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“The comfortable story of poverty allows the
majority of people to live in comfort and security,
largely unaware of the difficulties that many
others face. It neutralises our response to people
who struggle – not with criminality and anti-social
behaviour, but to cover the essentials of feeding
a family, clothing growing children and heating
homes. The comfortable myths about poverty
allow us to believe that people in poverty are
deserving of their poverty, and that it is neither
our fault nor our problem.”
The massive, destructive austerity experiment in Britain has provoked its churches to fight back against lies about poverty. A major group of British churches has come together to fight back against six myths about poverty. They aim to change the lies told about poverty and hope to upend the indifference and inaction based upon those lies.
The six lies.
- They are lazy and don’t want to work. Child poverty has been attributed to parents who do not want to work, yet evidence shows that inwork parents who are poor outnumber out of work families. The myth of multiple, successive generations who have been unemployed is disproved by statistics showing that such families never existed.
- “They” are addicted to drink and drugs. A very small fraction of benefit claimants report problems with addiction (4%). The vast majority of impoverished families spend their income on life’s necessities.
- They are not really poor; they just don’t manage their money properly. 60% surveyed agreed to this belief. Despite evidence that impoverished families concentrate on food and shelter, and lack adequate financial resources to sometimes pay for heat and electricity.
- They are falsely claiming benefits. 80% surveyed thought poor families claimed benefits fraudulently. The actual statistics show .9% for fraud. Ironically, some avoid claiming benefits which they are eligible for: 18 billion pounds of benefits go unclaimed. If only tax fraud was at .9%!
- They have an easy life. Churchgoers believed that the poor chose poverty as an easy lifestyle. Yet benefits provide less than half of what is needed to survive. When interviewed, impoverished families reported less happiness and less life satisfaction when compared to non impoverished families.
- They are responsible for the deficit. Striking, how many people believed that social welfare claimants’ benefits caused the deficit. In reality, the proportion of benefits to tax receipts has not changed over a long period of time, so no excess demand has been demonstrated. Yet because the politicians promote this idea, the public continues to believe this myth.
What are the lies which Americans tell about poor Americans? How have Americans come to be ‘comfortable’ amidst a sea of unhappy, poor Americans?
[It is a fact that the number of unemployed Americans far outstrips the number of job openings. In some industries, there is a greater than 10 to one ratio of jobseekers to job openings. Unaffordable housing has added fuel to crisis levels of homelessness. In a deeply cynical act, the Sequester is set up to remove 984 billion dollars over ten years, from the American economy in planned austerity. Apparently, elites plan to use the pain of the Sequester cuts to demand further cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs. This is a poverty-creating-ball which is set with momentum to keep rolling.]
I live in a rural area. Poverty is not so much hidden here as it is masked by low-wage jobs and prejudice. In the face of repeated rejection outcasts separate themselves out.
Are the comfortable myths American’s tell themselves about poverty any different from church goers in Britain?
A final quote from their study:
If our society misrepresents those who are at its margins,
blaming them for their poverty and ignoring the massive
injustices at work, then we are all set to fail. We will see
greater depths of poverty; greater suffering as children are
entrenched in circumstances which are damaging to body,
mind and soul. We will see a society which is unsustainable
and divided, where those with power or privilege are wilfully
blind to those without.
15 Comments
These myths of poverty must be perpetuated because for the rest of us to believe otherwise would require us to actually DO something about it and that we cannot do. We are too insecure ourselves, too frightened of winding up in those circumstances ourselves, too aware that only one small bad day or one small thing that is beyond our own control will land us in the same predicament.
We want to think that we are so much “better” than those people so we make up excuses and blame and myths to explain why we are not them or they are not like us. The truth is that deep down we know that we ARE them, that we are exactly like them and they are exactly like us.
And we are afraid. It is nothing more than fear that prevents us from helping them because then we would have to admit that we ARE them, and they are us. Just one paycheck away, just one job loss away, just one illness away, just one…….
