Hunger Makes People Work Harder, and Other Stupid Things We Used to Believe About Poverty

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2013/07/hunger-makes-people-work-harder-and-other-stupid-things-we-used-believe-about-poverty/6219/



There is no better way to channel the mind-bending logic of 18th century thinkers on poverty (men who we can assume were not poor themselves, by virtue of the fact that history remembers them) than to simply quote their words. Meet Philippe Hecquet, a well-known French doctor speaking in 1740:

The poor ... are like the shadows in a painting: they provide the necessary contrast.
With a little less lyricism, here is Englishman Arthur Young, in 1771:

Everyone but an idiot knows that the lower classes must be kept poor or they will never be industrious.
Philosopher and economist Bernard de Mandeville explained in 1732 that if countries can't have slaves, the rich people who live there at least require a vast and permanent underclass to prop up the economy and their personal good times:

... it is manifest, that in a free Nation where Slaves are not allow'd of, the surest Wealth consists in a Multitude of laborious Poor; for besides that they are the never-failing Nursery of Fleets and Armies, without them there could be no Enjoyment, and no Product of any Country could be valuable.

[KG]

1. AutoxchromDURec

[woo me with science]

4. +1

[Lee-Lee]

2. My dad still believes that crap

He is convinced that people are happy sitting home getting the partly assistance they do, and are choosing not to work, and if we just cut them off they would have to go out and take whatever jobs they can.

Of course he is an immigrant who is hugely anti illegal immigrant, and he is convinced if we just cut people off of welfare they will have to go take those jobs. Nothing I can say gets through to him.

[ejpoeta]

3. there seems to be a great number of people like that.

i have family members like that also. they always refer to 'those people'. I have been on welfare.... food stamps, medicaid, and cash assistance for a period as well. I can assure you that it was NOT a cushy existence. There was one job my husband had where on paper he made $40k a year. We were told we made too much. But bob had to drive around for his job on his own dime. After all the gas costs, he made $8000 a year. When the truck broke down, we only had one vehicle, he was out of work for a week. That is a week of no pay. He didn't get paid hourly back then. He got paid by the job. He had to change the motor in his truck.

Hand to mouth for sure. I overdrew my account every two weeks so he would have gas money for work. I purposefully did it because then we only had one overdraft fee instead of many. For me to go to work would have cost me more than I would have made. Minimum wage and having to pay a sitter would have put us in the hole more.

We had to look for a job. Both of us when we were on assistance. I tried to find stuff I could do that wouldn't require me to have a sitter. Something I could do from home maybe. It was impossible. And depressing. No, it was NOT fun. We didn't have much. We had directv because my husband installed it and we received a discount making basic service free. He had to have internet for his job. He had to have a cell phone for his job. We lived in a trailer that leaked heat in the winter so much so that we were barely not freezing to death even though we paid $400 every three weeks for propane. It seemed hopeless. And there was no way to get out of that pattern either. If it weren't for my family helping us, we may well still be there now.

[Orrex]

10. Clearly you should have made better choices and bootstrapped yourself into success

Hardy har har.

Your story is heart-breaking, familiar, and all too common. Anyone who complains about how easy it is to live on public assistance should be required to live on it for several years.

You correctly identify a cruel and often ignored truth about the black hole of poverty: the system is expressly designed to prevent people from escaping once they fall into it. If you get a small raise, your public housing rent will go up, your SNAP amount will go down, and you might lose other assistance, leaving you worse off than you were before.

I'm glad to hear that you've been able to get out of that situation. I sympathize, believe me.

[ejpoeta]

11. thank you. we are glad to be out of that situation.

we are better off than a lot of other people for sure. it just breaks my heart when I hear people complain about poor people. Sure there are always going to be abusers. But people try to make it out like that's the norm. And when I bring up that i was on welfare, it is always different. It's different. I am different. I know exactly how I am different. I am white.

Once my brother in law went on a rant about those women who have kids and aren't married. living in a trailer and having kids and not married. I wasn't married to my boyfriend and we had a daughter. and we lived in a trailer. I said, hey wait... I live in a trailer... and i have a kid and am not married. You must be talking about me!! He turned redder than red and sputtered. LOL! it was hilarious watching his brain try to turn itself into a pretzel to explain how somehow it is different situation. LOL! oh it was so great!! I wish it would change their minds though.

[woo me with science]

5. Peru is going to be sorry for creating a bunch of slackers.

They should be denying power, not providing it. Those wastrels might buy FOOD.
http://sync.democraticunderground.com/10023287102

[Solly Mack]

6. K&R

[reformist2]

7. The rich still tend to think of the economy as a zero-sum game, despite all evidence to the contrary

[HughBeaumont]

13. Just ask the guy with 13 homes!

[reformist2]

16. "Everyone else must fail" - that's about the size of it.

[malaise]

8. Here's Thomas Carlyle bawling about emancipation and those free pumpkins

Exeter Hall, my philanthropic friends, has had its way in this matter. The twenty millions, a mere trifle, despatched with a single dash of the pen, are paid; and, far over the sea, we have a few black persons rendered extremely "free" indeed. Sitting yonder, with their beautiful muzzles up to the ears in pumpkins, imbibing sweet pulps and juices; [p.529] the grinder and incisor teeth ready for every new work, and the pumpkins cheap as grass in those rich climates; while the sugar crops rot round them, uncut, because labor cannot be hired, so cheap are the pumpkins; and at home, we are but required to rasp from the breakfast loaves of our own English laborers, some slight "differential sugar duties." and lend a poor half million, or a few more millions, now and then, to keep that beautiful state of matters going on. A state of matters lovely to contemplate, in these emancipated epochs of the human mind, which has earned us, not only the praises of Exeter Hall, and loud, long-eared halleluiahs of laudatory psalmody from the friends of freedom everywhere, but lasting favor (it is hoped) from the heavenly powers themselves; which may, at least, justly appeal to the heavenly powers, and ask them, if ever, in terrestrial procedure, they saw the match of it! Certainly, in the past history of the human species, it has no parallel; nor, one hopes, will it have in the future.

http://www.efm.bris.ac.uk/het/carlyle/occasion.htm

[xchrom]

9. +1

[Arkansas Granny]

12. You can bet your sweet bippy that a hungry or poor person never said that.

[G_j]

14. +1000

the "haves" need the "have nots" to sacrifice their well being, health and their very lives to support their opulence. They believe they are superior beings. Some things never change,

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

15. From Carl Sandberg...

I AM THE PEOPLE, THE MOB

I AM the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And
then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and
makes me work and give up what I have. And I
forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red
drops for history to remember. Then--I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.