Poverty

Poverty
Policy List
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“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”

― Martin Luther King Jr.

46%. With the stroke of a pen, child poverty was cut by 46% in 2021. 2.1 million children were lifted out of poverty almost immediately. An absolutely staggering alleviation of misery, the likes of which men and women would dedicate their entire lives toward achieving. This change, this monumental triumph, was accomplished not by flinging a coin to a beggar. Not by the charitable giving of a philanthropist or the paradoxical pulling of one’s bootstrap. No, that improvement was brought about by structural change, exactly the type of structural change that Dr. King championed over a half-century ago.

That restructuring came in the form of the rather blandly titled “Child Tax Credit”, which gives families a certain amount of money back every year when they file taxes. In 2021, Congressional Democrats and President Biden passed into law the American Rescue Plan, an act that in part expanded the child tax credit. It increased the amount of money returned to families, increased the number of families who were eligible, and provided a portion of the credit as a monthly payment, instead of a single payment once a year.

If you listen to Republican politicians and commentators, they said all these “welfare queens” were going to spend all that money on drugs and alcohol. In reality, 91% spent the money on basic needs like food, clothing, rent, utilities, and education. They spent it on the things they needed to survive. And what makes this even better is all that money is getting redistributed back into the economy, back into businesses, a portion of which gets collected as taxes. Meaning it doesn’t even cost anything to implement! This was not accompanied by a record increase in people quitting their jobs either, on the contrary employment increased while this program was active. With a simple tweak to the system, we were able to make massive improvements to the lives of the most vulnerable in society, and the doomsday scenario predicted by detractors was spectacularly wrong.

Thanks to Republican opposition as well as a handful of corporate Democrats, the expanded child tax credit was allowed to lapse and returned to pre-American Rescue Plan implementation. As a result, child poverty shot up from 5.2% in 2021 to 12.4% in 2022.

We know how to end poverty in America. We have the knowledge to implement policies that are overwhelmingly effective and precise. We have abundant resources to make it so. And yet, the pain, anxiety, fear, and misery wrought by the lack of basic social safety nets goes on and on.

What this real-life example tells us is that poverty is a choice. Just not a choice for those of us who were born without a silver spoon. It is a policy choice that can only be decided at the highest levels of government, a place where those of us at the bottom of the economic rung are noticeably absent.

For the “lift yourself up by your own bootstraps” folks, I want to share my own story to describe what poverty is like in this country:

I graduated from high school as valedictorian. I went to “the Ivy League of Public Schools” (Binghamton University) where I double majored in political science and history. I worked 40+ hour weeks at Lowes while being a full-time student. During some semesters my days would begin by waking up for my 8:30, having class until the early afternoon, going to work from 2-11, coming home to my apartment where I did homework until the early hours of the morning, getting maybe 3 hours of sleep, and then it was time to start all over again. I went years without having a weekend off from work.

But fast-forward 2 years after graduation and I’m faced with a dilemma between paying my rent on time or paying for my chemotherapy medication. And then having to ration the food in my house until Friday when I get paid again. Before the new union contract last August, I had no money, no security. I was in constant pain, in a state of constant exhaustion, and it still wasn’t enough to pay for everything. My body physically could not handle anywhere near the type of schedule that I used to have.

All of the effort I put in, all of the work I did to set myself up for success, none of that mattered because I happened to have an illness. All of that “bootstrap pulling” was ultimately meaningless. I tried to walk that tightrope of perfection, did everything that I was physically able to, but it meant absolutely nothing because of a circumstance I had no control over.

And that’s largely what the story of poverty is like in America. Being deprived of basic necessities because of something you had no control over. Unsurprisingly, medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States. And even if you’re not personally sick, you may be in dire financial straits from taking care of an ailing parent or sick child. You may have lost your job, or are one of the hundreds of thousands of victims of Purdue Pharma’s oxycontin scheme, having become addicted to opioids after being overprescribed them by a doctor. You may have a debilitating medical issue but either can’t afford to see a doctor, or don’t have access to one.

Anti-poverty programs like Social Security, SNAP, unemployment insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid prevent millions from suffering, starving, or dying. Creating single-payer health insurance, increasing the amount of affordable housing, and breaking up price-gouging monopolies could finally put ending poverty within reach, and the most extreme systems of despair would cease to exist.

So why is there still such stiff resistance toward ending poverty when the goal is so achievable and desirable? The reality unfortunately is, the largest corporations in this country believe that it’s in their best interest for a certain amount of people to be poor and desperate. They know that the fear of ending up destitute and homeless is enough to keep most working people from demanding better. With a safety net, you might take a chance and look for a better job that makes you happier than the one you have now. Without one, you’re more likely to stay at that miserable job for years, even as they cut your pay, cut your hours, or increase your job responsibilities. If you’re afraid of letting your family go hungry or homeless, it is much more unlikely that you would try to form a union, demand better wages, or a better work environment. The psychological fear of losing everything is a form of power that they have over us, and that isn’t something that they are going to voluntarily give up, no matter how many people suffer.

Understanding that truth is critical to ending poverty and bettering our society. It’s not a resource issue, it’s a power issue. Unfortunately for them, power lies with the people in the United States. If we want to end poverty, we have the power to make that choice.

Policy List

Poverty in America is a choice, and I think we should choose to end it. Instead of a handful of individuals profiting off the hard work of the vast majority of people, we can choose to have a society that rewards hard work, provides a floor to make sure no one goes hungry, homeless, or needlessly sick, and breaks up monopolies to protect us from the tyranny of a small number of unelected individuals controlling the political and economic system. Many of the other sections like labor and housing include solutions that will help eliminate poverty in addition to what is listed here.

Reinstating the Child Tax Credit, a pandemic-era program that reduced child poverty by 46%
Expansion of anti-poverty programs such as SNAP and TANF, and removing the barriers that are designed to prevent eligible people from receiving benefits
Universal public school meals and wiping away predatory meal debt
Expanding Social Security to allow for a comfortable retirement and stability for the disabled
Universal pre-k and expansion of funding for childcare
Upgrading labor laws
Funding agencies like the Department of Labor and the Federal Trade Commission to crack down on exploitative practices that keep people in poverty and steal their money and labor
Building more housing and banning corporations from buying single-family homes
Public funding of elections
Eliminating student debt
Creation of a single-payer health system and elimination of unpayable medical debt
Stricter regulations on funds like TANF to prevent abuse by state officials and private groups