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What’s the Difference Between Being Broke and Being Poor?
Street scene in Bambara, Mali.
In my third year of medical school I spent a week with a traveling nurse who would do home visits in the housing projects of Toledo, OH to check on newborns. Someone would give birth in an inner-city hospital, then in a week or so this nurse would show up on the lady’s doorstep to show her how to take care of a baby. Many poor women don’t breastfeed, so she would make sure they were hooked up with WIC and other government programs.
I had never been in an inner-city housing project, and the police who escorted us around made it extremely clear that I should never come back without their assistance. It was horribly fascinating. The apartments were invariably filthy, and always had three to six women of various ages, watching daytime TV on big screens in high def. There were never any men around. The uninitiated might presume that the men were all at work — I don’t think that was the case. They always had nicer electronics than I. They often had old pizza boxes stacked in a corner nearly to the ceiling. I didn’t order pizza — it was too expensive on a student’s budget. Fancy cell phones, expensive tattoos, etc. My point is that I did not see what I expected to see. I did not see a lack of money.
I had a lack of money – I was a student. I was broke, but I was not poor. I drove a rusted-out Cavalier with non-functioning AC that ran fairly well most of the time (I installed a rebuilt Jasper motor in it myself to keep it on the road a little longer). I lived in a crummy cheap apartment (although it was clean). I ate a lot of rice and beans (which I have not eaten since). I lacked money. These housing project apartments revealed squalor, but not a lack of money.
When I visited my future wife in Mali, west Africa (she was in the Peace Corps at the time) it was the third poorest country in the world. They had nothing. But the women used shrub branches to sweep the dirt in front of their huts every day so it would look neat. They would not have stacked old pizza boxes inside their huts. They swept dirt.
It has been observed that you cannot cure poverty by giving money to poor people. If poverty is not a lack of money, then I suppose that makes sense. And our experience with the “War on Poverty” has proven that to be the case. So what are we supposed to do? No one could look at the dead eyes of those women watching daytime TV for the 1000th day in a row, surrounded by filth, and not feel bad for them. It’s only natural to want to help. So if you really wanted to help, what would you do?
We throw money at this problem to demonstrate our compassion. Not only does it not seem to be helping, it seems to be making the problem worse. So I ask, if you really wanted to help, what would you do?
Published in General
Thanks so much for taking the time to write that. Absolutely wonderful. Your perspective is MUCH appreciated.
We need to find a way to make THIS the dominant message in our culture.
I think I mildly disagree about rich and poor living in close proximity. I think that because of mass media, we think we are in proximity, and thus we think we know each other, but that actually we are living less proximate than in decades past. There’s a bunch of causes (among them, improved transportation, zoning, ending racial segregation), but now it would be rare for a poor kid in an inner city to have frequent (daily or weekly) personal interaction with an economically or professionally successful person in the neighborhood.
In the past (particularly for those who were subject to racial discrimination), the successful person moved to the big house on the corner, or to the one fancy street in the area, but generally stayed nearby. The kids in the neighborhood still saw him frequently, and he could tell them of how he “made it.” Nowadays, when a person does become “successful,” that person moves to the nicest suburb he can afford, and rarely interacts with the kids in the old neighborhood. Sometimes, the only “successful” people the kids in the neighborhood interact with are those with a professional reason to interact.
I think the lack of actual interaction contributes to the hostility you note. It’s easy to be irate with the rich person on television. It’s harder to be irate with the rich person who lives on the corner, shops at the same store you do and is otherwise a real person in your life.
I still think that the big issue is the breakdown of family. And, as other commenters have noted, government assistance programs contribute to this breakdown, most conspicuously by taking over the provider role of husband/father. If there’s no demand for a husband/father provider, what’s the incentive for a boy to work at the school thing? [I’ll spare you for now my rant about the effect of the minimum wage on making it difficult for young men from poor areas to get started on the economic ladder to become an effective provider even if they were interested in the role.]
So, as to what I would do: I would substantially cut back on the government assistance programs that make it more profitable to collect benefits (particularly as a single mother) than to get married and together earn a living (see @kozak comment #58).
And I’m willing to bet it was the one kid who didn’t need his parent showing up….
I had a similar experience to Dr. B: My first year out of college at my first real accounting job in the early 90s I was assigned to audit four of our city’s housing projects for compliance with HUD etc. I sat at the table at the management office, sampling files and doing working papers for about two weeks and I got to observe the residents and management interact. The files told their stories – multiple kids, different fathers, the amount of various welfare programs they were receiving, never any child support per se. Few residents worked. Many families had multiple generations and several branches of the family tree living in the same projects. Health and safety inspection reports detailed the filth in most units that Dr. B observed. HUD had rules about how many bedrooms had to be provided based on the age and sex of the children. Many single moms had three bedroom apartments with utility assistance. These moms would come in to pick up their utility “rebate” check, because the utility allowance was more than the cost. Many residents came in wearing their Nike windsuits (it was the 90s) and their nails done. Most of the residents paid out of pocket for satellite TV. (It was weird driving up to the project buildings and seeing all the satellite dishes anchored into the buildings) I was driving a 14 year old car and many of the residents drove new or nearly new cars tricked out with rims etc. The saddest files I reviewed were of the older residents – uniformly, their units were reported to be neat and tidy and there were no noise or trespass reports on them and they were living on meager social security or disability. The drug wars were raging and the projects were ground zero. The tough-as-nails on site manager, Vivian, was a chain-smoking, no-nonsense white lady in her 60s. I asked her how the residents I saw could afford to drive new cars and wear expensive clothes without a job. Vivan laughed at me (told me I may have a college degree, but no street savvy) and said that money flowed thru the projects, but not the legitimate kind. She told me that she had been managing for more than 30 years and she was seeing a shift in the white community to the same lifestyle that the black residents of the projects had embraced for the last 10 years. She had more young white girls apply who knew that they could be emancipated from their parents if they had a baby and they would be guaranteed a 2 bedroom unit and benefits. It was a very eye-opening. I grew up low, middle class, but handouts were unthinkable to my family. I don’t have an answer…you have to have pride in the right things…work, education etc, the residents seem to have pride in things like collecting the handouts etc
Yes you do, but it’s not polite to tell people to stop stealing our money and to work or suffer. The time for pololiteness needs to end.
