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Four Corners: Feb 11

Four Corners screens a documentary on the plight of American families living in car parks, trailer homes and motels.

2013-02-07_1342Monday’s Four Corners features a documentary from France’s Channel 5.

America’s Broken Dreams is directed by Philippe Levasseur who finds families living in car parks, trailer homes and motels.

Lose your job in Australia and there’s a good chance there will be a safety net to catch you. The Newstart allowance, Medicare benefits, along with other programs provide help. But it’s a very different story in the United States.

It may be the wealthiest country in the world but as documentary-maker Philippe Levasseur shows in America’s Broken Dreams, when you lose your job in the US there is very little to protect you. In 2008 the global financial crisis hit the poor first, but now America’s middle class is being devastated.

Larry Dodson, 52, used to manage a large customer service department. But two years ago he lost his job and house. Today he lives in a motel room with his wife and two children and scrapes by on $820 dollars a month, welcoming tourists to Disney World. After he has paid the motel fees, he’s left with just $70 a week for food and other necessities.

Terry used to be a sales manager and enjoyed a good life until he was made redundant. He ended up roaming from motel to motel in Florida in his car and eventually was judged ‘economically incapable’ of raising his six children. The three eldest were placed in foster care.

There are currently 1,800 children growing up in the motels around Disney World. They move from school to school as their parents are forced to find cheaper accommodation.

Amber and Daniel are married but are forced to live on different sides of the United States. Why? It’s the only way they can honestly make enough money to stop themselves and their children going hungry.

Three unique stories, but all have one thing in common: they are America’s new poor, who struggle for work but can barely survive.

Filmmaker Philippe Levasseur takes his camera into car parks, trailer homes and motels across the country as middle class families try to regain the American dream. What he found is simply shocking.

11th February at 8.30pm on ABC1.

3 Responses

  1. Unemployment is 2 years at a stretch, 5 years in total. But during recessions Congress always extends it, as they have every year since 2008 this time.

    Of as in any developed serviced based economy as the labour market gets tougher and people can’t compete for jobs, more and more people apply for disability. The US has nearly 9m people on Federal disability now.

    There are lots of flaws in the US labour market and tax and welfare systems (as there are in most countries) but it does exist and is very large (it is also largely unmeans-tested).

    We have Howard’s family payments which represent a large transfer of money to families.

    But then a single unemployed person trying to survive on 246.30/wk + rent assistance in Sydney with a 10-15 year wait for public or community housing isn’t doing it easy either.

    Youth Allowance and Austudy are lower than Newstart.

  2. I have many chat friends in the US…and believe me…if you do not work and do not have insurance for everything….you are in deep doo doo….not at all like here…unemployment is only for a set, short period there…and never mind going to a doctor…or buying medications….they just do without….
    Canada has a system like ours….

  3. The US has unemployment benefits. They are much higher than Australia’s Newstart basic rate of $246.30/wk rated as one of the lowest rates in the OECD. Usually 80% of your last year’s wages. They only apply to full time workers, or those who contributed enough through the social security tax to qualify for them. The US also has public housing, medicare and medicaid.

    The US safety net isn’t non-existent nor cheap, though is far from perfect.

    Property prices are also much, much lower in most of the US than Australia’s cities.

    The major difference is that the US has had 4 years of severe recession with low demand for labour, and a housing bubble implosion with a huge back log of foreclosures that are tied up in the courts.

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