50 years ago President Johnson declared “War on Poverty.” Now all the commentators and politicians are asking if the war has been successful. This of course is so much nonsense. The War on Poverty ended with the Vietnam War and the deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. What we have had for most of the last 50 years is old tried and true war on the poor. The only exception being when President Clinton ended welfare as we knew it and put in place for a short time programs which really did lift millions out of poverty and into the workplace.
A life at the bottom of food chain is no walk in the park in any kind of economic system. Our capitalistic system is a more efficient wealth producer than a Communist system, but everyday in every place one looks the sweet life of the affluent is flaunted in commercials, movies, TV shows and magazines. Every day the men and women near the bottom are reminded that they are losers. It doesn’t take great imagination to see how a person in this position could develop hate for those above him on the economic ladder. This is the logic that fuels the populist struggles for equity.
But for people down on these lower rungs there is a different logic. The people you see from down there are just above you and just below. The really rich folk near the top don’t even show up in your daily life. It’s hard to hate people you don’t see. What you do see are the people below you on the ladder and what a comfort they are. Their presence means there are even bigger losers. Here is someone you can look down on. Maybe they’ll take your crappy job by working for even less. Maybe they’re so poor they get food stamps and you get nothing. Maybe they’re a different color of have been here in America for less time than your family.
And in this war on the poor you have allies: the greedy rich. Just as the rich southern gentry used hatred of black people to keep the poor whites from tuning on them, the political servants of the avaricious have always used the war on the poor to keep the anger of those at the bottom of the food chain from turning on them. It’s a strategy that works at least 90% of the time. As a result political consultants know that a major downturn in the economy will intensify the efforts to blame it all on poor folk and things like food stamps and unemployment insurance will become hot button issues.
Never has this been revealed as clearly as it was with Mitt Romney’s 43% remarks in the last campaign. It was the poor people who manipulated the markets and destroyed billions of dollars in life savings in an avalanche of worthless financial instruments. It was the poor who had been handed billions in charity to put a comfortable floor under their fall.
Oh in fairness it’s not just the poor we should blame: it’s also those public employees. You know the ones who have decent pay and benefit plans like the private sector used to enjoy before the 1980's.
In the years before launch of the “War on Poverty” President Kennedy often counseled that all boats went up with the tide. If we did something to help the man with a lunch bucket the wealthy store owner would benefit as well. If we helped a business, the workers would share in the larger pie. What Kennedy said then was a fair description of economic realities in America but that came to an end in the eighties. In the great recovery of the last four years, the wealthy have been fully restored and are now richer than ever. The middle class are no better off. To return to Kennedy’s metaphor, the yachts are enjoying near perfect seas while the workboats are still bottomed out in mighty shoal waters.
We should take nothing away from the skill and moxie of those who have accomplished this sea change. It involved taking advantage of natural changes with ruthless efficiency. The export of work, the increased reliance on machines, the take over of manufacturing companies by financial types instead of manufacturing people are three of the tools that worked hand in hand with a constant attack on the unions.
Even now after the unions have been beaten down to a shadow of their previous selves the right wing Republican governors and the Coke Brothers fire away with religious zeal. Why? Because the US Supreme Court is not wrong when they say in our society money is speech. In this context who speaks for working people? Union political contributions, period. Shut that down and a politician who votes with working people has little place to look for help when the Coke Brothers come along distorting the facts.
Recently the polls seem to be telling a different story, so much so that Frank Luntz the master of language in the war on poor has retreated to his digs in LA, frustrated that the voters don’t seem inclined to swallow the bilge he’s peddling even if he calls Aqua Pura aged in the finest hulls. More and more voters have decided they are being hosed by the rich. Finally the old maxim, be a pig not a hog seems like an apt warning. It will be interesting to see if there is still enlightened wealth which will heed the warning and support efforts to let everyone have a little piece of the pie. Or will the Mitt’s argument carry the day in the boardroom with the argument which says all these unworthy people want is to eat the cake off the rich man’s table.
I was raised in a family at the bottom of the working class. My father was a janitor and school bus driver. He originally met my mom when she worked in a shoe shop. The people they envied were their friends who got a job in the Post Office where they were guaranteed job security and a good benefits package. They loved FDR for Social Security, saving the banks and the WPA. Never ever did I hear them or their friends express envy of his wealth or anybody else’s for that matter. From their perspective a fine fruit pie hot from the oven made by someone who loved you was far finer fare than a cake make by New York’s best pastry chef.
