George Will, as usual, has an interesting column today. Almost incidentally flicking aside John Edwards as an insubstantial, ill-informed lightweight (he “does not recognize the name James Q. Wilson”), Will makes an important observation about the “paradigm shift” in the understanding of poverty.
In the old paradigm of and from the 1930s, still shared by Edwards and most liberals:
Poor people are like everyone else; they just lack goods and services (housing, transportation, training, etc.) that government knows how to deliver. Hence [Edwards] calls for a higher minimum wage and job-creation programs.
And the new:
The 1930s paradigm has been refuted by four decades of experience. The new paradigm is of behavior-driven poverty that results from individuals’ nonmaterial deficits. It results from a scarcity of certain habits and mores — punctuality, hygiene, industriousness, deferral of gratification, etc. — that are not developed in disorganized homes.
I think there is also an interesting parallel — and an even more interesting lack of parallel — with how the paradigm of race has changed, this time since the 1960s.
In the 1960s (and earlier for most liberals) blacks were thought to be (to borrow Will’s language) just “like everyone else; they just lack” white skins, a view that is nicely captured in the title of a paradigmatic (!) film from 1964, Nothing But A Man. That theme can be found virtually everywhere, from Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner (1967) to the Cosby Show on TV.
On this view, blacks should be treated equally because they’re just like everybody else. In the new “diversity” paradigm (no more “paradigms” after this post), they should be treated differently because they are different. There is no “diversity” without difference.
As I’ve said before, diversiphiles think of themselves as progressives, but this is not progress.
George Will writes:
>>>”Most Americans seem to regard as the only searing economic injustice the violation of their constitutional right — surely it is in the Bill of Rights — to cheap gasoline. But Edwards believes attacking poverty can be politically energizing if, by stressing “work, responsibility, family,” the attack “is built around a value system the nation embraces.”
This smacks of the same, detatched elitism that makes George Will, IMHO, unreadable to anybody who actually gets his or her hands dirty for a living.
Looking down one’s nose at the working poor in America may work while lighting cigars when teeing up on the 18th, but it doesn’t play for me.
–Cobra
Cobra —
lighting cigars when teeing up on the 18th?
Are you suggesting that having a strong vocabulary smacks of a detatched elitism? Would immersing himself in hip-hop or rap culture rehabiltate George Will?
You seem to echo the same attitude that keeps the black culture down — that a mastery of the English language somehow isn’t hip.
Cobra, usually you make some valid point. Here your only complaint seems to be that George Will has too strong a vocabulary for both you and working class tastes. If George Will chooses his words from outside the hip-hop culture, try using a dictionary. It might expand your mind.
i can’t agree that will is unreadable to people who work with their hands. i have people in my family who are hair dressers and carpet layers and handymen. They can read george will and understand him. and there is nothing elitist about the values he listed in his article. this is the notion that has done so much harm to people, that only the rich can practice those values, and that if you are poor you must be dirty and stupid and it’s not your fault if you are. liberals accept these insults to the poor because they blame it on “society.” when society perfects itself, then people will behave. if people really acted like that, we’d still be living in caves, if people really said i’m poor so i’m discharged from every moral and ethical and legal and religious responsibility and obligation.
and even if they can’t read george will, it does not mean he is wrong.
I didn’t mean “unreadable” as in “people who get their hands dirt for a living” are illiterate, nor did I suggest that only Soul Train extras were incapable of comprehending Will.
Will comes across in this collumn with derision and contempt for those who struggle in America. It’s not a rare trait in his body of work, or among others of his ilk.
–Cobra
Many if not most of the poor people I’ve known really earned their economic status. They’re not “bad people”, but one way or another, they were holding themselves back.
The rich, by contrast, often seem to have the fortune handed to them. As far as I can determine, anyway.
Will comes across in this collumn with derision and contempt for those who struggle in America. It’s not a rare trait in his body of work, or among others of his ilk.
And yet, that doesn’t make it any less accurate.
I thought the left had finally realized it lost this debate when the NYTimes admitted that reauthorizing the 1990s welfare reform that it had previously demonized as cruel was actually a “no-brainer” now.
