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On Poverty: If It’s Sunday, It’s Myths in the Press
Sunday Washington Post: Spinning Myths about the Poor
James Wilson’s January 29 op-ed in the Washington Post—“Angry about inequality? Don’t blame the rich”—is oh so polite, and oh so offensive, as it peddles myth after myth that essentially add up to this: the poor have no one but themselves to blame, they’re not that poor anyway, and taxing rich people won’t help them.
Volunteer Heather Cranston, of LaRue, Ohio, arranges items on food pantry shelves at a Salvation Army in Marion, Ohio in this file photo. (Bill Sinden/The Marion Star)
Wilson argues that for the poor to rise we must “encourage parental marriage” and “induce them to join the legitimate workforce.” He points out that the poor have things like plumbing and heat, “a telephone, a television set, and a clothes dryer,” and there are fewer malnourished children. He says improving low-income mobility “has nothing to do with taxing the rich” and “the problem facing the poor is not too little money.”
“He’s right, there are fewer malnourished children and less substandard housing—largely because of public policy, which costs money,” says Georgetown University law professor Peter Edelman, who accompanied Senator Robert Kennedy on his poverty tour as an aide and is author of a forthcoming book, So Rich, So Poor. “Food stamps, Medicaid, housing vouchers, energy assistance—they all require resources, and they’ve all faced cuts.”
Wilson says ultimately the plight of the poor is about “too few skills and opportunities to advance themselves.”
“As though the hundreds of billions in high-income tax breaks couldn’t serve some useful purpose in that regard—for education, child care, subsidized jobs, infrastructure investment that would create jobs,” says Debbie Weinstein, executive director of the Coalition on Human Needs.
Here are just a few things made worse by tax breaks for the wealthy: unequal schools segregated by race, class and quality that are funded by property taxes. Hungry kids who aren’t ready to learn and early interventions that would significantly improve brain development are shortchanged. Parents working two or even three jobs who can’t pull their families out of poverty, afford childcare, or take job training or community college courses to better themselves because those don’t count towards meeting their (low-wage) work requirement for welfare benefits.
And what of that push for marriage? It would be great if there were all kinds of marital opportunities out there for happy families, and one idea is to start looking at the cradle to prison pipeline if that’s a serious societal goal. Another important point noted by Half in Ten in its Restoring Shared Prosperity report is that marriage isn’t the only route to the antipoverty affect conservatives tout—it’s two incomes that are key. Only 4 percent of households with more than one earner are in poverty as compared to 24 percent with a single earner. So Wilson might consider calling for funding of summer and year-round programs aimed at connecting disadvantaged youth to education and work experience, or subsidized jobs that were supported by Democratic and Republican governors alike.
Jack Frech, director of the Athens County Department of Job and Family Services in Appalachian Ohio, has been working with poor people for over thirty years.
“The right would have you believe that the poor are pretty well off and their plight is due entirely to their own character flaws,” Frech told me. “They don’t believe that poor parents have any incentive to work hard to make life better for their kids—as if there is a means test for loving your children. But the poor parents I know experience anguish watching their children go without basic necessities, and they suffer greatly from cuts in programs. The depth of their poverty and daily struggle to survive make the inadequately funded education programs available to them unlikely to succeed. On the other hand, the massive tax cuts granted to rich people at the federal and state levels haven’t been invested in jobs here but in offshore investments and new technologies that have increased their profits at the expense of people in this country.”
The dream is not a TV, a dryer and a coffee maker in every home. It’s equal opportunity regardless of race and class. And, Jimmy, that takes money.
GOP (and Dems?) to Poor Kids: Pony Up
In his State of the Union address one year ago, President Obama drew a clear line on deficit reduction when he said, “Let’s make sure that we’re not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens.”
A year later, he and his fellow Democrats have an opportunity to make good on that commitment, because House Republicans passed the “Refundable Child Tax Credit Eligibility Verification Reform Act” that would raise taxes on working poor families in order to (very) partially pay for a payroll tax cut extension. If the GOP has its way—and a House and Senate conference committee is considering it now—only taxpayers filing with a Social Security number would be eligible for refunds under the Child Tax Credit, not people using “individual taxpayer identification numbers (ITINs).”
