Why do most of the poor remain poor?

 I think one reason the war on poverty cannot be won is a lot of people who are trying to address the problem see it as a ‘one solution fits all’ problem or that ‘one thing’ cause’s poverty. The one solution and one cause are generally thought to be the lack of money.

My caregiver who is Filipino was being critical of poor Filipinos. He made the statement, “If the poorest of the poor Filipino gets his hands on any extra money he will spend it on a party.”  I told him that problem is not unique to the Philippines. I worked with the poor in the United States for over forty years and witness the same thing over and over again. I would even say that the majority of the poor I worked with would do that. I have had many volunteers working with me on projects become so frustrated they would drop out because of it.

I admit it is foolish for the poor to waste money, but I really do not know if I had lived in extreme poverty month after month, year after year, if I would not want to take advantage of any extra money that came my way to celebrate. 

We know a family that has not had enough money to provide for the basic needs of their family for twenty plus years and recently one of their children got a job at a Call Center. The first thing they want to do is buy a new car. They have never owned a car in their life. To me that is foolish! To them it is about pride and ego it tells family and friends they are overcoming poverty.  They had a party to celebrate the father’s sixtieth birthday at a local café, they paid for the meals and drinks of friends and family, again foolish to me, but not to them. I do not understand their thinking, but they do not understand mine. I was taught to save for a rainy day and when I mentioned that to them they told me, “…every day is a rainy day for them.” Money alone is not a solution to their poverty. The more they have the more they will spend.

Dr. Ben Carson who is running for President in the United States believes that it’s okay to be born poor, but that anyone who stays poor is remaining poor because he or she is lazy. He also says that those poor people are trying to find excuses for their own laziness when they blame their adversities on other causes than themselves, such as the prejudices of others or wrong governmental policies or bad luck. Quite honestly, I have known share-croppers working on the farms of my family members around Alabama that regardless of how hard they work they will remain poor. I see Philippine men, women and children going around my neighborhood looking in trash bins for plastic and metal that they can sell and regardless of how hard they work they will remain poor.  There poverty has nothing to do with being lazy.

Dr. Ben Carson is another example of one solution fits all. He is for a ‘flat tax’ for raising revenue for the government. He believes rich and poor should be taxed alike ten percent (or a random number) on all income. He bases this on the Biblical tithe.  Dr. Carson is not the only U.S. politician for a ‘flat tax’. The ‘flat tax’ idea completely ignores the fact that the poor have more needs than desires and that the rich have more desires than needs. One dollar to the poor has far more meaning than one dollar to the rich. One dollar to the poor could mean a meal. I don’t think assuming or believing God wills wealth and poverty is a viable solution or that religion alone is a solution.

A new report states in 2013 77% of students from wealthy families earned bachelor's degrees by age 24, compared to only 9% of those from poor families. New research shows nearly half of the nation’s recent college graduates work jobs that don’t require a degree.

Is college a solution to end poverty? I think education is only a partial cure for poverty. I definitely do not think a college education by itself is sufficient to end poverty, but I do think programs that combine general education with specific training areas that meet the individual’s needs and the local labor markets needs work toward overcoming poverty. When I was in High School these classes were offered for those not planning to attend college, but the government has eliminated them from the curriculum.    

Of the 30 occupations adding the most jobs to our economy, those requiring the least training make up half of the total.  The low-wage sector of our economy will be the source of most of the job growth over the next decade and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Obama believes college and higher minimum wages are the solution to poverty and is willing to pour more tax dollars into college programs and use any action he can to increase minimum wages, but they are not a viable solution to end poverty. We will not educate our nation out of poverty.

Will government welfare programs eliminate poverty? They will not eliminate anything as they are presently administered. The government has spent $20 trillion on the “War on Poverty” but poverty rates are as high as they were 50 years ago. The present welfare systems are no longer safety nets they are snares that trap people in poverty and dependency.

The welfare system was never created as a single system like Medicare or Social Security. The welfare system is made up of 13 large programs, for instance housing assistance can take the form of public housing, rent vouchers, or tenant support and each administered by different government agencies. The 13 programs generally run independently from one another and are managed by 8 large agencies in Washington that generally don’t interact with one another.

Most of the 13 programs have their own qualification standards. They have separate forms, rules, compliance, audits, etc. Some work in conjunction with state or local programs and some are run completely independently.   

The poorest Americans are often the least able to navigate the complex welfare system. This is why there are so many homeless on the street existing outside the safety net that was built to protect them.  Benefits are not reaching those in extreme poverty and those in the middle class are often getting too much. It all comes down to knowing how to work the system.  Our welfare system is broken; it teaches the wrong values, rewards the wrong choices and hurts those it was meant to help.

The system has many flaws and no one in authority seems interested in correcting them. The welfare system discourages marriage because a loss in benefits can occur when two people marry.  For example a single mom with a minimum wage job could lose all of her benefits if is she marries a man earning $20,000 a year. Often the decision is made by the mom to just live with the man and keep the benefits. She lies on her welfare forms to cover up the fact a man is in the house and when caught, if caught, no legal action is taken.  Today’s welfare system discourages work because at certain income levels benefit loss is greater than additional income earned. Many of the programs penalize welfare recipients fifty cents for every dollar earned. Why would you work if in the end you are going to end up with the same amount you are getting from welfare without working?

There are very few Conditions attached to the welfare system. Conditions should include, work requirements, job training, school attendance and/or grades obtained, drug and alcohol testing or time restrictions on how long you can receive welfare. Without conditions the Welfare System does not encourage recipients to change their lives. Obama argues it is unfair to put conditions on welfare recipients that are not put on the general public – makes no sense to me.

I think Obama’s simplistic solution is just that too simplistic. Obama thinks there are just too many rich people, and they are causing all the poverty problem. So, he proposes, let’s take more money from the successful people and redistribute it to the poor. It is divisive because it fans the flames of envy and resentment. Punishing success will only deter further success and that is not what you want if you want the economy to grow.

The federal government can inefficiently redistribute money; it cannot redistribute success, character, personal satisfaction, dignity, purpose, perseverance or any of the qualities and outcomes that make life worth living. How much the top 1 percent of the population earns has no bearing on whether the bottom 20 percent can move up.

What we need is to reform our welfare system to promote work and individual success, not dependency on government. We need to put conditions on welfare assistance. All welfare assistance needs to be under one government department. We must eliminate marriage penalties in federal programs.  We need to encourage vocational training. We need to help low-income children and parents break free of bad public schools. We need to provide incentives for employers to hire welfare recipients as we do in some States for ex-cons. We need more case workers to eliminate the improper welfare payments, including fraud, that is estimated to be about 9.0% of all federal welfare payments made and totaled $59.6 billion in fiscal year 2014 (Office of Management and Budget General Accounting Office). We need mandatory sentencing for welfare fraud.We need tax reform that is not punitive, especially Corporate Tax reform. We need to stop playing politics and using welfare to buy votes and actually help the poor.