Poverty, Relative and Absolute

Jonah is joined by Scott Winship – the director of Poverty Studies at the American ...

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Jonah is joined by Scott Winship – the director of Poverty Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and fresh off the heels of his position within Senator Mike Lee’s Social Capital Project. Jonah asks Scott about the persistence of poverty in American society, and what progress has been made both recently and over the long term. Then, they get into why some of the obstacles that have to be removed in order to lift poor people up are more intractable than others. In part, Scott thinks that these difficulties “show how we’re hardwired to think about these problems in economic terms rather than in terms of social bonds,” and that certain data may blind us when searching for the real issues.

Show Notes:

–Scott’s research at AEI

–Richard Burkhauser on poverty in the 60s versus now

–The Social Capital Project

–Raj Chetty on people doing better than their parents

–Mr. Piketty’s big book of Marxiness

–Jonah and Peter Beinart

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Comments (22)
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  1. Kathleen Houret

    A very interesting podcast. I'm glad I listened to it.

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  2. Mary Stine

    This was a wonderfully thoughtful discussion and I would be thrilled to listen to Scott Winship again. Kudos to Jonah for asking great questions. Maybe I missed it, but in the discussion of generational poverty there was not much discussion of real life causes and solutions. I would like to posit a few from my own experience.
    My father was the son of a hard working sharecropper. His wife, my grandmother, cleaned hotels and baked wedding cakes for extra income. By the time my dad was an adult farmer with a family of his own he became the financial rescuer for his aging but still working parents plus his 3 brothers and their children. All of those people (except the children) were working long hours, but the money couldn't cover medical bills. My dad worked at farming until his joints and back gave out, then continued to work in insurance and delivery trucking until he was nearly 80. By then Parkinson's had caught up with him. Were it not for the VA and Medicaid, he would have suffered and died without care. My 3 siblings and I paid for his care at home for nearly a year, but we could not have sustained it much longer, which is when the VA, followed by Medicaid, stepped in.
    Because he did not die heavily in debt, we were able to continue care for our mother, who had Alzheimer's.
    My point is that many impoverished families are not so lucky: there are not enough financially successful people to get any or all of them through a disaster such as long standing joblessness or a devastating medical illness. Even a treatable but chronic illness can be devastating. Case in point: my cousin's son in his 30's was laid off long enough to lose health insurance. He could only afford to take his insulin every other day and ended up dying from that.
    My family was adamant that all of us get at least a high school education and a spinster aunt of mine left me money for college, God bless her. But many families are mired in low paying jobs due to either poor education or functional illiteracy. In my opinion, no poverty program can work until literacy and other life skills are addressed. My parents read every day and read TO us children every day.
    So, this is my 3-point plan:
    Raise the minimum wage to a minimum of $22.00 an hour. I accept no whining from the execs on this: if you cannot pay a decent living wage you are a piss poor businessman and do not deserve the title.
    Set up mobile community health clinics to visit poor urban and rural areas and get those residents the screenings and basic care they often neglect. Offer lifesaving drugs at very low prices so no one dies from lack of insulin, or goes bankrupt just trying to pay for basic medication.
    Support community garden centers and provide a meeting/dining hall where classes in literacy and life skills can be held, along with community celebrations.
    There is actually a program in Kansas City, KS that has had decades long success with helping the working poor climb out of poverty, Crosslines. Founded by a Presbyterian minister who grew up dirt poor, the program addresses both the indignities the poor suffer as well as basic pragmatic needs. Their motto is "a hand up, not a hand out". Recognizing that often the poor lack basic transportation or decent clothing for job interviews, or even a working shower,
    Crosslines makes those available, along with a Christmas store where families can "shop" in dignity. Donations of all kinds, including furniture in good condition and automobiles are accepted. Volunteers staff the center, offer classes, and hold an annual plant sale. Dozens of churches, synagogues and mosques contribute volunteers and money. One of the most important things Crosslines has done is to value the skills and charity of those who come seeking help.
    Sometimes this has meant that a formerly out of work hairdresser returns to cut hair for free, or a construction worker who got help returns to help with major building repairs for free.
    Perhaps the best thing about a program like this is that it allows the rich and the poor to interact in positive ways and see each other as human beings with common goals and needful skills.
    I think one of the worst things great income gaps do is separate us in ways large and small.
    I agree completely with Jonah that the tendency to see every problem as merely a money problem is maddening. When the working poor are respected as people with needed skills and labor, they have better self esteem and feel they have more social capital. But being paid fairly is equally important. This is what the wealthy and middle class need to understand.
    What the poor and middle class need to understand is that money has never brought happiness on its own, and that the wealthy suffer the same slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, they just don't starve to death as quickly or die as often from lack of medical care. But they too can die from cancer or bad life choices, loose a child to a terrible accident, have an unfaithful spouse.
    However, from my background working with people of all income levels, the newly wealthy have the hardest time knowing who is really their friend, or how to raise children who are self supporting. Even among old money, longtime relationships are difficult. Many wealthy people would be better off with a poor man as their friend, because that man would have a true window on reality.
    I blame much of this division on the prosperity theology movement that has become so popular again over the last few decades. Underlying the theology is the ugly idea that the poor are somehow only worthy of scorn, that God has chosen not to "bless" them, so the rest of us should not either! To me, this is just an ugly twist on Calvinism, but it has had real life consequences for our society. The worst thing this has done is cause many to avoid even trying to reach out to someone not in their income level. The second worst thing it has done is to make financial wealth the only wealth that matters, trampling over morality by crushing the value of
    spiritual and emotional and intellectual wealth that reinforce and sustain moral behavior.
    Trumpism would not be possible without this trampling. Socialism is not possible without this trampling.

