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Friday, August 17, 2007
Keeping What You Earn
Reading an article about housing projects in New Orleans that are slated for demolition, I saw something that got me thinking about deserving-ness and inequality.
By the turn of the century, when I first walked through a New Orleans housing project for my own work (representing poor people facing the death penalty), I found it difficult to believe that the government could legally allow people to live in such squalor, with windows busted out on many units, with doors knocked in exposing interiors covered with graffiti, with children playing in trash-strewn common areas overgrown with weeds taller than them. By this point, America had given up on the notion of the deserving poor in favor of the view that identified the mostly working mothers who occupied the majority of these units as "welfare queens" having children in order to get bigger government checks.
It isn't just the nation. I'd argue that much of the progressive community has all but given up on making a strong case for a deserving poor and middle class.
The best example I have is the CAP poverty project, which probably more or less represents current thinking among anti-poverty progressives.
It's an excellent report. But when it makes an argument against poverty, it's mostly about the interests or identity of the non-poor. For example:
Poverty imposes enormous costs on society. The lost potential of children raised in poor households, the lower productivity and earnings of poor adults, the poor health, increased crime, and broken neighborhoods all hurt our nation. Persistent childhood poverty is estimated to cost our nation $500 billion each year, or about four percent of the nation's gross domestic product. In a world of increasing global competition, we cannot afford to squander these human resources.
Who's that about? Everybody who's doing ok and their interests.
And this:
Poverty violates our fundamental principles as a democratic nation and as ethically conscious individuals. American democracy is built on a simple proposition, declared in our founding documents and developed over centuries of trial and error: All Americans should have the opportunity to turn their aspirations into a meaningful and materially satisfactory life. Our nation is grounded on the idea that together we can create a society of economic advancement for all aided by a government that protects...
Who here? Everybody who's doing ok and their moral identity.
In fairness, it's also about deserving-ness and opportunity, in the sense that people aren't getting the same opportunities to work and get good jobs that other people have. In fact, much of the report's policy recommendations seem to be designed with deserving-ness in mind. And the framing does embrace work, personal responsibility and opportunity.
We should expect adults to work and young people to stay in school and not have children before they are able to care for them. We also should expect that jobs be available to those who want to work, that full-time work provide a decent standard of living, that all children grow up in conditions which let them reach their full potential, and that a nation of opportunity should also be a nation of second chances.
You know, there's nothing wrong with this paragraph per se. But by omission it implies that poorer people aren't holding up their end of the bargain. There's a compelling case to be made that many people being left behind are doing what's expected of them, and this report flat-out never says that.
Here's the argument in extremis: Slaves were denied better jobs and a decent standard of living. But they were also denied the fruits of their labors. It was a profitable enterprise where employers had the upper hand, as is much of the low-wage labor market today.
This isn't to say that arguments focused on opportunity and the non-poor aren't compelling. We're probably talking about complimentary ideas. What I'd like to see is a greater effort made defending the earnings of the poor and the middle class. Like what EPI and inclusionist.org do.
Posted by Matt Lewis
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