Poverty in the USA

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Before I go into this subject, I want to make it clear that I would much rather live in the USA than in any other country in the world. To be honest, when I visit the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (Hem-hem) I do feel ---briefly--- that I would really love to move there; and I would probably feel the same if were to visit, say, Germany or Holland (though who knows how much they welcome foreign folks over there?) but I would sooner or later feel the urge to return to the Land of the Free and the Home of the Bananas.

I keep meeting wonderful people here. So there's no shortage of them. A person I never knew turns out to be someone wonderful, and we sit together and deplore the state of things. Lovely women mourn the difficulty of finding men with a liberal attitude; all the guys seem to be conservative-leaning. (On the surface the guys are quite reasonable and well-balanced, but there does seem to be dissatisfaction with social welfare programs, spending on education and the arts, impatience with environmental initiatives, and hostility towards women, immigrants and ethnic minorities. All the liberal guys seem to be married. What does that tell you?)

This was brought home to me strongly just this morning when I read about a little 2-year-old Chinese girl being knocked down by two vans in heavy traffic, and lying there bleeding, ignored by all the bystanders. It appears that Good Samaritans have, in the past, found themselves liable after interfering in similar cases. Such things do not happen here in the US very often, but I cannot say whether people are just that much nicer, or whether the laws are that much more strict about hit-and-run accidents. In addition, the enormous population of China has a negative effect on the social responsibility of average citizens, it appears to us from here. The phrase "Life is cheap" seems to take on a whole different meaning ...

However, if you read the websites of organizations that study such things, we learn that poverty in the US is on the rise.  Bread.org, for instance, gives a quite dispassionate but depressing account of the picture of hunger in the US.

The causes of hunger, says Bread.org, is economic. Their lead article describes various technical states in which a household can find itself, one of which is food insecurity, which describes a household that struggles to put food on the table at least once a year. There is no shortage of food; only a shortage of money to buy it.

Poor, uneducated families tend to spend their money on food that does them little good in the long term; very poor folks are often overweight. The effects of low incomes are complex and varied, and in the US, in particular, families seem not to have the cultural resources to cope with poverty. Because of the American lifestyle which focuses on nuclear families, and which minimizes interference from older (and very occasionally, wiser) relatives, poor families have few or no ideas about how to ride out a hard patch. The Village does not help. The Church does not help much, since the intellectual liabilities of belonging to a church are so vast, that most people who might be able to cope with the church's incessant demands for money (by just saying no, for instance) tend to keep away from it. Increasingly, too, the churches have no use for people who are too poor to tithe to them.

Preparing for Affluence

Ok.  We're really far down this particular post, and not at a very good point at which to start a completely new idea, but that's exactly what I want to do.

I suspect that most of the affluent "fiscal conservatives" come from families of so-called "self-made" men. These are working-class men who have worked very, very hard, and made their money. They pay their taxes very resentfully, and the money they make is earmarked for their spouses and their (often quite undeserving) offspring; after all, blood is thicker than water (whatever that means), and why should the Government distribute their hard-earned wealth among the undeserving poor?

In my last post, I addressed the issue of what Education is for; here I'm musing about what Money is for. The Ignorant are convinced that money redistributed by the Government is ill-spent. My money, they say, is for my kids, and my grandchildren, to splurge on whatever they want. I shall give some of my money to my church (which will bankroll missions in Darkest Africa, ostensibly, but which really goes to support the church bureaucracy), and some money to my golf club, and that's all I'm going to do.

But can we really live well while our fellow-citizens, some of them very probably thoroughly lazy people, are on the brink of hunger, our schools are sorely short on equipment, school canteens are serving junk food, the orchestras and bands are going bankrupt, the libraries are shortening their hours, the police force is laying off officers, the city cannot afford to replace burnt-out light fixtures on the streets, and public TV and radio has to beg for funds to keep operating?  We are rapidly becoming a nation of newly-rich surrounded by newly-poor. Neither component of the population knows how to deal with its new circumstances.

Part of what we must learn is how our spending impacts our life in ways that are not obvious. It is difficult to persuade children that the welfare of others is important, that it is satisfying to see our neighbors healthy and comfortable. I really don't know how to do this; it must come from constant exposure to the idea. Public-spiritedness is very rare; and we must study it when we see it: where does it come from?

Arguably, the children of today know neither how to deal with affluence nor with poverty. Our community organizations are inept both with addressing needs here in the US as well as with needs in the world abroad; it is a miracle that anything gets done anywhere.

On July Fourth, 1890, one Albert Pillsbury gave a speech in Boston. Evidently 120 years ago, he felt that public spirit was in the decline, and he deplored it eloquently. A search on Public Spirit brought up a link to his speech, and I give it here: Public Spirit.

Comrade Pillsbury pursues his theme at length. But he says:

If public spirit is declining, the decline must be stayed; if it sleeps, it must be awakened. We need not lose confidence; we must not omit caution, nor forget the maxim, which contains the essence of all political wisdom as applied to popular government, that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. We have fairly entered upon a period which, to the republics of ancient times, has proved to be the period of decline, — a period in which new sources of mischief are opened, different from those to which we have hitherto been exposed, — the period of wealth and luxury, in which the people are liable to be seduced from proper attention to their public interests by the pursuit and enjoyment of riches. It has been said by a political philosopher that while danger to a small republic comes from without, to a great republic it proceeds from within. We have nothing to fear from foreign power; we must turn the eye of vigilance upon ourselves. It was long ago foreseen that one result of the unexampled opportunity for the acquisition of wealth, afforded by our resources and our laws, would be to divert the attention and the energies of the people from public affairs to the pursuit of private gain. We are beginning to realize this result. It is not a source of danger if it is met with a quickened sense of public duty on the part of the whole people. We cannot expect to enjoy the fruits of the prosperity which has made the United States the first nation in the world in aggregate wealth, and in the annual production of wealth, without the difficulties which seem inseparable from such a situation. We are reaping its benefits in every avenue of enterprise and philanthropy; in the march of industrial development, moving at a pace and upon a scale of which history affords no example, and in the boundless liberality of private munificence, manifested in the endowment of schools, libraries, museums, hospitals, and in every form which can increase the comfort and promote the progress of society. These are all proofs of public spirit, but to be effective for the security of popular government public spirit must be carried into the actual work of government by the whole body of the people.