The Societal Consequences of Not Making Ends Meet: Poverty in America and the Failing of Our Nation-State
by
Jason Reader
January 17, 2014
This is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang but a whimper.
T.S. Eliot (1925), The Hollow Men
I’m scared; I feel like I’m bearing witness to the death of the American nation-state. I’m not scared of its death; I’ve rationalized that. I’m scared, because of what comes with its death: the unknown. I believe the American nation-state is dying, because the vitriolic rhetoric emanating from the Beltway, especially from the Right, about people experiencing poverty, with the public shaming of welfare recipients, is too far out of touch with the basic realities of being American and living in this great nation. Given the recent trend of ludicrously dismal approval ratings for Congress, I’m enveloped with a sense that most politicians are living in a different America than the one that I’m experiencing at the moment; and with those dismal approval ratings, I don’t think I’m standing alone with those thoughts. I keep seeing hard working Americans, my friends and strangers, struggling to make ends meet; this isn't from a lack of employment. People are working multiple full-time jobs, yet they still struggle to put food on the table, clothe their children, and pay rent. The festering despondence I see in their eyes pulls my heart strings to the breaking point.
A common condolence offered for the deceased, “They’re in a better place!,” speaks volumes to the current state of the “human condition” (Arendt 1958) and life in America; anticipating one’s own mortality as a kind of welcomed release insinuates that this place, this world, our home, and our country is nowhere near as good as it could be. The festering despondence present on the faces of too many Americans is a manifestation of the back braking weariness experienced during their struggle to make ends meet. For too many of us, this festering despondence is a kind of resignation that makes “the better place” seem more and more enticing. To make it another day, too many Americans have to remind themselves to, as Dora so eloquently philosophized, “Just keep swimming.” Without the floatation devices that are government assistance programs, and never “entitlements,” I’m afraid too many Americans would be too tempted to reach “the better place” too soon. And in case you’re wondering, I consider the quantification of too many to be one: one too many.
Trying desperately to stay afloat, Mary, a fictional single mom raising two kids on her own in Northern Virginia, works full-time for minimum wage at your favorite burger joint. With an M.B.A., its not like she is uneducated or poor equipped for the workforce; its just there isn’t a workforce right now. She struggles to make ends meet. If it wasn’t for the generosity of her family and friends, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps, she would need to work, such an absurdly insane number of hours (more than 160 hours a week), that she wouldn’t even have time to slept let alone be the mom that her children deserve. Unfortunately, too many Americans can relate to this woman’s experience; this, in a nutshell, lies at the heart of America’s present existential crisis. In 2014, the fact of being American is far too often synonymous with having to make do with less and less.
From my own personal experience, if I was not grandfathered into my current healthcare insurance, I wouldn’t be able to afford the insurance available in Obamacare’s marketplace. And if your wondering why I don’t take food stamps…Pride: pure and simple; it’s my Achilles’ Heel. I’m guessing I’m not alone in this regard.
As these narratives of not making ends meet in America occupy headlines across the websites of news outlets, such as the Huffington Post, we are exposed to the, not often triumphant, personal experiences of poverty for ordinary Americans. Taken separately, these personal experiences may seem to represent atypical slices of living in the 21st Century America, but, as more and more of these personal experiences populate our national discourse and society's narrative spaces (such as the pages of the Huffington Post and other news outlets), I am overcome with a sense that the typical slice of the American Pie is no longer the Middle Class experience. This inversion of typicality presents extraordinary dangers and consequences for the continuing maintenance of the American nation-state. As the elected representatives of the American people (at every level of government: local, state, and national) continue to ignore, silence, and marginalize people struggling to make ends meet, a space opens up, within this blind spot, these margins, and this background noise, for the growth of alternative ideologies and master narratives (Lyotard 1993) (such as socialism, communism, libertarianism, anarchism, and other yet to be named ideas) that promise to more adequately satisfy the basic needs and provide for the general welfare of the American people. Our government seems to be actively pursuing the implosion of the American nation-state.
