At 11:02 2004-01-27 -0600, Diane/dianehust wrote, on the LessIsMore list; thread: "US politics: the two domestic views of America": > >I am going to play devil’s advocate and throw out something I wish for people to respond to. I am not saying I believe what I am about to say. > >Is it that the poor are getting poorer or that our concept of what is poor includes more people? > >The picture that Herbert (drawing upon Edwards’s campaign speech) is making that there are two Americas – one rich and one poor. O’Beirne complains that a lot of the people they classify as poor really aren’t – they are eating, they live in homes, they have lots of material wealth. She is not saying that all poor are that way; she is arguing that the some of the people that Herbert/Edwards are saying are poor are not truly poor. > >Many of us on this list have cited health care/insurance as lacking for many Americans. But that criteria is not a standard by which we judge one as poor or rich. There are lots of well-to-do people who are self-employed who must buy their health care; conversely there are a lot of middle-class people (not poor) who cannot afford health care. > >So I ask LIMers: what do you think of as a poor person in America? > Obviously, we have people who are homeless and destitute; but is a family of four who eats well, lives in a one-bedroom apartment, doesn’t own a car, hasn’t seen a dentist in two years, owns a color television and DVD player and never travels for a vacation, poor? > >Diane Fitzsimmons >Norman, Okla., USA > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - At 01:39 2004-01-27 -0500, Sharon F. wrote: My view of what makes a person "poor" is not based on income or living conditions. I tend to think of poverty as a situation in which people are involuntarily barred from participating fully in our society. The government defines poverty based on income, which may possibly overstate the problem. For instance, many seniors (including my in-laws) have very low income, but they have substantial assets (i.e., they own their homes, etc.) and access to Medicare, etc. I'm certain my in-laws meet the government's definition of poverty, but they are not poor, nowhere close. They are frugal, however, good habits developed during a lifetime of very modest income. Another acquaintance lives off-the-grid in a teepee without a car. He works odd jobs for food and is a tax resister (although he is careful to keep his income low enough that he isn't required to file a return). Although his income and living conditions would qualify him as poor in almost every country, I can't call him that. He lives the way he chooses and has the ability to change his circumstances. Another friend just qualified her children for Medicaid due to extended unemployment. But she is not poor. She has a comfortable house and knows how to stretch a dollar to keep food on the table and snowboots on the feet. She also has a strong extended family support network, which has provided her family with "extras" such as piano and ballet lessons for the kids (grandma pays). Most of the people I see at the community meal are poor. Not all of them are destitute-poor. One guy lives in a very comfortable house which he inherited. But he is psychologically damaged from Vietnam and has been unable to function in our culture. There are others who must rely on impersonal agencies to find them places to live and food to eat and ensure that the slumlord doesn't shut the heat off. There are some who had family once but are now alienated. I suspect one more about-to-be poor person just arrived in California. My neighbor's sister was put on a plane with a one-way ticket last week. She is bipolar and has been living with her elderly parents. She has tried to burn down the house, kept calling the police to claim they were beating her, etc. They tried unsuccessfully to have her involuntarily committed; I don't know the details on that. I think mental illness is a huge component in poverty. My brother-in-law is a tobacco farmer in southern Virginia and lives with his family in a dilapidated old farmhouse with only a woodstove for heat. He and my sister-in-law work very hard, but it is the life they choose. They both have college degrees and could live in a city and earn much more. Most years the farm does not make any money and they are kept afloat only by my sister-in-law's clerical job. He employs Mexican migrant workers and pays them, I think, $7-$8/hour, as little as he can get away with. While those wages would be considered impossible to live on by most people in this country, the migrant workers are able to send most of it to their families in Mexico. Some of them eventually save enough to return to Mexico and open their own businesses. Some of them have stayed and started businesses in Virginia. The issue of poverty seems very complex to me. I don't have any answers, but I don't think the "two Americas" is merely about whether people are actually starving or not. We have to ask a lot of questions about fairness, not just equality in this country but throughout the world. There is a scene in Robert Stone's novel, "A Flag for Sunrise." Some North Americans are in Central America: "Tom slowed down, wary of children and cattle on the highway, sounding his horn at turns to warn the burro carts that appeared more and more often now as they approached the capital. From time to time, they passed a lone Indian bent under a load of firewood. People looked down at the dirt as the car sped by them. 