Poverty and Inequality in America - Report Example

What I Know What I Want to Know What I Learned Poverty is a serious problem Homeless live on the streets Not enough resources Many homeless have mental issues Many homeless drink to self medicated mental issues Poverty does not mean you are homeless Having children justifies aid The welfare system doesn’t work Why are aid resources so few? What prevents people from going back to work? How does child care affect work in regard to the working poor? Why is it considered the fault of the poor that they are poor? Social attitudes have criminalized poverty The Reagan administration campaigned to change social attitudes towards poverty. The cultural concept of the ‘American dream’ is threatened by the concept of poverty. The behavioral poverty theory blames people for their impoverished state. 50.2 Million people are in a food insecure household which represents 23.3% of all children. Conservatives, in order to cut social programs, demonized the poor and classified them as immoral through anecdotal myths. Clients Name Name of Professor Name of Class Date Poverty in America The United States was founded on the ideology of equality, although much of that equality took decades, even centuries, to come close to achieving. The nation is still a work in progress, a continuing social experiment that has the potential to reach a state of enlightened social construction. However, one of the core principles that has framed the ideology of the country has been the principle of the “American dream”. This dream is based upon the idea that through the freedoms that have been established through law and through the beliefs that have become ingrained within the culture, every person can find success. However, while opportunity does exist, the paths to opportunity are fraught with obstacles that not everyone can endure. Poverty has become an obscenity against the concept of “the land of opportunity” to the point that in some instances it has been criminalized. Cultural belief systems have made it a state of moral decay as well as financial Because of the cultural discourse on poverty, the needs of those who have suffered so many losses that recovery is next to impossible without assistance are so poorly addressed that recovery from poverty is near impossible. In the 1970s and 1980s, a shift was seen in the way that the public considered the state of poverty. In the1980s when Ronald Reagan took the office of the President of the United States, one of his goals was to change the way in which the welfare system addressed the issue of poverty. The amount of resources that were devoted to public assistance were considered too high by the conservatives and reframing the nature of poverty seemed to be the best recourse in lowering the amount of money spent on social services. Therefore, the concept of behavioral poverty was invented which was a theory that looked at the behavior of individuals as being responsible for their financial position rather than socio-economic problems that needed to be addressed. Behavioral poverty outlines a series of behaviors that are connected to being poor. Three behaviors were identified as being central to combating poverty and the behaviors that lead to poor financial resources: “completing high school, once an adult, get married and stay married (even if not on the first try), and stay employed, even at a wage and under conditions below their ultimate aims” (Stoesz 70). The foundational belief, however, is that the way to combat poverty is to go back to work. Therefore, in order to support this belief system, the government constructed guidelines and requirements that must be followed in order to qualify for welfare in order to promote a return to work for those who are suffering from impoverished conditions (Stoesz 71). New Paternalism is a set of social policies that are intended as “a prescription for alleviating behavioral poverty. If the poor suffered from poverty other than absence of cash, and this was attributed to volition, the a logical policy outcome would be to dissuade the poor from counterproductive acts” (Stoesz 72). These polices included ideologies that supported eliminating welfare for anyone who was able-bodied and could work as well as denying additional aid to mothers who had children after they had entered the system. In other words, if they had a baby after they were already on welfare, no more assistance would be granted to support the additional child. Policies were explored to encourage marriage between heterosexual couples, and especially for the young. However, so many of these proposals violated basic principles of freedom, that most of them were discarded (Stoesz 73). President Reagan was successful on a few of the fronts that he campaigned towards in regard to poverty. He created the myth of the ’Chicago welfare queen’ through whom the demonizing of welfare recipients has become part of the social mythologies about welfare. This character bilks the public of thousands of dollars through fraud, thus making those who must receive aid part of an immoral and fraudulent social group. The sensationalistic nature of this type of anecdotal campaigning creates a focus through which to shift the public perception away from the real problem. This allowed for the shift of funds from 28% towards social programs down to 21%. The extra funds were redirected to the defense budget which changed their reflected financial benefits from 21% to 28%. Aid to Families with Dependent Children saw decreases of 13% and child nutrition programs were slashed by 28% (Karaagac 136). The problem with the success of President Reagan that it did nothing to help relieve poverty and everything to make it worse. The system of determining poverty was changed in ways that either mocked the system or were so unbelievably wrong that nothing but government fraud could be used to describe the way in which poverty was being calculated. One of the cost saving ‘remedies’ that the administration put into place included making catsup a vegetable in the school lunch programs. Another was to frame the poor through the benefits they were receiving, thus because items like food stamps were not given a cash value when assessing the poverty level of the nation, the conservatives declared that the liberals were making the issues seem worse than the ‘truth’ of the situation. Conservatives made an argument that because aid benefits were not being calculated properly, the number of the poor in the nation could be reduced by a third (Stoesz 69). The entire system was intended to undermine the social service programs and unfortunately for the country, much of the work was successful. While it sounds reasonable that the problems that cause poverty are within the behaviors of the poor, that is a simplistic and inaccurate way of looking at the problem. There are many causes of poverty, some of which are based upon the behaviors of some people. However, more of the causes for poverty can be seen through the socio-economic problems that are clouded by a series of myths that have been constructed to divert the attention away from the true causes of poverty. One of the worst examples of American mythology is that by going to work, the poor would not be impoverished anymore. Low paying jobs do not eliminate poverty levels. Working for minimum creates a social class called ’the working poor’, their wage not enough to support housing and food costs. In addition, there are not enough jobs available for the number of people who need to work, thus going back to work is not a viable way to look at the issue (Handler and Yeheskel 4). The greater socio-economic problems are outside of the control of the individual. In addition, the problems that come from being born in a family that doesn’t have very many resources creates a perpetuation of the problems that plague those who are poor. When an individual does not have adequate food, shelter, or health care, it is difficult to come to a point where those things can be built back up into the life an individual. Health care is one of the worst problems in poor living conditions. As an example, once a lack of basic products becomes established, such as soap, toothpaste, and clean water, the physical effects will produce health issues. Problems that revolve around hygiene, such as rashes, scabies, and other more debilitating affects to the lungs and heart, create a less than ideal candidate for employment. Thus, once the problem starts, it is difficult to find a way towards recovery with no funds or services available to cure the basic problems (Moonie 83). In addition, Handler and Hasenfeld have argued that in defining poverty within the Unites States, there has been an assumption that because a family climbs above the poverty line, their problems have been resolved. Most often, this is not the case. The ‘deeply flawed’ nature of the way in which poverty is defined creates a problem for those who have no help available or situations that are not workable. These problems are the instability of low paying jobs, having nothing to do with the capability of the employee. Problems with child care cause other obstacles to stabilizing a family’s financial welfare. The high costs of health care for a family also contributes to the problems of staying above the poverty line. According to FRAC (Food Research and Action Center), hunger affect 50.2 million people per year. Children are in a food insecure household at the rate of 23.3% of all children. Poverty isn’t just about statistics and finding ways to cheaply slip a bandage over a problem. Poverty is about the health, lives, and comfort of people who are living under circumstances that seem insurmountable. Once someone has lost a certain level of social status, it is a mountain to climb to get back to that point. As each level of success falls away, leaving someone in an economic down spiral in which loss is the main event of their lives, gaining back that place in life can become an insurmountable task when attempted through their own abilities to navigate their circumstances. When hunger and lack of basic services drain a person of the ability to function on a basic human level, social interaction will begin to suffer as well. Through poverty, a person finds that they become isolated which pushes them further away from creating recovery. When there is no social support, recovery is almost impossible. Discussing poverty in terms of individual moral decay and relating it to behaviors of the individual does not address the greater problem of poverty. As well, fueling myths about what it means to be poor and creating a scenario that associates poverty with criminality widens the gap between hardship and recovery because of the wider point of view that it takes to properly assess poverty. Works Cited FRAC. Hunger Data. FRAC, Food Research and Action Center. 2010. Web. 22 April 2011. Handler, Joel F, and Yeheskel Hasenfeld. Blame Welfare, Ignore Poverty and Inequality. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007. Print. Karaagac, John. Between Promise and Policy: Ronald Reagan and Conservative Reformism. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, 2001. Print. Moonie, N. (2000). Intermediate health and social care. Oxford: Edexcel. Stoesz, David. A Poverty of Imagination: Bootstrap Capitalism, Sequel to Welfare Reform. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. Print. Read More