S/O of Food Stamp Thread

[My3Boys]

Can you do a s/o of your own thread? Anyway, I didn't want this to get buried so I thought I would post this separately.

 

For any of you who are interested, there is an article re: poverty and minorities (although it could be applied in a more general way) that I found interesting. It is based on a book that is either recently or soon to be released. I would be interested in hearing everyone's opinion on it.

 

http://nation.foxnews.com/government-aid/2011/06/02/stossel-government-aid-helping-or-hurting-blacks

 

The author, Walter Williams, is an economist (and is also African American) from George Mason University.

 

I am hoping for a calm, reasonable, productive debate on this. It is an important issue that impacts all of us in one way or another.

 

Ds17 has been studying economics so we are into this big time right now.

Edited June 3, 2011 by My3Boys

[mcconnellboys]

I would tend to agree with him. I have lived throughout the deep south most of my life. I worked for years with a federally sponsored program meant to help get those in poverty trained and into the work force. I worked for more years in a medical malpractice defense position that led me all over the state of Louisiana for trials, regularly observing and speaking with locals chosen for juries, etc.

 

So here are a couple of examples of how I saw people held in poverty by the institutions that had been created to "help" them:

 

There were famous (infamous) projects in New Orleans where poor blacks had migrated when they finally left the plantations after emancipation. Understand, there were generations who stayed on the plantations after emancipation and who share-cropped, etc. Just as in mining towns for poor whites throughout Appalachia, these people always owed their soul to the company store and could never buy their way out of what was virtually the same sort of servitude they had endured under slavery.

 

When some did manage to begin attempting to migrate into larger towns/cities to look for work, they generally ended up in the poor part of town, and this is often where government "projects" (low income housing) were created later on. Further generations of these poor endured within these projects, never knowing that life could be any different for them than just going down to get on the government roles as soon as they were old enough and collecting their money, food, etc. on a regular basis. They were hopeless, in many ways. They could not see how their lives could be any different. They had no different model for living. Sure, they had the rest of the city around them, but because they still *lived* within a very different microcosm of that city, they just couldn't relate. Some things you have to live in order to understand....

 

After Katrina, when so many moved from New Orleans, there were calls to reconstruct the projects so that they could return. To what? The same life they and their families had endured for generations? I said, better to let them live in other environments for a while. Many had been scattered to areas where they were able to mix and mingle in a very different environment and start to see that a very different sort of life could be available to them. They might have the chance at a better education, better jobs, and then if they still wanted to return to NO, they could do that on a better basis and not have to live in the projects anymore if they did not choose to do that. I've watched news stories over the years about many post-Katrina families who have learned that there was a whole different sort of life they could live and who have enjoyed much greater success since they had to move. If they had not been forced by circumstances, however, their lives probably would never have changed....

 

You know, you tend to live according to how you grow up - complacency is just a part of our human nature. And when your family for generations has lived in one place and in one sort of lifestyle, it really is hard to understand how different lifestyles work or how you could accomplish achieving that sort of lifestyle. I worked in Tunica, MS for a summer (about 1986) and the folks there still lived "under the man." For them, their lifestyles were still very much the same as they had been since post-construction. Big planters grew huge cotton crops and wanted their cotton hand-picked, because they thought that was a better, more productive way of harvesting than with machinery. So these folks, having little other chance to work during a year's time, mostly all still picked cotton at some time during the summer. By hand. A backbreaking, bloody business in the sometimes 120 degree heat of the delta. I'm not conjecturing. I'm telling you what they told me and what I saw. They lived only about a 40minute drive from Memphis, but few of them had the transportation or wherewithal to try to get a job there and travel back and forth. Thank God for the Tunica casino. I never thought I'd say that about something I find so distasteful, but I know how many jobs it brought to Tunica, MS, and I know that with the money those jobs brought, another way of life has opened up for at least some of those people and their family lifestyles have been changing. I mourn that the casino was underwater recently.... Did you know that Jessie Jackson at one point called Tunica America's Ethiopia?