'What I wonder,' Bob Cole said in his strange tremulous voice, 'is whether the people down here have to live this way so that we can live the way we do.' 'I'm just a soldier,' Zecca said. 'But I think the answer to that is no. It sounds too simple to me.' 'But it's not a simple question,' Marie said brightly. 'It's a really complicated one.' Cole turned to Holliwell. 'How about you, sir? You're something of an expert. What do you think the answer is?' 'I have to confess,' Holliwell said, 'that I haven't figured that out. There are lots of gaps in my expertise. I don't know what the answer is.' 'We have to believe it's no, don't we?' Cole asked. 'We couldn't face up to it otherwise. Because if most of the world lives in this kind of poverty so that we can have our goodies and our extra protein ration -- what does that make us?' 'It makes us vampires,' Holliwell said. 'It makes us all the cartoon figures in the Communist press.' 'What if you found out it were true?' 'Me? What I do doesn't matter. I'd go on doing what I'm doing.' 'How about you, Captain?' Zecca took one hand from the wheel and turned partway around toward Cole. Marie kept her eyes on the road. 'What are you, Mr. Cole?' Captain Zecca asksed. 'Some kind of an agitator?' He asked the question humorously, with more of the Toledo in his voice than he usually permitted. 'Not at all,' Cole said. I read that in college, and I can't remember what happens in the book or even the basic plot, but that scene has stayed with me more than anything else I've ever read on poverty and social justice. Sharon Flesher northern Michigan, USA http://knitnthink.blogspot.com sflesher@traverse.net - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - At 02:05 2004-01-27 -0600, Diane/dianehust wrote: I think you have made an interesting distinction, Sharon. So, maybe, O’Beirne and Edwards (through Herbert) are talking apples and oranges? O’Beirne is talking merely about material wealth. Edwards is talking about access to a certain list of “goodies” that American society more or less agrees should be given to everyone (food, shelter, water, clothing, education and maybe health care.) Sometimes people choose to opt out of the “goodie package,” such as the guy in the tepee. But others opt out or lessen the amount of the goodie package either indirectly or directly through poor choices or bad luck or a combination thereof. Such as the woman I know who has just quit her job, losing her health insurance, because the stress of the job is too great. Then I guess the disagreement – taking us back to O’Beirne and Edwards then – would be: how hard do we work to make the package of goodies available to everyone? I’ll go think on that some more … Diane Fitzsimmons Norman, Okla., USA - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - At 02:28 2004-01-27 -0600, Jill wrote: Here are some more views on quality of life... Fordham Index of Social Health, compiled for the US each year. Sixteen measures to obtain an overal view of human welfare at each stage of life. For children, it reports infant mortality, child abuse and poverty; for young people, it covers teenage suicides, drug use, and the high-school drop out rate. For adults, it follows unemployment, average weekly earnings, and the proportion of those under 65 covered by health insurance. For the elderly, it reports poverty and the level of health-care costs they are required to pay. And for all groups, it covers homicides, alcohol-related road deaths, food-stamp coverage, access to affordable housing and the gap between rich and poor. The best figure the US has achieved since 1970 is the baseline. For example, if the homicide rate for 1996 was equal to the best previous year, it would score 100. "The recent results have been disquieting. From 1970, the first year for which the calculation was done, to around 1977, the index was steady at over 70 percent. There as then a rapid decline to around 40 percent, which persisted between 1985 and 1994, the most recent year for which figures have been published. It is, of course, very easy to quibble about these findings. For example, why should all the factors be given an equal weighting? Who says that there should only be sixteen factors anyway: Etc. The ISEW has also declined, as the GDP has increased. Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare is what ISEW stands for. More about that later - must get ready for work (hours cut, wage cut, due to budget cuts!) Jill