Squashed

Poverty (and the systemic causes thereof)

Poverty is the sustained inability to meet basic needs or participate meaningfully in mainstream society due to a lack of money, a lack of social power, or both.¹ Poverty is a social disease. It afflicts communities. It afflicts families. It can afflict individuals.

Like cancer, it is near-impossible to trace all of poverty’s various causes. But, like cancer, we’ve got some pretty good ideas on what some of them are. And, like cancer, while you can’t just dump money on the problem to make it go away, we know a lot of things we can do to attack poverty locally and nationally. If we’re not willing to fund the cure or remove the causes, we’re stuck with the disease.

Let’s get concrete. Any area with a shortage of quality public education, of employment opportunities, of public safety, of public services, or of public institutions (whether that means safe parks, civic meeting places, libraries, churches, or so on) is likely to be a high poverty area. By building or expanding any of those things, we can combat poverty. We can also combat poverty by building and supporting local leadership in vulnerable communities. Finally, we can remove blight—and anything causing it. Keep in mind that the thing causing blight could be something like gang violence or could be something like a major national bank foreclosing on homes, uprooting pillars of the community, and leaving empty houses as an invitation to crime. Finally, we can push back against poverty by building community confidence and community wealth. In some cases, this means shutting down the predatory lenders trying to strip communities of wealth. Support home ownership, home equity, and successful, local businesses. In other cases, it means fighting racism or simply working to make a few blocks of a city more attractive. It means knocking down the barriers that prevent people from participating on society. Those barriers can be social, legal, medical, or sometimes simply financial.

When we talk about poverty and politics, I think we should acknowledge three things. First, eliminating—or at least dramatically reducing it—is possible. Second, it is important to do. Third, it isn’t easy.

That’s where Romney gets it wrong. It’s not enough to say, “Eh. I’ll fix the safety net if it’s broken.” A safety net is not a proactive solution to the problem. And if you’re not paying enough attention to what’s happening to notice where that safety net is wearing thin, I don’t trust that you care enough about the problem to address it competently.