Poverty Strug­gle

The strug­gle of the impov­er­ished in our coun­try is a grow­ing trav­esty. Every year we spend more money on mil­i­tary defense and the incar­cer­a­tion of pris­on­ers than we do on pro­grams that fos­ter socioe­co­nomic uplift or edu­ca­tion.  Mil­lions of Amer­i­cans live below the poverty line, not because they are not try­ing to pull them­selves out of the iso­la­tion of socioe­co­nomic unbal­ance, but because the power bear­ers of the upper class in our soci­ety are con­tin­u­ally broad­en­ing the scope of dif­fi­culty to escape this grow­ing abyss in an effort to main­tain power.  The aspi­ra­tion of lead­ing a pro­duc­tive life seems to be within reach to the impov­er­ished because the view that they have is panoramic. They are sur­rounded by suc­cess, but most do not real­ize that there is an invis­i­ble bar­rier between where they are and the suc­cess they so des­per­ately strive to attain.  The dif­fi­cul­ties that they face are con­cealed under a cloak they know as the “Amer­i­can Dream”. Though this dream is sup­posed to be attain­able by the entire pop­u­lace of our coun­try, the truth is that the dream is devoid of vision. The antic­i­pa­tion fac­tor of this dream is soon over­shad­owed by the oppor­tunis­tic ideals of the upper class.

His­tor­i­cally, poverty has been a prob­lem that has plagued the United States.  Although the means to pre­vent poverty and sus­tain a pro­gres­sive econ­omy have always been avail­able, cer­tain class based ide­olo­gies have pre­vented these from being a con­stant.  There is a broad and deci­sive line that sep­a­rates Amer­i­can soci­ety eco­nom­i­cally. As of 2007, “ (the upper class) the top 1% of house­holds owned 34.6% of all pri­vately held wealth, and the next 19% (the man­age­r­ial, pro­fes­sional, and small busi­ness stra­tum) had 50.5%, which means 20% of the peo­ple owned a remark­able 85%, leav­ing only 15% of the wealth for the bot­tom 80% (waged and salary work­ers).” (http://sociology.uscs.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html). This divide in wealth is the deter­min­ing fac­tor in the poverty strug­gle in the U.S. The coun­try has seen hard eco­nomic times as a whole dur­ing the 20^th cen­tury. It would seem as if these eco­nomic hard­ships came as a result of WWII and the War in Vietnam.

Within his first one hun­dred days in office, Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt began leg­isla­tive and exec­u­tive actions that gave form to the New Deal.  The New Deal was a com­pre­hen­sive group of pro­grams that were inter­con­nected to pull the coun­try out of a period of eco­nomic depres­sion. These pro­grams were estab­lished around the 3R the­ory– Relief of the unem­ployed, Recov­ery of the econ­omy, and Reform of the bank­ing sys­tem by means of reg­u­la­tion. The imple­men­ta­tion of the pro­grams within the New Deal allowed the U.S. econ­omy to thrive and recover over the span of FDR’s first term in office. It set in place an eco­nomic revival for the United States, send­ing peo­ple to work in fac­to­ries to sup­port the war efforts in Europe and South­east Asia.  Amer­i­cans were play­ing a vital role in their eco­nomic empow­er­ment. This lasted until a new con­flict divided Amer­ica, The Viet­nam War.

Pres­i­dent Lyn­don B. John­son intro­duced leg­is­la­tion on the War on Poverty dur­ing his State of the Union address on Jan­u­ary 8, 1964. He said that “Poverty is a national prob­lem, requir­ing improved national orga­ni­za­tion and sup­port.”  Though the pro­grams that this speech helped found have been suc­cess­ful, it seems that the uti­liza­tion of these pro­grams puts the peo­ple that need them at higher risk of being shack­led to poverty.  The Food Stamp Act of 1964 said in sub­stance that the uti­liza­tion of the Food Stamp pro­gram by low income fam­i­lies would pre­vent hunger and improve social con­di­tions. The pro­gram was effi­cient in help­ing sup­ply food to fam­i­lies and indi­vid­u­als that were in need of con­sis­tent means of sus­te­nance and stim­u­lated the econ­omy by act­ing as a cash equiv­a­lent to buy gro­cery items (non-goods), but failed to improve the social con­di­tions for those who uti­lized it. In fact they were looked at as a bur­den on the coun­try by con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians and the upper class.