Thank you.
Truth! Thank you, Tom.
I want to say in regard to the deficit it is a lie, a damnable lie. We should be spending and doing so much more to end poverty, especially since deficits are utterly meaningless for a sovereign issuer of the currency. Yet, we do not help those in poverty, those underemployed. We even want to impoverish more of our citizens by cutting entitlements. This austerity is a cancer on our society. Now we have both political parties saying that more cuts are needed. These are our wise men. Fools all of them.
More truth.
X2.
Book Salon up with Sarah Erdreich’s Generation Roe: Inside the Future of the Pro-Choice Movement hosted by Pamela Merritt (Sharkfu)
It is time for democrats to behave like it. The answer to the grand bargain is NO! The answer to anymore spending cuts is NO! You want to shut down the gov and default. You are an ass, but you’re driving, jack.
Thank you TomThumb …noted and liked … commended
Blindness as a choice is an act committed by many seeing human beings/humankind each day — myth and myths lead us to think not enough can be had by all humans — so some/many must go without, with less and not enough — this is not so. It is needlessly so.
Thank you TT… the light needs to be let in.
Good on some English Xtians in doing so. USian Xtians should / need to be doing this too.
well… i make this comment a lot. It simply costs a lot more live these days. Which is the reason many of us will never do “as well” as our parents.
Their mortages where a few hundred dollars. They didnt pay $1200 a month for a one bedroom. I seriously couldnt find anywhere decent live for under $900
They didnt have to pay $100 a month to watch TV.
They didnt spend $100 on the phone.
There was no internet so they didnt have to pay $50-100 for that.
They didnt have to squirrel away cash every month in a 401K or IRA because social security probably wont be around when we retire.
They didnt pay as much as we do every month for our “employee provided” insurance.
The system is also stacked against poor people. Like say you get credit card – which you more or less have to have. Its like 29% interest. Be a day late $35 charge and your rate could go up higher. Just has dealt with this with a relative. Card never seemed to go down, but thats because most of their monthly payment was eaten by interest. Pay $40 and your bill only goes down $20.
Its also easy to get on amerry go round of the State shaking you down. Cant afford an ispection or renewal ontime. Well get a $200 ticket you cant. Even if you go to court and get it dismissed you are still out fees and court costs. Can pay it, well then get a warrent. More fees etc.
Take public transit you say! Well in my area the bus is now $4+. I used to take it all the time for convenience but now its so costly I just drive.
Its very easy to get a snowball effect when you dont have a good income. Once someone gets in a hole it can be impossible to get out.
True. The “Poverty Premium.” is that it costs more if you have little income. 40 dollars for bank overdraft charges. Payday lenders charge high % on their loans. Go without working for a few weeks and you are hopelessly in debt. The Poverty Trap, true. If you don’t have a bank account, things cost more. Most surveyed did not have cable TV,– too expensive. Car inspections can be bad if you are required to make costly repairs. A trip to the emergency room is 600 dollars here. People are going w/o healthcare. Those don’t sound like personal ‘choices’ to me./s Cost of housing is ridiculous and immoral.
We are working as hard as we can to make sure that your Social Security retirement will be around when you retire out there in the Deep Future! And that your benefits are as valuable tomorrow in the Deep Future, as they are Today!
Never. Give. Up.
Activists need to give leaders who won’t see what is going on and who won’t listen to what people are saying to them, and who won’t do any of the obvious things that need to be done, free google plus vision glasses, computer generated hearing capacity, and the free FDR WPA app for their wireless phones./s
Thank you for bringing attention to this aspect of the problem.
Raising licensing fees and public transportation fares rather than imposing progressive taxes on higher incomes, and privatizing public services are all ways that wealth is transferred upwards. The poorer people, as you say, never get a chance to get ahead, and in fact fall farther behind, just in everyday living, let alone a catastrophic job loss or health emergency.