Republicans are banking on anti-immigrant sentiment to win the day because many people using ITINs are undocumented workers—never mind that they are paying both income and payroll taxes.
Over 80 percent of impacted families are Latino. They earn on average about $21,000 annually, less than the poverty line for a family of four, and stand to lose $1800 on average. That’s money families need to survive, going towards food, rent, heat, clothing, childcare—which is exactly why the tax credit was created in the first place. In fact, it kept 1.3 million children out of poverty in 2009. According to the National Immigration Law Center, 5.5 million children would be affected by the new law, “4 million of whom are US citizens but all of whom are deserving of our support.”
All of this burden would be placed on the backs of what the President calls “our most vulnerable citizens”—children—for at most $24 billion in savings over 10 years. The payroll tax extension is expected to cost $120 billion. Just a .2 percent surtax on millionaires could raise as much dough as the child tax increase—a 1.9 percent surtax on them would generate $155 billion over 10 years. But what fun is that when you can demonize the poor, immigrants, and undocumented workers in one fell swoop?
According to people close to House-Senate negotiations, this bill has a shot at becoming the law of the land. “It’s my sense that the Democratic Leadership is preparing to sell out on the issue to get a compromise,” one senior House staffer told me.
Stand up for kids in poverty, Latinos, immigrants, families and an America that doesn’t pile onto those already bearing the heaviest load—here.
Fun With Mitt
Mitt reveals a problem he has with multi-tasking—“you can choose where to focus: you can focus on the rich, you can focus on the very poor, my focus is on middle-income Americans”—and also a problem with poor people.
Mitt equates concerns about economic inequality and social mobility with preferring China, Russia, Cuba, or North Korea over America.
Mitt’s worst nightmare: the discussion of wealth distribution “in quiet rooms” is suddenly interrupted.
What will Mitt do next? Please offer your predictions in comments below.
Tweet of the Week
“Tough choices” usually means taking money from people who can’t hire enough lobbyists—poor people. @NLCHPhomeless
For further reading and additional resources please see the extended version of this post at The Nation.
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25 Comments so far
Show AllTo paraphrase,
"The nasty republicans are out to hurt us again. Thank goodness the great Obama and Company have a chance to save us!"
More delusional CRAP from "the Nation."
where does it say Obama and Company can save us? I am reporting what they say about a commitment to kids, and saying that they have a chance to prove they mean what they say with regard to this one item--the child tax credit proposal. It might seem like a small thing, but it's not for those millions of families and kids who would be screwed if the Dems sell out on it.
"gregokauf"
Nowhere do you give Obama and the democrats the criticism they deserve.
The criticism of the republicans, while appropriate, even goes so far as to bring in Romney as if he has a significant role in the supposed focus of the article while ignoring the fact that
the "payroll tax cut" is a democrat sponsored attack on Social Security.
Also, twice you reference a quote by Obama - which, based upon his record up to this point, is clearly disingenuous - as if he means what he says.
You are selectively being critical of the republicans while Obama and the democrats DESERVE equal criticism.
You present your opinions as fact and question why others do not accept them? Your credibility is unraveled by attacking the author of the piece who has the courtesy and accountability to respond to postings on his own work. The author supported his points and I had no trouble understanding his point. Do you have any alternatives to suggest or are you simply a conduit for criticism?
My intention is not to say that Obama and the Dems have backed up those words uttered in the SOTU address in 2011, it's basically to say "put your money where your mouth is" on the child tax credit fight. I think I relate clearly that I'm not convinced they will come through since I quote a staffer who says he fears Dem Leadership--which obviously includes the Prez--is prepared to sell out on this. the whole point of my writing about this is because i think it's important to a lot of families and kids and the Dems AREN'T doing what needs to be done to protect their interests. that;'s why there is an action link for people to speak out.
