These days one can hardly get to eat one’s sandwiches, cucumber or otherwise, without being bothered by yet another stunningly patronising report on the state of the poor.
Today there’s one from Chicago, bearing the remarkable revelation that older people who cannot read or understand basic health information die younger than people who can. Researchers at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine interviewed 3,260 patients aged 65 or older in order to come up with the extraordinary conclusion that “more education tends to result in better job opportunities, a higher annual income and access to housing, food and health insurance”. Wow. Who would have thought it. All that work, all those interviews, all that precious time. And what a result.
Last week there was a similar example of the blindingly obvious from researchers at the University of Sheffield’s Department of Geography, working for the Rowntree Foundation, who found that inequality in Britain is at a record high, with the gap between the rich and the poor widening over the past 40 years.
On the life of your nearest private equity squillionaire, you would never have guessed it.
Academics always prefer to perform studies they know the outcome of in advance, especially when grant money is on the table.
Students who participated in those studies are soon to graduate with M.O. degrees. (Master of the Obvious)
Actually I know it sounds obvious, but some of the research that has been published in recent years has, by stating the obvious, led to significant changes in world view and Government policy.
The most important one is the recognition that income alone is not a good descriptor of poverty. Two families can have the identical income and live in the same part of the country and have completely different standards of living. This is because the standard of living depends on many things — like how well people are at budgetting (including whether they are spending money on things like alcohol and smoking); whether the family has extraordinary spending needs (eg someone has a chronic illness like asthma and needs to go to the doctor often); and also whether people have assets that underpin their living standards (an elderly person with a paid-off house and all their furniture will have a better standard of living than someone in a flat who is trying to purchase their first chair).
When you think about it, this is obvious, but for many years many Government’s have stressed just redistributing income down to the bottom of the heap as the total solution
How many years since FDR and LBJ declared ‘war on poverty’ with all the big government programs and bureaucracy in place (which have never been de-funded, but rather increase their budgets year after year)? And has this solved poverty?
New Orleans should have been the richest city in the nation with a Democratic governor, mayor, city council, levee board, etc. all employing the Democratic dream programs, yet look at the squallor that was revealed by Katrina!
Study poverty all you want to, but also take a close look at the programs in place from DEMOCRATIC Presidents and congresses, and ask, if they have such a great plan, why haven’t they worked yet?!?
Much of the funding that the state began to do during FDR and that continued during the 1960’s mitigated the suffering of millions of people. It wasn’t perfect, but the plain fact is the government subsidies positively changed the economy. After all, who does the goverment give money to? Private corporations, often. It may be a transfer of wealth to the poor, but often its a way of protecting the property rights of those who have property. Libraryjim might ask what would happen if we didn’t have such programs….
Perhaps we might talk about what would bring more happiness. A few small changes in how we transfer wealth would lift up the happiness of the poor and lower-middle class while not infringing on the happiness of the wealthy. After all $100 for someone poor is worth much more than someone who is wealthy (this is what economists and psychologists say). A simple, clear universal health care plan, and incentives to encourage people to work, incentives to give employers permission for people to have long vacations, might increase happiness much more.
No libraryjim might ask:
Study poverty all you want to, but also take a close look at the programs in place from DEMOCRATIC Presidents and congresses, and ask, if they have such a great plan, why haven’t they worked yet?!?
and
what needs to be done to encourage PRIVATE SECTOR businesses and groups (and especially CHURCHES) to take a more active role, rather than the government.
This is the way it was before the great depression what changed radically WAS the great depression because so many people were out of work. Now that this situation is no longer ‘the norm’ the U.S. needs to explore how it is going to get people off the ‘government teat’ to which they have become acustomed.
Oh, and I am SO against this concept of punishing the rich for being rich and therefore must give away their money. >:(
As a citizen, I hope that the government, as a collection of citizens, might choose to encourage people to care for each other, and not only take care of the property of the wealthy, but that of the poor.