# Poverty activists have been handed a giant crowbar. How to best use it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 4, 2005, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-activists-have-been-handed-a-giant-crowbar-how-to-best-use-it/320073 "2005-09-04T18:18:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2005, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-activists-have-been-handed-a-giant-crowbar-how-to-best-use-it/320073/1 "2005-09-04T18:18:46Z")
Katrina has opened public awareness, in a farily direct fashion, to just how many people are existing by an economic thread. Per the linked story below Katrina has handed poverty activists and social justice types a huge crowbar. Will they use it (stupidly) to smash Bush & Co or use it (intelligently) to pry open tired American moral consciences that were hermetically sealed by the poorly managed federal and state squandering and excesses of poorly manged welfare & related poverty programs in the past. What the best strategy for using this powerful moral lever. Will they likely squander it on Bush bashing? [Why the poor stayed in New Orleans Living paycheck to paycheck made staging a quick evacuation impossible](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9195946/) > [@](#): > > “Me and my wife, we were living paycheck to paycheck, like most everybody else in New Orleans,” Eric Dunbar, 54, said Saturday. > > He was standing on wobbly, thin legs in the bowels of the semi-darkened Louis Armstrong Airport, where he had been delivered with many others after having been plucked by rescuers from a roadway. > > He offered a mini-tutorial in the economic reality of his life. > > “I don’t own a car. Me and my wife, we travel by bus, public transportation. The most money I ever have on me is $400. And that goes to pay the rent. And that $400 is between me and my wife.” Her name is Dorth Dunbar; she was trying to get some rest after days of peril. > > Dunbar estimated his annual income to be about $20,000, which comes from doing graphic design work when he can get it. Before the storm, when he and his wife estimated how much money they needed to flee the city, he was saddened by the reality that he could not come up with anywhere near the several thousand dollars he might need for a rental car and airfare. > > “If I took my wife out to dinner, it was once a month,” he said, sounding as if even those modest good times had come to an abrupt end. “We’d go to Piccadilly’s. Never any movies. Really, it’s a simple life. I go to work, come home, talk to my wife, go to bed, then back to work again. A basic existence.” > > He was rolling two quarters around in his hand, short 50 cents to make a long-distance call to his son. As his eyes began to water, he repeated himself: “Just a basic existence.” ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2005, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-activists-have-been-handed-a-giant-crowbar-how-to-best-use-it/320073/2 "2005-09-04T18:25:12Z")
> [@astro](#): > > Katrina has opened public awareness, in a farily direct fashion, to just how many people are existing by an economic thread. Per the linked story below Katrina has handed poverty activists and social justice types a huge crowbar. Will they use it (stupidly) to smash Bush & Co or use it (intelligently) to pry open tired American moral consciences that were hermetically sealed by the poorly managed federal and state squandering and excesses of poorly manged welfare & related poverty programs in the past. They may have to use it to beat back those who will argue that the condition of the poor in NO is final proof of _intrinsic uselessness_ of government welfare and poverty programs (or of counting on government to save you at all). ---
**Author:** ![want2know](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/50afbb/32.png) [@want2know](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/want2know)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2005, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/poverty-activists-have-been-handed-a-giant-crowbar-how-to-best-use-it/320073/3 "2005-09-04T21:22:48Z")
Or the “poverty pimps” could use said crowbar to open their own “moral consciences” and realize that the cause of welfare families with half a dozen or more kids is truly a lost one. Government welfare programs _are_ a total failure. The problem they need to focus on now is very well articulated in the OP: why is _anyone_ with an honest job living in poverty? Why is _anyone_ who is employed forced to live a substandard existence in inadequate housing? Until the profit-taking of the 80s, I don’t recall ever hearing the term “working poor”. And in recent years, the relentless profiteering of the oil companies and the real-estate interests have placed a decent life out of reach of a large number of hard-working people. I am no fan of Mr. Bush, but this isn’t his fault any more than it is yours or mine. In fact, it is probably \* more\* our fault because we have let the powers that be convince us that the vague threat of terrorism is somehow more threatening to the “American way of life” than the very real economic conditions that exist today. I don’t know what the solution is. I am certainly no proponent of government intervention. I am simply saying that the so-called “activists” need to redirect their energies toward improving the lot of people who are actually _contributing_ to society and the economy rather than those who simply leech off it.