Thank you,TomThumb. Rec’d.
These are crimes against humanity. Words alone are not enough. We must pool our remaining resources and go to our nations capital and show them what real poverty looks like.
Occupy was a supreme start and must continue, but where these decisions are being made,so our collective voices will be heard. Never give up. PEACE
You should make that comment a lot. It’s important, though the facts vary depending on where you live.
I pay less than $800 a month rent for a 3 bedroom, 2 full bath house, but that’s because I’m in an inner ring Cleveland suburb where most of my white coworkers are afraid to even drive through because lots of black people live here and they were taught to fear them. Silly white people. I have, however, lived in places like Denver where it really was impossible to find even a 1 bedroom apartment for less than $700 a month, and the wages there are the same as they are in Cleveland, lower, if you count the states’ minimum wage laws(it’s $7.85/hr in Ohio).
I watch free over the air TV via a $50.00 antenna mounted on the back fence, and get about 2 dozen channels, including 4 PBS stations. But I’m in range of broadcast signals. Millions of Americans living further out don’t have that option. Millions more who do aren’t even aware they have this option or, if they are, just can’t live without ESPN, CNN, or MSNBC or Disney or whatever.
I have a tracfone and pay maybe $20 a month for it on average. I could get a landline for less if I had to.
I make about $40K a year gross because I’m lucky enough(and skilled enough) to have a county job. But, contrary to popular opinion, my pension ain’t free–I pay at least $5K a year into that and never see it. No 401K or Social Security for me, and I consider myself lucky in relative terms.
My health insurance is pretty low in cost, and I haven’t had a credit card for over 20 years. I think that proves the latter really aren’t necessary. Tear ‘em up.
I’m with you on traffic tickets. They’re outrageous when all’s said and done. I had a minor one that ended up costing me $300 and it’s taken months to recover from it. Throw in things like auto repairs and you can kiss going out to eat, even at a fast food place, good-bye.
Public transit? Yeah, that price has skyrocketed. Even living near a bus and train line, to work downtown would cost me more to buy the monthly pass than it would to drive and pay to park! Ridiculous.
You make a great point; I just threw in my 2 cents to show how things can be a little different depending on where you live. At least one thing is absolutely the same wherever you live, though: if you’re poor or near-poor, just one financial setback can drown you.
Thanks for this superb entry, Tom Thumb. These truths should be shouted from the rooftops. Recc’d.
Mtquinn et Ohio Barbarian, the smooth talker in the WH is steadily forcing us toward more cuts. In a Huffpo article with 831 comments, Sachs showed how Obama has been steering the U.S. government toward austerity and more cuts, in a Reaganesque “starve the government” process of tax cuts, and job cuts, the Sequester cuts, insufficient revenue increases on the fewest top tax payers, and failure to address needed changes to taxes. He credits Obama for crafting a small government plan since 2009. Sobering.
Link to Sachs is Here.
Because Obama talks ‘the economy” and jobs, he is very hard to challenge unless you look at what he does. We could look at his ‘Grand Bargain’ meme and hang every bad deal he has made for the American people on it. Why did he let the Bush tax cuts remain for the 99%? Why didn’t he go for an increase in the capital gains tax? A Tobin tax on financial transactions? Sachs argues that this is a set up for a deficit crisis to be solved with more cuts to social programs.
It has been a week since this info plus Sperling’s admission that cuts to SS and MA are part of what Obama ultimately aims for, to catch up cognitively with the deeper meanings of what Obama is doing. This is austerity for no good reason. The now nonexistent deficit was just an excuse to scare everyone into accepting more cuts to New Deal programs.This will just make things worse for everyone, especially those without jobs, those in low income jobs and those who are living on the edge of poverty.
BINGO! Wherein the White House officials admit that they plan to switch out Sequester cuts for ‘entitlements’ (as scribed by the NYTimes.).
Link Here.