The consequences for the emergence of these alternative ideologies and master narratives is the threat of social unrest, widespread violence, and the potential extinction of the American nation-state. Chandy and Gertz (2011) identified correlations between poverty and the failure of states. Johan Galtung (1969;1990) noted that violence can be a consequence of the actions, and inaction, of governments and, if such violence escalates or erupts into open warfare, the consequence of this violence may very well result in the failure of the American nation-state. Through actions, and inaction, governments, according to Michel Foucault (1990) and others (Agamben 1998; Hardt and Negri 2000; Esposito 2008), exercise power to control their constituent populations. In the past, the world has born witness to the consequences of governments actively, and quite genocidally, controlling populations (for historical examples, the Nazi's Holocaust and Stalin's Purges are blatantly prime).
I fear the dystopia that my country has become. The outright elitist disdain that I see Congressional Republicans displaying towards Americans struggling to make ends meet is appalling, offensive, and just plain rude. Where did the sympathy and empathy for your fellow man go? Did I miss the memo? I dare you to walk in my shoes; I dare you to walk in the shoes of my friends. But this elitist attitude is nothing new.
Historically speaking, the United States has not shied away from exercising power to marginalize and, even murder, people. In the 1830's, thousands of people died as a direct consequence of an Act of Congress. These deaths were the consequence of the Indian Removal Act of 1830 which instituted the infamous Trail of Tears and the forced relocation of Native Americans from the southern states of U.S. (Thornton 1984) To this very day, governments across the American spectrum institute policies that control marginalized and silenced populations; policies that harmfully target the homeless, the foreclosed upon, minorities, the LGBT community, and the working poor abound. Nay a day goes by that the pages of the Huffington Post (amongst others) is not filled with stories of the local, state, federal legislatures passing acts, edicts, and regulations designed specifically to push people out of our communities, out of society, and away from the benefits of simply being American. The relocation of these marginalized populations isn't necessarily physical with exception to policies relocating the homeless (Takahashi 1998) and disproportionately imprisoning minorities and the poor (Wacquant 2009); some marginalized populations are ethereally relocated through the act of denying these populations access to the institutions and structures, and, as such, the social benefits of simply being Americans and being, otherwise, productive members of society. The laws concerning foreclosure deny ordinary Americans the benefit of remaining homeowners. The costs of healthcare and insurance, along with the lack of a single payer public funded health system, push people, whom struggle with making ends meet, away from enjoying the benefits of basic good healthcare as would nominally be considered a necessity for the maintenance of a decent standard of living.
As America begins to debate the merits of raising the minimum wage, we must remind ourselves of the consequences for inaction. The trajectory, that the governments across the United States have placed our nation on through their actions and inaction, is propelling the American nation-state towards a cliff possessing dire existential consequences if we were to fall. Raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour will not be enough to satiate the basic needs of food, shelter, psychological and physiological well-being, and security for way too many Americans. For many Americans living in the wealthier regions of the U.S., a minimum wage of $10.10 an hour will simply not suffice, because the costs of living for these Americans is simply too great. With an average costs of living in Northern Virginia of approximately $87,000 a year for a family of four (FindTheData 2014), a minimum wage earning family, making $10.10 an hour, still needs to work more than 160 hours a week between all of the family's workers. For single minimum wage earning moms, working more than 4 full time jobs a week is absurdly laughable.
Our politicians don’t seem to understand how to tell time; a week only contains 168 hours. If Mary, the college-educated minimum wage earning single mom raising 2 kids, needs to work 160 hours a week so she doesn't have to suffer the indignity of relying on government assistance, when will she sleep? Ask any American, if they would rather work or live off welfare? I guarantee that they will want to work even impossibly long hours. But the most precious commodity possessed by every American struggling to make ends meet is time; and we never seem to have enough. We work to live, but, with the longer hours we work, the less time we have to live. In my opinion, the American Dream has died, because the third shift has robbed us of our time to dream.
