Redesigning America for the Working Poor
A Call for a Dignity of Work Program, Not Another War on Poverty
Apr 9, 2009
It is hard to be comfortable with the budget and stimulus numbers coming out of the Obama Administration. It seems like the administration believes the government can do everything for everyone. The approach is too far reaching and too expensive. In the short term it does make sense to stimulate the economy. However, in the long term the government needs to concentrate on making America stable and rewarding for those who work. In order to do this the administration needs to abandon Great Society thinking and focus on their initiatives that returns the idea of dignity to work for those who labor in low paying jobs and provides stability to workers who fill these desperately needed roles in our economy. This means recognizing how poverty has changed in America since 1963, providing a health care solution to those who work, and changing the home ownership culture in America.
Leaving the War on Poverty in the Past: Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan
In his 1964 his State of the Union Address President Johnson declared a “nationwide war on the sources of poverty.” Johnson’s plan focused on economic hardships of rural Americans and African Americans. According to official government statistics at Census.gov poverty dropped from 19% of the population in 1963 to just 11.7% in 1979. The number of Americans officially considered poor dropped from 36 million to 26 million. The program was effective.
In 1981 President Reagan championed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act which cut eligibility for poverty programs, cut benefit levels, and allowed states to cut off benefits if new state work regulations were not met. Reagan’s idea was to keep recipients from becoming entrenched in welfare programs. In his 1988 State of the Union Address in which Reagan said, “My friends, some years ago, the Federal Government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.” What Reagan was stating was more about the mood of the country and less about what the statistics said about Johnson’s programs. In the years since the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act the declined in poverty ceased.
Despite what the numbers say Regan had it right.Today poverty in America has a very different face than it did in 1963. In 1963 rural economic conditions and access to services, education, and job opportunities for African Americans shaped Johnson’s policies. Programs were built to aid and then train those who couldn’t get work. Today women and Latinos form a disproportionate number of America's poor. According to Census.gov 2008 reports half of all households living in poverty have a female head of household and 56% of all people living in poverty in America are female. In 1979 roughly 22% of Latinos living in America lived below the poverty line. Today that figure is 20%. However, the Latino population grew more than three and a half times during that period and the number of Latinos living beneath the official poverty line grew from 2.9 million in 1979 to 8.2 million today. An additional complication is that many of these “new poor” have jobs. Women and Latinos increasing represent a hard poor working class. Despite their hard work they find themselves poor and according to research into dignity of work feeling insecure and displaced socially. What these workers need is not a war on poverty, but an America that returns hard work with security and dignity.
How Changing Healthcare and Home Ownership Can Bring Dignity Back to Work
In Elliott Liebow’s classic sociological study of urban low income and unemployed men, Tally’s Corner, the argument is made that the social status of a low paying jobs that leaves the worker in poverty is no better than being unemployed. In American sociological research that thesis has stood the test of time. To bring dignity back to work America needs to make low wage work feasible and acceptable. The first thing that must be fixed is access to health care. In Europe an individual can build a career as a waiter, barber, fast food employee, or unskilled laborer because they have access to health care and medicine. In America these workers often have no access to health care and affordable medication. Illness or injury can bankrupt workers or trap them in an endless cycle of debt. There is a very good reason that health insurance is one of the primary data sets in the Census database on poverty. Workers unable to provide healthcare to their families often see their work as the problem. With government removing the burden of health care from employers and providing health care and medicine to workers then the job is no longer the source of these woes.
The second area that needs to be addressed is home ownership. Home ownership should not be a part of the mythical American Dream. Not everyone should own a house. The message from the country's leadership should focus on the dignity of work, creating strong vibrant communities in low income areas, and support of regulations that doesn’t allow or encourage financial institutions to push home ownership down the throat of Americans. The current financial crisis is at its core an over reach by the government and banks to make America a nation of home owners. It is an example of a cultural narrative superseding economic common sense. The message needs to be changed. A strong working class community of renters is the type of community that helped build industrial America during the first part of the twentieth century. There is no crime in living is a nice community as a renter.
America needs to move beyond the extreme perspectives that the government must do nothing or can do everything. Governments are great at police and fire departments, roads, schools, some regulations, and health care. Governments are terrible at promoting the arts, subsidies and tariffs, banking, legislating morality, some regulations, and managing the cultural wars. If the Obama administration can scale back their gigantic government can do it all approach they just might be in a position to bring back dignity and security to the hard work of low wage Americans.