It is esti­mated that there are over 43.6 mil­lion peo­ple were liv­ing in poverty in 2009. The major­ity of this num­ber is clas­si­fied as the “work­ing poor” or lower-middle class soci­ety. Here we see that the line of class is preva­lent in the strug­gle to over­come poverty. In the case study Liv­ing on the Edge: Poverty in Amer­ica, the nar­ra­tor pointed out sev­eral key ele­ments that con­tribute to a state of poverty in the U.S. a lack of edu­ca­tion is the biggest con­trib­u­tor to the poverty prob­lem in our coun­try. The U.S. spends more than $30,000 a year to incar­cer­ate each per­son in the cor­rec­tional sys­tem, but less than 10,000 a year to edu­cate each child. There is some­thing wrong with this ratio. Why do we spend more money on incar­cer­at­ing peo­ple instead of edu­cat­ing them? Edu­ca­tion gives peo­ple the abil­ity to obtain bet­ter jobs; incar­cer­a­tion on the other hand ensures that there is a lower class of cit­i­zens. If a per­son is con­victed of a crime, they must reveal it on an employ­ment appli­ca­tion if it asks. Some of these appli­ca­tions ask that you go into detail about the crime and the dis­po­si­tion of the case. Although it is sup­posed to be used to screen appli­cants, it is more than likely used as a tool to dis­crim­i­nate against those that have paid their debt to soci­ety by being penal­ized by incar­cer­a­tion. Since jobs are not as avail­able to this group of peo­ple tend to turn back toward the way of life that is more famil­iar to them. The funds spent to incar­cer­ate is not evenly spread effec­tively across the process. Very lit­tle of the $30,000 it takes to incar­cer­ate a sin­gle per­son is spent on their reha­bil­i­ta­tion or their tran­si­tion back into soci­ety from an insti­tu­tion­al­ized state. If a per­son is not reha­bil­i­tated, there is a greater chance of them offend­ing again after they are released.  Insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion is a dif­fi­cult cycle to break, espe­cially if a per­son has been insti­tu­tion­al­ized for the major­ity of their adult life. Liv­ing in a soci­ety that seems to have no orga­ni­za­tion or struc­ture can be stress­ful, even trau­matic to an indi­vid­ual that has been incar­cer­ated. Again, this will lead them back to their famil­iar ways of think­ing and liv­ing which in turn will cause them to offend again.

Look­ing at the unbal­ance of money spent on incar­cer­at­ing peo­ple as opposed to edu­cat­ing them in an effort to make them­selves more pro­duc­tive indi­vid­u­als in soci­ety, we have to look at the rise in the cost of higher edu­ca­tion and how sub­stan­dard the pub­lic edu­ca­tion sys­tem has become. If the wealthy are the only peo­ple that can afford post-secondary edu­ca­tion after hav­ing attended schools that have more inno­v­a­tive resources to enhance their edu­ca­tion than that of the pub­lic school sys­tems, the job mar­ket will be at their dis­posal. Here again we see the line in class drawn within our society.

Change must occur if the United States is to progress.  The unalien­able rights of life, lib­erty and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness that are sup­posed to be afforded to each cit­i­zen of the United States are only a rem­nant of a dream to the impov­er­ished. Until this is a finite truth, the  con­tra­dic­tion the most mem­o­rable quote in our Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are cre­ated equal” will con­tinue to be fal­lacy. If we are truly to be defined as a great nation,  more must be done to improve the socioe­co­nomic trav­esty that the poverty stricken pop­u­lace  face.  There must be an acknowl­edg­ment that there are no sec­ond class cit­i­zens, only sec­ond class treat­ment. We can­not allow dehu­man­iza­tion or allow our­selves to be dehu­man­ized by the ideals of the few that believe they are bet­ter than the major­ity because of wealth. Based on the wealth that these few peo­ple have and the Chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples that this coun­try was founded on, it is their respon­si­bil­ity to ensure the well-being of all those that live in poverty. What can you and I do?

A heav­ier empha­sis must be put on the spend­ing on edu­ca­tion as opposed to cor­rec­tions. There needs to be a shift in the way that the gov­ern­ment spends money. The money that is bud­geted for mil­i­tary defense and incar­cer­at­ing peo­ple should not be as great as it is. The fact that the money that is bud­geted for edu­ca­tion is a frac­tion of the defense bud­get and that of cor­rec­tions would lead one to believe one to assume that going to war and impris­on­ment are more impor­tant to us than a qual­ity edu­ca­tion. Edu­ca­tion is the key to break the ongo­ing cycles for both of these dilem­mas that our coun­try has faced for the past 80+ years. Unfor­tu­nately it is the une­d­u­cated that end up in either of the two uni­forms. This ide­ol­ogy insti­tu­tion­al­izes the poor in one way or another.

The cur­rent ide­ol­ogy by which our soci­ety lives  con­tributes to the ongo­ing poverty strug­gle in the Unites States and the means by which it is pur­veyed makes this coun­try any­thing but united.  Until there is move­ment from this ide­ol­ogy to pro­duce change, the anguish and despair of the impov­er­ished with each pass­ing day will con­tinue to grow and over­whelm the sub­servient major­ity of our soci­ety. The iso­la­tion of the poor must be brought to the fore­front and con­fronted with right­eous zeal. The ide­ol­ogy that is com­mon to our soci­ety in fact “ter­ror­izes, trau­ma­tizes, and stig­ma­tizes” The Unites States must change its own posi­tions towards its own cit­i­zens before we can begin to effec­tively influ­ence any other soci­eties. Until then, the trav­esty of our impov­er­ished strug­gling to sur­vive in a coun­try that is sup­posed to be an exam­ple to the world stage will con­tinue to be laugh­able to the rest of the world.