It Doesn't Trickle Down

18 September 2012

As more and more Americans
  lose their homes, their livelihoods,
  the ability to feed, cloth and protect their children,
  we are starting
  to understand something
  the poor among us
  have long known...

It Doesn't Trickle Down.

If we, the 99%, are to stop the war
  the wealthy have waged against us,
  we must understand our own
  contribution to their war chest.

We must disarm
  the wealthy
  of the weapons
  we give them.

One important strategy
  of disarmament
  is to understand
  the lies we have accepted
  as reality,
  and to understand how those lies
  were embedded
  into our psyches.

I want to tell a story,
  but first I want to pose
  some questions for us all
  to ponder.

Why are unemployed poor people perceived as reprehensible even though national economic policies that sustain involuntary unemployment are not seen as blameworthy?

Why are the unemployed poor held in disdain while the unemployed wealthy are celebrated?  To help answer this question, you might survey the number of TV shows that exult Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

Why are the poor who receive welfare accused of dependency and deviancy while those not labeled as such enjoy welfare free from public disclosure and judgment, e.g., students who receive public financial aide, homeowners who receive tax breaks, corporations that don't pay taxes and do receive subsidies, civil servants who receive pay for unproductive work and workers employed by military bases kept open exclusively for employment purposes?

I assert that these beliefs were

  intentionally created
  by those who
  were called 'Robber Barons'

  to divert our attention
  while they plundered
  our lives and our nation.

These beliefs are now sustained
  by modern day Robber Barons
  and we who continue to believe,
  and hence, perpetuate the story.

So, here is the story,
  only know this...
  It is not a parable or an invention of my mind.
  It is a rendering of our own history
  in these United States.

It is the story of the
  social construction of what we believe to be reality.

Even as our unwitting belief in this story
  reinforces the endeavors of the wealthy
  to continue, unabated, in their destruction
  of our economy,

so, our considered understanding
  of this story,
  and our commitment to NOT
  play a part in its continuance,
  will take back two very powerful
  weapons the wealthy use against us...

namely, our ability to think for ourselves,
  and to create our own reality.

The Past Unveils the Present

This story is one wherein the destinies of two disparate groups, i.e., capitalists and poor, are interwoven into a robust and resilient fabric.  The fabric’s strength is realized through a reiterative and self-reinforcing process dating back to antiquity.  This cycle includes attitudes and biases, the appropriation of those attitudes for purpose, the institutionalization of both, and the expansion of the attitudes.  Herein, the cycle is first observed at a critical juncture in its American evolution, i.e., the advent of Social Darwinism, and secondly in its contemporary form.  The juxtaposition illustrates the force and seeming intractability of the cycle and demonstrates the challenges faced by policies that run contrary to it.

Ingram and Schneider (1993) identify various socially constructed groups, characteristics accorded them and consequent implications for them as recipients of public welfare.  One group, “advantaged”, is perceived as “…deserving, virtuous, respectable, attractive or likeable” (p. 73).  Another, “dependents”, is construed as deficient in capacity, e.g., skills and knowledge, or character, e.g., discipline and will.  Yet another, “deviants”, is portrayed as immoral, debauched and undeserving.  Accordingly, the advantaged are the primary beneficiaries of public welfare, followed at a marked distance by the dependents.  Deviants, on the other hand, are routinely excluded from public benefits, sanctioned and punished.  History has bestowed advantaged status on capitalists and relegated dependent and deviant status to the poor.

Dropping in now on the chapter entitled Social Darwinism in America, i.e., the early 1800’s, income disparities were widening, a handful of capitalists were becoming exceedingly rich while many lived in destitution.  Darwin’s precepts regarding natural order were correlated to the human condition by such men as Herbert Spencer and William Sumner, James Hill, John Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie (Hofstadter, R., 1992).  Having established the basis that humans were variously endowed, social Darwinists then saw fit to apply the notions to the economic situation.

They created the story that competition of the market place was the setting for a human enactment of the survival of the fittest.  The struggle to survive was won through the accumulation of capital.  Where strength ensured survival in nature, human virtue ensured survival in the market.

This association proved highly fortuitous for capitalists, whose extraordinary wealth was becoming difficult to defend in a country defined by equal opportunity and democracy.  Not only did they declare that they were the fittest, they claimed they had “…superior ability, foresight and adaptability…” which enabled their remarkable success (Hofstadter, p. 45).  These self-made men were, in the truest sense, self-made.

But what of the destitute?  This story becomes complete only through the elucidation of its entire cast, and the poor are critical, if not active, actors.  On the conundrum of poverty amid growing wealth, Social Darwinism came to the rescue.  Social Darwinism claimed that business competition was natural law, and as such was inviolate.  If individuals were disadvantaged as the market’s natural process unfolded, it was a necessary and allowable, if not saddening, consequence.   In fact, they asserted, all individuals, through diligence and thrift, could achieve pecuniary success.  So, they encouraged patience, hard work and persistence.

Some, however, were not quite so magnanimous in their evaluation of the poor.  Survival of the fittest required inequalities and as such negated equality and natural rights.  These people asserted that there was a reason for the natural selection of the poor out of the market, i.e., deviant individual characteristics.  “They, the poor, are unfit and should be eliminated.  The whole effort of nature is to get rid of such, to clear the world of them, and make room for better.  If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well that they should live.  If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best that they should die.” (Spencer, 1850, cited in Hofstadter, 1992).

Ingram and Schneider (1993) claim that the social constructs of advantaged and deviants have reified in American society.  Certainly, this assertion bears out in the case of capitalists and poor.  A mantra embedded into the public psyche is that investing in the rich is paramount for achieving national objectives.  Hence, their interests, being synonymous with the public interest, are endowed with noble repute.  Their motives are beyond doubt, their advantages undisputed, their acceptance of public welfare necessary.

Other mantras are reserved for American poor (Gans, 1995).  They are morally deficient.  They are lazy, freeloaders and contemptuous of society.  They are the underclass, under all other classes, and as such, outside society.  They, therefore, are undeserving.  “…indigence is produced not by the social or economic system, but by the deviance of the poor.  The necessary punishment for deviance is poverty” (Backer, 1993).

A whole discourse of illogic has been developed around the poor.  The characteristics, so long reinforced, have reified and transformed into the casual mechanisms of poverty, i.e., the victims have morphed into the perpetrators (Gans, 1995).  Now, the mantras proclaimed by many are that moral deficiency generates poverty, laziness causes unemployment, welfare recipients create poverty. 

In this way, the social constructs have obfuscated the true causes of poverty, and worse, created a political climate in which the poor can safely be punished for the ills others perceive them to bear upon society.  Examples of anti-poor sentiment encased in public policy discourse include desexing and segregation recommendations in 1912; sterilization, unabated in some states till the 1970s; and Spiro Agnew’s strategy of isolating the poor in rural towns in 1974.  To these are added those policies that capitalized on the plight of the poor for the advantage of others, namely the 1949 U.S. Housing Act, and those that aim to end welfare by systematically moving people out of the system, i.e., The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996.

It is not surprising then that such oxymorons as these exist: 1) unemployed poor people are perceived as reprehensible, even though involuntary unemployment sustained by economic policies are not seen as blameworthy; 2) the unemployed poor are held in disdain while the unemployed wealthy are celebrated; 3) the poor receiving welfare are accused of dependency and deviancy while those not labeled as such enjoy welfare free from public disclosure and judgment, e.g., students receiving public financial aide, homeowners receiving tax breaks, corporations receiving tax breaks and subsidies, civil servants receiving pay for unproductive work and workers employed by military bases kept open exclusively for employment purposes.