Will captures the right’s take on poverty

March 6, 2006

George Will devoted his most recent column to deriding John Edwards’ approach to tackling poverty. In just a couple of paragraphs, Will managed to highlight most of what conservatives get wrong about low-income families.

In a speech shortly after Hurricane Katrina, [Edwards] rightly stressed the correlation of family disintegration — especially out-of-wedlock births — with many social pathologies associated with poverty. He said, “It is wrong when all Americans see this happening and do nothing to stop it.”

But no one knows how to stop it. Anyway, spending at least $6.6 trillion on poverty-related programs in the four decades since President Johnson declared the “war on poverty” is not “nothing.” In fact, it has purchased a new paradigm of poverty.

Edwards has a 1930s paradigm of poverty: Poor people are like everyone else; they just lack goods and services (housing, transportation, training, etc.) that government knows how to deliver. Hence he calls for a higher minimum wage and job-creation programs…. The 1930s paradigm has been refuted by four decades of experience. The new paradigm is of behavior-driven poverty that results from individuals’ nonmaterial deficits. It results from a scarcity of certain habits and mores — punctuality, hygiene, industriousness, deferral of gratification, etc. — that are not developed in disorganized homes.

Will’s making several important points here, but they’re all wrong. First, Will, like far too many on the right, casually dismissed the effectiveness of the 1960’s-era “war on poverty.” As Digby reminded us yesterday, conservatives have been getting this one wrong for a while.

If there is a prize for the political scam of the 20th century, it should go to the conservatives for propagating as conventional wisdom that the Great Society programs of the 1960s were a misguided and failed social experiment that wasted taxpayers’ money.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, from 1963 when Lyndon Johnson took office until 1970 as the impact of his Great Society programs were felt, the portion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent, the most dramatic decline over such a brief period in this century.

Second, Will embraces an almost comically-stereotypical approach to “blame” the victim for their poverty. “Behavior-driven poverty that results from individuals’ nonmaterial deficits”? This is Will’s new paradigm of poverty? As Kevin said, “In other words, the poor are poor because they’re lazy, dirty, weak, and come from bad stock.”

And third, not incidentally, Will seems convinced that Edwards would simply prefer a new New Deal that emphasizes direct government aid to low-income families. I’ve reviewed Edwards’ approach to the issue; it’s much more Clinton than LBJ.

Poor people are like everyone else.

I had an old poli-sci prof who used to say ‘The leading cause of poverty in America is not having enough money.’

His point was, it’s not a moral problem. It’s not a religious problem. It’s not cultural, or genetic.

People who say it is say so precisely because moral and religious and cultural and genetic problems aren’t reachable by legislative means.

And they want poverty to be an unreachable problem.

Otherwise they may have to pony up.

You can argue modalities — direct grants, wages, etc. — but at some point the people with enough money have to give some of that money to people without enough money, or stop pretending.

  • Hmm, George Will doesn’t like or care about poor people. Who would have guessed?

  • Every time that you might think that a lunatic has finally seen the light and become rational once again, that person proves that insanity is permanent. George Will may have finally gotten his position on Iraq “correct” for the same reason that a broken clock is “correct” twice a day: confusion of “accuracy” with “broken trust” that the damn thing is honest and in proper working order!

    NONE of the Lying.Fucking.Bastards EVER tells the “truth” as most honest, rational and sentient beings understand that term and by which we engage in political discourse. George Will just seems to have a particularly large and influential megaphone — that makes him a loudmouth; it doesn’t make him credible or correct.

    As a very wise and knowledgable friend told me a long time ago, it is almost impossible for person A to believe that person B is more honest than they (person A) are. That has always been our problem as Dems and as progressives, a new form of insanity (doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results): we deal with Rethugs and the American Taliban as if they behave as we do in politics and any other endeavor in life. They don’t; they never have, and they never will. Want proof? Two words: Ann Coulter. Or maybe Kate O’Bierne. Or how about Bill Bennett. Or Robert Novak. Or Grover Norquist.

    Come to think of it, there are a lot more than just two words to prove my theory, but they are all “proper” names. LFBs, all of them.

  • The new paradigm is of behavior-driven poverty that results from individuals’ nonmaterial deficits. It results from a scarcity of certain habits and mores — punctuality, hygiene, industriousness, deferral of gratification, etc. — that are not developed in disorganized homes.

