the "poor"

If you haven't already read Robert Rector's excellent Heritage Foundation backgrounder on poverty, please give it a look.  He really nails it.

For most Americans, the word "poverty" suggests destitution: an inability to provide a family with nutritious food, clothing, and reasonable shelter. But only a small number of the 37 million persons classified as "poor" by the Census Bureau fit that description.

In other words, most Americans have no clue what actual poverty is.  Poverty comes with its own language -- starvation, cholera, malaria -- words that aren't used in America today.  Most Americans have never even seen any of the horrors associated with true, abject poverty.  Just remember, when libs refer to "poverty," the word was chosen for specific images they're trying to evoke in your mind.  But the living standard of all but the very poorest Americans is considerably better than that -- better, in fact, than most of the middle class of the world.  Our poor are still rich for human beings.

Today, the expenditures per person of the lowest-income one-fifth (or quintile) of households equal those of the median American household in the early 1970s, after adjusting for inflation.

This is so important!  The poor do not keep getting poorer -- our poor are not just richer than the global middle class, they are even wealthier than our own middle class of only thirty years ago.  Microwave ovens, cell phones, cars with computers, airbags and anti-lock brakes.  Color TV, home video, access to resources like the internet.  These were not just luxuries -- in my own lifetime many of them were science fiction.  Now they are all part of everyday life -- even for our poor.

Think back thirty years, and try to imagine all the things the stupid libs would be describing as "rights," demanding that government guarantee for all.  I'm pretty sure that microwave ovens, cell phones and color TVs were not on the list, but healthcare and higher education probably were. 

Now in 2009, when we're being told how important it is that healthcare and education be given to the poor, I ask: Why they can't buy those things themselves?  If you ask me, the poor have squandered their opportunities to buy these essentials by instead buying microwave ovens, cell phones and TVs.  I think we should demand that they surrender those luxuries until they've secured their own healthcare and education, but lo and behold, suddenly those luxuries have become "rights" as well.

Overall, the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family's essential needs. While this individual's life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.

The fact is that poverty is no longer a material condition of being impoverished.  Today, it is a political condition of simply not being adequately wealthy for the age Americans live in.  And the debate between the left and the right is not about how unwealthy our "poor" need to be; it is about what decade our poor really need to be living in.  As Rector points out, our poor are doing quite well compared to the middle class of the 1970s.  Go just a few decades further back, and our poor are downright rich. 

And all the wealth and luxuries that have become "rights" between any point in the past and now? Those were just shifts in priorities, and the real reason other "rights" have gone unmet.  Do you see someone without healthcare or education?  Because I see someone who has a cell phone, cable, a car, a private apartment -- or who even owns their own home -- instead of buying health insurance or tuition.  Rights are not being deprived; rather, poor choices are being made.

Here's the most important part:

While real material hardship certainly does occur, it is limited in scope and severity.

And my problem with this is the question of how much more we could be doing for the very few who are genuinely needy, if only our social programs weren't clogged up by the not-so-poor who are simply structuring their lives so as to receive a handout.  How much better off could the few truly poor be, if only we weren't wasting our goodwill on our garden variety "politically" poor?

As long as it pays to be poor, people will strive to achieve it.  Don't be so foolish as to think there aren't people carefully arranging their affairs to qualify for welfare they don't need, at the same time rejecting freedom they simply don't use.  This costs us all -- but it costs the poor the most.

That's the John Galt Line.

Comments

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You make some valid points. Unfortunately, though, in many ways the cars, microwaves, cellphones, (but not TVs), have become necessities to work and perform in the world. They are advanced technologies, though so pervasive that they are not costly. These people would only be considered rich if these were luxuries - but they are not.

In terms of education, that is quite subjective and cannot be guaranteed by how much money is involved. For people who can't afford institutionalized education, I think the best way to allow people to succeed is by improving libraries, community educational programs controlled by local people, and the ability to receive a liberal or technical degree-equivalent by passing appropriate testing. If people are poor and can't afford good teachers, allow them to learn by themselves and give them the incentive to do so by supporting scholarship programs and such. Don't give people education for free~allow the poor to develop their own communities to rise-up instead of becoming dependents of the state. In history, many formerly poor people became rich or comfortable without welfare, but rather by making productive choices.

In any case, however, the idea that wealth is a determinant of life-satisfaction and personal ability is a crutch people use to complain, be lazy, do drugs, and hurt other people. This idea, I think, is solidified by access to near-free entertainment on TV, the Internet, and video games. These systems allow people to feel as if they are participating, but in reality are making little if no contribution to the living, breathing world. Along the way, subtle messages about the reality of the world - controlled and produced by powerful individuals - are seeped into their subconscious minds.

I think people would be better off~poor and rich~to get back to the basics of life.