Poverty is a relationship, not a thing unto itself

"As has been said of power, perhaps poverty is a relationship, not a thing unto itself." Stephen Pimpare, A People's History of Poverty in America, p. 238.

When William Dean Howells (American realist novelist and literary critic) said "poverty is not the lack of things, it is the fear and the dread of want," what did he mean? Wasn’t it that, as Jacob Riis reported, in 1899 (when Howells was 56), half a million of 1.5 million population of New York “were driven, or chose, to beg for food?” Was this statement not just a simple function of his upper-class upbringing and livelihood? It probably was.

Anyway, what I really want to talk about is not Dean Howells, but rather an interesting concept that Stephen Pimpare calls Relative Poverty in his book (A People’s History of Poverty in America). This concept has for long been with me. Whenever I talk to anyone about poverty, I try to present my idea on poverty as something that does not have any absolute basis. Everything about poverty is relative. Pimpare lays out the ground for an argument very close to my thinking and that is what induced this passage.

In his critique of Robert Rector of Heritage Foundation’s outrageous comments about how poor Americans are not really poor because they have VCRs and Cars, Pimpare argues that: “people do not compare themselves to their ancestors, but to their neighbors.” Rector would have had a point if he was trying to make Americans understand that while they call those with cars and VCRs poor, people are dying from hunger (absolute lack of things) in Africa and Asia. But he is definitely not going there. His conclusion is that to solve the problem of poverty, single mothers have to marry those with whom they mothered the child(ren)—as if it is always the woman who refuses to marry the guy with whom she bears a child—and lazy people who sit at home and watch TV all day should be put to work. His suggestion for a sound anti-poverty strategy is: “to increase work and marriage, reduce illegal immigration, and increase the skill level of future legal immigrants.” Oh he so not a radical! (See: Rector, Robert. "How Poor Are America's Poor? Examining the "Plague" of Poverty in America," Aug 2007)

The whole issue here is the crazy rate of growth in what economists like to call “the size of the pie,” while the portion that goes to the top 1% of the population has also increased dramatically. That is were the problem lies. Even sensible critics of the current state of wealth distribution shy away from talking directly about the huge divergence between the richest and the poorest.

George Gilder, American Republican, evangelical author, in his infamous book: Wealth and Poverty gets only one thing right. After presenting his supply-side economic approach and advocating for the necessity of higher investment to enlarge the pie, he admits that: "the poor, as they move into the workforce and acquire promotions, will raise their income by a greater percentage than the rich, but the upper class will gain by greater absolute amounts, and the gap between the rich and the poor may grow." I am very happy that he is at least admitting to that.

However, there is no data (as far as I know) that proves that the percentage change in the poor wages is larger than the one of the rich at the time of general economic growth. But even upon accepting this claim, often, even hundreds of times of increase in the poor people's wage will not match a second hand CEO's wage. And what creates poverty (if taken as a relative concept) is not the percentage increase or decrease in the wages. It is the actual gap that exists between the poor and the rich. So even going down the route of percentage change is flawed from the get go.

My big wonder is that no one is making a radical suggestion about the measure of poverty in the U.S.. Why not saying: Lets mandated the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to calculate all the tax-payers accumulated income, divide it up by the total number of tax-payers and then define the poverty line base on that number. For example whoever earns less than half that number is considered poor. This way the general wealth is being taken into account and therefore a relative measure will be produced.

I know, I know. You are now saying: “so what! The U.S. government is not even providing adequate support to the 13% (over 37 million) Americans who are already considered poor under the existing (flawed) measure. There is no comprehensive social security system in this country.” And I understand that. But that is a different story and I have a lot to say there too. But will suffice to this for now.

Ps: for those who may not know about the current poverty measure in the U.S.: in 1960s, Mollie Orshansky (economist) proposed a measure which more or less looked like this: take the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s economy food plan—the cheapest of four food plans developed by the Department of Agriculture—and multiply its current dollar value by three and there is your poverty line. Although Orshansky did not even claim to have developed a comprehensive plan, applicable to all families at all times and in all places, the U.S. government took the plan literally and have been applying it since. The only adjustment they do every year is inflation adjustment. It is interesting to know that according to Barbara Ehrenreich’s epic Nickel and Dimed, “in 1960s food accounted for 24 percent of the average family budget (not 33 percent as the definition came to suggest) and housing 29 percent. In 1999, food took up only 16 percent of the family budget while housing had soared to 37 percent.”[1]

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[1] Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting By in America, 2008, Holt Paperbacks, p. 200.