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From: carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: A statistic on poverty [2]
Message-ID: <251@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 16-Dec-84 00:42:46 EST
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.251
Posted: Sun Dec 16 00:42:46 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Dec-84 08:35:57 EST
Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
Lines: 72
Summary: 

Continuing my dissection of Alien's article:

>[Alien describes how his/her family lived tolerably well under the poverty
>line and without food stamps.]  I always had adequate food, clothing and
>shelter.

You are a great inspiration to the millions who don't.  See future postings
of mine on hunger in America (if I ever get around to writing them).

>However, other people with the same or more money had serious problems, even
>serious malnutrition.  Why?  Usually the main reason was vice.  Cigarettes,
>alcohol, junk food.  In general, poor money management. 

Cigarettes are an addiction, not a vice.  Obviously, the poor should give up
smoking while the affluent continue to puff away.  Alcoholism is a serious
and tragic illness, not a vice.  Eating junk food is the result of poor
education, bombardment with advertising, and various factors which together
can be called the "culture of poverty" (see below), but it is not a vice.
You forgot to mention gambling.  Chronic gambling is an addiction, not a
vice.  Lots of poor people throw away their money on state lotteries.  This
is not a vice; it is seen by them as perhaps the only way to escape their
dreary world.  Don't get me started on lotteries.  Well, I suppose they're
better than playing the numbers rackets.

>I've had some rather enlightening talks with social workers.  One family
>that spent their entire allowance of Food Stamps on soda and potato chips.
>That's all they ate.  The rest of their money went to support their father's
>4 pack a day habit and alcoholism.  

Yes, the familiar and comforting image of the shiftless, irresponsible poor.
Most non-poor Americans simply don't have the faintest idea of what life is
like for most of the poor population.  From Michael Harrington:

"Here is one of the most familiar forms of the vicious cycle of poverty.
The poor get sick more than anyone else in the society.  That is because
they live in slums, jammed together under unhygenic conditions; they have
inadequate diets, and cannot get decent medical care.  When they become
sick, they are sick longer than any other group in the society.  Because
they are sick more often and longer than anyone else, they lose wages and
work, and find it difficult to hold a steady job.  And because of this, they
cannot pay for good housing, for a nutritious diet, for doctors.  At any
given point in the circle, particularly when there is a major illness, their
prospect is to move to an even lower level and to begin the cycle, round and
round, toward even more suffering....

"Poverty in the US is a culture, an institution, a way of life....The family
structure of the poor, for instance, is different from that of the rest of
the society.  There are more homes without a father, there is less marriage,
more early pregnancy and ... markedly different attitudes toward sex.  As a
result of this, to take but one consequence of the fact, hundreds of
thousands, and perhaps millions, of children in the other America never know
stability and `normal' affection.

"Or perhaps the policeman is an even better example.  For the middle class,
the police protect property, give directions, and help old ladies.  For the
urban poor, the police are those who arrest you....The outsider is `cop',
bill collector, investigator (and in the Negro ghetto, most dramatically, he
is `the Man')."

>I could go on, but I won't.

Thanks, I get enough to turn my stomach from such humanitarians as Ed Meese,
our future Attorney General.  Finally, a conciliatory note to conservatives
who found this article as offensive as I intended it to be:  I suggest you
read the essays of George Will, the Thinking Man's Conservative, or listen
to him holding forth on ABC.  George will explain to you, complete with
quotations from Chaucer or somebody, why conservatives should be strong
supporters of the welfare state.  You could also read such books as "The
Other America" and "The New American Poverty" by Harrington or "Blaming the
Victim" and "Equality" by William Ryan if you wish to discuss the problem of
poverty with adults.

Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes