War on the Poor

Great Debates
21

Needs2Know and Edwardina Have made some nice points, and I’d like to add a few of my own. But first, I have also at one time been poor, dirt door, and even spent a couple of weeks in a homeless shelter. Thankfully we coped and got a new home, and Ive exceeded my Moms expetation and income levels.

A lot of misdirection is used to show how much money welfare recipeints get. Medicare for instence, doesn’t directly go the recipient, it’s a card not unlike a blue cross or Kaiser cards whos benefits are ony realized when in use.

Also not everone on welfare gets subsidized housing. If Oakland is typical those wanting to get it will typically spend upwards of 5 years on a waiting list, and then may still not get it, as those programs have strict restricitions on how fast you must find a home, how many people can share a room and landlords willing to go through all the red tape neccesary to accept the payments.

As for food stamps the typical family probably receives an average of $150 dollars.

22

I do it because I am white, straight and male, which means that I am the embodiment of pure evil. I am also Southern, which means I am the vilest of the vile. I want drastic changes in public charity because I chortle with glee at the thought of starving babies and elderly people dying because they can’t afford the medications they need. Nothing gives me greater joy than to inflict suffering on others, and if I can do it to those least able to defend themselves it increases my rapture sevenfold. I love to persecute the poor - and blacks, women, gays, Hispanics, American Indians, and Asians - for no other reason than the pure, sadistic pleasure of mistreating others. You are perfectly right to despise and revile everyone who questions the welfare system, because you are far, far better than we are, far more insightful, far more compassionate, far more intelligent and better informed, far more enlightened. Anyone who disagrees with your views on poverty welfare could not possibly have any honest reason for doing so, so it can only be because we are sick, twisted and evil. Therefore you have no reason whatsover to take us seriously or show us any respect whatsoever.

23

Quick point: after payroll deductions, you might have actually been living on less than this woman.

BTW, what do you think of the fact that for government program that are income dependent, money that you earn reduces or eliminates your benefits. Money that you get for free from the government does not. I always found this obscene.

24

My information comes from having provided job placement assistance to those who were recieving aid for a 2 year period of time, and from still being at the same meetings with all the other folks STILL providing those services for additional 5 years.

As has been pointed out, calculations for annual income that include “medicaid” are inappropriate, since medicaid is a health insurance, not income. Most often aid consisted of monthly food stamp allotments, and sometimes a cash stipend. In addition, there were additional payments to an authorized day care provider ** if ** the person was in an authorized school, work or job seeking setting. after several years of watching such systems operate, I have learned the following :

  1. There are some who abuse the system (duh)
  2. The great majority were on assistance for a period of less than 2 years (most for only a few months), and generally after some catestrophic occurance (death, divorce, severe illness of major bread winner etc.) For those who were on for more than 2 years, there were extenuating circumstances in the family (such as a child who required 24/7 nursing care, severe disability of the major bread earner etc.)
  3. The amount of $$ spent on things like running the programs that helped to get people off welfare exceeded the cost of the cash payments being provided.

So, we get to pound the drums proclaiming success in getting people off welfare, dispite the fact that unemployment in my state is at a 20 year low (ya think that might have a bit more to do with it??? nah!).

Bottom line to me after working with that population was that the great majority were going to get off in short order with or without assistance of work programs. There is no possibility of advancement in welfare, your life style is not likely to improve over time. That’s why most folks get off of it.

To in the meantime, dehumanize the people who find themselves in that situation is not particularly productive, let alone being unkind.

25

I realized that my previous post was completely off of the OP, and I’m sorry. This just illustrates why I don’t often post to the GD forum.

To address the actual subject of the thread, just let me say that I don’t feel that there is a deliberate war on the poor. I think a war usually means consciously attacking an enemy. I think that the worst part about being poor is not the deliberate attacks, although those hurt also, it’s the indifference, and the attitude that you deserve whatever you get if you don’t have the resources to defend against it. There is frequently a moral judgment attached to poverty in this country that I think is habitual and perhaps unjustified.

