Using People, and Loving Things
Personal charity has never been enough.
I am aware of no example in history where the charitable inclinations of the rich and middle class have been sufficient to completely alleviate the sufferings of the poor on a societal scale. This is partially due to the fact that for most of history, the poor have represented fifty percent or more of the population. It has always required the intervention of the government, or of a semi-governmental agency--such as the Catholic Church--for the poor to come close to having their needs met. As Mr. Berger points out above, the poverty of today is not due to any scarcity--at least not in the developed nations--but rather to a set of selfish priorities imposed upon the world by its wealthiest citizens and most elite corporations.
At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, it has been estimated that fifty-six percent of Americans "could not make ends meet," i.e., lived in poverty (Stanley Lebergott, The American Economy: Income, Wealth and Want, 1976; p. 508). In 1928--the year before the start of the Great Depression--that number had fallen to an estimated fifty percent (derived from Internal Revenue Service data cited in Donald Barlett and James Steele, America: Who Really Pays the Taxes; Simon & Schuster, 1994; pp. 66-7). By 1959--the first year the Bureau of the Census kept official statistics--the poverty rate had dropped to 22.2% in the United States, due to the effects of FDR's New Deal. Fourteen years later, in 1973, President Johnson's "War on Poverty" had reduced that number by one-half, to 11.1 percent. That was only four years after the minimum wage in the United States reached its pinnacle, equivalent to approximately $15.00 per hour, or $31,200 annually, in constant--i.e., equivalent to 2015--dollars. Nineteen-seventy-three is also the year when the wages of the vast majority of Americans began to stagnate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
No one except the monk, the addict, and the mentally ill lives in poverty out of choice. As Carol Graham pointed out in her 15 February 2015 Brookings Institute monograph, "The High Costs of Being Poor in America: Stress, Pain, and Worry," stress is higher among the poor in the U.S. than it is in Latin America. She also points out that a Gallup survey in 2013 showed that the percentage of poor individuals (less than $2000 per month income) who experienced stress, worry, physical pain due to stress, sadness, or anger the day before the survey was taken, was between 5 and 15 higher than it was for middle income (working and middle income) individuals ($2000-$7500 per month income), and between 6 and 21 percent higher than for rich individuals (upper middle class and upper class, more than $7500 per month).
The same Gallup survey also asked participants to rate their subjective physical and mental well-being. On a scale of 1-10, the poor rated their well-being at 6.22. This is almost a percentage point lower than the middle income individuals (7.06) and nearly a percentage point and-a-half below the rich individuals (7.60). A study by Ronald Anderson, states that people living in poverty have twice the incidence of chronic pain and mental distress as those making $75,000 per year or more, and five times the incidence of extreme chronic pain and mental distress. Discrimination also increases stress. Discrimination leads to increased transaction costs when you get a loan or a mortgage. Maternal stress also leads to lower birth weights, which lead to problems later in life for the children of those living in poverty, according to a new study by Zaneta Thayer at the University of Colorado.
Everyone has a difficult time agreeing on what constitutes poverty. According to the Census Bureau, 14.5 percent of Americans lived in poverty in 2013 (Income and Poverty in the United States: 2013; Current Population Reports, P60-249), published September 2014), or roughly one out of every seven Americans. This was the first decrease in the poverty rate since 2006. This is one-half of a percentage point lower than the number for 2012, but it is two percentage points higher than it was in 2007 (p. 12).
The method used, as the Census Bureau admits, may not be the best method for an accurate measure of poverty in this country. According to the above report (p. 4), in the period 2009-11, 31.6 percent of the population had a period of poverty lasting two or more months. Chronic poverty in that time period was uncommon, with only 3.6 percent of the population living in poverty for the entire thirty-six month period. Perhaps we need to reconsider our entire viewpoint of the poor and impoverished in this country. Perhaps we actually need to consider those under the threat of poverty, that percentage of our nation's population who is one or two paychecks from economic disaster; so that one unforeseen circumstance (loss of a job or an increase in rent), or physical disaster (a trip to the ER or an auto accident) causes them to fall into poverty, becomes the measure of our citizens' economic stability, rather than the percentage of individuals who are actually in poverty.
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