Red Emma’s

Baltimore is a city of great poverty and great wealth. How do institutions of the state profit from and deepen structural inequality and economic exclusion? Please join Red Emma's in welcoming Daniel L. Hatcher as he addresses these questions and many more.In The Poverty Industry, Daniel L. Hatcher exposes how state governments and their private industry partners have turned America’s most vulnerable populations into sources of revenue. The poverty industry is taking billions in federal aid and other funds from impoverished families, abused and neglected children, and the disabled and elderly poor. As policy experts across the political spectrum debate how to best structure government assistance programs, a massive siphoning of the safety net is occurring behind the scenes.Human service agencies and their contractors take disability and survivor benefits from abused and neglected children, use illusory schemes to siphon Medicaid funds intended for children and the poor into general state coffers, and convert child support payments for foster children and families on public assistance into government revenue. Nursing homes and juvenile detention facilities sedate residents to reduce costs and maximize profit. Local governments purchased nursing homes to take the facilities’ federal aid while the elderly languish with poor care. Counties hire companies to mine the poor for additional funds in modern day debtor’s prisons. And the revenue strategies continue to expand. In the face of these abuses of power, Hatcher offers a road map for reforms to realign the practices of human service agencies with their intended purpose, to prevent the misuse of public taxpayer dollars, and to ensure that government aid truly gets to those in need.