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Makers, Takers and $2-a-dayers
One official measure of poverty around the world is surviving on $2 per day or less. It’s a condition many Americans could barely imagine living in. And yet the official data suggests that while politicians insist the U.S. is insulated from such deprivation, a large share of the country is feeling a cold draft from the “Third World.”
(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
A set of new analyses from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), drawing from a study of income data by the University of Michigan's National Poverty Center, shows that for well over a million households, many of them with children, are besieged by hardship of an epic magnitude:
The number of U.S. households living on less than $2 per person per day — which the study terms “extreme poverty” — more than doubled between 1996 and 2011, from 636,000 to 1.46 million, the study finds... The number of children in extremely poor households also doubled, from 1.4 million to 2.8 million.
The World Bank's $2-per-day metric derives from a perennial cliché in humanitarian circles, generally used to describe poor countries in the Global South. But while some question the usefulness of such simplistic measures, the phrase has a unique application in a country that’s historically represented the top of the human development scale. And one reason why the U.S. has so many people stuck at the bottom is because in many communities, this inequality is practically written into the law, with public assistance programs virtually enforcing the extreme poverty line.
Since bipartisan welfare “reform” under the Clinton administration, which precipitated the gutting of programs and erosion of benefit levels over time, the poorest households have become mired in outmoded welfare systems that don’t correspond to real social needs:
Benefits are below half of the poverty line in every state. For a family of three, benefits are only about $2 per person per day in Mississippi and Tennessee and only slightly more than $2 per person per day in Alabama and South Carolina, for example.
It's basic math: Add the recent recession to years of wealth-hoarding by the richest Americans, factor in endemic socioeconomic, racial and gender inequality, and you get polarization that's global in scale and intensity. This is reflected in each individual whose daily standard of living is worth the cost of a Wall Street financier’s morning coffee.
Although the stimulus package enacted by the Obama administration gave a temporary boost to welfare programs, those dollars have dried up. The safety net is further unraveled, according to the CBPP, by a block-grant funding system in which the benefit “does not increase in response to increased need.” Meanwhile, recently proposed budget cuts to federal housing assistance (from both the White House and Congress) would raise the cost of rent for hundreds of thousands of struggling families. In other words, the “ownership society” is effectively disowning its neediest members.
Extreme poverty is acutely painful for already vulnerable demographics. The largest jump in $2-a-day poverty—a stunning three-fold increase since 1996—hit female-headed households. Children in poverty, who face long-term barriers to education and healthcare, and are disproportionately black and Latino (but including many whites as well), tend to carry these hardships into adulthood.
According to CBPP researcher Arloc Sherman, these trends affirm other research suggesting that “it has become harder to access welfare.” Since the reforms of the 1990s, which instituted onerous work requirements and other restrictions, the percentage of very poor families covered by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) has tumbled.
On the other hand, what’s left of the safety net continues to play a critical role in preventing total devastation for many. “I suspect for those who lost jobs in the recession, Unemployment Insurance—thanks in part to [The Recovery Act]—played a big role in keeping people's cash incomes above $2 per person per day,” Sherman told In These Times.
While the presidential hopefuls race to outdo each other in gratuitously denigrating the poor (along with people of color, single women and other time-honored scapegoats), it’s important to keep in mind that these populations don’t fit the standard caricatures of welfare queens and freeloaders.
The CBPP’s research also reveals that the population that uses public assistance--those conservatives demonizeas the “entitlement society”--primarily consists of old folks, people with disabilities--oh, and people with jobs. In fact, “People who are neither elderly nor disabled — and do not live in a working household — received only 9 percent of the benefits.” So in a labor market offering about one slot for every four job-seekers, a good chunk of those “entitlements” go to the very same “hardworking Americans” that right-wing rhetoric contrasts with the supposedly undeserving poor.
The right pushes a delusional narrative of country divided between “makers and takers”—the productive go-getters versus the welfare-hungry sloths. But when you crunch the numbers, it becomes all too clear who the real takers are: the ones who make it harder for everyone else to make a living.
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Show AllI really must commend Chen for pointing this out. She's one of the few writers who seems to actually care more about her subject matter rather than flogging a book she may have authored. I have worked for 20 years in Toronto helping low-income people by publishing a street newspaper called the Outreach, many of these people need the extra cash income for basics like food and toiletries. Though things may be different in the U.S., here in Canada many social worker types are often called "poverty pimps" by the people they purport to serve. I have personally witnessed the corruption of these types on a massive scale. I don't think she is one of them, as evidenced by her writing. All the best to Chen. She's one of the good ones.
"Here in Canada many social worker types are often called "poverty pimps" by the people they purport to serve."
Yes, we use the same term here, at least in Pittsburgh.
But when I travel to Toronto, what I find striking is that it doesn't seem to have any poor people - or at least nothing resembling the dilapidated substandard housing junk-filled vacant lots and abandoned commercial districts in many US urban areas (see Linh Dinh's blog). One sees a few homeless people but mostly they are young anarchist-squatter types, not middle-aged jobless men. My brother lived in Parkdale, which is supposed to be the poor Toronto neighborhood, but it would be well-off by Pittsburgh standards.