On the other hand, the attitude of abject victimhood on the part of the poor is just about as habitual and unjustified. I can understand the reasons why so many of the poor seem resigned to it: for example, if you go on AFDC, once you start working again, you will never get a tax return until you have paid back all the money that the government ever gave you. This is just one more contributor to what is already an uphill struggle. There’s so much you don’t learn about managing money when you grow up poor, so it’s hard to make a lasting change in your situation, even if you do get a couple of breaks. I’ve read that only 2% of the population ever transcends the income bracket they were born into. Chances are if you are born below poverty level, you will remain there. It seems to me that there must be reasons other than just a “lack of motivation” influencing these statistics. I think a major problem with poverty in this country is that so many people have unrealistically high expectations. They know they live in the richest country in the world. They see every day on TV how the wealthy live, and they also know how unlikely it is that they will ever reach that level. Some people figure why work that much harder to make such a small difference? Their lives are lived on a totally different scale: a beat up car or a less beat up car, not a beat up car, or, with a bit of hard work, a Mercedes. Why do you think that so many kids from poor neighborhoods get into dealing drugs? Because they don’t know any other way to “be like Mike.” It does take a lot of motivation to struggle to break out of that environment, and then to deal with the emotional hardship of learning a whole new way of life outside of all the guideposts you have ever known, all for the goal of a career that will bring in about $30,000/yr. It’s hard to be that far-sighted when up until that point, as a survival mechanism, you’ve been living moment-to-moment and paycheck-to-paycheck.
Jeff_42 - I have said repeatedly that I am not trying to defend the woman’s actions, just give you some insight into why someone might make a frivolous rather than survival-oriented choice. You’ll get no argument from me that the jacket and shoes were not the best way to spend the money, but as I said before, a person cannot function in survival mode all the time. Maybe she wanted to pretend for a moment she was like other moms that could buy such things for their children. Maybe logic was not her main motivating force at that time. Like the woman in the special Needs2Know watched, she knew that $100 wasn’t going to make that big of a difference, and that the jacket would make her son happy. I just want you to acknowledge that these are people, people whose every waking moment is not consumed with the life-eclipsing goal of getting off welfare. They are also mothers, friends, neighbors, people who want to participate in life, who want to be happy, and like most human beings, can’t deny themselves every scrap of human emotion just because they are poor. Maybe the woman was not very motivated to get off of welfare, or maybe she was a person determined to better her life, who made an exception just that once, to do something that would normally be outside her reach. Either way, who are you to judge her? Why always assume the worst about people?

Like Needs2Know said, maybe you have to have been there to understand, and not resent people spending your hard-earned money on things that their kids don’t actually need. Who are they to dress above their station, anyway? While we’re deciding what they should and should not buy, maybe we should make them sew gold stars on all their inexpensive yet fashionable clothes, so we know which ones are on welfare, and give them plastic cards or coupons for rent and clothing, too, instead of checks, so that they can only purchase the things on the government-approved list. Maybe they should be even further dehumanized, so that they won’t for a moment forget that they are on welfare, and must not do anything that does not further them down the path to non-dependence on your tax dollars.

I don’t think that staying on welfare, having more babies that you can’t support, and bilking the system is right. I think it’s dead wrong. But I find your attitude of self-righteous judgment on a life you have no frame of reference for equally incomprehensible, unsupportable, and upsetting.

26

Ed said

I certainly can see the need to provide some people with temporary help obtaining food clothing and shelter. But I can’t see why limiting the benefit to these necesary items is mean or stigmatizing. If someone can afford cable TV, a cell phone, $150 shoes, etc., I think that they do not need assistance. Why should working folks be buying Nikes for the poor?

27

It is appropriate to include Medicaid in the welfare calculation. While not income per se it is a program that mitigates the living expenses of those who collect on it. It works the same way as a rent reduced (or outright free) apartment would. It may not be a paycheck handed to the person collecting but it certainly eases their burden allowing them to spend what little they do have on something else.

Edwardina
I’m not certain why you are resorting to ad hominem attacks but I think it is unjustified. Never have I suggested dehumanizing the poor or saying they shouldn’t dare rise above their station. I have been quite consistent on the idea of wanting to help those who help themselves. Based on your next to last sentence in your most recent post you seem to find those who abuse the system as disgraceful as I do.

As for saying I have no ‘frame of reference’ and ‘assume the worst of people’ you are wrong. While my family has never been in poverty circumstances neither were we rolling in the dough my whole life. After my mom’s second divorce she was left to support three children with no aid from either previous husband. She had a decent job and managed but a lot of it was done by CLOSELY watching what money was spent on. Getting teased at school for dressing funny? THAT’S ME. It happened to me. Green hand-me-down jeans and purple, white and tan plaid hand-me down pants and some K-Mart Special sneakers I don’t even remember the name of come to mind. I distinctly remember going home and BEGGING and crying to my mom on several occasions for a pair of Nikes or whatever was cool at the time not to mention refusing to get dressed in the morning (I was in 4[sup]th[/sup] grade at the time). Trying as hard as I can to remember back to the fourth grade the only two things that jump into my head is the story I just relayed and falling off my bike. By your theory of parents sometimes just wanting to do nice things my mom must be some evil bitch. Far from it…she WAS doing the nicest thing for us by making sure we were provided for today as well as planning on providing for our FUTURES.