    Gee, this must explain the Great Depression. All those dirty people from the “Dust Bowl” weren’t cleaning behind their ears and showing up late to work. If only the Joads could have gotten their hands on some soap and a reliable watch.

  • I cant believe we still have people trying to take sides in this “debate”. Have a good read of Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickeled and Dimed” and especially David Shipler’s “The Working Poor”. There are many parts of this problem, and the important thing to note is that the obstacles these people face, combined with the less than stellar choices some make means they are extremely vulnerable to any mishap, and even if they are struggling and succeeding it takes a lot of luck to get out and stay out of poverty. This is very complex problem, and taking a one-sided approach on either side is just ignorant at this point. Granted he gets party of the problem right but you cant lay all the blame at poor people’s feet, as if circumstances beyond their control play no part. George Will has obviously turned into a partisan hack. It disturbs me that he would be so simpleminded about this issue. Who he is trying to score points with is beyond me, because most people expect much better from him.

  • Buy a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.

    Some people are poor because they’ve had bad luck, or worse, been oppressed by racism, sexism, etc. Some people are poor because they’ve made bad decisions with their money.

    The left raises up the first group as the face of poverty, and says that if we give these people the basic necessities, and eliminate barriers from prejudice, then they will prosper because we’re all equal. Clearly some will, but equally clearly, some won’t.

    The right points to the folly of the second group — buying cigarettes and lottery tickets, and then complaining they can’t make ends meet. If the left refuses to admit that these people exist, then there will be an impasse on the issue of poverty, and the reigning party will run roughshod over the Dems, only barely considering them in matters of poverty relief.

    What the second group needs is education. Is it “judgmental” to tell a poor person not to squander $500 a year on lottery tickets when the kids need new clothes? Maybe. But that’s reality. Plenty of people in this country have worked hard and become millionaires by being thrify with their money. If you don’t agree, read “The Millionaire Next Door” by Stanley and Danko.

    But the point is that we have to be aware of both facets of poverty if we want to tackle the problem. And no matter what we try to do, some people will abuse the system. That doesn’t mean throw out the system.

  • Right, Addison. George Will just disgusted me on this one. Ive known him to be closeminded before, but this is a topper. A cheap shot at Edwards, that just makes Will look like an ignoramus. I mean, does he not know that the laundry list of things he derides about the poor are often symptoms of the poverty itself? Does George Will’s car break down on the way to an interview, yes…and he calls a cab, gets there no prob, and returns home to get a call that his car is already being fixed in the shop. Way to go Georgy, you are SO punctual. A poor person, however, breaks down, doesnt have a cell phone, sits and waits til someone picks them up and gives them a lift, which probably doesnt happen, because George will was the only one who drover by and probably flipped them the bird out the window. So why do they not maintain the car, or get one that works, because they are poor!. This is but one example of how people of Will’s ilk, the priveledged types who have never known a minute of poverty or the inconveniences it causes ( and would never venture out to talk to these people personally) continually get it wrong. If he had any idea of what the poor have to go through to get through a single day, he would shut the fuck up about their industriousness. What a fucking jerk. Go screw yourself George.

  • There have been many studies over the years showing that altruism is hard-wired in animals. A recent one showed surprisingly discriminatory altruism for human infants as young as 18 months (see the story BBC). These studies – all showing helping behavior toward non-relatives, with no benefit for the helper – establish the fact that the selfishness we’ve come to take for granted in 21st century reich-wing America is an aberration, a sickness induced by our corporate culture.

  • And furthermore, since Im already steamed, what really pisses me off about the compassionate conservatism of Bush and cronyco…is that they claim to want to help people, they claim that the methods they use of trickledown, ownership society, less regulation, blah blah, will fix all the country’s ills, and then, when faced with the fact that despite a very costly expansion (in terms of the deficits via tax cuts and asset bubbles via low rates that have been the primary suppliers of growth) has done nothing to help, and in fact poverty is rising, and more people are uninsured, and (I could go on and on…) they steadfastedly refuse to change course. It’s as if evidence pointing to their incompetence is just wished away. They point to good GDP numbers as about the only thing that matters (since actualyl pointing out how much richer the rich have got would be bad form). This gets back to the accomplishments issue of yesterday – the only thing they have managed is to push his twisted ideology further forward, even though it has done nothing to better this country. We are less free (spied upon), more intolerant (anti gay), more polarized in wealth and income, and more subjected to gut level and irrational thinking. Its like we are rolling back slowly, denying that the age of enlightment should have ever come to be. Oy, it must be the rain, because Im just disgusted with this country today.

