#undeserving poor

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/15/man-feeds-hungry-kids-hates-food-banks-austerity

The Trussell Trust was never meant to be based in Britain. Its founders, Carol and Paddy Henderson, began by feeding children sleeping rough in Bulgaria. Only when a desperate neighbour in their home town, Salisbury, asked for help did the Hendersons start distributing food out of their garden shed. Similarly, FareShare began life giving homeless people surplus food from Sainsbury’s. Two decades and 420 food banks later, both charities are now huge.

If you watch something today, watch this.

The 400-year history of how we talk about the deserving versus the undeserving poor.

“Within that term is this entire history of debates about the poor who can work but refuse to, because they’re lazy,” said Susannah Ottaway, a historian of social welfare at Carleton College in Minnesota. “To a historian, to see this term is to understand its very close association with debates that center around the need to morally reform the poor.”

"Historians trace America’s welfare system to England’s 1601 poor law, which required local communities to collect taxes and distribute aid to the poor. But only the “impotent poor” — those truly powerless to support themselves — were to receive aid. The “able-bodied” were to be put to work.

I cannot agree with the position not to vote. I am too concerned with the influence and impact of policies and legislation mandated by our political institution on the welfare and well-being of the Black and the communities of other oppressed persons. I am too concern with the well-being of my sisters as there exists a conscious refusal on the behalf of the government and other political entities in acknowledging the role of racism, classism, and sexism in creating the environment and conditions which lead many Black women into positions of economic independence(as head of households) or dependence(on the welfare state)economic dependence of assistance from the welfare state. Within a economy that benefits and profits from the incarceration of black bodies, there must exists a conscious refusal to give recognition to the influence of a prison system that incarcerates fathers, husbands, and lovers, and forces Black women into positions of economic independence or dependence. And as conservative politicians, under the monetary influence of White capitalist, concerned with profit, seek to deregulate business in an increasingly globalized economy in which jobs are being outsourced outside of Black communities, preventing un-incarcerated Black men from finding gainful employment, while the the nation presents Black men under a racist mythology of "dead-beat" fatherhood, unable to fulfill traditional roles as father or provider and Black women as "welfare queens" who's inherent "insatiable" sexuality must inevitably lead them into lives of unplanned pregnancies.Or they are cast into the role of the "undeserving poor", shiftless and lazy, or what Mitt Romney has defined as the "entitled" 47 percent. Black oppression is not a natural consequence of a White imagined deviancy. Black oppression is the direct result of a racist and capitalist system which has sough to profit from our "inferior status". I am voting because I am concerned with Black survival. I am voting because I am concern with the flourishing of Black life. I am voting because I am in love with Black people.

So I was recently a small part of an exchange on Facebook in which one of the people I was interacting with articulated a fairly tea party-friendly line about the Democrats being engaged in class warfare on behalf of those Americans who live on wealth transfers from those who earn, with government as the mediating agent that takes from those who earn to give to those who don't.

As it happens, I was astonished to see this screed come from the person it did, and frankly think it must have come during a bad day, or at an inopportune time. It's just not characteristic of the writer -- who, while we don't always agree, nonetheless usually avoids such rhetorical extremism.

I think what shocked me most was the extraordinary ignorance of social and political reality the sentiment betrayed. After all, we ALL live on wealth transfers mediated through the government. I get to deduct my mortgage interest ... something renters don't get to do. Businesses write off billions on their taxes in capital depreciation "losses," many of which are losses on paper only. (Landlords get to depreciate rental houses, for example, even if the value of the house increases over time.) Lots of "private businesses" -- ranging from defense contractors to private prisons to charter schools -- aren't really free market enterprises: they're tax recipients. Poor people pay huge percentages of their income in Social Security and Medicare taxes -- taxes that are capped at $106,000 income, meaning if you make more than that you don't pay SS and Medicare taxes on the income over that amount. And, of course, we all get fire and police and lots of other public services paid for out of taxes.

Which brings me to the images above. One measure of whether or not you have earned the pay you get is productivity. In general, the more productive you are the more you make, and as productivity increases wages typically follow. Except that this hasn't really happened in the last 30 years -- our great period of "don't tax high incomes." Instead, while worker productivity has increased dramatically, wages and take home pay have been frozen. In other words, you and I work harder and more effectively, but the wealth derived from our increased productivity has not been shared with us. It's been concentrated at the top, where high wage earners and those who live on inheritances and capital gains find much of their income exempted from the taxes the rest of us pay.