By: KRDG
The American public has been convinced that government aid to the poor creates dependency, enforces the notion of entitlement, and discourages individuals from seeking gainful employment. The media, top government officials, certain intellectual elite, and business leaders have perpetuated this concept for decades. According to a poll cited by Fong, Bowles, and Gintis (2001), “Americans have much stronger beliefs that poverty is caused by laziness; sixty percent of Americans say the poor are lazy, compared to just 27% of Europeans” (Fong, Bowles, and Gintis, p 3).
The current image, as discussed by Schram, regarding the dominating belief among the US public is that of “welfare recipients as malingerers and no-accounts, lazily living off welfare” (Schram p. 23). Schram makes the argument that in order to develop praxis for the poor that is effective, a “counterdiscourse that undermines the basic assumptions of the reigning discourse of suspicions and provides the basis for a credible alternative interpretive framework" is needed (Schram p. 31).
A basic understanding of how poverty is defined aids in establishing a framework for this discussion. As stated by Piven and Cloward (1993), “when the poverty line was first calculated in the 1960s, the average family spent one-third of its income on food, and the poverty line was set at three times the food costs, adjusted for family size.” For those that are able to access benefits, whether in the form of a housing subsidy, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food benefits, Medicaid, Head Start, or any other government sponsored program, they are required to confirm their income and assets to maintain the eligibility. The notion that if people would simply work hard enough, they would not need government aid, simply does not apply by today’s standards. The truth is that the rules established for becoming and remaining eligible for any type of public benefits often traps individuals in generational poverty.
As thoroughly described by Piven and Cloward (1993), there were a myriad of “administrative strategies” that were employed after the 1970s to prevent even those that were eligible from receiving the aid that was needed. In addition, during this time frame, “businesses turned to the hiring of contingent workers- part-time, temporary, and subcontracted employees” in order to increase profits and avoid paying benefits and pensions (Piven and Cloward 1993).
A critical angle to explore is the role of declining wages as a result of the shift in income sources and types of employment. An example provided by Washington, DC based organizations, Jobs With Justice and Americans for Tax Fairness, explain the impact of paying substandard wages and benefits by Wal-Mart. Based on an average hourly wage of $8.81 for a full-time position, employees rely on subsidies for the SNAP program at an estimated cost of $6.2 billion per year (Smiley 2014). In addition, Wal-Mart “collected an estimated $13 billion in revenue from food stamps spent in their stores” (Smiley 2014).
While this is a singular example of one corporation, it represents a systematic approach that undermines the basic needs of citizens, all the while maintaining a public image of laziness as the operating assumption. An element to further explore in Schram’s counterdiscourse, as a result, must include the role of wages, underemployment, education, in structuring public welfare policies and corporate dominance in policy development. Based on the findings of a 1995 New York Times/CBS poll referenced in Fong, Bowles, and Gintis, “twice as many [respondents] agreed as disagreed that “it is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves.” If this remains the standard of public opinion today, it seems that devising a system to provide temporary assistance while allowing for increased flexibility may be feasible.
Resources
Fong, Christina M., Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert. Reciprocity and the Welfare State.
In Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, and Ernst Fehr, Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperating in Economic Life. (277-302). London, England: The MIT Press.
Piven, Frances Fox and Cloward, Richard A. (1993) Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare. New York: Vintage Books.
Schram, Sanford F. (2002) Praxis for the Poor: Piven and Cloward and the Future of Social Science in Welfare. New York: New York University Press.
Smiley, Erica. “Wal-Mart’s Food Stamp Scam Explained in One Easy Chart.” June 25, 2014. http://www.jwj.org/walmarts-food-stamp-scam-explained-in-one-easy-chart
The American public has been convinced that government aid to the poor creates dependency, enforces the notion of entitlement, and discourages individuals from seeking gainful employment. The media, top government officials, certain intellectual elite, and business leaders have perpetuated this concept for decades. According to a poll cited by Fong, Bowles, and Gintis (2001), “Americans have much stronger beliefs that poverty is caused by laziness; sixty percent of Americans say the poor are lazy, compared to just 27% of Europeans” (Fong, Bowles, and Gintis, p 3).
The current image, as discussed by Schram, regarding the dominating belief among the US public is that of “welfare recipients as malingerers and no-accounts, lazily living off welfare” (Schram p. 23). Schram makes the argument that in order to develop praxis for the poor that is effective, a “counterdiscourse that undermines the basic assumptions of the reigning discourse of suspicions and provides the basis for a credible alternative interpretive framework" is needed (Schram p. 31).
A basic understanding of how poverty is defined aids in establishing a framework for this discussion. As stated by Piven and Cloward (1993), “when the poverty line was first calculated in the 1960s, the average family spent one-third of its income on food, and the poverty line was set at three times the food costs, adjusted for family size.” For those that are able to access benefits, whether in the form of a housing subsidy, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food benefits, Medicaid, Head Start, or any other government sponsored program, they are required to confirm their income and assets to maintain the eligibility. The notion that if people would simply work hard enough, they would not need government aid, simply does not apply by today’s standards. The truth is that the rules established for becoming and remaining eligible for any type of public benefits often traps individuals in generational poverty.
As thoroughly described by Piven and Cloward (1993), there were a myriad of “administrative strategies” that were employed after the 1970s to prevent even those that were eligible from receiving the aid that was needed. In addition, during this time frame, “businesses turned to the hiring of contingent workers- part-time, temporary, and subcontracted employees” in order to increase profits and avoid paying benefits and pensions (Piven and Cloward 1993).
A critical angle to explore is the role of declining wages as a result of the shift in income sources and types of employment. An example provided by Washington, DC based organizations, Jobs With Justice and Americans for Tax Fairness, explain the impact of paying substandard wages and benefits by Wal-Mart. Based on an average hourly wage of $8.81 for a full-time position, employees rely on subsidies for the SNAP program at an estimated cost of $6.2 billion per year (Smiley 2014). In addition, Wal-Mart “collected an estimated $13 billion in revenue from food stamps spent in their stores” (Smiley 2014).
While this is a singular example of one corporation, it represents a systematic approach that undermines the basic needs of citizens, all the while maintaining a public image of laziness as the operating assumption. An element to further explore in Schram’s counterdiscourse, as a result, must include the role of wages, underemployment, education, in structuring public welfare policies and corporate dominance in policy development. Based on the findings of a 1995 New York Times/CBS poll referenced in Fong, Bowles, and Gintis, “twice as many [respondents] agreed as disagreed that “it is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves.” If this remains the standard of public opinion today, it seems that devising a system to provide temporary assistance while allowing for increased flexibility may be feasible.
Resources
Fong, Christina M., Bowles, Samuel and Gintis, Herbert. Reciprocity and the Welfare State.
In Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, and Ernst Fehr, Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperating in Economic Life. (277-302). London, England: The MIT Press.
Piven, Frances Fox and Cloward, Richard A. (1993) Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare. New York: Vintage Books.
Schram, Sanford F. (2002) Praxis for the Poor: Piven and Cloward and the Future of Social Science in Welfare. New York: New York University Press.
Smiley, Erica. “Wal-Mart’s Food Stamp Scam Explained in One Easy Chart.” June 25, 2014. http://www.jwj.org/walmarts-food-stamp-scam-explained-in-one-easy-chart