  • Actually, I think that poverty “is” a moral, religious, cultural, and genetic problem, given that the “Incredible Sulk” known as George Will is, or at leasts associates rather heavily with, persons who are culturally weak (talk about your “Nazified” media), theologically lazy (brag about Jesus, but ignore trying to be like him), morally dirty (if one goes only so far as to equate morals with ethics, although most conservatives find the word “ethics” to be brutally vulgar and obscene)—and with their unbelievably-bad vision, selectively-poor hearing, and downright crummy math-skills—are most definitely of genetically inferior stock.

    Did any of these guys actually graduate from college—or did they all manage to get their degrees through a mail-order catalog?

  • The are a class of affluent humans that are “spiritually impoverished, and suffer the graping hunger of never having enough,,, who must continually dominate and acquire more wealth and status.. at the expense of society.
    I’ll call them piggies.

    In the sandbox, toddlers without boundries who grab all the toys are redirected to share by the supervising adults. In Washington, the piggies buy off the supervising adults , so it’s no holds bared unfair competition, where wealth leverages more wealth and creates an ever increasing poverty class.
    With a few piggies eating ever increasing percentages of the finite resources…..eventual poverty for the rest of us is guaranteed. And then we will all get to enjoy the disorganization created by scarcity.

    It’s that old Republican trick of blaming the victim.

  • This is probably the area of public policy I’ve focused most closely on through my professional career. Those interested in reading a series of insightful and detailed reports on working poverty in different states should click here: Working Poor Families Project.

    To put it concisely, Will really could not be more wrong here, though the incorrect caricature he presents is eternally comforting to Republicans not totally immune to pangs of conscience that maybe they’re thriving in a society that isn’t as just or principled as it might be. (See my blog for another instance of this mindset: the Bush administration is trying to shut down one of the few federal programs that give us insight into how well or poorly anti-poverty programs are working for the American people.)

    Blaming the poor for their poverty by pointing to their reckless sexual habits, lack of a work ethic, or otherwise deficient values is a lot easier than facing the truth: the main reason people are poor is because they lack salable skills in a job market that increasingly values educational attainment and specialized abilities, and increasingly rewards social networks.

    Read Jason DeParle’s marvelous “American Dream,” from 2004; you’ll see both this problem and its corollary (which is closer to Will’s argument), that the lack of employment and income security does have a destabilizing effect on poor families. This is a lot different, however, from the social-Spencerist prescription Dr. Will is peddling.

    First of all, it’s helpful to note that large majorities of low-income people, and near-majorities of those who actually live under the poverty line, do in fact work. They just work crappy jobs, often characterized by low pay, miniscule or no benefits, little to no upward mobility, and high risk of disappearing in economic downturns. Some states are better than others at running programs to help “make work pay”: whether it’s childcare subsidies, assistance with transportation, or other measures, these states–concentrated in, you guessed it, the supposedly immoral Blue coastal and upper-midwest regions–are doing more to honor the social contract than their ostensibly righteous, actually vicious right-leaning counterparts.

    But basically the way to attack poverty is to push measures like these, which help alleviate its effects, while also attacking its sources through strategies to increase the “human capital” of low-income communities: better primary and secondary schools, incentives for employers to relocate to or higher from such communities, and comprehensive social service networks to help remove the personal barriers to sustained employment that plague so many of the poor.

    Edwards gets this; indeed, he’s living, smiling proof of the value of this approach. I don’t know if he’ll be my candidate of choice in 2008, but I greatly admire his advocacy around this issue and the work he’s doing at the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity.

  • I haven’t heard anyone address the subject of wages
    and who sets them. How does our society conclude
    that tens of millions of jobs aren’t worth a living wage,
    because that’s what we have in this country. I don’t
    know any reason that a rich country can’t afford to
    pay hamburger flippers enough money to live
    modestly, but that’s the case in this country.

    We are a nation with a huge population of working
    poor. Are we going to continue to blame them,
    call them shiftless, lazy louts as the Republicans
    do, or call them uneducated, unmotivated, unskilled
    who need upward mobility assistance, like the
    Dems? Or are we going to face the fact that
    millions upon millions of people simply aren’t
    smart enough to become CEOs no matter how
    much education and skills we force feed them?
    And are we going to face the fact that for the
    foreseeable future, millions of menial jobs need
    to be filled? Because if we don’t, poverty will
    always be a huge problem. People who work
    hard should be paid a living wage, and we just
    don’t provide that for them. We could, but we’re
    too goddamned selfish to do it.

