Posted on 07/22/2007 11:04:31 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
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.
Another of the Rowntree Foundation’s breathtaking findings was that while the number of people living in extreme poverty had fallen, the number of people below the poverty line had increased. Subtext: which gives everyone lots more work to do.
Then, a few days ago, came an absolute cracker of a report from Glasgow, once second city of the empire, now first city of the poverty industry – or “sick man of Europe” as the cognoscenti affectionately call it. The Glasgow Centre for Population Health and the Medical Research Council came up with a study that, wait for it, found that if Glasgow had the same socioeconomic profile as the rest of the country, a lot of its health problems would disappear.
The researchers’ work, based on 25,000 participants in the Scottish Health Survey, also revealed a mystery worthy of Harry Potter: “Interestingly” – their choice of word in the précis – “some aspects of health and lifestyle are no different in the Glasgow area to elsewhere in Scotland, despite Glasgow’s relatively higher levels of poverty.” You want an even more searing insight? Try this: “Unfavourable health characteristics cluster in poor people living in the most deprived areas, especially among people with low levels of education, middle-aged men, and women out of work or in low-skills occupation.”
Now I am not among the ranks of the foaming-mouthed, who regard the poverty industry as a conspiracy to sting the rich in order to control the poor through welfare dependency. Nor do I believe that those working in social justice do so purely for their own benefit.
Rather, on behalf of the poor, I get frustrated at all the talk and lack of action. What exists does amount to an industry; and I do think it is time to question its rigour, its remit, its direction and perhaps even its whole point. Regardless of the fact that all the studies I have described above are the work of committed, serious people who would like to make the world a better place, I find myself marvelling at their remarkable ability a) to find absolutely nothing enlightening to say and b) to leave the door open to further research.
In other words, whether they like it or not, they are part of one of today’s most successful, sustainable sectors, one that provides thousands of educated people with houses, a life and a pension. All the things, in fact, that their subjects of study lack.
And that’s what offends me most. The poor, that huge, passive reservoir of research fodder, society’s lab mice, cannot escape them. Can only gaze with indifferent eyes at the toiling ants, at their dumb questions, their patronising warmth and their endless boxes to be ticked. All in order to be told what people in their circumstances have known for time immemorial: that they don’t do so well in life as the rich, nor live so long.
Huge numbers of people now work in the field of poverty. There are approximately 100,000 social workers in England, Scotland and Wales. The national UK voluntary sector has a paid workforce of 608,000. God knows how many the NHS, universities and local authorities cumulatively employ in various soft jobs in the same area, but enough for us safely to conclude that the equivalent of a small country’s GDP is spent monitoring and analysing the nation’s deprived.
One of the ironies of much current academic research of poverty is not just its intellectual flabbiness but also its elitism. Last February there was a big UK conference called Transcending Poverties, an event notable for its distinguished speakers. For six serious hours they rehearsed the same dilemmas, agonised over the same inevitabilities. Yet not one single new idea or insight was forthcoming from the day in Glasgow; nor was even one speaker drawn from the ranks of those spoken about: proof, in a sense, that we have stopped listening to the poor because there are now so many articulate advocates paid to speak for them.
If there are no answers to poverty, it is because we have ceased to pose hard enough questions. We need no more research, often parasitic, that reinforces what we already know. We need to divert money from servicing the poor into delivering jobs and enterprise, thereby empowering the people rather than institutionalising their victimhood.
Over the weekend, in an act of surreal symbolism, a high-wire artist set out to walk a tightrope strung between Glasgow’s Red Road flats, some of the most infamous high-rise housing in Europe. In a place where the poor struggle simply to survive, survival was turned into entertainment. Did the poor notice? How did it make them feel? Doubtless some academic will soon ask them.
I then asked them: "How does the person making $9601 feel?" They said: "Lucky!" I agreed, but I also pointed out that, in short order, they would start complaining that they were poor and they would want redress. The lesson finally ended with a discussion of the fact that anytime two people compare incomes and one has less than the other, the lower income person is deemed "poor". Indeed, unless you have a perfectly even distribution of income, you will always have "poor" people. A perfect distribution of income is pure communism and has been tried in numerous social experiments (e.g., New Harmony, Owenism, etc.) and it never works. Also, "poor" in the US is a hell of a lot different that "poor" in a lot of Third World countries.
Finally, we tend to glamorize poor people, giving them more status than most deserve. Rich people create jobs, give to charities, augment capital formation, plus making many other contributions to the economic benefit of society, while poor people do little to add to the economic well-being of society. If poor people worked at bettering themselves through education and hard work with the same gusto as they do pointing to rich people and blaming them for all their problems, we probably wouldn't have any "poor people".
I’m sick up to here with “the poor”.
