A Conversation about Poverty

A while back I had this really wonderful discussion about poverty, politics, culture, and economics. D. got the ball rolling and she had some interesting thoughts. I am also thinking about using my responses as writing samples for my applications to academic programs.

D. WROTE: Hi Caren! Since you are a social worker and a woman, I knew you would be just the person I needed to ask this question of: how certain are you that the cure for poverty is the liberation of women? I have heard Oprah say this for years now (in addition to promoting education for women), and her reasons do make sense. I have also heard Hitchens speak of this, but he is referring more to women in Islamic countries. Do you think this is true of US women? Are we not liberated already??

Anyway, just wondering what your thoughts are since you are working in the field and dealing with all walks of life. Brad and I talked about this subject last night, but since he is a MAN he also thinks like a man. :-) Thank you so much for any insight you can provide.

Caren REPLIED:
Wow, what a great way to start my day! To answer your first question, Yes, I agree with Oprah and Hitchens (on this point) that one of the major factors in curing poverty is the liberation of women. I also think this is an oversimplification of a very manifold approach. I see poverty in our country as a function of despotic capitalism. It is a means of maintaining a cheap workforce for menial labor. As a society we are only as well off as our least affluent members. In general, yes, I think that women are fairly liberated here, but I also think that depends on what you mean by liberated. It is within our lifetime, Dawn, that married women have been able to legally open a bank account on their own, without their husband's signature. Women still make approx 75 cents to every dollar a man makes for the same job. Considering that women are not equally compensated, I would have to say that our liberation is still in process.

There are other factors at play on the stage of curing poverty. Women are by far the largest group of significantly disadvantaged people in our society, but class and the perception of race also play a large roll in access to resources. The two most essential resources in building a strong society being education and health care. Not everyone has equal access to these resources. That is my specific experience as a social worker, I see this ALL THE TIME. I believe liberation means equal access. Unfortunately, equal access means cost-sharing. And we do not live in a very sharing culture. Our roots in "rugged individualism" are revealed in every argument in which the words "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps" are used. As a society we value the ideals of liberation and equality, but we do not invest in the practice. That is why I believe in funding education and health care, as an investment in the success of our society. I will be comfortable saying that women are fully liberated in our country when it's not news that a woman is being nominated to the Supreme Court, and when we get equal pay for equal work, and when we have equal access to the highest ranking positions in commerce and government. And, no, I don't think having Sarah Palin on the ticket as VP qualifies as equal access. That was the worst example of tokenism I've seen in a long time.

Thank you for asking! Also, I may want to post our correspondence on my blog. Would that be OK with you? I can omit your name.


D. WROTE: You bring up a very valid point regarding women’s rights pertaining to monetary compensation and equal pay for equal work. Perhaps I have been connected with the military too long because, of course, the military is probably one of the few employers providing pay based exclusively on rank and not gender. The question begging to be asked is “why are we allowing ourselves to be paid less for the same work?” How can we force change?

I suppose I subscribe to the “rugged individualism” ideals. Yes, “I” did it myself, so why can’t “they?” I think the majority of society has no problem with offering someone a hand up, but a perpetual handout is much harder to swallow. I use my own family as a very anecdotal example: Someone given hundreds of thousands of dollars to live on over the course of their lifetime, never worked a day in their life, never went to school, and spent their days driving around in an expensive car, using drugs, going to the tanning beds, and essentially doing nothing useful for more than 40 years and completely unmotivated. After all, why bother trying to achieve something on your own when daddy’s wallet is perpetually open? I look at countries operating liberal social medicine programs (England and Germany come to mind) and see the enormous tax burden it places on the masses of working people. Yet, and maybe this would not be the case here, both countries have an entire generation of people who draw pension benefits and receive basically free healthcare, while they themselves have never worked a day in their lives. Are Americans better than that? I cannot adequately address funding education, but I thought we already did to some degree?

Are societies with more social programs more successful as a whole? I suppose one would first have to define success. Wow, I would have to spend a considerable amount of time thinking about that one. I like to think helping someone out for a time would make society a better place, but the unknown outcome is pretty unsettling. I don’t think people don’t care about others or are unyieldingly selfish, but I do believe fear of the unknown leaves most people content to simply go about their business. I also believe most people, at least the ones I know, recoil at the idea that our government would oversee this enormous task.