    Who the hell says a hamburger flipper is worth
    only so much, and a CEO 2000 times that,
    anyway? God? The market place? Don’t human
    beings have a say in this?

  • It boils down to one thing, Republicans lack empathy for their fellow human beings.

  • Marcus, that’s too broad a statement about all Republicans but I certainly think it’s true of a significant percentage these days. The Washington elite, mostly Republican despite Karl Rove’s attempts to say otherwise, is truly out of touch with what’s happening in most of America.

    There’s a lot of good comments here. Yesterday, when I read Will’s column, I was at a loss where to begin at first since there was so much that was wrong with what he said.

    It’s true though that Will is woefully out of date on a number of issues and particularly on Edwards. Each age has its answer. What worked for FDR wouldn’t have worked in this era but each president who’s actually committed to doing something useful for the country can find a few things that do work.

    Already what worked for Clinton isn’t going to work for the next Democratic president all that well. I’m not against outsourcing and globalization but I think there’s plenty of evidence that we’ve overdone it to the point of damaging our long-term economic and security interests. It’s time for some balance; and it’s probably time for fundamental reforms of corporations that takes into account a simple proposition: you can make profits but not at everyone else’s expense.

    In the early history of our country, there was a prevalent argument that corporations couldn’t exist and receive various protections and rights under the law unless they somehow contributed to the public good; somehow raw, unethical greed has been subsumed under that principle. Most Americans don’t mind a person of ability getting paid well, but we all know that a certain amount of wealth at the moment has nothing to do with abillity or the willingness to work hard and play by the rules. Will sidesteps that issue like the plague.

  • The United States Treasury is the Planet’s most productive Money Laundry. Money extorted as taxes from (mostly) productive working people is given to poor people in the form of United States Treasury Checks and Department Of Agriculture “Surplus” Goods. The Middle Class Government Clerks and Enforcers who administer this theft skim a good percentage off the top. If the US Treasury Money Laundry were not employed, then the poor people who extorted the money would be felons by definition. The Government Clerks and Enforcers would be guilty, at the very least, of Misprison Of A Felony, if not fellow Conspirators in the Commission of Felonies. The Treasury Clerks cutting the checks would do hard time in Club Fed for Money Laundering (actually a victimless crime). The present system of Poor Relief operated by the United States Government is not only a fraud upon the tax-payers, a dysfunctional social practice, and an affront to virtue, it is a jobs program for congeries of payrollers, pork-choppers, layabouts, common scolds, and pencil neck bullies. Expunge the infamous thing!

  • Dwight Eisnehower, in a letter to his brother Edgar, stated that while he believed the federal government should not be allowed to gain too much power, it must also realize its responsibilities to the American people:

    “…it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it…..Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.”

    I wonder if the Reagan Republicans of today would call Ike a RINO?

  • This country’s “poor” aren’t poor. Many of them have automobiles, color televisions, etc., etc… If you’ve seen the truly poor folks in some other countries, you get a new take on America’s “poor.”

    We have “poor” who “can’t afford to feed their children” (so the state does it while they’re receiving their state-mandated and state-quality (are they even going to be qualified to perform a state-job, such as that of a DMV clerk?) educations), but they seem to find the funds to buy beer, lottery tickets, or unregulated pharmaceuticals.

    They can’t afford to pay their own rent, but when they get free housing, they destroy it. They ignore education, and then protest when their offspring cannot pass a test to ensure that a bare minimum standard is achieved. Our “consumer” culture strips them bare – cars, electronics, empty calories, etc.

    A culture that expects handouts will never mature into anything but a needier culture.

    With no education, they can’t find jobs, but then again, they’re not looking too hard either. They won’t take “startup” jobs, and then they wonder why nobody wants to make ’em CEO…

    We need to educate our “poor” and develop a culture of inclusion. Our “poor” must learn that the way to retire as a millionaire isn’t via the state lottery, exploitation of others, or the distribution of unlicensed pharmaceuticals. Our “poor” children need to learn that slinging burgers or washing cars isn’t a career – it’s a step.