Your Romney argument is inaccurate. His being in this article has NOTHING to do with the child tax credit section, it's because the article is a roundup--This Week in Poverty--of numerous items. One kind of had to include Romney's statement in any roundup. You'll notice that I gave it very little space since so many have covered it, in contrast to the child tax credit issue or the PLA in los angeles.
I used to work for Democrats as a writer. A big reason I got out of that business is because I wanted to be free to criticize whoever the hell I want to criticize when I see reason for it.
I agree with Greg's defense of his article. We on CD can be hairtrigger and overly self-righteous at times. The focus of the article was on the raw deal being administered to the poor, especially children. Trying to retain that focus would be wonderful, in my opinion.
Now, if Greg would only take on Obama's many failures and craven sellouts, such as the mortage crisis that resulted in bankers being awarded trillions while ordinary people were turned out of their homes, well, that would be wonderful, too.
Any chance of that, Greg? Maybe in the next post?
Greg's post "Voluntary Foreclosure Prevention Fails to Deliver" does indeed tackle the mortage problem. But it is soft on Obama and instead points to gee-whiz, inexplicable failures of policy, rather than what most of us feel/know is the real reason-- that Obama simply is in the pockets of the bankers and the financial elites.
An excerpt from the post mentioned above follows.
------------------------------------------------
I asked Congressman Grijalva why--besides pressure from financial services industry lobbyists--there is so much resistance from the Obama administration to forcing principal reductions.
"Many of the people making and crafting these decisions have been intimates and come from the same farm," said Grijalva. "So, I think there is almost a cultural reluctance to mess with the system that they came from. You need a real outside perspective--outside of Wall Street and the financial services industry to really bring some creative ideas."
That's exactly where Kaptur is now turning her attention. She secured a commitment from Secretary Geithner to meet in April with her and some policy experts who are on the ground in Ohio and experiencing the crisis firsthand.
"We're trying to bring Main Street to them," she said. "Sharing the experiences of the key people in our state who are involved in housing and bank regulation. We feel the administration can use Ohio as a checkpoint against which they can measure their programs' effectiveness. For example, HAMP is not having a huge impact in Ohio. We need to share where Ohio is and where we need to be."
To give the author credit where it is due, he does take the president to task for ignoring poverty in his State of the Union address. It's in a post on his blog site, linked to in the article. Worth a look.
if you google my name and foreclosures you will see that I was an early and frequent critic of Obama Administration's foreclosure policy--that it basically asked the banks to do crap voluntarily, and that people were getting kicked out of homes illegally.
Nation reporter George Zornick has been covering the foreclosure beat of late and I think doing a very good job. But yes, I would think it will be included in this column too--especially direct action taken by communities to protect people in their homes.
All that money engineerred through decades of tax breaks to remain with the upper 1% can buy a lot of lies, i.e. Public Relations.
They managed to send the following memes through the media echo chambers:
1. That the poor, Acorn, and unworthy home buyers caused the fiscal crisis of 2007-2008. (A crisis that has been "healed" in precisely the same way that the U.S. Gulf of Mexico was "healed" of the massive oil gorge... through a cover-up. As if PRINTING boatloads of money and giving it to bankers, wouldn't provide the appearance that the economy was once again flush with capital.)
2. That "Illegal aliens" are the cause for the nation's lack of jobs.
3. That "terrorists" are a threat worthy of a multi-TRILLON dollar MIC debacle, that like a blind monster takes off on one pursuit-of-an-imaginary enemy, after another.
4. That student test scores reflect the teachers' methods (rather than the socio-economic factors of the various communities that undergo these tests).
5. That the poor "earned" their lowly status.
This "5th element" is a complete retake on Calvinism. It's a wonderfully convenient religious ethos if the goal is a society dominated by the very rich. What better way to avoid policies and practices that spread benefits around than to explain that the poor created their own mess in the first place?
Pay no attention to all those jobs shipped overseas.
Pay no attention to the Drug War essentially abducting male African American would-be breadwinners from their homes.
Pay no attention to the artificially inflated balloon of housing prices that decimated so many communities when it popped.
Pay no attention to lobbyists who purchased the politicians to rewrite the tax laws to have the VERY well-to-do paying less and less.
