Jan. 8, 2014 marked the 50th year anniversary of U.S president Lyndon B. Johnson’s enactment of the War on Poverty. 50 years later, the U.S has the capacity to work forward in Johnson’s eradication of poverty without having to engage in war at all.

 

 

Alex Scrivner | Contributing Writer

“Let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined; as the session which enacted the most far-reaching tax cut of our time; as the session which declared all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States”—Lyndon B. Johnson, State of the Union Address, January 1964

Is a nation’ s greatness measured upon its rich or its poor? Or is it the gap between the two which is the most telling? On Jan. 8, 1964, Lyndon B. Johnson declared in his State of the Union Address that Congress needed to join his administration to commence a national war on poverty at a time when the number of Americans living in poverty was reaching critical mass. Now the nation considers what has resulted from this “war,” and some wonder if the “troops” were ever sent out in the first place.

The current national poverty line, which is an adjusted number from that fixed in the Johnson era, is set at $23,293 for two adults and two dependents younger than 18 and $18,498 for one adult and two dependents less than 18 years of age. The daily crisis for those who are at or below these national lines is that being employed, even full time, is not enough to keep one securely outside of the stagnant socioeconomic status of poverty. The reality is that for some, even being employed full-time and earning minimum wage still results in living at or under the poverty line.

The current federal minimum wage of $7.25, considering inflation, carries less economic value than it did in the 70s. In his recent State of the Union Address, President Obama stated that he is supporting a federal minimum wage increase to $9 by 2015. Frank Stricker, emeritus professor of history at Cal State Dominguez Hills, and author of Why America Lost the War on Poverty-and How to Win It, proposes the wage be established at $15.50.

“Even for a worker with [a] full year’s work, that’s only $32,240. …For anyone with dependents that’s still poverty,” Stricker said.

The spectrum of who and what accounts for “human poverty” in the U.S. has been broadened in the same ways as it has remained stalled throughout the past 50 years, time that has included wars and turmoil of various kinds. For one to understand the persistent negative repercussions of the economic system at work, he or she needs to evaluate how the society at large relates to poverty and who the “weapons of war” have ended up fighting for and against. After all, if a person is unaware of a war, then he or she is also unaware of which side of the battlefield they occupy individually.

“But it is not a standstill budget, for America cannot afford to stand still. Our population is growing. Our economy is more complex. Our people’s needs are expanding. …It will not be a short or easy struggle, no single weapon or strategy will suffice, but we shall not rest until that war is won. The richest nation on earth can afford to win it. We cannot afford to lose it.”

The broadened Social Security instituted in the 60s (e.g. food stamps, Head Start and other social welfare programs) has played a role in meeting the needs of the poor. However, it has reacted inadequately to increases in wealth which the country has received, proving to be ill-equipped to challenge America’s growing inequality.

In a 2013 study, the Economic Pol- icy Institute reported that the minimum wage for workers in terms of the average hourly earnings has continuously digressed since 1964. Mini- mum-wage workers shared a calculated 49.4 percent of earnings made in 1964 and in 2011 that figure dropped to 37.2 percent. The supposed richest nation on earth continues to withhold from its labor force their equal share. Productivity has not been a determining factor in the corporate distribution of earnings.

“The gap between the richest and the average worker is massive and nearly 10 times as wide as it is in other countries,” Stricker said. “We have a lot of income growth in America, but almost all the additional income we make is taken away by the income at the top one to five percent, and it doesn’t get distributed to the average people so the wages stay low.”

While one can join the picket lines with a big finger pointing toward capitalism to blame, capitalism itself does not necessitate the extreme inequality between the rich and the poor that America continues to fabricate. Stricker sees the only hope in alleviating the nation from growing and/or sustaining poverty is to redistribute wealth and income.

“The minimum wage fights that are going on now are a little effort to do that,” Stricker said.

Social services have kept poverty levels at bay to a point; however, the percentage of those in poverty has increased by less than 1 percent since 1964. Should there not be an implementation of a goal within social services to significantly decrease those percentages? For example, with welfare checks, the money given is put back into the economy because those receiving the aid do not have enough to budget in order to save anything they receive. Systems such as this seem to act as a quick fix and a financial buffer for corporations that are not required to shift the way they do business and distribute profits earned.

“Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope — some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity … All of these increased opportunities … must be open to Americans of every color. As far as the writ of federal law will run, we must abolish not some, but all racial discrimination. For this is not merely an economic issue, or a social, political, or international issue. It is a moral issue.”

Johnson’s War on Poverty fed off of the momentum of the Civil Rights Act of 1963, and 50 years later, race is still a determining agent in who is more likely to live in poverty.

