A
major concern of progressives is their supposed interest in the fate of
the poor. They purport to be the champions of the poor. But the truth
is that they need the poor more than the poor need them, in a symbiotic
relationship. As much as 75% of the money allocated to the poor is
consumed by the vast bureaucracies that administer this aid. These
agencies are actually job programs for college graduates who would often
find it difficult to find employment in the private sector. The late William Raspberry
wrote a column dealing with Gina, a 14 year old living in a group home,
who had a caseworker, a psychotherapist and a court appointed lawyer.
These caregivers have to be supported by a number of clerical workers
and supervisors who compose the vast helping bureaucracy. If the "poor"
were suddenly to disappear they would have to redefine their definition of poverty in order to maintain their sinecures. And that is exactly what they have done.
Advocates for the poor do not ordinarily live by what they preach. The President has informed
us that, “We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep
our homes on 72 degrees at all times.” Yet during a recent trip to
China the first family and their staff of about 70 stayed in the
presidential suite at the Westin Chaoyang Hotel, which USA Today
reports costs about $8,400 a night. Clearly the elite live by a
different standard and have for a long time. Communist defector Victor Kravchenko
recalled that during the famine in the Soviet Union, “I found myself
among men who could eat ample and dainty food in full view of starving
people not only with a clear conscience but with a feeling of
righteousness, as if they were performing a duty to history.”
What is poverty? The late political scientist Edward Banfield
provided four degrees of poverty: destitution, which is lack of income
sufficient to assure physical survival and to prevent suffering from
hunger, exposure, or remediable or preventable illness; want, which is
lack of enough income to support essential welfare; hardship, which is
lack of enough to prevent acute persistent discomfort or inconvenience.
To this he added a fourth: relative deprivation which is a lack of
enough income, status, or whatever else may be valued to prevent one
from feeling poor in comparison to others. This last category is
elastic enough to include millionaires who covet the possessions and
power of billionaires. One important category of poverty Banfield does
not mention is psychological or spiritual poverty. This is the most
significant form of poverty in an affluent society when physical needs
are easily met.
Where
do America's "poor" stand in this scale of poverty? In a nation of
over 300 million people there are undoubtedly cases of destitution, want
and hardship. However, these cases appear to be the exception. As
former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman stated,
"More people die in the United States of too much food than of too
little." According to William Bennett, "Poor people in America have a
higher standard of living than middle-class Americans of previous
generations." According to the Heritage Foundation,
80% of poor households have air conditioning. Nearly three-fourths
have a car or truck, and 31% have two or more. Two-thirds of poor
households have cable or satellite TV with 18% having a big screen
television. And .6% of poor households own a Jacuzzi. The Los Angeles Times
reported the California's "poor" spent $69 million using their welfare
payments on at least 14 cruise ships sailing from Miami and other ports,
at Disney World, in Hawaii and Guam and at hotels in Las Vegas. Many
of the "poor" enjoy luxuries that the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt would
envy. Heather MacDonald claimed in 2000 that New York City spent $790 million on the homeless, or $39,500 per person. According to Robert Rector
of the Heritage Foundation the U.S. has spent over $20.7 trillion on
means-tested welfare since the beginning of the War on Poverty.
The
failure to eliminate "poverty" is a result of the faulty assumptions
made about the poor. Many believe that the poor are "just like us"
except for the fact that they do not have money. Even such an astute
observer as George Orwell
believed that providing material support for the poor would improve
their behavior. "Give people a decent house and they will soon learn to
keep it decent. Moreover, with a smart-looking house to live up to,
they improve in self-respect and cleanliness, and their children start
life with better chances." It has become obvious that this is not the
case. The "poor" have a different set of values condemning them to
poverty regardless of how much money is lavished on them. A
professional athlete may make $300 million during his career and yet
retire in poverty. As Banfield has stated, "the capacity of the
radically improvident to waste money is almost unlimited."
This brings us to the last form of poverty: psychological or spiritual poverty. Mother Teresa
commented at Harvard, “America is not a rich country. America is a
desperately spiritually poor country.” This “spiritual” poverty hits
the poor particularly hard. Vladimir Bukovsky
noted this upon his arrival in the United States. Having been born and
raised in “genuine” poverty he noted that he, “detected everywhere the
spirit of ostentatious defiance. The worse it looks, the better,
because society is to blame.” American poor made a concerted effort to
exhibit their poverty. Advocate for the poor complain that there are
"food deserts" in the inner cities. It might also be noted that these
areas suffer from being “hardware store deserts.” Yet there is no
shortage of nail salons and liquor stores in these neighborhoods. The
market determines what people are interested in buying. Tennis shoes,
costing several hundred dollars, a pair are not marketed to middle class
youth. The target market is inner city youth.
Myron Magnet
tells the story of author Amy Tan’s sister and brother-in-law who
arrived from China in 1983. After only four years in America, they
owned a car, three televisions and a house. They also had two children
in college. They accomplished this all with dead-end jobs: he washed
dishes and she helped manage a takeout restaurant. Reporter Jacob A. Riis described the attitude of Jewish immigrants early in the 20th
century: “The poorest Hebrew knows – the poorer he is, the better he
knows it – that knowledge is power, and power as the means of getting on
in the world that has spurned him so long, is what his soul yearns
for. He lets no opportunity slip to obtain it. Day- and night-schools
are crowded with his children, who learn rapidly and with ease. Every
synagogue, every second rear tenement or dark back-yard, has its school
and its school master, with his scourge to intercept those who might
otherwise escape.” According to Magnet, the successes of present day
Asian immigrants “contains an implicit reproach” to the indigenous
poor. Many arrive with little capital and a poor command of the
language, but through hard work become successful.
Innumerable
studies have been conducted on poverty's causes and cures. Perhaps the
assertion of President Franklin Roosevelt says it best: “Continued
dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration
fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in
this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human
spirit.” Certainly progressive academics are aware of the consequences
of their policies. Perhaps that is their ultimate goal.