George Will’s editorial is a mixture of errant historical analysis and misdiagnosed ascertains on what causes poverty. Mr. Will suggests that we are in transition from an old paradigm which views poverty as systemic to a new paradigm which focuses in on individuals’ shortcomings as the cause of poverty. While it is true that American society focuses in on the latter reason, the “old” paradigm never existed.
Our society has always looked at behavioral, cultural and other assortment of internal frailties to explain why social problems exist. Even during the Great Depression, unemployment was explained as being due to people not willing to take any type of job available to them. The poor houses of the 1800s, charity workers trying to reform the poor and a meager public welfare system are all evidence of the historical antecedents of poverty being explained as individual failings.
George Will expresses this paradigm quite well when he states that poverty “results from a scarcity of certain habits and mores – punctuality, hygiene, industriousness, deferral of gratification, etc. – that are not developed in disorganized homes”. This culture of poverty theory made popular in the late 1950s is not new to the thinking processes of most Americans. Unfortunately our programs to address poverty are centered on this theory, which explains their failings.
Does Mr. Will seriously suggest that if all Americans suddenly lead an exemplary life that poverty would cease to exist? By studying those who are more likely to be in poverty, we only uncover those who are the most vulnerable to our economic system. If these “slothful” people suddenly changed their “habits” and left poverty, they would only be replaced by a new group of people whom we can study and see how they are different from the rest of us. That way, we can blame these differences as the reason for their impoverishment.
Such a recipe has never worked in addressing the condition of poverty in America, yet it remains the primary way of addressing poverty. This is the old paradigm as well as the new paradigm. Until we actually dive into a new way of thinking about this problem little will change.
The reason the “old paradigm,” as you call it, exists is because it is the only one through which individuals have the ability to change their situation. Otherwise, you just have a caste system.
The “old paradigm” actually reinforces a certain type of caste system. Although upward mobility is quite possible in our society, it is still true that the best predictor of wealth in this country is the wealth possessed by one’s own parents. Concentration of wealth is at its highest levels since pre-Depression days.
Individuals who are no longer burden by mere survival can obtained great things in life. It is unfortunate that for one-third of Americans, life is merely surviving rather than obtaining fulfillment.
Mike V.,
If we define “poverty” as the lowest x percentile, poverty definitionally won’t “cease to exist” unless we all have identical incomes. (It’s been tried, and it (a) was gamed from the get-go by the supposed “equals” in charge; (b) resulted in everyone but the individuals in (a) being worse off.)
Mike, you take “obtaining fulfillment” to mean “obtaining wealth.” I’m sorry, but I find that bizarre. All I want personally is to be able to indulge my own little pleasures (mostly music and books), and keep myself dry and clothed and in reasonably good health. What difference does it make to me what Bill Gates’ net worth is, so long as his gain isn’t my loss? I don’t want to live as he does, and by the grace of God I’m unlikely to get the opportunity anyway ;-)
Mike V. writes:
>>>”The “old paradigm” actually reinforces a certain type of caste system. Although upward mobility is quite possible in our society, it is still true that the best predictor of wealth in this country is the wealth possessed by one’s own parents. Concentration of wealth is at its highest levels since pre-Depression days.
Individuals who are no longer burden by mere survival can obtained great things in life. It is unfortunate that for one-third of Americans, life is merely surviving rather than obtaining fulfillment.”
Absolutely, and I question the perspectives of pundits in regards to these issues, especially when those said pundits get oppurtunities to give lectures or simply sit in on board meeting talks for upwards of $25,000 per day.
Where theres a Will
I don’t begrudge George Will, or anybody else’s earnings or affluent lifestyle, however I’m definitely taking a grain of salt with his opinions and analysis.
Michelle writes:
>>>”All I want personally is to be able to indulge my own little pleasures (mostly music and books), and keep myself dry and clothed and in reasonably good health.”
I agree with you, in the statement that you shouldn’t have to compare yourself to Bill Gates to consider yourself “succesful”, however, given your intellect and gleening from a lot of your posts, I don’t think you’re living the life of “Willie, the homeless harmonica guy who hangs out at the library”, either.
The comforts you speak of come with an ever increasing cost, especially the “reasonably good health” part. That’s why when pundits like Will argue against national health care, or corporations paying health benefits, you have to recognize that you’re listening to a man who can painlessly write a check for even a castastrophic surgical procedure.
Skewed perspectives.
–Cobra