The War on Poverty 2.0

I understand the gut instinct behind the policies created to police welfare recipients’ behavior. For many, welfare is an act of charity, and the last thing anyone wants is their charitable donation squandered. If, for example, you lent a friend $300 dollars because he said he needed money to catch up on his rent and later you found out he gambled some of it away you’d be furious. You’d probably never lend your friend money again, and if you did you’d demand he followed your rules because while you’re lending him money out of the kindness of your heart, you’re not a sap. If the social safety nets were put in place as an act of charity then it would make sense to have this perspective. The problem is there are a variety of reasons these programs exist, yet charity is probably the least amongst them.
Recently in Brooklyn a mother was killed when she was caught in the crossfire of a shoot out. I had a conversation with a coworker who was outraged by the story. They weren’t outraged by the tragic loss of life. No, their outrage stemmed from the fact that the mother, who died protecting two of her children, had twelve kids and was probably on welfare. They were horrified that they had to pay for a woman who chose to have twelve children. Their solution to the problem of people on welfare having “too many kids” was to cut them off, and take away the kids, or force sterilization.
Down in Florida the governor has decided to force recipients of public assistance to submit to drug tests. Many people are applauding the legislation despite the fact that the costly test have so far shown that the percentage of people on public assistance who test positive for drug use is lower than the known usage for the general population.
In the 60’s we as a nation began fighting a war on poverty. By the late 80’s that war on poverty had morphed into a war against the poor. The notion has become inculcated in our culture that if you’re poor it is somehow your own damn fault. We’ve seen this at recent republican debates, huge crowds of people cheering, blaming the poor for their misfortune. Now I’m all for highlighting the need for personal responsibility, but the sentiment being expressed these days goes a step beyond that to the point where we are criminalizing being poor.
The poor these days are viewed as leeches on society. The poor are the enemy to prosperity. It is more of this atlas shrugged bullshit seeping into our culture that ignores the structural deficiencies of our society and decides that the poor are poor because they are lazy, and the rich are rich because obviously they worked hard. Yet anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention can name at least three corporate scandals in their lifetime that resulted in hundreds if not thousands of Americans, through no fault of their own, falling into poverty: Stock market crashes destroying personal savings, corporations committing massive fraud with employee pensions, and of course Madoff.
The idea behind all these rules, restrictions, and tests is to disincentivize the act of being poor. As if the problem were that the poor just find being poor too darn good to become rich. It is as if the lessons people are learning from this recession are that the poor have caused the recession and all we have to do is punish them to avoid this in the future. This is in stark contrast to the reality that there were structural problems with the economy and that anyone can become poor if we don't take care of these fundamental problems.