Neglect of the poor results in dismal future

Neglect of the poor results in dismal future

By Solomon Matsas

It seems to be quite fashionable to drop-kick the poor these
days. Politicians are stumbling over each other to offer up the
most severe welfare reform plan, the deepest social funding
cuts.

This is certainly not revolutionary. The poor have been
everyone’s whipping post since the earliest times. In 60 A.D.,
Lucan, the Roman epic poet wrote that, "Poverty is shunned and
persecuted all over the globe." In the 17th century, French
historian Gaston Roupnel reported that in many towns it was
forbidden and officially illegal to feed the poor and that the poor
themselves had been imprisoned.

In late 20th century America, the indefatigable myths and
half-truths about the poor are again trotted out and reinvented:
"The poor make their own fate (sex, babies, dropouts, drugs,
etc.)," or "The homeless just like to be homeless. They like their
freedom and independence."

I hear these sincerely felt banalities all the time. For most of
us, it is harder to identify and analyze the more complex factors
that truly create and perpetuate poverty. Factors that include
generalizations of oppression and exploitation of labor,
educational and vocational inequities, historic and institutional
sexism and racism. These real causes of poverty are frankly painful
to consider, particularly for many resentful and fearful white
males.

As Congress begins the debate to change the current public
assistance system, we must require that our elected representatives
take a serious appraisal of realistic reform options rather than
trivialize the issues of social welfare into a senseless partisan
game of program slashing and election-bound theatrics.

In recent years, the ranks of the poor and working poor have
swelled. The 1990 census revealed a national poverty rate of 13.1
percent. According to the Bureau of Census report titled "Poverty
in the United States: A Statistical Brief," the ’80s saw a dramatic
rise in the numbers of poor in all age groups and most regions. In
1981 and 1982, federal programs that patched together the basic
assistance efforts for low-income families such as Aid to Families
with Dependent Children, Medicaid, Food Stamps and Unemployment
Compensation were drastically and harshly reduced.

Over the past 25 years, welfare payments have been cut in real
dollars by 45 percent. During the same period, most middle-class
income levels, particularly the lower wage categories, have sharply
declined. Currently, nearly 40 million Americans are living below
the official federal poverty line. This number has increased by
almost nine million since 1979. As many as 20 million more
Americans are considered working poor, with household incomes just
marginally above the lowest groups.

Homelessness in many major cities has reached epidemic
proportions. Social agencies in nearly every state report a severe
straining of resources as traditional homeless populations have
multiplied with additions from new groups. Daily new arrivals to
the street include those recently laid-off and ineligible for
benefits, those wiped out by illness, natural disaster or loss,
veterans young and old, the elderly victimized by rent-gauging
landlords and changing neighborhoods.

The mentally ill, many receiving treatment prior to a scourge of
heartless politically motivated state funding cuts, are now left to
fend for themselves, resigned to a shopping-cart existence or a
policeman’s baton. Aggravating this situation and increasing the
numbers of homeless are unbending local building ordinances and
resistant business and homeowner groups which often close ranks to
thwart affordable housing projects and low-cost alternative
dwelling proposals.

Who then, are these poor Americans? How do these larger numbers
break down? Nearly 20 million of our country’s needy are children.
Indeed, more than 70 percent of people receiving federal AFDC money
are children. Another 10 million poor are seniors, most elderly
women existing somehow on the minimum Social Security benefit for
widows. Many millions more poor have been unemployed or destitute
for many years and are not reflected in the national
statistics.

Since World War II, and particularly over the past 15 years,
there has been a persistent and potentially disastrous reluctance
of governments at all levels to honestly address the economic and
social structures sustaining poverty in America. Educational
opportunities in many of our communities remain unequal. Many
property tax-based school districts in economically depressed areas
cannot compete for resources with wealthier areas. Perennial
buck-passing of responsibility from special-interest owned state
officials often leaves the poorer educational districts
shortchanged.

Past and recent conservative administrations, seldom historical
friends of the average worker, have battered and stymied organized
labor at every turn. As a tumultuous global economy continues to
evolve, once-strong domestic industries dwindle and disappear south
or elsewhere, taking away precious middle-class jobs from regional
populations that are now struggling to survive. Labor union
membership has thinned to a fraction of past decades as
efficiency-driven, profit-hungry corporations pursue a relentless
process of downsizing and layoffs, paralyzing many in the remaining
workforce with unprecedented insecurity and disillusionment.

Women and minorities continue to receive substantially fewer
wages and benefits for equivalent labor than their male
counterparts. Affirmative Action policies are again under attack by
cynical critics who would callously assert that the employment
opportunities playing field has somehow been rendered level,
although most recent studies continue to prove that little has
changed regarding illegal job discrimination practices. Fueling
future cycles of generational poverty, unemployment rates among
minorities in many urban areas are four times the national average
and rising.

Certainly a large part of this colossal problem has to do with
our perception of who and what the poor really are. Only when we
manage to see the poor as our neighbors, fellow Americans or even
family will we be emotionally fortified to take on the task. Only
when we begin to face our feelings of impotence can we look clearly
at fiscal policy situations. Only when we stop judging the poor as
a group, and instead challenge ourselves to recognize that poverty
afflicts all manner of people, will we begin to consider how our
country’s vast resources are being used.

It takes little intellectual courage to bash the poor. It takes
even less moral resolve to dismiss the poor as a tiresome and an
inevitable nuisance. But here is the most disturbing truth that I,
for one, cannot get away from: Whatever we as a society end up
doing about future public assistance policy, the bottom-line,
end-of-the-road losers will be children ­ girls and boys,
babies, teens, kids of all ages.

Of our American kids, tens of millions of them are now living
bleak lives below and near the poverty line. Many millions more
could be added as we grind our self-righteous political gears and
self-justify the policy changes that will ultimately shift away
most of the safety net from those who already have the least.

Poor children don’t have six-figure lobbyists in Washington.
Poor children have no voice at all. Collectively they are the
silent tragedy that continues to haunt our nation’s soul. Those
myopic Americans who believe that people just have to be
responsible for their personal behavior and life choices cannot
rationalize away the ongoing, grand scale suffering of the children
of those adults they would criticize.

It is possible that we, as greatness-seeking people, cannot
survive the future if we continue to punish so many of our
country’s children in such a mean, misguided, shortsighted manner.
When you hear in the next weeks and months the so-called
"reformers" tromboning their new ideas about what to do with the
poor, ask yourself: Whose interests are being served here? Who will
suffer?

Matsas is a staff member at UCLA.