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Harris Sherline: Counting ‘The Poor’
We hear a lot about poverty: who is poor, how poor they are, lack of opportunity, how our free-market economic system and the rich are to blame for their condition. In other words, it’s our fault they are poor.
What image comes to mind when you hear the word poverty? Someone who looks like a bum, homeless, unkempt and lazy, living off the taxpayers? Or a simple, hardworking individual or family, struggling to make ends meet, just trying to get along?
Or, all of the above?
Poverty statistics have always troubled me. Mostly, I think, because they seem to include too large a percentage of the population, and the percentage never seems to change. If anything, it has increased over the years. My sense is that the reason for this is that the definition of poverty keeps changing, generally to bolster the bureaucracy and special interests that have turned it into a business.
The War on Poverty was launched by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and “in the decade following the 1964 introduction of the War on Poverty, poverty rates in the United States dropped to their lowest level to date: 11.1 percent. They have remained between 11 and 15.2 percent ever since. Since 1973, poverty has remained well below the historical U.S. averages in the range of 20 percent to 25 percent. ... In 2004, more than 35.9 million, or 12 percent of Americans, including 12.1 million children, were considered to be living in poverty with an average growth of almost 1 million per year,” according to Wikipedia.
The word “poor” is misleading. It tends to imply that people who are considered poor are unemployed, living on the streets, going hungry. However, the reality is far different from the popular image.
Robert Rector, a senior research fellow with the Heritage Foundation, provides interesting and perhaps surprising insight on the status of the poor in his article “Understanding Poverty in America, What the Census Bureau Doesn’t Count when Reporting on the ‘Poor.’”
Rector notes, for example, that very few of the more than 30 million Americans who are defined as poor actually experience any significant hardship. “According to the government’s own surveys, the typical ‘poor’ American has cable or satellite TV, two color TVs, and a DVD player or VCR. He has air conditioning, a car, a microwave, a refrigerator, a stove, and a clothes washer and dryer. He is able to obtain medical care when needed. 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.”
Rector also observes that spending on the poor is generally underestimated — by not including the value of many of the government benefits they receive, such as food, housing, medical care and certain social services. “If converted into cash, this aid would be nearly four times the amount needed to eliminate poverty in the U.S. by raising the incomes of all poor households above the federal poverty levels,” he writes.
He further comments, “What is surprising is that every year for nearly three decades, in good economic times and bad, Census has reported more than 30 million Americans living in poverty.”
How is it possible that the number of Americans living in poverty never changes, no matter how much money and services are provided to help them?
The answer is that the definition of poverty — that is, the formula for calculating income — routinely omits many of the government services and benefits provided to the poor. For example, census figures count only “around 4 percent of total (government) welfare spending as ‘income.’” This makes it possible to increase expenditures for welfare without materially affecting the poverty numbers.
Poverty in America has become a growth industry, with a variety of constituencies and special interests, including many politicians, all of whom benefit from the system and seek to expand it for their own advantage.
— Harris R. Sherline is a retired CPA and former chairman and CEO of Santa Ynez Valley Hospital who has lived in Santa Barbara County for more than 30 years. He stays active writing opinion columns and his blog, Opinionfest.com.
Comments
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» on 11.14.09 @ 11:10 PM
And no doubt we can lower the crime rate by redefining what constitutes a crime.
Prisons in America are a growth industry and when they are privatized the incentive to reduce the recidivism rate is nil.
Eliminating grades and attendance requirements would lower the dropout rate.
Harris is on to something. Do Sin next.
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» on 11.15.09 @ 12:48 PM
I’m not quite sure I understand the point of this article. Let me paraphrase:
Poverty annoys me. It seems like the government should have taken care of it by now. I mean, look at all the money they’ve thrown at it! Yet it stays the same. What’s the problem? I know! It’s a conspiracy. Most people really aren’t poor—the government just wants me to think they are. Ah, here’s something I understand. People taking advantage of other people. Well, guess what, I’m not going to fall for it anymore. From now on, when I hear poverty statistics, I’m just going to ignore them because I know that if people have some stuff, that means they aren’t poor. Amazing! I just eliminated poverty!
