The new movie Slumdog Millionaire from acclaimed director Danny Boyle of Trainspotting fame is an endearing love story and well worth seeing. The movie is now also a conservative talking point for you see Larry Elder, a conservative African-American LA-based radio talk show host, thinks after seeing the movie that well that the poor in America don’t have it so bad and liberals who complain about poverty in America should just shut up about it already. From Real Clear Politics:
The viewer of this film is stunned — time and time again — at the poverty that makes the poorest rundown shack in Appalachia look like the honeymoon suite at the Bellagio.
In America, we consider a family of four “poor” if its annual income falls below $21,203. And we actually undercount income — ignoring assets accumulated in prior years and disregarding non-cash welfare, such as taxpayer-funded education, lunch programs, health care, food stamps and subsidies for public housing. Only 6 percent of poor households, according to The Heritage Foundation, are overcrowded — meaning more than one person per room. More than two-thirds of “poor” Americans live in housing with more than two rooms per person. And 43 percent of America’s poor households own their own homes — and the average poor person’s home has three bedrooms, one-and-a-half bathrooms, a garage and a porch or a patio.
“Overall,” writes Heritage, “the typical American defined as poor by the government has a car, air conditioning, a refrigerator, a stove, a clothes washer and dryer, and a microwave. He has two color televisions, cable or satellite TV reception, a VCR or DVD player, and a stereo. He is able to obtain medical care. His home is in good repair and is not overcrowded. By his own report, his family is not hungry and he had sufficient funds in the past year to meet his family’s essential needs. While this individual’s life is not opulent, it is equally far from the popular images of dire poverty conveyed by the press, liberal activists, and politicians.”
“Nearly three-quarters of poor U.S. households own a car,” says the study, “31 percent own two or more cars. Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions. Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception. Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.”
In 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population — rich and poor — lived with air conditioning, while today 80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. The average poor American has more living space than the average citizen — of all income levels — living in many cities throughout Europe, including Paris, London, Vienna and Athens.
Right now, our economy is in a recession of unknown duration, with rising unemployment and vast economic anxiety. But we live here, in America — a country of vast prosperity, freedom of choice, and a control over our own destinies that much of the world simply finds breathtaking. And this film reminds us that things could be worse — much, much worse.
That Larry Elder is stunned at the brutality of the poverty in the film likely means that Larry Elder is among the 82% of Americans who don’t possess a passport and thus never leave these shores to see the world and if he does it’s likely Europe and not the slums of Asia’s megacities. Frankly, he doesn’t need a passport to see harsh poverty but he likely walks, or better put drives, right past it daily. He’s just blind to it. It’s uncomfortable and so unpleasant so he ignores it. Well, I am not blind to it. It is a daily assault upon my sense and sensibilities. This morning as I dragged myself to work I walked down Sanchez to 17th Street for my morning ritual. There, mocha in hand, I headed to the Castro Muni Station to catch my train. Turning the corner, there was a rambling man yelling who knows what at the sky and at all who would listen. Something about the man coming. Then but a block later at the corner of Noe and 17th Street, one shopping laden with the Earthly possessions of two men one standing guard the other asleep on a tarp with a sleeping bag tossed over him. They have all the room in the world for they have no room. Poverty in San Francisco, the glittering metropolis just north of the world’s high tech industry, is indeed something to behold and visualize. There’s at least two neighborhoods in the city with a poverty rate over 50%. Just blocks from where I am now over in the Tenderloin, over a third of its residents live in poverty. Poverty is all around us, Larry Elder just doesn’t want to see it.
But what really galls me is that the Heritage Foundation report written in 2005 has long been debunked. I see no point in re-inventing the wheel so here’s Dr. Amy Glasmeier of Penn State’s Center for the Study of Poverty in America on what constitutes poverty in America:
For years now, as a nation we have been debating whether the poor are truly poor given their access to material goods such as housing, washing machines, televisions, and cars. In reality, the nature of life for the truly poor is about “not enough”, as in not enough income to eat properly, little access to basic goods such as adequate clothing or shelter and heat. We have finally reached a time when we can all agree that the poor are truly, truly poor. And their numbers are growing rapidly.
Recent Census estimates reveal that the population percentage considered severely poor has reached a 32-year high. Between 2000 and 2005, the percent living at half of poverty-level income increased by 26%. The descent into destitution spares no community or group in society. America’s urban, suburban and rural communities are all witnesses to the growth of what adds up to the “abject poor.”
The abjectly poor in America are individuals living on $5,250 a year. For a family of three, two adults and a child, the level of income is $6,922; for a family of four, $10,222. This level of poverty in comparative terms is only slightly above the poverty line originally set in the 1960s and affords a person little more than food and shelter.
The $5,250 for an abjectly poor individual means a bare bones budget of$437/month. Of that total, no more than $50 is available per week for food, or $7.14 day––about two big Macs and a drink, or 1200-1600 calories a day and 120 grams of fat. The residual income supports a housing expenditure in the same range of $200/month, which in most places in the country yields a bed in a group home, leaving about $37 for incidentals.
Even more sobering is the fact that the number of severely poor is growing rapidly. In 1975 the severely poor were 30% of the population in poverty. Today a dismaying 43% of persons in poverty are severely poor by national standards. But more embarrassing than the share of the poverty population truly poor is the increase in the number of persons descending into severe poverty. While the rate of new entrants moving into poverty is somewhat stable, those who are becoming truly poor are increasing at a rate 56% higher than the growth rate of new entrants into poverty.
No demographic is immune to its reach. The severely poor are more likely to be of working age than young or old, though a large share of the truly poor are children under seventeen. The largest number of abjectly poor are white (two times as many as blacks), but blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately likely to be most affected. Women, the prime target of welfare reform, on a proportionate basis are one third more likely to face deep poverty than men.
No region is untouched by this growth in the number of truly poor. The 15.89 million abjectly poor Americans live predominantly in the South (6.5 million) followed by the West and the Midwest (3.5 and 3.1 million, respectively). States with the highest share of abjectly poor have historically had high poverty levels (e.g., the Delta, Appalachia and the U.S.-Mexico Border). The largest totals are, not surprisingly, in the biggest states, although Georgia and North Carolina are also a part of this august group. States with the fastest rate of growth are some unlikely places––Minnesota, New Hampshire, Idaho, Maine, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin. Previously these states escaped the ranks of the worst in terms of social ills due to progressive policies, investments in education, and tolerant societies. Now even they must question their own policies toward the poor.
Is this evidence of welfare reform gone drastically off course? Are we seeing the consequences of low taxes for high-income individuals and the resulting growth in income inequality? Are we harvesting the seeds planted twenty years ago in the minds of the nation’s citizens that government is the cause rather than the cure for economic insecurity? According to this view, government is the reason that people are poor. Its programs allow them to choose not to work, when in fact programs should be fostering self-sufficiency for all. Like everything associated with poverty, I guess it depends on your point-of-view.
No, we don’t have legions of child beggars whose eyes have been burnt out with acid but beggars aplenty we have in one of the richest countries on Earth. It’s not just the beggars. It’s also millions of Americans who aren’t getting enough to eat or who to stretch their food dollar eat poorly, it’s millions without preventative health care plans who then delay care and treatment until it’s too late thus overburden our emergency rooms. Talk to a librarian in any major city in the United States, chances are they are also our nation’s social workers now.