What I don’t understand is that even with a nice car and electronics why someone would want to live in projects. Frankly I want a nice house and nice stuff. If I have to work for it so be it. The more stuff I wanted the harder I worked.
No. She needed her mom to be there. But her mom was there, and that went a long, long way. It changed how I perceived that student. She was a native Spanish speaker, and she liked to hang out with the other Spanish speakers, which wasn’t great for her. (It stopped her from learning English.) Her mother cared about her doing well, and I knew I had an ally.
I guess I would say I didn’t have any kids, really, who didn’t need a parent to show up.
When I taught ACT prep in one of the Kansas City public schools, my best students far and away were illegal immigrants. Not all of the illegals were studious, of course, but when you have a girl who’s only been speaking English for two years get in the 85 percentile of test-takers, that’s the family getting behind and pushing to make sure she actually succeeds. Made me wish I could strip one of my other kid’s citizenship and give it to her.
“Root, hog, or die” is a common American catch-phrase dating from well before 1834. Coming from the early colonial practice of turning pigs loose in the woods to fend for themselves, the term is an idiomatic expression for self-reliance.
I taught ESOL students, and they were much nicer than the regular student body. I pushed into those classes, and some of those American kids were just… hard.
This is true for neighborhoods where people may be poor, but are trying to get ahead.
But if the majority of the people in the hood are on food stamps or living in Section 8 housing, the attitude towards someone improving their property is more likely to be resentment. If too many people improve their property, you then have the problem of ‘gentrification’, which as we all know, is a very big no no for impoverished neighborhoods, because it makes the people who don’t improve feel bad.
It is a sad fact of human nature that we tend to sink down to the lowest common denominator, instead of being inspired to work hard and overcome what should be temporary economic circumstances.
I think the major problem in the country today, is a paucity of spiritual knowledge, or spiritual health. If there is no higher purpose in life, then why try? If money ain’t for nothing, why not just watch TV?
I don’t want to be so pessimistic, but I have seen several neighborhoods transition from prosperous to impoverished, and none that have transitioned in the opposite direction.
Our culture does not value individual responsibility and hard work anymore. If the government pays for everything, then why try? And what is more demoralizing than never aspiring to greater things?
What we need in this country, and indeed around the world, is spiritual healing.
Maybe benefits should be less than the value of a minimum wage income. I know of instances where you can live much better on the dole than you can taking what ever work you can find. If you work you lose your housing , health care ,transportation assistance etc. . There is no incentive to be independent. If you have no marketable skills you would be a fool to give up the government benefits. Part of the problem is low skill immigration and an academic mindset that Americans don’t need low skill manufacturing jobs. Years ago a person could make a living if they were willing to work. Also, ” immigrants are doing jobs that Americans won’t do ” is not true. Many would get a secondhand truck and lawnmower and make a living with them if it made financial sense.
I found a job for an unemployed father of three. He wouldn’t take it because he made more on welfare. We quit giving aid. After a while and with pressure from his wife (who later left him, got a job, then got some education and became a nurse) he asked us to take in his oldest son who subsequently lived with us for some time. After H.S. graduation the boy went in the Army, the dad went back to Michigan.
Anecdotal tales like this aren’t suitable to make policy on, but they can sure illustrate a problem.
I have a friend who figured she would be stupid to work (she is not stupid). She figured she would have to make $80,000/ year to break even and live the equivalent life style she has living off the system. She says we are the stupid ones for going to work and supporting her. Hard to argue against that.
I don’t know about that. If you try to reform welfare, the leftist media will be full of anecdotal tales (sob stories) about how this will hurt people.
I’ve had a couple friends say the same thing to me. Welfare reform brought an explosion in disability claims. The beauty of disability, is that it includes Medicare, and it pays better than welfare did. And it’s lifetime – nobody ever gets kicked off disability (that would be mean!). In my previous hometown in Tennessee, most of the laborers (carpenters, plumbers, drywall guys, etc) were on disability, so you had to pay everybody in cash. This is not considered disability fraud in that area – it’s just standard everyday business. No one would accept anything other than cash.
Even if you only bring in $25,000 a year in disability, if you can make another $25,000 tax free on cash jobs here and there, plus you have food stamps and Medicare and a housing allowance – that’s $50,000 that you don’t have to spend on food and shelter etc, plus great benefits. And it’s guaranteed, unlike a job where you could get fired tomorrow for showing up drunk or something.
Why on earth would you not sign up for that? People, in general, are not stupid.
TEN!
Sounds like we are in full agreement. Sob stories got us where we are now, and are helping keep us where we are now. “There are eight million stories in The Naked City:” These are some of them.
This point cannot be made often enough or emphatically enough.