The Poverty of U.S. Politics.

Although political leaders periodically rediscover poverty, the United States is a difficult nation in which to be poor or hungry. Puritan New Englanders took wealth as a sign of God's favor, and by the nineteenth century our culture was dominated by the Horatio Alger mystique of rags to riches.

The converse of these celebratory ideals lie in the widespread social conviction that the poor deserved their fate. Conservatives were willing to leave them to their fate; corporate and liberal philanthropy offered occasional alms--accompanied by intrusive moral guidance. Only during the Great Depression, when poverty gripped wide segments of the middle and working classes, were these easy moral certainties widely challenged.

Bill Clinton's 1999 late-summer tour of impoverished communities became another occasion for public debate of poverty in the United States. Not to be outdone, many candidates for public office have rediscovered the issue. But however much poverty may be "back in the news," familiar perspectives continue to underlie the debate. Today the query still widely heard on the street is: how can we have hunger when job growth is supposedly booming? And the widely prevalent answer is once again that the poor are in some ways to blame, either by not wanting to work or by misusing federal food stamp programs to buy junk food.

A reexamination of the current "boom" and of the extent of hunger should lead us to different conclusions about the poor. For example, if hunger is a consequence of intrinsic character flaws, one must wonder why its incidence fluctuates so severely. James Well, head of the advocacy group Food Research and Action Center, reported in July 1999 that hunger rose sharply the previous year and that "36 million Americans were either hungry, were skipping meals, couldn't afford an adequate or balanced diet, or were otherwise on the edge of hunger." That was the same year many business and political leaders, including Clinton, celebrated the shrinkage of the welfare rolls and the entry of many recipients into the job market. Though there are good reasons to celebrate diminishing dependence on a paternalistic welfare state, the corporate job market into which recipients entered merits as much scrutiny as the welfare system they left.

The vast majority of the poor are working poor. National studies released in July 1999 by Rutgers University's Center for Workforce Development indicate that only 24 percent of the working poor want to work less, compared to 58 percent of other workers from previous Rutgers studies conducted over the last several years. Additionally, 24 percent of the working poor said they wanted to work more, compared to 12 percent of other workers. Rutgers' conclusion: "The working poor and the unemployed are in large numbers seeking a better life and are willing to work for it." Furthermore, contrary to many prevalent stereotypes, a study conducted in 1993 by Mathematica Policy Research concluded that food stamp recipients shop smarter and eat 20 percent to 50 percent less junk food than other people.

So if the poor are willing to work, use their resources wisely, and often work harder than many others, so, too, are they willing to learn. But the U.S. corporate political economy fails them in this way as well. Rutgers' latest research also found that 81 percent of the working poor want to enroll in an education or training program but only 18 percent work for employers who finance one (compared with 36 percent of higher-income workers). Additionally, only 27 percent of these employers receive government aid for such programs. This unwillingness to fund job training and development is not surprising given a U.S. corporate culture that emphasizes short-term profits and often fails to make the best use of the existing talents of workers at all levels.

Many U.S. industrial and white collar workers are now working the longest hours of their lives. They have faced stagnant or even declining real incomes during much of their working lives. Their hold on "the American dream" of a stable and secure existence has become tenuous at best. It is this stagnation that accounts for both much of the hunger among low-income workers and many of the stereotypes and resentments held by those just above low-income workers in the corporate pyramid.

In the context of a corporate culture that seems resistant to change and a political process that is virtually moribund, traditional notions about the poor deserving their fate and being unworthy of aid help a marginalized working and middle class make sense of its own situation. In the long run, however, these insecurities must be eliminated. The Rutgers research points to one promising strategy:

* Gradual reductions in the standard work week--not part of our politics since the late thirties--would both take pressure off overworked Americans and offer more job opportunities to the marginally employed.

* A higher minimum wage indexed to inflation would improve the bargaining power of most low-income workers.

* An adequate family allowance for all parents of young children and universal health care would not only help redress poverty but also make middle-class family life more secure.

That we cannot afford such measures is belied by the many ways in which such measures would improve the productivity of our workers and ease the waste in much of our current welfare, health, and private philanthropic efforts.

If the politics of poverty is ever to become more than a photo-op, it must become the stuff of broad coalitions for reform of our corporate political economy. Developing a strategy that provides the universal rights to adequate wages, family time, and health care would help and be helped by a reexamination of our stereotypes regarding the poor.

John Buell is a freelance writer living in Southwest Harbor, Maine. His e-mail address is [e-mail].