Have you read, by chance, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood? I was able to see the author (Janise Ray) speak at my university. She offered some amazing insight into various pressing social issues. You might also enjoy her because she hails from Georgia.

Care REPLIED: Here is what I think:

In order to end poverty we need to change our frame of reference from us and them, haves and have nots (I'm not giving up what I've worked so hard for, I will work so hard and never have what that person has) to an attitude of partners. We need to become partners in our combined success, and in doing so hold ourselves and others accountable. We are accountable for the country we live in. Becoming more accountable as people will help us feel more empowered so that the "burden" gets transformed into a contribution. I don't actually hope that our country as a whole will do that, but I know that there are a lot of people out there who work for partnerships to create a better quality of life and more opportunity for everyone. When we are a nation of partners we will see an end to poverty and inequity.

"Handouts" versus "support to succeed." Handouts are a complete waste of resources. Absolutely. But in order to learn children need to be well-nourished. Poverty is a self-perpetuating problem: no money, no food, desperation, crime, health problems without treatment, no education, fewer employment opportunities, no money, and so on. A child who is not fed properly will not learn well and will not succeed academically. Interventions that happen early are shown to work. Headstart. WIC programs. But many of our best programs struggle to be more than a series of handouts. Welfare as we know it should be tied to higher education and employment support. It seems to be moving in that direction. Yes, there are people who will take advantage of any system and not pull their own weight, but I'd be willing to bet that, like most human behavior, there is a bell curve with the vast majority of people doing the best they can and showing up with what they've got, which of course varies from person to person.

I think it is a mistake to withhold services that would improve the quality of life of the whole country just to keep a few people from taking advantage. Plus, the same analogy holds true for corporations, the most egregious examples being the bailouts we've seen in the last 4 years. But I'm not arguing against those bailouts as long as the loans are tied to outcomes and is repaid. Whatever happened to those guys in the 80s, Milken and that lot, did they ever repay their bailout?

Also, a lot of where we are now is still tied to our recent history. Through the practice of Red Lining
in real estate Black families were denied the kind of accumulation of wealth that white families benefited from. I think the banks that participated and profited from Red Lining owe a huge debt to people of color who were cheated. Red Lining was outlawed in 1968, but it's practice devastated entire neighborhoods, and the poverty it created can still be seen today.

I agree with you about growing up in the military, I didn't realize until I was 16 that there was so much inequity. One of the ministers at the church on RAF Lakenheath was the 4th female military chaplain in the entire DOD. 4th! in 1980! I'm not sure how any chaplains there were, but I'm sure it was in the 100s if not the 1000s. And I never saw so many racially and religiously mixed marriages per capita as on base at RAFL. But I didn't keep any statistics... ;)

And yes, the question is why do we undervalue ourselves? But look around, traditionally women's work is undervalued throughout our society. Caregiving, home-making, even teaching are all undervalued in their own way as far as social status and compensation is concerned. I read an article recently that pointed out that businesses and corporations, when polled, indicated that women were paid less because they tend to ask for raises less. Does that mean it's the women's fault for not asking? Or does the employer bear some ethical responsibility to pay everyone at equal levels based on productivity and evaluation/audit results? It certainly goes against my sense of fair play that we, as women, are taught to put our needs last from a very early age, and then it's used it against us to avoid paying us what we are worth. (this is why I like accountability so much: an employer who is accountable to the employees wouldn't tolerate that kind of inequity. And indeed, the government I work for, for better or worse, holds itself accountable to some degree and pay scales are equal among like job titles. I am not arguing that the government is the highest arbiter of fairness, it's just an example of an attempt at equity in pay.

As to the question of how to measure the success of a society, there are a couple of well-accepted standards that point to the over-all health and well-being of a country. GDP is one, and the US is the richest country in the world. Infant mortality is another, and the US is one of the poorest countries in the developed nations. The World Health Organization ranked the US 36th out of all the nations in the world for overall health provisions to its citizens. That's 36th, behind nearly every European nation. Another measure of success could be the overall happiness of a country's citizens. I'm not even sure how this is measured, other than by asking people a series of questions about how happy each individual thinks she or he is. There have been some studies on this, which show that Sweden's people consider themselves very happy. But doesn't Sweden have one of the highest suicide rates? Apparently, what makes the people unhappy enough to kill themselves is the darkness of winter, Vit. D deficiency if you will, not the amount of taxes they pay. So, of course, I prefer the health related measures of success.