And then, through the allegedly moral cloak of Calvinism, extend the inverted reasoning that God rewards those who do well, and therefore "must be" punishing those who go without. And who are they, this uppercrust of modern day Ebeneezer Scrooges, to question the will of the all-mighty?
The more religious our nation has become, the more unequal the financial strata (or class system), added to an uptick on war. Today's wars don't even wait for genuine provocation, the prextexts are fabricated. And today's "leaders" lie without fear of retribution. My God, they've allotted to themselves the right to torture, deny trials, hide evidence, and KILL citizens at will... as if all the protections and Constitutional rights hard-won over centuries, mean nothing.
The whole charade is about as viable as the U.S. dollar...
Criminals are running our nation. And they control the legions of warriors who mistake their vows to protect the nation (and its citizenry) with "Just following orders." The times are full of peril... however, every law of nature reminds that when rot fully sets in, the entity must come apart. Its center can no longer hold.
Watch for falling debris.
Well Said!!!
Well said Sioux Rose. Keep one very important thought in mind: Through American history the greatest liars, the most dangerous spies, and the vilest of traitors have wrapped themselves in the flag and presented themselves as Christians. They hold themselves as decent, patriotic and sincere, while concealing the rotteness within themselves.
All great points Sioux. Imagine how different things would be, with true single payer universal health care, a sane drug policy that only goes after traffickers of the hardest drugs and pharmaceutical kingpins, and foreign policy, that isn't foreign to assertions of "promoting democracy" (assuming that we had democracy to "promote").
Back to reality. Sigh.
Thank you, Hue, Paul R. & Pooka. Consider this, too: that just when things have gotten exceptionally tough for so many, universities have set up "Happiness Studies." Now maybe I've read too much sci-fi, enjoyed too many Twilight Zone episodes during my early years, and possess too vivid an imagination... but, it seems to me that the influence of Big Pharma, added to the inroads it's made into chemically anesthetizing much of the naturally upset population (as seen in the vast expansion of anti-depressant drug disbursal) might be gearing up for Plan B. What I'm getting at is: If happiness becomes officially seen as "the norm" (in the way professional organizations get to rate schools exclusively on their test scores without consideration for any other socio-economic elements factored into the mix), then the doctored-up standards are in place to IMPOSE that norm through forcing "dissidents" to take "happiness" drugs. It's a slightly different take on what Orwell envisioned, where the new form of torture is FORCED happiness, and the most astute, alert, serious, and rebellious (to the awful status quos that legitimizes such painful conditions for so many) persons are kept on the new medications.
"It's all being done for your own good, Frauline."
Anyone else see what I see?
Absolutely I do. Even just considering one very predictable side effect of SSRI's, as it relates to a user's engagement in pressing societal issues, if you will, and that is apathy.
Enduring mental illness myself, and a very brief stint on SSRI's, the apathy for me, was much more terrifying than the fear of losing control of my thoughts. To the extent that realization was stark enough to inspire me to embark instead on learning cognitive skills to observe those thoughts rather than be a victim of them, oddly enough, I owe to my short lived SSRI "trip".
That was my own personal experience, and I'm certain SSRIs have helped others, however, what is very clear, is that SSRIs are vastly overprescribed even with the best intent of those prescribing those drugs.
I'm not sure what the numbers are, relative to any trends of growth in per capita SSRI use, but it doesn't take much imagination, to appreciate what potential societal effects might be in store relative to that society dealing with its problems, or to appreciate, the potential powers imagined by those who intentionally guard only their sobriety, relative to the greater societal haze.
Kaufmann sez: "In his State of the Union address one year ago, President Obama drew a clear line on deficit reduction when he said, 'Let’s make sure that we’re not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens.'"
***
Obama did not "draw a line". He spoke a line. There's a difference.
I actually agree with you. What I'm trying to do is challenge them in moment's like these--in this case, the fight over the child tax credit--where they (Obama/Dems) have the opportunity to back up their rhetoric. maybe I should have made that more clear. I'm not at all convinced they will, which is why I wrote about it and link to an action page where people can speak out on this issue.