A life at the bottom of food chain is no walk in the park in any kind of economic system. Our capitalistic system is a more efficient wealth producer than a Communist system, but everyday in every place one looks the sweet life of the affluent is flaunted in commercials, movies, TV shows and magazines. Every day the men and women near the bottom are reminded that they are losers. It doesn’t take great imagination to see how a person in this position could develop hate for those above him on the economic ladder. This is the logic that fuels the populist struggles for equity.
But for people down on these lower rungs there is a different logic. The people you see from down there are just above you and just below. The really rich folk near the top don’t even show up in your daily life. It’s hard to hate people you don’t see. What you do see are the people below you on the ladder and what a comfort they are. Their presence means there are even bigger losers. Here is someone you can look down on. Maybe they’ll take your crappy job by working for even less. Maybe they’re so poor they get food stamps and you get nothing. Maybe they’re a different color of have been here in America for less time than your family.
And in this war on the poor you have allies: the greedy rich. Just as the rich southern gentry used hatred of black people to keep the poor whites from tuning on them, the political servants of the avaricious have always used the war on the poor to keep the anger of those at the bottom of the food chain from turning on them. It’s a strategy that works at least 90% of the time. As a result political consultants know that a major downturn in the economy will intensify the efforts to blame it all on poor folk and things like food stamps and unemployment insurance will become hot button issues.
Never has this been revealed as clearly as it was with Mitt Romney’s 43% remarks in the last campaign. It was the poor people who manipulated the markets and destroyed billions of dollars in life savings in an avalanche of worthless financial instruments. It was the poor who had been handed billions in charity to put a comfortable floor under their fall.
Oh in fairness it’s not just the poor we should blame: it’s also those public employees. You know the ones who have decent pay and benefit plans like the private sector used to enjoy before the 1980's.
In the years before launch of the “War on Poverty” President Kennedy often counseled that all boats went up with the tide. If we did something to help the man with a lunch bucket the wealthy store owner would benefit as well. If we helped a business, the workers would share in the larger pie. What Kennedy said then was a fair description of economic realities in America but that came to an end in the eighties. In the great recovery of the last four years, the wealthy have been fully restored and are now richer than ever. The middle class are no better off. To return to Kennedy’s metaphor, the yachts are enjoying near perfect seas while the workboats are still bottomed out in mighty shoal waters.
We should take nothing away from the skill and moxie of those who have accomplished this sea change. It involved taking advantage of natural changes with ruthless efficiency. The export of work, the increased reliance on machines, the take over of manufacturing companies by financial types instead of manufacturing people are three of the tools that worked hand in hand with a constant attack on the unions.
Even now after the unions have been beaten down to a shadow of their previous selves the right wing Republican governors and the Coke Brothers fire away with religious zeal. Why? Because the US Supreme Court is not wrong when they say in our society money is speech. In this context who speaks for working people? Union political contributions, period. Shut that down and a politician who votes with working people has little place to look for help when the Coke Brothers come along distorting the facts.
Recently the polls seem to be telling a different story, so much so that Frank Luntz the master of language in the war on poor has retreated to his digs in LA, frustrated that the voters don’t seem inclined to swallow the bilge he’s peddling even if he calls Aqua Pura aged in the finest hulls. More and more voters have decided they are being hosed by the rich. Finally the old maxim, be a pig not a hog seems like an apt warning. It will be interesting to see if there is still enlightened wealth which will heed the warning and support efforts to let everyone have a little piece of the pie. Or will the Mitt’s argument carry the day in the boardroom with the argument which says all these unworthy people want is to eat the cake off the rich man’s table.
I was raised in a family at the bottom of the working class. My father was a janitor and school bus driver. He originally met my mom when she worked in a shoe shop. The people they envied were their friends who got a job in the Post Office where they were guaranteed job security and a good benefits package. They loved FDR for Social Security, saving the banks and the WPA. Never ever did I hear them or their friends express envy of his wealth or anybody else’s for that matter. From their perspective a fine fruit pie hot from the oven made by someone who loved you was far finer fare than a cake make by New York’s best pastry chef.