Algernon Austin, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy, said in an article by TheGrio that “there continues to be racial bias in the labor market, some of it is in overt consciousness and some is not. Until we acknowledge the presence of overt bias and subtle unconscious bias we will not be able to solve the problem of excessively high black unemployment. ”

Government statistics go hand- in-hand with Austin’ s statement. According to the U.S. census, in 2011 (and it is still about that average today) the percentage of all American people in poverty was 15 percent and the percentage of single-race blacks who were in poverty was 27.6 percent; the amount being nearly double for the black population in comparison to the entire populace. Johnson’s State of the Union Address, along with Obama’s in January, emphasized the need of an alleviation of poverty for ALL American peoples. The issue cannot be glossed over, and the matter of race must be incorporated alongside any debate of poverty, just as one must talk about the rich when discussing the poor.

The job market contest does not only exist amidst racial complexities but also shifts in the types of people applying for minimum and low-wage jobs. After the 2008-2009 recession, many jobs were taken out of the market which left even more of those who were highly educated and older to settle into work usually occupied by youth without college degrees. The Center for Economic and Policy Research analyzed that the number of “16 to 19-year-olds in low-wage work fell by 50 percent between 1979 to 2011 while workers ages 35-64 increased their share of low-wage work.” In 1979 the number of low-wage workers who had college experience was 19.5 percent, and in 2011 that number increased to 33.3 percent. In sum, those who have a college degree are taking work at the minimum-wage level and leaving those equipped to work but lacking a diploma to settle for an even lower earning job or no job at all.

According to a January 2014 article written by Colorlines.com, “One out of four blacks and one out of six Latinos under the age of 25 are without work. ” This cycle is economically stagnating the peoples who, within the next 50 years, are going to be the majority of the U.S. population.

“Very often a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children.”

Ironically, the most notable times of economic stimulation and job avail- ability have been when the U.S. is in a military war. In the late 60s the U.S. had an astonishing 3 percent poverty rate during the Vietnam War due to government investment in job creation. This provided a lot of stability for middle class families and blue collar workers but also played a pivotal role in creating astringent political polarities and was a distraction from fighting things like poverty according to Stricker.

Out of this era also came the War on Drugs during the Nixon presidency in 1971.

“Some people say that the War on Poverty was replaced by the War on the Poor,” Stricker said. “ And part of it was the War on Drugs which incarcerated many people who had committed minor infractions and who were heavily minority. ”

The War on Drugs, conversely linked with the War on Poverty, continues to fuel our criminal justice and political systems. In 2012 the U.S. arrested 1.5 million people for nonviolent drug charges, and in the same year incarcerated what added up to 1 in every 108 adults. Just as war abroad hasn’t solved poverty at home, imprisoning mass amounts of citizens for major and minor drug indictments (the U.S. holds the medal for highest incarceration rate in the world) hasn’t brought resolution to the relentless conflict of ending poverty.

“My good friends and my fellow Americans: In these last seven sorrowful weeks, we have learned anew that nothing is so enduring as faith, and nothing is so degrading as hate. So I ask you now in the Congress and in the country to join with me in expressing and fulfilling that faith in working for a nation, a nation that is free from want and a world that is free from hate — a world of peace and justice, and freedom and abundance, for our time and for all time to come.”

“Every person has their own right to self-determination, ” said Rudy Salinas, an interim program director for Housing Works in Los Angeles, Calif. Housing Works is an initiative within Los Angeles that acts as “an approach to ending homelessness that centers on providing homeless people with housing quickly and then providing services as needed.” This organization focuses on the chronically homeless, and approaches poverty from, what they deem, the “human level. ”

The staff of Housing Works adopted psychologist Carl Rogers’ position toward life, which is one of unconditional positive regard. As the invisible hand pushes the polarities between the rich and the poor in society, it would be injudicious to assume that one’ s consciousness has not also acclimated to the disparity. While policies need making and economic systems need bending, it is one’s consciousness and approach to his or her own fellow man or woman that also needs reinventing. This applies to those who are living in socioeconomic poverty alongside those who are not. The stance Salinas has taken is one of mutual responsibility, where the eradication of poverty is in the hands of the average citizen just as much as the politicians that represent them.

This puts the individual at the crux of the War on Poverty. Over the past 50 years, political agendas and the economy have claimed a war in vain. Historians such as Stricker and activists like Salinas have given up on the fleeting effectiveness of war, but have not lost hope in the reality of an alleviated socioeconomic poor. At its core, the War on Poverty is a war for equality. Everyone has a role, and if each of us plays our own part there shouldn’t have to be war at all.