I knew that I needed to write about this topic once I read an article this week entitled
“Poverty may be highest since 1965“.
The title alone made me angry. Have we come no further in doing away with poverty in this country since 1965? Really??!!
The article explains that all of the gains in the war on poverty since 1965 have been lost. Lost. Will someone explain that to me? Something is really wrong here.
Being a bit of a history buff, my mind quickly flashed back to the reforms that were made after the Great Depression, which promised the American people that never would a financial catastrophe like that happen again. Entitlement programs were put into place to insure that the poor of this country would be taken care of. But did it work? History would say that it didn’t.
By 1965, during the Lyndon Johnson years, the same problem existed as poverty was at an all-time high….again. In an effort to thwart poverty (again), Medicare and Medicaid were enacted, among other entitlement programs, to help and aid the poor. Many have medical insurance who might not have otherwise been covered (yes, health care coverage was already available to all). So, has it helped overall?
I’m not an economist nor hold political office, but I’m a mom who feeds a lot of mouths every day. Still, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to realize that if you can wipe away gains from over 30 years that quickly, the gains themselves may not have been real. Perhaps we need to reconsider the remedy for poverty.
Since the measure of poverty is closely related to (and calculated from) the unemployment rate, I looked up what the unemployment rate was prior to the Great Depression. Remember, this was a time when the economy was primarily “agrarian”, or farm-based. Want to know what the unemployment rate was in 1931?
3.3%.
In other words, since everyone was home on the farm, making their own livings from the land, hardly anyone was unemployed.
How about in 1965, what was the unemployement rate then?
5%.
Today, depending on who you listen to, the unemployment rate is 9.7% (chacha.com) and even higher in some states. (California 11.2%, for example).
In other words, 15.3 million people in the the U.S. are unemployed.
Despite our historical advances, our country is still dealing with a high rate of unemployed and impoverished people. You can blame industrialization, globalization, urbanization, immigration, outsourcing, downsizing and lack of education, but the fact remains that…
poverty cannot be cured with entitlements.
What this article reveals is a perpetual cycle of dependence upon a system that doesn’t work…at least very well.
So, what’s the answer? Wish I knew. I have a few ideas, though. Could sustainable living play a part?
We’ll be talking about them all week. Tune in.
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Wow, great article! I couldn’t agree more, especially with your statement that poverty cannot be cured with entitlements. Initially, entitlements may seem like a good idea, but I believe they are a big factor in causing people to lose their self-respect and sense of independence. Some people certainly need a “hand up”, and I have no problem helping those people. But when it gets to be a “sense of entitlement” and a tendency to just wait for the government to “help”, and when it lasts for years, that’s where I draw the line.
I’m looking forward to what else you have to say about this.
Pat
Can’t wait to read the next in this series. This is such an important topic to talk about. I think our biggest problem has been that we have forgotten how to take care of ourselves. Too many don’t know how to grow anything or build anything, don’t know how to make do or improvise. and most importantly, how to save money. These were all skills that everyone knew up until our parents or grandparents generation. Then we let “modern conveniences” do our work for us and we forgot how to do things ourselves. Looking forward to tomorrow’s post!
I really enjoyed this article. I’m from the UK and although I do think there should be something in place for when people fall on hard times, so that they don’t starve, I think that the ‘nanny state’ we currently have in the U.K. doesn’t help anyone. In some cases there are children in families who are now on the fourth generation of people who are unemployed, yet these families seem to have ‘more’ stuff than I had when growing up, with both parents working. I hope that your politicians in the US are listening to you, because living your whole life on handouts doesn’t contribute anything to your country or the world.
In the 70s, Congress almost passed the Basic Income Guarantee. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee This same idea has come up again and again in our history (first presented by our Founding Fathers), and even has a strong movement behind it today.
It works like this: Much like every Alaskan citizen receives a payment from the sale of the state’s oil, the idea of a guaranteed income is that every American citizen—rich or poor—would receive a minimum monthly payment of, say, $1000 (indexed to COL and inflation), as a DIVIDEND for being an American citizen who holds a share in all of the many public natural resources that make our country great. http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
This minimum citizen dividend would be provided by tax rebate for most people, but as a cash payment for the poorest among us. It would have the effect of eliminating most poverty almost immediately because it would provide just enough to feed and shelter an individual, but not enough to provide any luxuries at all. Only the most mentally downtrodden/addicted among us could abuse it, and they would be “free” to do so. Plus at that point, we are dealing with mental health issues, not poverty per se.
The incentive would still be on working and/or sharing resources, if only to grow one’s own food, but people of all incomes could work less if they wanted and spend more time with family, meaning more work to go around. (I mean how many more meaningless “jobs” can we make manufacturing and selling plastic crap for the landfills just to keep our burgeoning masses “employed?”)
Right wing and left wing alike love this idea because it eliminates humiliating and expensive government bureaucracies like the welfare, social security and food stamps offices, while still giving people both the freedom and power to take minimum care of themselves no matter what tragedy befalls them.
It’s provided to EVERY citizen as a dividend for citizenship, not just to the poor, which would eliminate stigma as well as keep a buffer of money circulating in the economy even during a downturn. The only people who wouldn’t receive this dividend would be people in jail, nursing homes or mental institutions for the duration of their stay, since the state is paying for their care already.
I am very excited by this idea and shocked to learn its actually as old as our country. Most people don’t want to or can’t farm/homestead, and may indeed be called to other things, like medicine, art, education or law. Imagine where we could go as a nation if none of our citizens lived with the stress and fear of foreclosure, eviction, hunger or medical bankruptcy.
If you give people an entitlement because they aren’t making enough money, isn’t the natural result that they begin to feel entitled to money that they do not make?
Great Post. This is such an important topic. I believe we as americans need to start manufacturing things made in the USA. Definitely, strive for a sustainable lifestyle. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. ;o)
How many times have you heard an older person say, “We didn’t even know we were poor”. It think that has a lot to do with it. The entitlement programs have trained so many people to believe that the minute someethign happens to you that someone else should fix your problem for you. Or that you are “entitled” to cable TV, a car, vacations, etc. and if you can’t afford them, someome else should pay your way. But for folks that grew up in an era with NO welfare programs, you just accepted “poor” as your way of life and didn’t even think twice about it.
What I’m saying is, the poverty statistics were probably just as high as they are now, only less reported.