Poverty

When I re-posted a graphic about how just a portion of the defense budget could end poverty, a friend asked a very important question:  “How, exactly?  She noted that we’ve been fighting poverty for a long time, without much success. This came right around the time of the 50^th anniversary of the War on Poverty promoted by President Johnson.  It’s been customary in conservative circles to point to the continuation of poverty and welfare dependency as proof that the War on Poverty was an abject failure.  The history of what it did and didn’t do is much more complicated, of course, but I don’t think that those of us who are progressive have done a very good job of promoting strategies that would be more effective.

Poverty, like every other social force, doesn’t have one single cause.  I don’t have the ability or desire to try to make a unified strategy about how to combat it.  But I want to raise some points for us to think about.

First of all, what has helped to reduce poverty in the US? Which means it ended it for some.  Well, Social Security greatly reduced poverty among our elders.  The gains of the labor movement brought higher wages and better working conditions.  Until the ‘80’s, when it became fashionable to demonize “welfare moms”, food stamps and school lunch and breakfast programs greatly reduced hunger in the US (it’s on the rise again).  Advances in health care, particularly when universal, made a big difference (think of the eradication of polio).

In my opinion, welfare and many government and charity programs, including food and shelter provision don’t really reduce poverty primarily because they may increase the amount of money or resources a poor person or poor family or poor community has, they don’t usually increase the amount of economic power that a poor person, family or community has.  They can give space for growth and development, they can keep people and communities alive, but they by themselves don’t build economic power.  And without economic power, or the ability to create it, it’s very hard to move out of poverty.

This is where conservatives and progressives both have something to offer. Economic power has a lot to do with one’s character and utilization of gifts (initiative, desire for education, determination, willingness to sacrifice, a commitment to save and invest).  Economic power also has a lot to do with social forces (access to capital, public investment in sectors of the economy that are developing, breaking barriers to hiring and advancement, access to information).

I’ve worked in building character and personal strength—particularly in young people—in poor communities for almost 30 years, and I see how family and cultural systems can sometimes frustrate that growth.  I’ve also seen how poor neighborhoods and poor families have been systematically red-lined by the private sector and by government.  Why hasn’t the banking industry in the US, for example, not developed a micro-credit and savings program that could design products that would make a difference in poor communities? They have the knowledge and the financial capital to do so.  But the profit margins would be low (you could still make a profit) and so can’t compete on a pure dollar basis with investments in wealthier sectors (let alone investments in derivatives of investments of other investments).

One more thing.  As much as we might think that everyone having the potential to gain economic power, there are forces at play that simply do not want economic power to grow among those who have less.  The powerful almost always feel threatened by others seeking power, and will do anything to resist that (including restricting voting rights).  Look at what has happened in many cities and states since the recovery from the Great Recession began.  Cuts in public workers salaries and pensions, cuts in education.  This at a time of great expansion of wealth in the country. And a continued expansion of our military budget, which is already bigger than the next 10 nations combined (which includes Russia, China, the UK, some pretty big spenders on bombs and warships).

I don’t think this is going to answer my friend’s question.  In fact, I hope not. I do hope that we as a country can get serious about ending poverty.  There is also a whole lot more that could be said about global poverty and what’s needed there—compatible technologies, debt forgiveness, health care, climate change, moving away from economic demands based on export and so on

What do you think?

I started this blog to talk about my passion for justice and beauty.  At the root of most injustice in the world is economic injustice.  And poverty and hunger are the opposite of beauty.

Be justice.  Be beauty.

Patrick