How Do Liberals/Progressives Think About Poverty?

Conservatives see the cure for poverty as relatively simple -- work if you're able, charity from the Church and help from the families. End of story!

Liberals and Progressives recognize that poverty is caused by many factors, and that we can't know how to alleviate it without some understanding and perhaps some experience of poverty, how it works, why it continues, and what poor people truly need.

During graduate school, I was poor, and in retrospect, welcomed the experience to lead me to greater understanding of the situation. What if you were poor? What would be your situation and what could be done to help?

If you are one of the working poor, you may be working two jobs at long hours and at minimum wage. (Read Barbara Ehrenreich's book, Nickle and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America to find out more about the working poor.) You live in a small apartment, in a cheap motel, or sharing a space. The place is dark, not pretty, and you can't afford the new rug or slipcovers or bedspread to make it more appealing. You were on food stamps, but you then got the second job, and clear an extra $150 a month which has disqualified you, but you now have to pay more for food. Meals are simple, repetitive, and boring. Since you can't afford to eat out, you often don't have lunch. Fresh fruits and vegetables are too expensive, so you worry that you aren't eating as many healthy foods as you need. You know you can't afford to get sick.

Your husband was killed in a car accident, which totaled your car which you can't fix. He didn't have insurance -- neither car nor life insurance because neither of you could afford it. You now take the bus from home to first job to second job to home. If no one delays you at work, the bus route adds an extra 65 minutes to your day. If you don't leave work immediately, it adds another 92 minutes to your day.

You are thankful you don't have children, since there's no child care available at any of the jobs, nor could you have afforded health insurance for them, nor for yourself. You and your husband were looking forward to having children, but when you got pregnant, even though you used birth control, you both realized that you couldn't afford a child at this time in your new marriage. Although the Churches told you not to have an abortion, they weren't offering to pay for your rent and your food and your medical expenses, so you chalked it up to hypocrisy and very reluctantly did the only thing you could think of -- had an abortion. You honestly can't figure out how single parents manage.

You are dog-tired when you get home from work, watch a little network television (since you can't afford cable) and then fall asleep. You haven't been to a movie in four years, and the last dinner out was a McDonald's a month ago.

You sometimes wonder what it would be like to be privileged, or to have time for friends. You'd love to go to college, but even with financial help, you couldn't afford it. You wonder if there's a way to better yourself -- since you're trying really hard and it ain't getting better!

You are definitely going to vote this year, even though you haven't figured out how, since you don't expect your employer to let you out of work to vote. If the lines are too long, you're not sure what you'll do about that -- but you are hoping, desperately, that those who talk about helping the poor, creating better health care, raising the minimum wage, and providing some kind of housing assistance, truly mean it, and have the power to get it done. You have not been happy with the Republicans -- obviously, if they truly wanted to help, they could have helped and would have had the votes to over-ride the President's veto. You admire John Edwards who you hear has been working with the poor, and often talks about the Two Americas. You like the fact that Hillary Clinton spent a day as a nurse -- your Republicans friends called it a publicity stunt, but you figure it beats kissing babies and you like the fact she's willing to walk around in someone else's shoes for the day. You like Barack Obama because he seems compassionate and sensitive to the underprivileged. You have little time to read the papers, and don't get cable to watch the debates, but you know enough to have some Hope.

Comments

[Desiderata]

No child is responsible for his or her poverty. Smug and arrogant declarations of a personal responsibity for one's impoverishment may have merit, but in our self-righteous condemnation of the poor we persecute their children.

Lyndon Johnson's War On Poverty was a success in that no child in America went to bed hungry. Reagan turned that achievement on it's head with his undeclared War On The Poor.

We have been out of touch with the soul of our nation ever since.

The wisest rule of life my mother ever passed onto me was never to judge others in need, else God make you walk in their shoes tomorrow.

It is in this life we are punished for our sins, not some afterlife.

[rich1107]

"During graduate school, I was poor"

You may not have had much cash, but you were definitely not "poor." There is a huge difference between choosing to live with little money to better yourself and the circumstances of the young woman you describe.

Also, you make no mention of the only candidate that would have a real impact on your subjects life; Dennis Kucinich. Has the nomination been given to one of the Republican-Lite candidates already?

[babylonandon]

Part two.

Without either of them having full employment he now has custody of his child and has gone from occasionally visiting his girlfreind to staying at my house (without my permission and in violation of their lease) with his kid. I have already heard him scolding the child for what sounded like urinating on the carpet.

Now I'm sure in the liberal world a fascist landbaron like myself should be obligated to allow this sponge and his kid to remain in my house without charge or objection and be thrilled that I can provide them a home to trash.

However, as I rented only to these 2 ladies and am not a public charity institution nor do I enjoy cleaning up after people who I did not enter willingly into contract with, I do not feel obligated to allow this to continue and am going to make the life of the three parties (the younger lady, her boyfreind, and his kid) more difficult by making him and the kid leave.

If she chooses to tether her life to his and remain in her poor irresponsible state that is her problem, and I owe them nothing. I have respect for the older lady who is trying to make her way from extremely humble beginnings but it is stupid choices like the ones the younger has made that keeps people like her in these positions.

My question to you is why I or anyone else should be made to care about or support her situation or her boyfreind's?

Mind you, I have already rented to a couple with an uncontrolled kid who trashed my house once before (I spent weeks and several thousand dollars fixing the damages). I do not choose to make the same mistake again and as I only have one unit I do not fall under Federal rules that say that I have to.

[babylonandon]

Part one
Or maybe the poor are like one of my tenants.

I've got 2 ladies I rented my upper flat to. They came from a tough situation. Their father was an enlisted military who had married a woman from overseas. When they were very young, she was killed in a car accident.

Sometime later, their father remarried to a woman who had another child by him. Then he died of cancer, leaving them in the care of a stepmother whose only interest was in seeing to it that she and her child received his benefits and the spawn of another woman were gone.

As they are the daughters of a US serviceman they have the right to be US citizens (and the oldest was of legal age). She bought them 2 plane tickets to where a relative of their father's lived and gave them pocket money to get there. They've received no other benefits from her fathers service.

The oldest worked several jobs starting off working in grocery stores and worked her way up to an agent in a local financial institution - all without more than a GED. The youngest has generally lived with the older, holding odd jobs from time to time.

As their landlord, I respect the older one's hard work but the younger one has done what causes most woman to remain poor - she hooked herself up with a guy who is less than motivated to be an adult.

[TIME]

How we react to the financial disadvantage of our fellow citizens; is a reflection of our moral values as a society.

How those people became poor should only be of concern when trying to improve their situation, not whether or not we will give immediate financial help.

In the 1930's, we as a people, made a decision on how we were going to help poor Americans. In the 1960's we enlarged those kind of programs.

Those kind of programs helped ease the suffering of millions of our citizens. If conservatives want to call those programs socialism, they should remember, it is part of why we call ourselves the greatest nation on Earth.

Some problems are to big to leave to the charity of capitalists, or trickle down economics. Could faith based groups solve the poverty problems of the 1930's? I doubt it.

The question is: Why are we no longer willing to help the suffering of our fellow citizens and remain the greatest country in the world?

This generation needs to make a hard sacrifice (as every other generation has done before us) to ensure the future health of our country and our people. The sacrifice needed now, is a financial one, not a military one.

We have the money, we don't have the compassion.

[TIME]

I want to add:

The only way a job is the best self help program, is if that job pays enough to live within the current economic situation.

Working poor, should not be an acceptable situation. What else can we ask of people, except that they work to provide for their families?

[slim]

God have mercy on us all.