As to assuming the worst in people I don’t need to assume. I tutored the boy for over a year and became fairly familiar with his family. Indeed, I spent more time with him than his own mother did (4 hours a week to his mother’s 30 minutes per day [3.5 hours]…that number came from the social worker running the program). This was a welfare family. Period. The boy was 8 or 9 (did I say 11 before? How old are you in 4[sup]th[/sup] grade?). His mom was 22 and his grandma was 37. His great grandma was around too but I don’t know her age. So far we have 4 generations of a family living on welfare. None of them worked unless the boy was lying to me.

I’m not assuming the worst in my example. I know the story as well as anyone from outside might and I stand by my assertion that the boys Nikes and jacket are too much. The idea that $100 isn’t much good for anything else is crap. That thinking keeps you poor. Save that money, a $100 here, a $100 there and maybe, just maybe, you’ll have enough for one semester at college when your child reaches 18 and maybe, just maybe, he or she can swing a scholarship or find a job to pay their way once in school and continue their education.

Hard? You betcha but I personally think any chance is better than no chance at all and Nikes and Bears jackets doesn’t buy them a chance at anything.

28

jeff, when some one asks me what my annual income is, well, I refuse to tell them 'cause it’s none of their business, but I would never include the $600 per month my employer spends on my health insurance, even tho, having it reduces my potential outlay of expenses annually. (and this year significantly, since the $6000 hospital stay for my son, but I digress) and, frankly, neither does the IRS when calculating my income. why then, when you’re looking at what a “welfare” participant “earns” would you include THEIR health insurance?

29

You may not include your health benefits as part of your pay in your mind but you should. Your employer certainly does. A very loose (don’t cream me on this) rule of thumb holds that on average an employer pays about 20-25% above what they hand you in a payroll check to have you on staff. It certainly means something to them. It also means something to the government when looking at how much money they have to give away this month.

Let’s say you have no money.

I give you a $100 to live for the month.

I give you $100 and a cart of groceries.

Who would you rather be (rhetorical I know)? Who do you suppose is paying for the groceries?

It is a benefit that accrues to you, the recipient. If in that example you want to run around and say you only get $100 a month to live on that’s fine but it’s not the whole story either.

30

Necros wrote:

Luxury! We didn’t have beverages at school. We had to get the water we needed by filtering moisture out of the air or drinking each others’ urine. Over half the class died of dehydration. And every night when we got home after working in the coal mines for 5 cents a year, our fathers would kill us and dance a jig on our graves.

Kids today, though. They don’t believe a word of it.

31

Interesting thread. I have knownpoor people, and I really think that many of them have no idea how to manage money. For example, one thing you see in poor neighborhoods is a “Rent to Own” store. This chain is immensely profitable - yet the people it exploits are poor. This is how it works-they will rent you anything (TV, appliances, furniture, etc.) with NO money down, and 5 years to pay. This means that a poor person pays 3-5 times the price of the item. What these people don’t seem to understand is the time value of money-I guess the grade schools aren’t doing a good job of teaching math.I even argued with a woman once-she was “renting” a TV set-for $25.00/month!In 3 years she paid $900.00 for a set woth $400.00! If she set aside a small sum ($10.00/week) she could buy the set outright in less than a year. So many of these people are trapped in poverty, because they never think out the consequences of renting-at a rate that approaches theft!

32

Jeff_42 - I want to apologize for taking the discussion to a somewhat personal level. Obviously your experience of welfare families and mine are different. My mother never bought me fashionable outfits, either, and I remember the teasing it netted me on more than one occasion with crystal clarity. Considering the probable difference in our ages, it seems that “inexpensive yet fashionable” ensembles vary little through the years. Let me only infer that wearing such an outfit as you described could only be that much worse for me given that I was a girl.

It’s a touchy subject for me. I’ve heard a lot of rank disparagement of welfare families based on people with experiences like yours. Then I think about my own mother crying on Christmas morning because she had nothing for me but a bicycle too big for me to ride that someone had let her buy for $10 and nothing at all for my sister. I obviously don’t have an objective outlook on this subject.

All I wanted to say was, in essence, don’t lump everyone together with the habitual offenders. Not everyone is like them. Some people just need some help, and I for one don’t mind paying out of my hard-earned money for them to have some help. As a matter of fact, I’d rather have the gov’t spend my tax money on undeserving welfare families than some of the things that it does spend the money on, like the infamous $250 toilet seats. I guess maybe lee has a point about the “war on the poor,” because I hear so much more bitching about welfare than I do about blatant overspending in other areas that seem incalculably less justified. I don’t claim to understand the macroeconomics involved in running our country, but certain things seem ridiculous to me: paying farmers not to grow crops, bailing out the savings and loan industry, and loaning money to other countries when we have kids here who are undernourshed and spend their days crammed 40 or more to a classroom. I would rather pay money that goes to feeding, housing and clothing a child, any child, than pay for that other stuff. But that’s just my perspective, and I freely admit where my bias comes from.

