Stumble It!Dec 29 2008
On Poverty
“When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist.”
~Dom Helder Camara, Archbishop of Brazil
Poverty is always blamed on one source by most Americans; the poor. As if being poor is like being dirty; merely bathe and the failing will slough off like mud in the bathwater. In reality, poverty is far, far more complex and has been an essential component of the human experience since the dawn of human civilization. In the book Siddhartha, by Herman Hess, the young Buddha is kept in excruciating luxury - servants who age are replaced by younger look-alikes, sick servants are not allowed near the prince, and every wish is granted to Lord Buddha. Then something extraordinary happens; during a trip outside of his controlled environment, Buddha sees a sick old man dying in the street and thus he is awakened to the frailty of humankind. In that instant, Buddha could have had two reactions; he could have been repulsed by the disgusting image and cursed the old man for beinf dirty, sick, and poor. But instead he had an opposite reaction; he sought out the source of suffering in the world and worked to end it.
The American “middle class” (and to a much, much larger degree, the upper class) are young Buddhas confronted with the ugly truth of their dream existence; poverty both bold and blatant. And the majority of the reactions have been of revusion, repugnance, and blame. And it has always been that way, to one degree or another. Much of American social repugnance for the poor grows out of English anti-poor laws, which are based on the theoretical existence of a so-called “Protestant Work Ethic.” That work ethic is an illusion, a fiction created by those who are successful to explain why they are better than those who are unfortunate, ill-educated, and poorly-treated. Let us look back a little.
Prior to the introduction of coffee, the main beverage for most Europeans was wine or beer of some kind. Drinking water was ludicrous since water-borne pathogens killed people very quickly; cholera, dysintery, and a host of other ailments awaited the drinker of water. Beer (and to a lesser segree, wine) killed harmful bacteria, thus prolonging one’s life expectancy to a whopping 36 or 40 years. The introduction of coffee, however, required the boiling of water which also killed the bacteria and unlike beer or wine,revived the person rather than make them sloppy or drunk. Unfortunately, coffee was an expensive habit to have - a single cup of coffee in the 17th century cost more than a day laborer made in a week. Thus coffee became a drink of the elite and those wishing to put on airs of eliteness (here’s where the middle class comes in).
With this magical elixir of Arab derivation and Turkish design came a change in focus for Protestant middle classers in England; the myth of the Protestant Work Ethic was born and poor houses, creditor jails, and workhouses became the warehouses of cheap labor. Children, women, and men of all ages worked in the mines, the factories, and the assembly lines of the Industrial Revolution, making a tidy profit for the middle class who increasingly were called upon to support the working class; something that had previously been the province of the elite - kings, nobles, and knights. Though the middle class put on airs of generosity and piety, many of them resented the working poor - and still do. There was, and still is, the belief that if one wishes to make their way in the world, one should pull oneself up by their own bootstraps and make it happen. This was (and is) an enormous oversimplification of the process of success and one to which middle class factory owners and mine owners clung to and passed on to their American counterparts.
In the early 19th century, a middle class merchant named Joseph Sill found making a profit in England extremely difficult and so emigrated to America. He was banking on the post War of 1812 boom in the American economy to lift him out of obscurity and to make it in the world as a merchant in his own right. But by 1819, when he arrived in Philadelphia, the boom had become a bust - the “bubble had burst” to borrow a modern anachronism - and he lost almost everything. While living in poverty, he was treated as a criminal, or worse, by the so-called charitable institutions and foundations which had sprung up during the boom times; he was called a loafer and a wastrel, even accused of being a drunkard (though he was a tea-totaler). Joseph Sill caught a lucky break when some money came to him from a long-delayed debt owed and he parlayed that small fortune into a comfortable lifestyle for he and his wife. Sill funneled his money into charitable projects and sat on the boards of several organizations, including the Sons of Saint George (a charity composed of former Englishmen) but bucked the trend of charities by insisting that poverty was not a moral failing, merely the misfortune of those caught in an unforgiving commercial economy. He was increasingly isolated from the various trusts and boards for his views yet never ceased his work.
The majority of Americans are under still under the misapprehension that being poor, especially working poor, is a failing and resent “their” taxes going to support welfare, medicaid, head start, and other social programs. Working poor are still called lazy, shiftless, leeches, and “welfare mamas” to name but a few. The handful of cases wherean individual is able to slip through the cracks of a system, or rig it to their benefit, are held up as prime examples of why the welfare system should be abolished and why it is wasteful.
In reality, the working poor are more industrious, and work morehours per week than an average middle class worker. According to the Department of Labor, a person classified as “working poor” labors for 58 hours a week compared to the average 38.2 hours a middle class family does. Also according to the Internal Revenue Service, the median income of Americansin 2007 was $40,450 a year. Working poor are classified as earning less than $21,200 a year for a 4 person family, according to Health and Human Services, and make up about 17% of all Americans. At the federally-mandated (which is not universal by any means) minimum wage, of $6.22/hour, for a 58 hour work week, a working poor person makes $360.76 a week, or $18,750 a year, $2,450 BELOW the poverty line. By comparison, the top 1% of Americans owns 33.4% of all wealth in the United States. The next 19% own 51% of the wealth.
The question then is how does one improve one’s earning potential? Many Americans respond “education” as if that were a magic bullet - in reality the cost of education, even a 2 year education, is rising at a rate of 2-3x the rate of inflation. Additionally, with a working poor person earning a mere 18,750 a year and working 58 hours a day, when can they take classes. The federal answer in 1996 was the Welfare-to-work program that allowed welfare recipients to attend a 2 year college while receiving benefits, or (in the case of a teaching degree) a 4 year college while receiving benefits. But much of that funding was undone in 2002, leading to severe cuts in education funding.
Other Americans cite starting a business as the key to success; indeed the majority of employers in the United States are small, entrepreneur ventures. But success is not guaranteed; for example 50-61% of restaurants fail within the first three years of opening, according to a study conducted by The Ohio State University; can 60% of restauranteurs be lazy, stupid, or inept? In addition, in order to qualify for a loan, the person has to prove their creditworthiness, which is no mean feat even for a middle class entrepreneur.
The poor in America are no less determined to lift themselves out of poverty than those who “make it” - for every success story, there are hundreds of failures, setbacks, and unfortunate. But how does one go about it? The first, and most important step, is to realize that the process by which a Capitalistic, American ‘free enterprise” system has been treating the problem - i.e. demonizing the poor - does NOT work; after all, if a “conservative” points to the welfare bilker as proof that they system doesn’t work, they should also point to the Bernard Madoffs of Wall Street as proof that Capitalism dosn’t work either.
QED
—————————–Sources———————
Dom Helder Camara “A Spiral of Violence “
Ohio State University “Restaurant Failure Research “
Social Security Administration
Healthline’s “Health Effects of Poverty “
“Who Rules America? ” UCSC’s Sociology Departmental Study
Department of Labor: Minimum Wage Statistics by State
“21 Dumbest Moments in Business, 2008 ” Fortune Magazine
Mark Pendergrast’s Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World Perseus Publishing, 2000
Herman Hess’ Siddhartha Mass Market Paperback, 1981
