial intelligence can fabricate convincing lies in seconds. A citizenry that cannot agree on what is real cannot deliberate. It can only split into camps. When people retreat to tribal enclaves, it can foster a sense of self-righteousness and victimization. The New York Times Editorial Board, July 4, 2026. — Earlier this spring, The Times also published a brilliant guest essay by Stacy Schiff, author of a book on Samuel Adams, that compared the list of grievances against King George III laid out in the Declaration of Independence with President Trump’s actions today. They made the American case, in the most concrete terms, that King George III was guilty of every kind of abuse of power. In Jefferson’s accounting, the king had undermined the rule of law, the common good, the judicial system and the political process. It seemed there was little he had not corrupted… For many who read the litany today, the resonance is unmistakable. So if you really want to know what the founders would say, you might do worse than review a selection of our founding 27 grievances…In 2026 they also feel miserably familiar. — A fitting end to this July 4th and “reading round-up” post is to honor or at least reflect on the value our country’s most recent immigrants add to our lives, how they are pushed into the shadows while they do the work we think is beneath us, how they toil for little pay and no respect, or even acknowledgment. Read this New York Times photo essay to get a flavor of exactly how these recent immigrants, here legally or not, keep our society, particularly its most wealthy areas, humming along: The people paid to wash the large glass windows in the beachfront mansions are also paid to be gone before the arrival of the people who enjoy the clear views of the ocean. The people hired to clean the homes are the bookends to someone else’s summer weekends. In the Comment Section below, please share your ideas about our country’s big birthday bash, any of the articles and videos shared here…or anything else you think is important. Do you think our government is “working for the happiness of the people”? The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Poverty Trap at povertytrap.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Jun 28

    Inequality In Stock Market Investment

    Welcome to The Poverty Trap, a newsletter and podcast for people who are fed up with the inequality baked into America’s system and want to individually and collectively make change. Thinking about subscribing? Here’s what one paid subscriber recently had to say about The Poverty Trap: “You do great work, Joan. I don’t always get to read your newsletter, but when I do, I leave more informed and more compassionate…” Amy B. One Big Issue: Investment in the stock market is skewed heavily toward the wealthy and white. The most recent statistics as of April 2026 show that 58% of U.S. adults own stock (down from 62% in 2025), but the top 10% of Americans by net worth own 87% of that stock, while the bottom 50% of Americans by net worth own only 1% of stock. Structuring the same data in more stark terms, the top 1% of Americans by net worth own more stock than the bottom 90% of Americans, combined. Breakdown of stock ownership by race shows another disparity: there is a massive gap between white Americans, who own approximately 87% of stocks, and Black Americans, who are 13% of the U.S. population and own 0.7% of stocks, while Hispanic Americans also own 0.7% of stocks, but make up 18.9% of the U.S. population. This startling analysis from The New School, Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy demonstrates the racial wealth divide well beyond stock market investments, and offers specific changes to our country’s policy choices that could at least partially reverse this inequality. Why It Matters: President Trump’s decision-making for most issues seems to revolve around how the stock market reacts—from tariffs to the war in Iran—the President looks to the response of the market to make major economic and other policy decisions. But how the stock market goes is not necessarily a reflection of how our economy goes. And policy decisions made to help the stock market reach stratospheric heights don’t necessarily benefit the majority of Americans or our country. What might be even worse is that the President himself, his family and administration are heavily invested in the stock market. So is this administration making decisions for the entire country that only benefit the white and wealthy, including him and those closest to him? As the Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman has explained more than once: “The stock market is not the economy”. The basic reasoning, translated by Investopedia in a recent article, is that “the stock market tracks the value and expected future earnings of publicly traded companies, while the economy comprises all U.S. production, consumption, employment, and commerce.” A soaring stock market doesn’t mean the overall economy and the 330 million people who are part of that economy are doing well financially, and vice-versa. But according to a Washington Post article published a couple of weeks ago, President Trump admitted the stock market was his oracle and even guided his foreign policy decisions: “The stock market is more brilliant than anybody there is, including the people on this stage, other than me, of course,” he said, flanked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other top administration officials…. “I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe,” Trump told reporters gathered in the Alpine spa town of Évian-les-Bains, France, after the Group of Seven summit. “If you kept this [the Iran war] going, that could have happened, but all I know is every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ship.” The Post article also reported the president’s own investment in the stock market: In his second term, he has shattered ethical norms for modern presidents by maintaining an active portfolio in the market. His investment accounts made more than 3,600 transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars in the first quarter of 2026, according to an analysis by CBS News. Here is a comprehensive summary of President Trump’s 3,600 stock market trades for the first three months of 2026 published by CBS News: https://www.cbsnews.com/projects/2026/trump-stock-trades/. And a CBS video discussing the issue: Today’s booming stock market, caused mainly by AI investment, is “driving a record share of American wealth…” says Axios in an analysis published earlier this month. A record 33% of the total wealth of the U.S. household sector was in stocks at the end of 2025, according to Federal Reserve data. * That beats the ~30% during the meme stock-and-SPAC mania of 2021. * And tops the ~27% reached in Q1 2000, just as the internet boom peaked. Yet, the report acknowledges the wealth isn’t distributed evenly—not even close: The big picture: This uneven distribution helps explain some of the peculiar features of the current economic and political environment. * For instance, the so-called K-shaped economy, in which GDP growth is increasingly reliant on spending by the wealthy, is likely driven in part by wealth effects of stock market gains for these folks. * In other words, the rich seem to be feeling especially flush and are willing to spend. * Meanwhile, 90% of the population hasn’t benefited from the booming market — even as relatively high inflation shrinks their real disposable income. Again, for the majority of Americans, and especially Black and Hispanic Americans, this “driver of wealth”—the stock market—means next to nothing. I’d love to hear what you think about stock market investment in general—who it benefits and who it doesn’t—and President Trump’s unprecedented stock market trades this year. Just leave your thoughts in the Comment Section below. The Poverty Trap is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Poverty Trap at povertytrap.substack.com/subscribe

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About

A Podcast for those who are fed up with the inequality baked into America's system and want to collectively make change. povertytrap.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Joan DeMartin
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    143
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Joan DeMartin
  • Show Website
    The Poverty Trap