Every "poor" person in the USA who doesn't thank God every day and every night that they live in this country should be deported to some third world African nation (maybe Zimbabwe) where they can find out what it is really like to be poor.
"Poor" people in the USA get free housing, free healthcare, free money, tend to be obese, have at least one TV, a cell phone and even a computer with Internet access. The nerve of some of these people to complain about anything when there are people in the world who are really doing without the basics in life.
The USA is probably the best country in which one can be poor. Most other countries would let poor people starve and die because they simply don't care.
The United States is the greatest country in the world! Our poor are overweight and most have at least one car and several television sets!
This lasted for about 2 years. It only took conservatives that time to win the Senate and the House and many state governments. Conservatives proved that the poor paid no taxes and were, in fact, not poor. The homeless crisis was proven a sham. Mitch committed suicide.
Suddenly, the poor are off the socialists vocabulary list.
The mantra is now "the wealth gap", "middle class disparities".
As a token for this election cycle, John Edwards has been selected by the socialists to emphasize the cause of the poor; the only candidate to do this. In fact, it is his only issue. Other candidates hardly ever bring up the word.
The socialists have succeed in virtually eliminating poverty through wealth redistribution.
They have not given up on redistribution. They just have a new constituency, the middle class, those who are taxed the most.
yitbos
They just want the middle class becaue they vote Republican. If they make the mistake of voting for them they will see their schools decline.
Several TV sets — all made in China. Hurrah for China, I guess.
The poor wear designer clothing, date fashion models and get frequent flyer miles that upgrade them to business class when jetting off to Mustique!
The romanticism isn’t totally misplaced, though perhaps now out of date. These are the folks that, until the onslaught of masses of illegal aliens and the fleeing of manufacturing to China, undertook the lowly jobs, the close to the earth jobs, the get your hands dirty jobs. Sweat and perseverance were honored.
Granted, class envy is wrongheaded. The existence of a Bill Gates generally does not cause poor people to be poorer.
The poor will always be with us.
“Poor people in the USA get free housing, free healthcare, tend to be obese........”
Wow. Is this really true ? Then your politicians are not much better than ours rewarding their customers with handouts.
Funny you should mention American welfare ; during every Election we have some Socialist candidate warning the voters that :
If they dont vote for him then this country will get like America where there is no welfare system and the poor live on the streets and black and Latin kids suffer from malnutrition oh and if you get hit by a car the hospital leaves you to die if you dont have private insurance did you know one child every 2 minutes dies in Greater Los Angeles why can’t we have a National Assistance programm e like in the 1940s did you know North Korea has the best health system in the world not many people do............
May I use your post to demolish this argument with some of my lefty mates in our local pub ?
I dont want to use your quote without asking you first.
Cheers
The Democrat Party has been buying votes in this manner since the early 1930s. Unfortunately, the Republican party is trying to do the same thing. But with regards to housing, there are numerous public housing complexes in every major city here. Of course, many are in decrepit shape because the tenants are not held responsible for upkeep. As for free healthcare, any person in the USA, legal or not, can walk into any hospital (which receives public funding) ER and receive healthcare at zero cost to them. As a result, the ER becomes a de facto doctors' office. With regards to obesity, junk food is often times far cheaper than healthy food here, so that tends to be consumed more, and we see the result.
May I use your post to demolish this argument with some of my lefty mates in our local pub ?
Go for it.
“With regards to obesity, junk food is often times far cheaper than healthy food here, so that tends to be consumed more, and we see the result.”
Good post but I beg to differ ion that point a bit. It is cheaper to go buy a bill of groceries but “the poor” don’t like to come off that money all at once. No, I have seen many shop daily in a C-Store where prices are at least double. People who put $2 worth of gas in their car every day instead of filling up (because they don’t want to spend the money all at once)generally spend the same way with regards to food.
When I was in college, I worked at a C-Store next to some section 8 housing. The residents basically shopped daily in the expensive as hell, junk-food selling C-Store. As an aside, the owner of that section 8 housing turned off the water because people weren’t even paying their drastically reduced rents, as low as 25$ a month.
There is a reason people are “poor”.
Interesting perspective. I couldn't imagine buying any food in a convenience store on a regular basis. I'm also going to bet that lottery tickets were also a big seller.
“I’m also going to bet that lottery tickets were also a big seller.”
This was in MS, which has no lottery but right across the river in LA it is just that way.
Lottery = A tax on people who are bad at math. ;)
You mean that if I own a cell phone, have only one Color TV, Cable, Air Conditioning and a Car, that I could still be considered poor? And I'm likely to be 60 pounds overweight too! Now that's POOR!
There is a difference.
There are no “pur” (as Rush likes to pronounce it) in this country.
You want real poor people, go to Haiti.
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