33

Jeff - Since I’m the one paying the bills at work, I am acutely aware of the relative value of my benefits. My arguement still stands, however, that it is NEVER considered income to the IRS or anyone else.

For example - this year the relative value of the insurance has been more than 8 grand, due to 6 grand for my son’s illness this spring. last year, the value was about 800. Most years prior to 2 years ago, we “got” about 400 worth of services from the insurance.

Hence, it’s not considered income for anyone else, so don’t lump it in for the welfare participant either, thank you, which was my position.

34

There is no war on the poor, but there is a war on the productive members of society.

35

tracer Bloody Luxury! After working in the coal mines all day, then kill us and bury us. Then they would dig us back up the next morning so they could kill us again!
There is indeed an assault on the non-poor these days. Just listen to Al Gore. THose of us supporting ourselves and paying in the 37% tax bracket are the bad guys…taking money away from those ppor, and refusing to give more money…damn we’re bastards!

36

Let’s make this perfectly clear: There is such a think as working poor. You can work hard and still not earn enough to eat.

37

{private thoughts on}
I can’t believe I’m arguing the anti-poor position.
{private thoughts off}
So lets look at the benefits recieved by the poor in america. We have free food, free health care, free housing, free WIC, and a cash allowance of about $500 a month. Using the cash allowance gives you water, electricity, heat, and a telephone. We also have free public school, free school lunch, free school lunch in the summer, and free college grants. (not to mention loans and scholarships) Also publicly subsidized busses, free libraries, free parks, etc…

Humm, the more I think about it the better this welfare thing sounds. I would love to spend my days planting in my garden, reading books at the library, and walking in the park.

So now I have a few questions.
What more are we supposed to provide?
Why do many of the poor seem angry at the non-poor?

38

This is apples and oranges, Lee. That quote is talking about soldiers who have to support families on very low cash salaries. While it’s true that the military offers benefits above and beyond the salary, such as free housing (if you can survive the waiting list), free medical (assuming that exists at your duty station; CHAMPUS, the dependents’ insurance still has a deductible and co-payments that must be paid by the servicemember), cheaper tuition (for the servicemember only), and so forth.

If there is shame, and I think there is, it belongs on the Defense Department and Congress for refusing to accept that those in uniform have the same rights and financial obligations as everyone else. I’d love to see anyone with a family of four support themselves on $1200 a month.

For those people who think the wife ought to work, that’s not always possible. In some military towns, jobs can be very hard to come by, because military spouses have to compete with local residents for the same jobs. Unless the military spouse has special skills, chances are the employer is going to look at someone who’s from that town. Given a choice, would you hire and train someone who’s likely to leave in a short time, or one who’s not?

Robin

39

Lee, sure you can be working poor and not make enough to eat. You cannot support a family of four making $5.00 an hour. But you sure as hell can support yourself! Why should you be able to support a family on that salary?

In the past I have supported myself for years making less than $10,000 a year. Sure, I had no car, no health insurance, shared housing, no airline travel, listen to the radio instead of buying CDs, all clothes from thrift stores, eating out less than once a month, shopping the sales at the grocery store. But it is easily possible to survive that way. But I couldn’t have supported 4 kids on that salary!

Anyone who works for minumum wage can support themselves without starving if they use a little thought.

And I disagree with those who think that it is the rich who look down on the poor the most. No, it is mostly those who are one rung up the ladder who hate and despise those on welfare. If you are barely making enough on your salary, you can bet you’ll often dislike seeing any of your tax money go to other people.

Should medicare be counted as income? Well, it is definately a benefit. Of course I would rather have $500 in cash rather than $500 in free medical care, but how can you claim that the $500 in medical care isn’t a benefit to the person who gets it? People don’t neccesarily add the value of their benefits package to their income, but they definately consider it. Isn’t it a consideration to keep your current job if they pay for thousands and thousands of dollars of medical care every year?

40

I’ve been poor, too. And I’ve known other kids who were poor.
So, I’ve got a pretty clear grasp of the situation when I say—THE KID STOLE THE SHOES & JACKET.
Did the kid say that his Mom bought the stuff for him? So what? He’s not gonna say --“I stole 'em.” No, he’s gonna lie.

So, the shoes & jacket are a non-issue vis a vi welfare.
For all of this, welfare reduces the ammount of violent crime. Desperate people do desperate things. Welfare takes the edge off this without having to send the cops out to kill people.