Poverty in the United States.
Lately, it has been a hot topic for debate, and rightly so. Over the last several years, more and more Americans have slipped into poverty–the loss of good paying jobs to globalization and the rising costs of health care are probably the two biggest causes of the problem.
Despite the fact that many Americans are struggling, recent actions by Congress and the federal government have actually done little to alleviate the suffering–if anything they are making it worse. An article in the NYT points out that the new federal rules regarding the types of documents that can be used to verify identity when applying for Medicaid–in an attempt to reduce the numbers of illegal immigrants receiving benefits–have actually led to a reduction in the number of citizens who receive benefits.
Is this just more bureaucratic ineptness on the part of the government, or is this a deliberate action designed to make it harder for the poor to receive help–thus reducing Medicaid expenditures?
One thing is for certain–public assistance programs have done nothing to alleviate poverty. The work requirements of TANF have not provided welfare recipients with better lives. Neither have the work requirements and time limits on TANF resulted in any real savings of government dollars on public assistance programs–since most welfare leavers end up working low wage jobs, they end up having to rely on programs like food stamps, medicaid, subsidized housing, and child care subsidies in order to barely scrape by, despite the fact that they work full time.
But if the poor are just as bad–or worse off–than they really were before, who benefits from public assistance programs? It’s not the poor–it’s their employers. Welfare reform provided corporations with a large pool of cheap, easy to exploit labor.
Public assistance programs are not designed to help the poor–they are instead, a means of keeping corporations from paying higher wages by forcing taxpayers to provide wage subsidies to their lowest paid workers. The programs are designed to maximize profits for large employers, such as Wal-mart, while throwing the poor just enough crumbs to prevent them from revolting and demanding better pay and working conditions, while demonizing those who are exploited in order to fatten corporations’ bottom lines.
If we truly wish to reduce poverty in the US, we must ask ourselves why so many people working full time jobs can’t afford to pay their bills and survive on what they earn. It is immoral to pay people who work full time less than it costs to provide a basic standard of living–that’s food, clothing, shelter, transportation, education, and health care.
The answer to the poverty question is to make a living wage the minimum wage. No working American should have to be homeless, go without food, or be without access to basic health care.
How we do it is another question–should we simply raise wages high enough to cover all of an average family’s living costs? Or, should we socialize certain services, such as health care, while guaranteeing that wages keep pace with all other costs? I, for one, don’t think the “how” really matters, except that single payer health care would probably save a lot of money on health care costs. At issue is protecting the human rights of the people, as opposed to catering to the whims of a few rich campaign contributors.
We also need to take control of the immigration issue–by severely penalizing (and jailing) employers who hire illegal immigrants. In addition, attempts to pay certain groups less than others for doing the same job–whether the discrimination is based on gender, race, or immigration status, should be treated as such–and be subject to penalties.
If we want to revitalize our economy, we need to make higher education accessible to everyone–by doing so, we will once again become a world leader when it comes to technological innovation and scientific progress.
And while we’re talking about labor issues, I think we should stop allowing companies who utilize sweatshop labor to import goods into the United States. Not only do we get to take a stand against human rights abuses in other countries, we make it possible for locally based companies to compete with multinational corporations, thus breaking the monopolies they hold on the economy–not to mention the electoral process.
Many people will argue that raising the minimum wage to a living wage will result in a loss of jobs and a downsizing of the economy. What will really happen is that companies will be forced to find innovative ways to compete in this kind of environment–they will have to develop technologies that replace unskilled labor, thus resulting in more technology based jobs.
In addtion, the loss of low wage jobs would not have the negative impact on families that many opponents claim it would. The truth is that many families would actually prefer to have one parent stay home with the kids, at least while they are small. Higher wages would make this possible, and would probably result in a reduction in crime rates, divorce rates, and other familial problems that can be traced back to the stress of having two full time wage earners in a household with small children. This is not to imply that women would be forced to return to being nothing but housewives–it simply means that families would have the ability to make the choice that is best for their own situation. A positive development for many low income women is that fewer of them would be force to stay in abusive relationships because of money concerns (the main reason most domestic violence victims stay with their abusers).
Much of the poverty debate in this country–especially the rhetoric coming from the right, doesn’t really focus on the real issue. It is a shell game, and a propaganda campaign designed to keep people from focusing on the facts of the matter.