Ronald Regan began the Myth of "The Welfare Queen" in 1975. It is the same Myth that Republicans are spouting today about those who are drawing unemployment because they can't find a job. The underlying assumption is that if a Family receives money, then they won't ever support themselves.
So President Clinton and Speaker of the House, Newt Gringrich, got together and time limited money benefits (only 2 years in Indiana), and made it law that if a Mother applies for cash benefits for a child, then she will Never be able to receive cash for any other child that she might have afterwards.
A woman with one child, in Indiana, receives $229 in TANF (money) per month. Try raising a child, (or more) on that!! The Elderly, who receive $694 per month from Social Security, are trying to support their Kids and Grand kids because they are the only ones who have a regular income, small as it is.
What good is having a refrigerator when you can't pay to turn on the Electric??
I think the logic of the rights argument should be refocused on the rich.
The rich are rich due to their character flaws and lack of human empathy.
If they were not such greedy, self absorbed narsicists they probably would have less and there would be more for everyone else, but accumulating wealth far past what you could ever spend becomes an obsession and pathological and overshawdows much of the good we are capable of. So are they rich do to their own human failures?
Have you seen these "hoarder" shows on TV, where family members confront their loved ones because they collect pets, or they won't throw things out? I've often thought that people who collect so much money have the same emotional/mental defect that more traditional hoarders do.
Part of the national myths have a religious overtone, never more true than with Romney and the Mormons. In his Mormon church, if someone's sick--even with the stomach flu or, especially, pregnancy--everyone comes to help. But if someone has financial trouble, only his or her very, very true friends believe in him and will help. All others, who called him "brother" for three hours each Sunday, assume it's partially or all of his fault, and won't help except for tepid ideas or referrals. Even if it is similar to the Great Depression (which it is now), and he tells them he's not getting any sleep and his family will have to split up, which, in reality, could mean the death of that family, no one will help very much. They won't dig into their savings of 10s of thousands of dollars, kept to send each of their five kids on missions to convert the whole world to Mormonism. Usually, during one of the three-hour segments on Sunday, IF the Mormons talk about service projects, they emphasize little ones. On a recent Sunday, a priest in the LDS church (Latter-Day Saints, pretentious? yes), said that members should always be on the lookout for things that take only five minutes and seem easy to you, but can be very important to someone else. For example, bringing cookies or candy to someone in the hospital. This all goes hand-in-hand with the nonrecognition by religions overall, not just Mormonism, of mental "weakness" or differences. Religion, to me, seems very bestial. In it, you can see that humans have evolved from hunters and gatherers who would battle to the death over pieces of land that were necessary to feed their own tribe or family.
As a practicing Mormon for first 45 yrs of life, I concur with your assessment. Also, always seemed that the very affluent held the highest church positions. Just more righteous I guess. Can't say that other local churches are not equally self-absorbed. Seems religion is too often a construct for superficiality. Except, of course, on Fast and Testimony Sunday.
People like Wilson are the courtiers who defend the King. They are the apologists for
slavery in a slave society.
In this last capitalist country the poor are a powerful standing argument against "private enterprise" and "the free market system." There is no credible moral defense of the fantastic inequities and painful tragedies that result from the profit motive. And so the "argument" arises that the victims of capitalism are their own worst enemies. The claim that we ought not to "blame the rich" for the plight of the poor is a lot like saying that we ought not to blame masters for the plight of the slaves. The capitalist ruling class (the so-called one percent) is like every other ruling class in history: it engrosses more of the social product than it is morally entitled to, and it is directly responsible for the human misery that is created therein.
The Republicans are simply vicious when it comes to the poor. The Democrats are also vicious, but slightly less so. Of course, both parties are beholden to the ruling class.
Good article! Backs up putting more "vigilant" in the "sharing" of the IKung which David Erdal and Andrew Whiten wrote of in one thesis about egalitarianism as a Machiavellian status escalator. We need more of that in this world today.
As George Carlin use to say; the rich keep the poor around to make the middle class nervous and uneasy!