There are several problems with this argument. First, poor does not mean destitute. A person is poor if they have less than the normal standard for living comfortably within a given country or society. Yes, there’s a lot of flexibility in this definition, like any other, but this does not mean one can eliminate poverty by giving everyone a television. Because this has often been the case in practice, we get cheap food and goods for ourselves by exploiting the poor elsewhere and feel like we’ve done a good deed because anyone can afford a meal at McDonald’s.
There’s a deeper problem here than definition, however. Even if one was to agree completely with Mr. Sherline’s argument, what function does it serve? To prove that poverty statistics, like every other facet of government and the free market, are manipulated for personal gain? This seems so obvious as to not require mention. What I suspect, though, is that if I buy this argument, it makes me feel better about my lack of care for the people around me, in my neighborhood, who do not enjoy the same quality of life that I do. If the problem is smaller than we are told, then I probably don’t have to contribute to the solution because there are enough people working on it already. In short, Mr. Sherline’s argument entails complacency.
The question still remains when all the statistics are thrown out the window. When I see, with my own eyes, the face of someone in need, will I help meet that need or ignore it? Will I take for granted the benefits I currently have as given to me by my hard work and determination, or will I share my finances, my time, my self with those who lack the same luxuries?
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» on 11.15.09 @ 02:34 PM
I cannot believe that this guy is for real. How can you live in this or any other country and not know that there are people who live on their next check, paying exorbitant interest rates on their time purchase or credit card? Frequently missing a meal, trying to fund transportation expense, even unable to buy a coffee at their local coffee shop?
Is he so insulated from the community that he thinks that poor is a chosen life style?
Obviously he doesn’t know that unemployment exists or low wages are paid. In fact, he must believe that minimum wages are adequate to one’s ability to pay rent, buy food, get needed medical treatment, or life’s other necessities.
The tragedy of his observations are that there are people who equally insensitive to the world around them that they think there is some substance to these comments.In other words there are enough people out there who have an unrealistic idea of what the real world is about without having these idiotic comments presented as an actual life choice, or a real situation.
Almost every crackpot can find followers and he is not excluded.
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» on 11.15.09 @ 06:17 PM
Arrest and deport
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» on 11.15.09 @ 08:38 PM
Uh… here in Santa Barbara County, there are migrants living in caves near Santa Maria, apartments in the Southern County where people sleep in bunk beds in shifts, and quite a few folks living throughout the County in their cars.
Harris Sherline is unbelievably ignorant and arrogant. He should get out of his dreamworld and work at a homeless shelter or church meal service to see what reality is here.
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» on 11.16.09 @ 09:21 AM
@Matt Recla: Thank you for stating so succinctly what is wrong with this argument.
I notice Sherline doesn’t mention anything about fixing the systemic issues that keep people below the poverty line in this country. I might have been more amenable to his points had he suggested the government spend money on education to give people the tools to raise themselves and their families up out of poverty rather than blaming statistics for distorting the “real” numbers of poor in our country.
He also clearly hasn’t been into any department stores lately - color TVs (really?! not black and white?) and DVD players are pretty cheap these days, not to mention thrift stores and people of higher means giving their old ones away. The fact that Americans have those electronics despite their economic situation just proves how central TV has become to our culture, not how affluent we are.
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» on 11.16.09 @ 11:36 AM
Maybe Sherline is right. Of course, the “health care industry” is another one of those
growth employment sectors unlimited by inflation, justice or need, as well.
And wasn’t that the route Mr. Sherline took to his golden-parachuted, comfy SY Valley existence?
Heading into Thanksgiving, at a time when 8-years of Sherline endorsed Bushonomics have left tens of millions unemployed, homeless, or almost bankrupt, Sherline’s lack of sympathy or empathy, charity or compassion, speaks eloquently.
Who in their right mind would prefer to be “counted among the poor”?
There’s a wonderful old book Sherline might profit from re-reading some day. It’s
called the Bible.
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