 

I will tell you that this is about more than skin color, too. It is about those in poverty being kept down in poverty by the complacency (among other things) that our welfare state provides. I have walked into a house on the Cumberland Plateau in TN as recently as 1981 to find them living on a dirt floor (with an outhouse, too, of course). If you think that running water and electricity are fully established throughout eastern Kentucky and southeastern Ohio (Adams County, for instance) even today, you would be wrong. The Appalachian region may have become a time capsule because of the isolation the mountains provided, but it remains stuck in that rut today thanks at least in part to our welfare system.

 

I grew up in a family owned grocery/general store sort of business that served our poor rural county and those surrounding it. We did a huge business and were one of the first businesses in our area to accept food stamps, WIC, etc. I worked there 20 hours a week during school and 40 or more during vacations from the time I was 11 until I went to college at 18. I saw and talked on a daily basis with folks from all walks of life. The food stamp program was expanded in about 1970-71, right about the time I started working in our store. I would say that food stamps probably got to be a majority of our business within about 5 years of that time.

 

I'm not making any judgments whatsoever about whether all the various forms of assistance our government offers are either good or bad, because I think they are both. I'm just stating that I do not think the sociology of the situation was considered at all, or that our government had any idea what would happen when they set up this giant experiment. I think that it would behoove us to look at human nature, and basic things like our tendency toward maintaining the status quo, etc., before making policies that might do more harm than good in the long run.

 

Do you remember a few years ago when there were time constraints placed on receiving welfare (and maybe other forms of assistance)? Wasn't that under Clinton? Everyone fell out in a faint that we'd be turning people out to die. But wasn't it found that it actually helped spur people to get off public assistance? We are remarkably resilient when we are faced with very tough choices, I think. When we know that we don't *have* to do something, maybe not so much.... And, again, I'm not making judgments about people who use any form of public assistance. My own niece and her husband and growing family are on public assistance right now, as I hear many young familes are. I believe the statistics bear out that at least a third of our nation is - the highest rate ever. But where does that stop? Where does the money come from to keep supporting larger and larger numbers of people for longer and longer periods of time? Who pays for that? When will the camel's back be broken?

[Mrs Mungo]

Anyone truly interested in this topic should also read Jonathan Kozol, imo.

[twoforjoy]

You know, you tend to live according to how you grow up - complacency is just a part of our human nature. And when your family for generations has lived in one place and in one sort of lifestyle, it really is hard to understand how different lifestyles work or how you could accomplish achieving that sort of lifestyle.

 

I think that's oversimplifying it a bit.

 

Part of the issue is that, if your parents are poor, you have fewer resources to fall back on, making needing assistance more likely. DH and I had to get financial help from our families numerous times when we were in our 20s. We just did not make enough money to make ends meet. Our families had the ability to help us (and we used credit to fill in the gaps, which was a terrible idea), and so we used that resource. If we'd been from families that couldn't provide us with that help, of course we would have been more likely to need government assistance. I don't know how we can ignore the fact that "generational poverty" can most adequately be explained by the fact that the poor have no wealth to pass on to or share with their children.

 

My own niece and her husband and growing family are on public assistance right now, as I hear many young familes are. I believe the statistics bear out that at least a third of our nation is - the highest rate ever. But where does that stop? Where does the money come from to keep supporting larger and larger numbers of people for longer and longer periods of time? Who pays for that? When will the camel's back be broken?

 

What jobs do you suggest these people get? Because, last I checked, there are tons of people out there looking for work who cannot find anything. Rather than blaming the government for providing assistance, perhaps we should blame the private sector for not creating jobs.

[tntgoodwin]

I have thought about getting an Economics masters at George Mason, and I like what I know about Walter Williams, so I will have to check this out!

[Ohdanigirl]

Very interesting. I am going to have to find that book. Thanks for posting.

 

Danielle

[Tarreymere]

I do think complacency has a lot to do with it. Being poor in America is pretty comfortable. I was a single mom on food stamps living in subsized housing and it was a very comfortable place to be. But I just couldn't see staying there, so I put myself through college in a field I didn't care for specifically because it was field that jobs were available in. The choices I made are the same choices everybody else that is able-bodied and sound of mind living in the same situation has available to them. But most of the (white) people I knew when I lived in public housing never left.