Poverty! What is it Good For?
Absolutely nothing, you might say. Lots of people around the May Day say the same thing. Yet someone looking at the U.S. and other unequal countries might contend it is ‘berry, berry’ good for the rich.
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| Texas Food Lines |
Workers are poor because others aren’t. Extracting super-profits out of low-paid labor is the name of that game. This is a basic fact of the class structure. Nearly all poor people work, so the term ‘poor’ alone is fraught with disdainful implications. Who does this low-paid, hard or dangerous work? If your geographic, ethnic or national caste is at the bottom, that is where most will labor, all the while living under the myth of the meritocracy. Even so-called ‘white’ workers know this. But if they are on the bottom, right-wingers tell them to stand on another’s head as some kind of non-solution solution.
It goes farther than that. The media in the U.S. pretend that only African Americans, native Americans or Latinx are ‘poor’ – but that does not accord with statistics, which show more European-Americans below the poverty line. So this portrayal boosts racism and nationalism, which boosts division, which is very, very good for the rich and the ruling class. And for the ‘white’ poor? Not so much.
Poverty creates street crime, because having almost no property creates street crime. Many street crimes are also ‘businesses’ – they are illegal but they make money. Street crime requires a police force. We know what they do – police the poor. People with good jobs or education, who have benefitted from social or personal wealth, do not need to commit crimes. Even though they still do – white collar ones. Insider trading ones. Cayman Island tax dodge ones. Hand-on-the-keypad ones. Buyer-beware ones. Our capitalist world is full of them, all the way up to the ruling elites.
SOLUTIONS?
The proscribed liberal and conservative ‘solutions’ to poverty are anemic. Police cannot solve poverty, they just shunt it aside with a gun or jail. Teachers cannot solve poverty. Try teaching homeless children or those with chaotic home lives. Charity organizations and churches cannot solve poverty. Even they recognize that. ‘Personal responsibility’ scolding can’t solve poverty. It has no material basis. Social workers cannot solve poverty. Just ask them! The capitalist government cannot solve poverty. The 1960s ‘war on poverty’ ended with a whimper. That is because poverty is endemic to an unequal system. Built-in. Part of the archaic furniture. A dirty secret, intractable, a punishment, just part of ‘nature.’
What about the politicians of the two corporate parties? Certainly Trump did not bring up poverty. Most of his voters were actually in the higher-end of the class structure – farmers, small businessmen, entrepreneurs, self-employed. Did Joe Biden or Kamala Harris, the heroes of the ‘middle class’? No. They spent nearly 100% of the time on the pandemic or “I’m not Trump.” In Biden’s past he did things like supporting the 2005 pro-bank and credit-card bankruptcy bill; backed funding the labor-breaking Americorps; endorsed the failed ‘retraining’ mantra for laid-off workers; approved of ‘faith-based’ efforts in prisons; voted for Clinton’s ‘welfare overhaul’ in the 1990s. And on and on. You see, to these Parties, the proletarian poor don’t vote or have any power, so they can be disregarded. And unions? Unions are praised in the abstract, but almost nothing is done in the concrete. Wonder why many don’t vote…or vote against the hypocrites.
THE BASICS
“Food, clothing and shelter” are 3 simple requirements of the human animal. Hunger is rampant in the U.S., with the pandemic making it worse. Food is a commodity, not a right, in a capitalist system. The profit system’s partial ‘solution’ is cheap, bad food – high in sugar, fat, animal products and salt. This gradually makes people sick with hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and obesity. Hey, but you got two burgers for $6!
Clothing is plentiful because the system produces too much of it. “Fast fashion” and used clothing are two sources, the former toxic, the latter quite reasonable but looked down on. But high quality clothing that lasts or works well with cold or heat is highly priced and out of reach of the poor. Here imperial capital has attempted to solve the problem by exploiting workers and children in the global south – keeping them in labor poverty. Spreading the poverty around!
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| Homeless Encampment in Minneapolis |
Shelter is also a commodity for those who can pay. In cities around the world gentrification and the increase in class inequality has resulted in rising rents and home prices. The slogan of ‘affordable housing’ is just that – a slogan that runs up against builders, landlords and house flippers – i.e. ‘the market.’ ‘Affordable’ becomes actually too expensive, as a builder’s profits come first. Houselessness has increased with the pandemic, but it was always there. Real affordable housing can’t compete with a private market because they are actually opposed concepts. The former actually means price & size controls or public housing, something the real estate industry could not stand.
The patchwork of ‘targeted’ government programs for the ‘undeserving proletarian poor’ – WIC/food stamps, Section 8, welfare, Medicaid, unemployment, disability – don’t solve the long-term problems and sometimes even the immediate term. Many of these are not universal programs or are limited, so they mark their recipients as losers and sponges. This furthers an endless Republican and Libertarian talking point which centrist Democrats agree with. For leftists this is all basic stuff. But for the rest of the U.S.?
Immiseration is increasing in nation after nation. A transitional program of anti-capitalist demands, coupled with the perspective of eventual workers’ power and a subsequent socialism is a roadmap to capital’s failure to provide the basics. Decent food, clothing and shelter are ‘rights’ – not to mention education, health care, peace, a healthy environment, transport and mass democratic power. Poverty will no longer exist after a time. Classes will whither away. Humanity will be freed from the rich parasites that benefit from poverty.
That is why no one holding power in the political system really wants to talk about or end poverty. They know it is built into an unequal class society based on private accumulation. It’s just ‘sad’ collateral damage to them, the equivalent of friendly fire. So be quiet.
Other prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box upper left: “The Lie of Global Prosperity,” “The Case Against Race Reductionism,” “The Lower Depths,” “Famished Road,” “Hillbilly Elegy,” “White Trash,” “Last Train to Zona Verde,” “The Wire,” “Listen Liberal,” “A Minnesota Yankee in King Trump’s Court,” “What is the Matter With the Rural U.S.?” “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” "Nomadland," "How to Kill a City," "Capital City," "Cade's Rebellion."
Red Frog
November 27, 2020
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