Boon Or Bane Pro Bob Herbert And Tony Snow Offer Conflicting Statistics And Views On The Efficacy Of And Need For Social Welfare Programs.
In a segment of “Eyes on the Prize,” the brilliant documentary series on the civil rights movement, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is shown at a press conference, saying, “There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of people in that society who feel that they have no stake in it, who feel that they have nothing to lose.” Aristotle understood this. “Poverty,” he said, “is the parent of revolution and crime.”
In some sense, the American people understand it. A national survey conducted last fall showed that 72 percent of Americans believe that reducing poverty would help reduce racial tension and crime.
And yet, in a reckless new journey, with maps scrawled by sneering, cynical men with an utter contempt for history, the nation is moving fast toward policies guaranteed to increase poverty, suffering and greatly expand a dangerous part of the population that feels it has nothing to lose.
Henry Hampton, executive producer of “Eyes on the Prize” and “The Great Depression,” has completed a five-hour documentary series called “America’s War on Poverty,” which will appear on PBS on Jan. 16, 17 and 18. It’s an honest look at a period that has been profoundly distorted and lied about by politicians and others who have built marvelous careers exploiting misery. The series arrives at a crucial moment in which poverty is growing, as is the number of middle class Americans falling into poverty.
One might have expected a sense of urgency to develop, a sense that these are serious problems that must be dealt with - trends that must be reversed. Instead, the opposite is happening. The newest, most successful leaders in government have gotten where they are by promising to mug the poor.
“It seems to me so obvious that we have to do something about poverty,” said Hampton during an interview at the headquarters of his production company, Blackside Inc., in Boston. “But this obvious need to act is buried in this litany that we’ve heard for so long: ‘They don’t want to work, they’re taking your money, they want to sit and drink and watch television.’ That kind of blatant appeal continues to work.”
An “unconditional war on poverty” was declared by President Lyndon Johnson in his 1964 State of the Union address. Johnson appealed to the best in America when the country seemed economically strong, militarily powerful and, in some quarters, deeply idealistic. It was also a time when the nation was hurtling into the Vietnam tragedy and when violence at home was eroding important reserves of good will and depriving the nation of some of its greatest leaders.
The war on poverty made progress despite handicaps. A companion volume to Hampton’s series points out that in 1965, some 33.2 million Americans - 17 percent of the population - lived in poverty. By 1973, both the absolute numbers and the rate of poverty had declined, to 23 million and 11 percent, respectively.
Then came the reversal. By 1988, after eight years of the Reagan revolution and its cruel assault on social services, 31.9 million, or 13.1 percent of Americans, were living in poverty. The numbers are still rising.
It would have been most helpful if we had built on the poverty war’s many successes and learned from its failures, which should have been corrected. Instead, cheap politics and widespread ill will prevailed. The poor got poorer and, according to a study of the years 1978 to 1986, the percentage of adults in the middle class in that period declined from 75 to 67 percent. The rich got richer, of course. And the demagogues - who do all in their power to foment hatred of the lower classes - flourished.
This won’t go on indefinitely. At some point a reckoning is inevitable.
xxxx “Boon or Bane Con Bob Herbert and Tony Snow offer conflicting statistics and views on the efficacy of and need for social welfare programs.”