If America is truly concerned with eradicating poverty, the only policy that will be adequate in the near term will be the enactment of a living wage tied to a more comprehensive assessment (beyond the present federal definition of poverty) of the costs of living for each and every postal zip-code. The present federal definition of poverty only calculates the costs of food multiplied by 3. (Federal Register 2013) Americans have many other basic needs beside food; what about rent?; what about healthcare?; what about education?; what about utilities? If we redefine poverty calculating for all the other basic needs, the proportion of Americans living in poverty will undoubtedly shock even the most objective economist. I will even dare say that the true proportion of Americans living in poverty is a lot closer to 99% than 0%. The people of the United States must keep in mind that if Congress continues to do nothing on poverty it is out of a, perhaps subconscious, desire on the part of these elites to keep the undesirable margins of the American populace from receiving their due as productive members of the American nation-state. The current battle lines have drawn. Do you stand up for profit? Or, will you stand up for your fellow Americans? At least, we must take head of Pope Francis’ warnings:
“Today in many places we hear a call for greater security. But until exclusion and inequality in society and between peoples is reversed, it will be impossible to eliminate violence. The poor and the poorer peoples are accused of violence, yet without equal opportunities the different forms of aggression and conflict will find a fertile terrain for growth and eventually explode. When a society – whether local, national or global – is willing to leave a part of itself on the fringes, no political programmes or resources spent on law enforcement or surveillance systems can indefinitely guarantee tranquility. This is not the case simply because inequality provokes a violent reaction from those excluded from the system, but because the socioeconomic system is unjust at its root. Just as goodness tends to spread, the toleration of evil, which is injustice, tends to expand its baneful influence and quietly to undermine any political and social system, no matter how solid it may appear. If every action has its consequences, an evil embedded in the structures of a society has a constant potential for disintegration and death. It is evil crystallized in unjust social structures, which cannot be the basis of hope for a better future. We are far from the so-called “end of history”, since the conditions for a sustainable and peaceful development have not yet been adequately articulated and realized.” (Pope Francis 2013:59)
Works Cited
Agamben, G. (1998) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. by D. Heller-Roazen. Stanford: University of Stanford Press.
Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Esposito, R. (2008) Bíos: Biopolitics and Philosophy. Trans. by T. Campbell. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration (2013) Annual Update of HHS Poverty Guidelines: A Notice by the Health and Human Services Department on 01/24/2013. January 24, 2013. https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/01/24/2013-01422/annual-update-of-the-hhs-poverty-guidelines#t-1
FindtheData (2014) “Cost of Living Details for Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD Metro Area.” Accessed on January 16, 2014. http://cost-of-living.findthedata.org/l/563/Washington-Arlington-Alexandria-DC-VA-MD-Metro-Area
Foucault, M. (1990) The History of Sexuality: Volume 1: An Introduction. Trans. by R. Hurley. New York: Vintage Books.
Francis, The Holy Father. (2013) Evangelii Gaudium: Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis. Accessed January 16, 2014. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium_en.html#No_to_the_inequality_which_spawns_violence
Galtung, J. (1969) “Violence, Peace, and Peace Research.” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp. 167-191. http://www.jstor.org/
Galtung, J. (1990) “Cultural Violence.” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 291-305. http://jpr.sagepub.com/
Chandy, L. and Gertz, G. (2011) “Two Trends in Global Poverty.” The Brookings Institution. Accessed on January 16, 2014. http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2011/05/17-global-poverty-trends-chandy#
Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2000) Empire. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Lyotard, J. (1993) Toward the Postmodern. Edited by R. Harvey and M.S. Roberts. London:Humanities Press.
Takahashi, L. (1998) Homelessness, AIDS, and Stigmatization: The NIMBY Syndrome in the United States at the End of the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thornton, R. (1984) “Cherokee Population Losses during the Trail of Tears: A New Perspective and a New Estimate.” Ethnohistory, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 289-300. http://www.jstor.org/
Wacquant, L. (2009) Prisons of Poverty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bio: Jason Reader is currently a Doctoral Candidate at George Mason University's School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. His dissertation research centers on personal narratives and stories about the experience of poverty and the struggle to make ends meet in Northern Virginia.