Is the poverty more in the suburbs?
Don't overlook rural poverty, in both the US and Canada.
As I read what our "leaders" are doing to us all, I often wonder why they do things that seem totally illogical if they are truly interested in the well being of the country as a whole. I often wonder what is their end game? Well, this week I ran across this little gem over at Counter Punch. This my friends is their end game. This is our "leaders" nirvana. This is where they want to bring the country, and eventually the world. Jakarta was the test platform, now it's being rolled out to Greece, other countries including the US will follow.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/17/take-a-train-in-jakarta/
Hat tip to pjd412 for originally posting this link on CD.
All hail "austerity cuts". Just don't tax their heirs or capital gains. And the most insidious problem of this whole dynamic, they seek constant growth. Unlike trees and mother nature there is no end to their need for greed.
Personally I've been getting by on about 300.00 a month for seven years now. I am lucky my home is paid for, no mortgage or I couldn't have done what I've done for so long. But I haven't kept my head above water. It's hard to pay the utilities, taxes, insurance and fees necessary just to keep earning that 300.00 a month. I find myself in arears everytime my insurance comes due. I am a single individual I can't imagine how someone with children can even survive on less. Everytime I hear the wealthy talk about how they shouldn't pay taxes on inheritance or capital gains I have to gasp at their chutzpah.
Before someone jumps me for being on the internet. My computer was built in 1999, I am on dialup through a free service. Paying that 12.81 every month for telephone service is a real drain since just two years ago it was only 5.81 and I really receive no additional services. I haven't made a long distance call in over 20 years. And Ma Bell is back bigger and more hungry than ever.
I just met the requirements to qualify for social security I'll be making twice what I am today. I hope to get my real estate taxes paid up before I am foreclosed on and maybe afford some basic homeowner's insurance. But I am not betting on being able to afford that insurance. I am going to concentrate on paying my back taxes so my home isn't sold out from under me.
Add to that ever increasing gasoline prices and it's a formula for failure at 10.00 to 20.00 dollars a day. I can't imagine trying to make it on 2.00 a day. I don't celebrate the DOW at 13000. I question where that 13000 is coming from.
How are you keeping up on your RE taxes? The ones on my modest house in a very low house-price area would eat up 75% of $300 a month alone.
Yes, like the U.S., poverty is more and more hidden in the suburbs. Toronto still provides money to homeless people for 1st and last month's rent to get people off the streets and still has a lot of hostels and some social housing. In most cases, people are left with next to nothing after paying our high rents. I believe our social traditions have kept our crime rates low and poverty less obvious. Thanks for the heads up re pimps.
Actually, in the US, there is not much poverty in the suburbs. It is still concentrated in the run-down city neighborhoods - at least in the area I live.
My intended point was that I suspect that Canada has far less real poverty than the US, and that the experience of travelling to Toronto from Pittsburgh, or somewhat worse, Detroit, is becoming comparable to coming to Toronto from the third world.
The homeless programs you describe, your $10.50/hr minimum wage, your public transportation, the cleanness of your city and lakeshore, and of course, healthcare for all, are things we can only dream of down here.
But at least we have Sidney Crosby and you don't.
The US is probably the worst of the developed countries so far as the gulf between the rich and the poor. Most of this can blamed on the Republicans, otherwise known as "The National Social Darwinist Rich Peoples' Party". A more accurate description of what the Republican Party really stands for...
Sad but so true! Tell it sister. Tell it all! Keep writing storires like this.
The real "job creators" are US, not the greedy few. Keep "wealth" in the hands of the many, and the economy will blossom from the bottom up. The reason there are so many boarded up shops is that our money supply is being funneled into fewer and fewer hands. I've never seen Warren Buffet in any of our village shops. Take one of his billions and give $3 to each of the rest of us, and that money will be spent, all of it, in our towns and villages. That's a billion more dollars in the economy, not in the hands of one person. Trickle down economics is a sham, a criminal theft scheme for stealing the wealth of the many, and it will ultimately destroy the ability of the 99% to afford the basic necessities of life.
Bring back welfare. Do not allow people to starve or go without shelter. The more of us with money to spend locally, the more our local economies will thrive, and the more chances there are for the poor to get local jobs. We took such a system, which produced a budget surplus and generalized economic well-being, and turned it on its head. How's that worked for us so far?
S'funny. The first time I heard "makers and takers" I thought they were talking about factory workers, farmers, construction workers - hell, even poets, as "makers" and bankers, corporate directors, stock traders etc. as "takers".
Curse my literal turn of mind. I have fallen into their trap.
Good to hear Michelle make a similar point. Next time you meet someone who considers themselves a "maker", ask them to point at something they made. A plumber might point at a house where he/she fitted heating - they don't need to have smelted the metal for the radiators themselves. A nurse might point at someone they helped cure. A musician might play you a song.
But if the answer is "money", you know you're looking at a taker.