    I worry for America – especially now the suburbs… We have children growing up who think that they’re too good to work at McDonald’s or to mow grass or do other “work.” They think that they’re going to go straight to management.

    I’ve got an 18 year old neighbor kid who turned down $50 to do some ladder work with my power washer that would have taken him maybe an hour, and the later, while I was up the ladder and halfway through the job, wandered over and asked if he could have some wood from my garage to make a skateboard ramp… At least he didn’t just walk in and take it… This kid “works” fast food. One day I was grabbing a burger, at lunch time, and he was standing next to the counter, wondering why the manager didn’t have his check for him. He stood there for about a half hour before he finally realized that the boss wasn’t going to ignore the lunch crowd to cut him a check. This fellow will grow up to be “poor,” and I suspect that he won’t even realize why. He’ll just blame others.

  • What gags me about Will’s column is that only a few months ago he was touting a study that said the simpliest solution to the problem of poverty was not to have to have a child out of wedlock or as a teenager.

    Don’t do this, and you will break the generational transfer of poverty.

    But here he spends a whole column deriding Edwards, even though Edwards seems to be saying the correct things to help end poverty.

    Is this just mindless reactionarism? Is Will trying to scuttle Edwards chances?

    Or could it just be that George Will does not understand that Liberalism is NOT a mirror image of his conservatism? That is is not George Will’s job nor within his competence to tell liberals what to think, what to say or how to govern.

    Grrr!

  • Lance,
    So do you think George was promoting eugenics and birth control, possibly to include abortion? Why not just throw the “poor” into walled ghettos and work camps? That way they’re no longer an eyesore, and at least we’ll get something out of them.

  • 2Manchu,

    I think Will was promoting personal responsibility. He just convenently forgot that when he saw a liberal progressive (Edwards) make the same point.

    According to Will’s subconscious, Liberals can not be fiscally conservative, nor believe in any restrictions on government interference in personal life, nor have any practical solutions to real life problems.

  • Lance,
    Sorry, get a little paranoid without that fourth cup of coffee. I figured Will had enough sense not to propose those schemes.
    Cal Thomas and Jeff Jacoby, on the other hand…..

    And isn’t a lack of fiscal responsibility and increasing government interference with personal lives become more identifiable with the current administration?

  • “And isn’t a lack of fiscal responsibility and increasing government interference with personal lives become more identifiable with the current administration?” – 2Manchu

    As George Will would likely point out, Incurious George (Bush) is not really a conservative. At least, not of Will’s definition.

    The problem for both (theocrat and libertarian conservatives) being, they need each other to make a barely functioning plurality in the country and the Congress. A plurality that is breaking down now that the theocrats are in a position to expand government to interfer in the private lives of the American People and spend whatever it takes to re-moralize this immoral country.

  • George Will’s editorial is a mixture of errant historical analysis and misdiagnosed ascertains on what causes poverty.

    Mr. Will suggests that we are in transition from an old paradigm which views poverty as systemic to a new paradigm which focuses in on individuals’ shortcomings as the cause of poverty. While it is true that American society focuses in on the latter reason, the “old” paradigm never existed.

    Our society has always looked at behavioral, cultural and other assortment of internal frailties to explain why social problems exist. Even during the Great Depression, unemployment was explained as being due to people not willing to take any type of job available to them. The poor houses of the 1800s, charity workers trying to reform the poor and a meager public welfare system are all evidence of the historical antecedents of poverty being explained as individual failings.

    George Will expresses this paradigm quite well when he states that poverty “results from a scarcity of certain habits and mores – punctuality, hygiene, industriousness, deferral of gratification, etc. – that are not developed in disorganized homes”. This culture of poverty theory made popular in the late 1950s is not new to the thinking processes of most Americans. Unfortunately our programs to address poverty are centered on this theory, which explains their failings.

    Does Mr. Will seriously suggest that if all Americans suddenly lead an exemplary life that poverty would cease to exist? By studying those who are more likely to be in poverty, we only uncover those who are the most vulnerable to our economic system. If these “slothful” people suddenly changed their “habits” and left poverty, they would only be replaced by a new group of people whom we can study and see how they are different from the rest of us. That way, we can blame these differences as the reason for their impoverishment.

    Such a recipe has never worked in addressing the condition of poverty in America, yet it remains the primary way of addressing poverty. This is the old paradigm as well as the new paradigm. Until we actually dive into a new way of thinking about this problem little will change.

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