Who Are the Other Americans Now?

[marmar]

from Dissent:



Who Are the Other Americans Now?
William Kornblum - April 26, 2012


If you are concerned about rising poverty rates in the United States, you are not alone. Surveys of American voters consistently reveal substantial majorities (around 60 percent of respondents) that say rising poverty in this nation is a major concern. Slightly smaller majorities agree that government should intervene on behalf of poor families and children. Renewed Occupy Wall Street demonstrations this spring should keep poverty and inequality in the news cycle. In a Pew research poll released in January 2012 (the most recent polling available on the issue), 66 percent of respondents agreed that there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between the rich and the poor—an increase of 19 percentage points since 2009. Many identify with the 99 percent, and wish to assist those who are experiencing frightening economic insecurity, but do we know what it will take to change the situation?

There is no mystery about the most immediate way to begin reversing the national shame of rising domestic poverty. The answer, however banal it may seem to some readers, is that we need to work as hard as possible to re-elect President Obama. Beyond that, we must turn, in far greater numbers than Tea Party types, to sustained grassroots politics and work to elect as many Democrats as possible to the House and Senate. Demonstrations and occupations are essential for mobilization and raising consciousness about the social costs of inequality and poverty. But the protesters in Wisconsin are showing us that mass rallies and street protests eventually need to generate serious grassroots voter organizing, or what is a political movement in a democracy for?

NOT EVERYONE, of course, sees poverty as a problem. Take the recent assertions of Robert Rector, an “expert” on poverty issues in the United States, insulated in smug comfort at the American Enterprise Institute: “most people whom the government defines as ‘in poverty’ are not actually poor in any ordinary sense of the term. While material hardship does exist in the United States, it is restricted in scope and severity.” Rector and others on the right deny the evident and precipitous race to the bottom that has been going on since the Reagan 1980s. They are always quick to play distracting statistical games to prove that the poor in America are not really counted properly, or that they are not really poor at all.

Rector and his AEI colleagues are especially fond of citing the 2009 U.S. Housing Survey counts showing, for example, that 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning, when in 1970 only 36 percent of the U.S. population enjoyed that “luxury.” And about three-fourths of the poor have a car or truck. Imagine that? “Liberals,” Rector notes, “use the declining relative prices of many amenities to argue that it is no big deal that poor households have air conditioning, computers, and cable TV. They contend that even though most poor families have houses full of modern conveniences, the average poor family still suffers from serious deprivation in basic needs, such as food, nutrition, and housing.” Rector never mentions that poverty rates are highest in the nation’s hottest states (for instance, in Arizona, 15.2 percent, and in Texas, 16.2 percent), where a sizeable chunk of the Republican base are elderly people on fixed incomes who would not be there without air conditioning. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=600

[xchrom]

1. Du rec. Nt

[Warpy]

2. When some sour wingnut tells me about poor people with AC

I point out that the unit is part of whatever place they are renting and not privately owned. Then I point out that the unit lasts forever because poor folks can't afford to use it much, if at all. They're lucky to have fans.

I've been there and poor is poor, no matter what the landlord had to put into the place to make it rentable.

I want to see all these idiot "experts" on poverty exist on minimum wage for a year.

Then maybe they'd be qualified to say a few things.

[Scuba]

4. +1

[pinto]

3. GOTV !