“Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no
habits of working and have nobody around them who works…. They have no habit of
‘I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.” – Newt Gingrich,
Republican candidate for President
Blaming the poor for their poverty is Republican dogma.
Herman Caine, before allegations of sexual harassment and a thirteen-year
affair derailed his presidential campaign, suggested the unemployed in America
shouldn’t blame the Wall Street collapse and the resulting weak economy, saying
“if you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself.” Romney says
the solution to poverty is to stop taxing and regulating businesses. Of course,
common sense and experience tell us that serves to make the rich richer and the
rest of us at risk from greedy or unscrupulous businessmen.
Most of those doing well in our country come from
middle class or wealthy families. The advantage of growing up in a home where
physical needs are met, health care is insured, children have exposure to
books, learning, and travel, etc. is well established.
Nearly 60% of Americans will live below the poverty
line for at least a year between the ages of twenty-five and seventy-five. I
spent my twenties in that category because of my choices: dropping out of
college to work temporary labor jobs as needed. I chose poverty in protest of
the Vietnam War, reasoning that if I did not earn much money, I would not pay
taxes to support it. I remained poor through my twenties as I sought to become self-sufficient
in rural West Virginia and develop as a professional musician. When I decided
to seek work that would offer better pay and job security, I went back to
college, taking advantage of our tax-payer subsidized state college system. It
was the advantage of a middle class upbringing, including public education which
moved me from poverty to the middle class as a teacher.
Most families living in poverty in the U.S. are
single parent families, women and their children. Many young mothers become
pregnant because of the lack of family planning education or services or
because they do not see a possibility of fulfillment except as a mother. Many
fall into poverty after divorce. Forty
percent of African-American and thirty percent of white and Hispanic single
parent families are living below the poverty line. “Working poor” and low-income
working households may constitute nearly 30% of American working families. Does
anyone doubt that the Great Recession, with the loss of millions of jobs and
the foreclosures of millions of homes, has forced millions of Americans into
poverty?
Tone-deaf Republican lawmakers who resist efforts
to extend unemployment compensation, mortgage foreclosure mitigation, and
infrastructure spending to put Americans back to work are fond of claiming that
stimulus spending has not worked. But without it, millions more would be
jobless, homeless, and experiencing poverty through no fault of their own.
To be fair to Gingrich, generational poverty
exists. As a West Virginia teacher, I have many times heard the expression,
“the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” to describe the cycle in which children
of parents who lack education, intelligence, skills, or motivation to work in
other than minimum wage jobs often seem destined for the same fate. They lack
the ability to catch up with peers who entered school with more skills and the support
of better-educated families.
Gingrich suggested students should be paid to
replace school custodians to teach the benefit of a job. He is apparently not
aware of the many students who already work in fast food restaurants to help
support their families and end up dropping out of school because they can’t keep
up both work and school. He must not be aware of successful programs like the
Harlem Children’s Zone, which is transforming lives and ending generational
poverty through cradle to college support of family and community.
During the Great Depression, rampant speculation
crashed Wall Street, broke the banks, and millions upon millions of Americans
lost their jobs and homes, experiencing devastating poverty. Thanks to the
social welfare programs passed in response such as unemployment compensation,
Social Security, food stamps, Medicare, and Medicaid the effects of subsequent recessions
for many poor and middle class families is reduced. And thanks to President Obama
and Democrats who passed the stimulus (ARRA) and rescued the automobile
industry, the economy did not continue its slide into a full depression, and
millions of jobs have been saved or produced. Unfortunately, a modern economy
requires growth in the range of 3% or more to create enough jobs and we are not
there yet. Many economists have called for renewed stimulus spending on
infrastructure, but Republicans refuse to budge on taxes on the wealthy to fund
it. Instead they focus on reducing deficits which has resulted in massive job
loss in the public sector.
I’ve taken the liberty to revise Newt’s words: Really
rich people and politicians who cater to the so-called “job creators” have no
idea what it means to struggle to make a living. So they literally have no concept of how hard
poor and middle class people work to feed their families and pay the rent. They
have no sense of shared sacrifice in hard times or that their fellow Americans
want nothing more than a good job, a decent place to live, and the knowledge
that an illness or downturn in the job market will not send them into poverty.
We can’t let the current crop of Republicans take us
back to the era where each must fend for him or herself. Few people in America
choose to be poor as I once did. Good jobs, good schools, and programs to
intervene to break the cycle of poverty will bring people out of poverty and
into the middle class. Fair taxation will help pay for it. A healthy economy
such as we had under Clinton will generate surpluses to pay off our debt.
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