Turning the War on Poverty into a War on the Poor

http://jaybookman.blog.ajc.com/2015/05/08/turning-the-war-on-poverty-into-a-war-on-the-poor/

Jay Bookman
May 8, 2015

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, writing in the Chicago Tribune, has declared the War on Poverty a failure and is demanding that a new course be set. The approach that he takes to the problem runs parallel to that of much of his party, as the 2016 budget passed by the Republican Congress illustrates.

Bush writes:

“Trouble is, from the War on Poverty to the persistence of liberal big city mayors, the same government programs have been in place for over a half-century — and they have failed. We have spent trillions of dollars in the War on Poverty, and poverty not only persists, it is as intractable as ever. This represents a broken promise. And it feeds the anger of Baltimore.”

The premise of that argument is profoundly silly, and an apt comparison will help explain why: We could just as easily point out that since the end of the Cold War, we have spent some $12 trillion on national defense. Yet despite all that money and all the debt we’ve incurred in spending it, our enemies not only persist, like poverty they are intractable as ever.

Does that mean those defense programs have failed, that we have lost the War on War? By Bush’s logic, apparently so.

Poverty, like national security, is not a problem that can be “solved.” It is an ongoing obligation of a country that likes to think of itself as the most prosperous on the planet, and the growing divide between rich and poor makes it more pressing, not less. Furthermore, the “War on Poverty” is not a failure when tens of millions of Americans have a decent place to live when they would otherwise not have one, when they have food on the table when they would otherwise have gone hungry, when they have heat in the winter when they would otherwise have suffered in the cold.

We certainly should not replace the War on Poverty with a War on the Poor, which is essentially what Bush and others seem to advocate.

Because at one level, poverty is an inescapable function of simple math. At any given moment, the American economy produces X number of decent, good-paying jobs with benefits such as health care. The number of Americans wanting and needing those jobs is X plus Y. The premise of conservative theory on the question seems to be that by cutting government benefits for those in the Y group, we will either improve their moral character or heighten their economic desperation, and either way, that will make more good jobs appear.

It will not. There is no conceivable mechanism by which increased economic desperation among the poor produces an increase in the number of available decent-paying jobs, and it is political alchemy to suggest otherwise.

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In times of rapid change, those with the least education and fewest financial resources are always the most vulnerable and least adaptable. It’s not a matter of character, it’s a matter of fact. To cite just one illustration, some 25 percent of American homes today have no Internet access. Among black households, it’s 34 percent; among households with incomes of $25,000 or less, it’s 51 percent.

If you’re a child raised in such a home, what are your chances of competing in a 21st century economy? Oh, a few will get out. If you’re extraordinarily lucky, gifted and hardworking, you have a chance to overcome those obstacles, although the odds are still long even if you have all three. For many, day-to-day survival is as high as they dare to aim.

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