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  3. Michael Kliegman

    No need to apologize (as you did in subsequent Podcast), happy to hear "quintiles." I do wish you had asked him his thoughts about "food insecurity," a term that's become very big as substitute for "hunger."

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  4. Gabriel.Egli

    More wonkery!

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    Bill McDavitt

    I get that it's a bit surprising that Scott didn't have 1 or 2 incandescently obvious policy fixes, but perhaps a better follow up question might have been, are there 1 or 2 policies out there that that would really benefit a city if we just got rid of them?

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  6. Mathew A

    Very interesting podcast. However, I tend to disagree with the idea that inflation is actually much lower than reported (and thus real incomes higher). I think it's the other way around. Especially in the most important areas we spend most of our money. Housing, Education, Healthcare.

    In particular I don't like the way they adjust prices in regards to technology. If the iPhone 10 costs $1,000 and the iPhone 11 costs $1,100 then the price should increase by 10%. Don't put some type of deflator on there because the iPhone 11 is allegedly better.

    When you do this is very much disguises the fact that total costs/prices are still going up. Inflation is still increasing.

    In particular you can see this in asset prices. It's not a good thing that the cost of owning a home has skyrocketed in so much of the country. Or that 40 years ago it was very possible for a single income/blue collar family to enjoy a middle class lifestyle, now not so much.

    Living in CA my wife and I both college educated (combined about 140k a year), in our 60 year old track home with 15 year old cars, no fancy vacations or eating out, and we were still not really getting ahead.

    Don't tell me inflation is understated...

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  7. PM

    Stupid people want to be stupid. Sometimes there are developmental factors but I certainly deal with people who are proud of their stupidity. I, of course, shouldn't say "stupidity" I should say something more warm and friendly.

    The lie of course is that education works. And if education doesn't work, then it's because the school or the teachers are bad. Tell it to the Maoists :)

    Parents do not care about their children's education. This is a barrier that the school system generally cannot overcome.

    Just as we're not going to start sterilizing people or preventing people from having children. Or letting people starve to death.

    Regarding the podcast's discussion of rewarding marriage. There was a time when divorce was taboo and women (probably more so than men) had to deal with it. People were not happily married as it was a life sentence.

    It would be interesting to see what would happen if one were unable to get a divorce for at least five years except for abuse or infidelity.

    I would argue that there's much more interest in having sex than in having a spouse. Sex, of course, can lead to children. Blindingly obvious.

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  8. PM

    I would pose the discussion in different terms. Are/were you able to have as many children as you wished primarily due to economic factors? Were you forced to work when you would have wanted to stay at home with your child/children?

    It all depends on who you're around. Some are doing just fine. This article reminds me of similar articles I've read over the years from National Review etc. telling us that the problem is either non-existent or greatly exaggerated.

    At this point, I'm not suggesting solutions. I'm just trying to get an admission that quite a lot of women are unable to have as many children as they would wish to have and/or able to stay home with their children primarily due to economic factors.

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    CynthiaW

    I really enjoyed this discussion.

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  10. Joe O

    Excellent and enlightning.

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