The War on the Poor: A Defense Manual

by Nancy Folbre

The War on the Poor counters attacks on the poor in the same lively, accessible style that made The New Field Guide to the U.S. Economy a cult classic. Using charts, graphs, and political cartoons, The War on the Poor presents topics including middle-class welfare, "family" values, child support, teen poverty, the minimum wage, the underclass, orphanages, health, hunger, corporate welfare, block grants, private charity, work requirements, and incentives. It includes a comprehensive resource list of addresses and phone numbers of activist groups, lobbying organizations, information sources, and media contacts.

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction

142 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1996

About the author

Nancy Folbre is an American feminist economist who focuses on economics and the family, non-market work and the economics of care. She is Professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Reviews

[Megan]

I know he's been dead for over a decade, but is it too late to murder Ronald Reagan?

[April · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a college book that I don't remember reading previously, but it must've been for one of my American Studies or Community Studies classes. It makes a strong argument for cutting back on military spending (or any spending that seems superfluous and incorrectly used, like prison spending--spending that doesn't really benefit the majority of people in this country) to increase funds towards people's welfare.

I understand the other side of it as well, that billionaires who do work hard do deserve their money, but do they really need all those billions? Can't they be happy to brag about their pre-tax billions instead of needing to see every penny of it, as long as they're still making those billions with maybe several million less a year? And they seem to want to be philanthropical anyway (or are they just forced to be for "tax purposes"?), so why not be taxed a bit more and have their money really go to work for society's welfare (again, if taxes were spent to benefit a majority of the people in this country)?

And it's not to say that people shouldn't work for their own welfare, but that "work" does need to be valued differently and affordable child care is also essential. I know in the south of France when one of my friends was living there, they paid something like 200 Euro/month for half-time public childcare and the rest was supplemented by the government to the providers.

I also think it's unfair for the middle class in the U.S. to pay the amount of taxes they do. It makes sense for the multi-millionaires and billionaires to shoulder more of the tax responsibility--mostly because these people make the amount they do by having other people work for them and the middle class people are doing the more direct labor to earn their wages. And in the Bay Area at least, "middle class" is something like making $175,000 annually for a double income household.

"Out-of-wedlock births have increased among all women, not just among those eligible for AFDC [Aid to Families with Dependent Children].
- Women of all income groups are less likely to marry and stay married than they were 30 years ago. The birthrate among single women has changed very little. But because single women are now a larger percentage of all women, births to single women are a larger percentage of all births." pg. 42

"The problems of unemployment, underemployment, and employment in casual labor have helped deepened the division in our system for providing social benefits between the 'middle class' (those with permanent jobs), which gets honorable, supposedly earned benefits, and the people who receive welfare. The stigma attached to welfare is self-reinforcing: The low status of its recipients stigmatizes the program, and the low status of the program stigmatizes its recipients." pg. 111

"No one likes welfare. But the idea being bandied about today that it could be abolished is misleading, a political dead end, and morally indefensible. Our goal should be to abolish poverty, not welfare. In a democracy, you can't simultaneously try to improve a public-assistance program and malign its recipients, because you have to develop popular support for trying to help them." pg. 111

"Of course, politicians also make more reasoned arguments to smooth the way for this sort of scapegoat politics [why it comes to figure so largely in public discourse that welfare and out-of-wedlock mothers are presumably encouraged by welfare to have babies]. It will actually be good for the poor, the argument goes, to slash the programs that give them aid because these programs generate perverse incentives. With a welfare check in sight, we are told, people give up the effort to be self-reliant and fall into a torpor called dependency. Or, even worse, they have babies to make certain the checks come and keep coming. These arguments are powerful because they evoke prejudices embedded in American culture--against the poor, against sexualized women, against minorities. But they are also based on a campaign of misinformation that has shaped popular understandings and fueled ancient prejudices." pg. 114

"No matter how it is financed, many people will object to the idea of a guaranteed basic income. Those who earn high salaries or expect to inherit large amounts of money will complain that they do not want to support any dependents except their own children. But a nation is like a family: It cannot survive in a world based purely on market competition and individual choice. We should enforce collective responsibilities and obligations to care for one another. We should reward nonmarket work and encourage people to invest in their own skills. We should make the health and welfare of our fellow citizens our first priority." pg. 129

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

The War on the Poor reads like a long pamphlet. It is about poverty in the US, but more particularly the economic warfare that both parties have waged on the poor by cutting and undermining social aid programs. Most of the book is set up in a myth-reality format, debunking an anti-poor conservative myth each page. There are lots of silly cartoons and illustrations, and the responses to each myth are short bullet points. The last chapters have extended text, but are still just very short essays on poverty's causes and some potential solutions. There's not a whole lot to this book, but it seems to be very well researched, and it does present a lot of info snippets that would lead you to much more complete answers to any given doubt you might have about the lot of the poor in America.