A Major Concern of Progressives is Their Supposed Interest in the Fate of the Poor
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A major concern of progressives is their supposed interest in the fate of the poor. They purport to be the champions of the poor. But the truth is that they need the poor more than the poor need them, in a symbiotic relationship. As much as 75% of the money allocated to the poor is consumed by the vast bureaucracies that administer this aid. These agencies are actually job programs for college graduates who would often find it difficult to find employment in the private sector. The late William Raspberry wrote a column dealing with Gina, a 14 year old living in a group home, who had a caseworker, a psychotherapist and a court appointed lawyer. These caregivers have to be supported by a number of clerical workers and supervisors who compose the vast helping bureaucracy. If the “poor” were suddenly to disappear they would have to redefine their definition of poverty in order to maintain their sinecures. And that is exactly what they have done.
Advocates for the poor do not ordinarily live by what they preach. The President has informed us that, “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times.” Yet during a recent trip to China the first family and their staff of about 70 stayed in the presidential suite at the Westin Chaoyang Hotel, which USA Today reports costs about $8,400 a night. Clearly the elite live by a different standard and have for a long time. Communist defector Victor Kravchenko recalled that during the famine in the Soviet Union, “I found myself among men who could eat ample and dainty food in full view of starving people not only with a clear conscience but with a feeling of righteousness, as if they were performing a duty to history.”
What is poverty? The late political scientist Edward Banfield provided four degrees of poverty: destitution, which is lack of income sufficient to assure physical survival and to prevent suffering from hunger, exposure, or remediable or preventable illness; want, which is lack of enough income to support essential welfare; hardship, which is lack of enough to prevent acute persistent discomfort or inconvenience. To this he added a fourth: relative deprivation which is a lack of enough income, status, or whatever else may be valued to prevent one from feeling poor in comparison to others. This last category is elastic enough to include millionaires who covet the possessions and power of billionaires. One important category of poverty Banfield does not mention is psychological or spiritual poverty. This is the most significant form of poverty in an affluent society when physical needs are easily met.
Where do America’s “poor” stand in this scale of poverty? In a nation of over 300 million people there are undoubtedly cases of destitution, want and hardship. However, these cases appear to be the exception. As former Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman stated, “More people die in the United States of too much food than of too little.” According to William Bennett, “Poor people in America have a higher standard of living than middle-class Americans of previous generations.” According to the Heritage Foundation, 80% of poor households have air conditioning. Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31% have two or more. Two-thirds of poor households have cable or satellite TV with 18% having a big screen television. And .6% of poor households own a Jacuzzi. The Los Angeles Times reported the California’s “poor” spent $69 million using their welfare payments on at least 14 cruise ships sailing from Miami and other ports, at Disney World, in Hawaii and Guam and at hotels in Las Vegas. Many of the “poor” enjoy luxuries that the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt would envy. Heather MacDonald claimed in 2000 that New York City spent $790 million on the homeless, or $39,500 per person. According to Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation the U.S. has spent over $20.7 trillion on means-tested welfare since the beginning of the War on Poverty.
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