As to tax burden: Healthcare, education, and nutrition cost money. We all pay one way or another--either through supporting unemployed people, or by footing the bill for sick people, or by housing criminals in jails and prisons. Taking a meta view of our economy, the cost of doing business is pretty much going to be the same whether we pay out of pocket, our employers pay for us, or whether we pay through taxes. We have an opportunity to build a partnership between individual, groups, communities, and governments, to invest in a richer, stronger, healthier, better educated nation. Our practice of providing the basic necessities to people doesn't have to mimic those that operate in other countries (even though they work pretty well in most cases). We can create our own model for success. I want to know why, if we have a government that is by the people for the people, so many folks feel the government can't be accountable to the people? If folks really feel that way, why don't they participate more and get involved? The voter turnout rate in this country is appallingly low. Accountability starts with the individuals exercising their responsibility to participate. I have always thought that rights come with responsibilities.

Food for thought here are two approaches to making national change from a federal initiative:

the Americans with Disabilities Act prohibited discrimination based on physical or mental ability, and thus mandated access to people with disabilities to all public spaces, with few exceptions. There was no funding attached to the program, no taxes. Yet it worked and we now have curb cuts, accessible bathrooms, tweeting intersections, and lots of other amenities that makes the world accessible to all of us, and doesn't hurt able bodied people.

the Medicare Part D program: carefully crafted program for spending federal money on providing medication coverage to people who qualify for Medicare. It was micromanaged to death and comes to us as an overly complicated behemoth that blatantly benefits pharmacorporations. I interpret that as a subsidy for corporations that are already making astronomical profits.

(just as a fun fact, the ADA was signed into law by Bush the 1st, and Part D was signed into law by Bush the 2nd)

OK, I know some of what I've written here has been disjointed, and even unsupportable since I don't have all my sources sited, but to my knowledge it's all true.

Did you see this video when I linked it on my FB page? It's got some great information on a global scale. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/hans_rosling_reveals_new_insights_on_poverty.html

Oh, I almost forgot, about Christopher Hitchens, I haven't actually spent a lot of time listening to him or reading anything he's written, so I don't have much of an opinion either way. For some reason he hasn't made much of an impression on me. That in itself is a mystery. I think I've heard him on NPR, but it's such a foggy memory. Of course I'll go look him up now.

D. WROTE: I did, however, want to tell you YES, YES, YES---what you say makes perfect sense! Some of what you mentioned (i.e., WIC, Head Start, etc.) has been shown to work wonderfully and are indeed fantastic programs. We need to start with the children. No child anywhere, but especially in America, should go hungry. Ever. We have also got to improve our literacy rates. Yes, you are right in that it is about changing the mindset and feeling we are working toward a common good for the whole. I need to read up on Red Lining…I saw an Oprah episode last year where one of her crew went to either Sweden or Denmark to illustrate how their society lives. As you mentioned, they are heavily taxed to fund numerous social programs. I saw that they were amazingly happy. The extent of their happiness was mind boggling! New mothers received something like either 6 months or a year of paid maternity leave and were guaranteed the same job when they returned to work. They felt safe in their communities. Amazing stuff.

Gosh, I wish I felt there was some way to make a difference somewhere. Look where we live, though. The heart of the Bible Belt, where the mindset of the old south is still very much alive and kicking. I regularly hear the dreaded “n” word in conversations, people participate in prayer circles, church services are held 2 days a week or more, you cannot buy alcohol on sacred Sunday, sex stores cannot sell their goods on Sunday, and if you aren’t white, heterosexual, male, and believe in the same God they do you don’t belong. It is SO discouraging. We are closet atheists, so we really don’t fit. We have found a nonreligious group and joined up to meet for lunches, talks on specific subjects, etc., but I am really worried about being discovered. We are just one level above pedophiles in their eyes.