‘America does so much more to subsidise affluence than alleviate poverty’
This is a touchy subject and it&#x27;s easy to be insensitive. There is true, desperate poverty, then there is is comparative poverty, then there is perceived poverty. Poverty can be hard to define.I could make a comment about a child who gets free lunch at school but also buys a new $1000+ phone every year. But that&#x27;s an old story -- like the shiny decked out Cadillac parked in front of the shotgun shack.<p>There is true, desperate poverty in the U.S. I don&#x27;t mean to dismiss that. But much of what people in the U.S. consider to be poverty today passed as middle-class America 40 years ago. In a sense, the difference between alleviating poverty and subsidizing affluence can often be a state of mind. When a family with a house and a car and three televisions tries to improve their situation so the single parent isn&#x27;t working three jobs while the 12-year old kid fixes Ramen for the siblings, that&#x27;s an effort to rise out of poverty. But that family is still a 10-percenter globally.<p>I&#x27;m reminded of a situation I witnessed fairly close up a while back. A family in our community lost everything when their house burned down. They weren&#x27;t poor before the fire, but I don&#x27;t think they or anybody else in the community considered them to be rich. Before dinnertime on the day their house burned down, each of their children had a place to sleep, clothes to get by for the next week, and a lot of hope that their circumstances were temporary. Within months, a lot of hard work from the parents, neighbors, and extended community put the family back in their rebuilt home. It probably took years to really replace everything. But today the family is well situated.<p>I have seen others who have received similar levels of assistance who are much less well situated. The biggest difference I can perceive is a state of mind. One story can be characterized as a case of subsidized affluence. Some others have been efforts to keep their heads above water. But the level of assistance was very similar.<p>I am not saying that poor people are poor because they choose to be poor. But I can&#x27;t escape the thought that a poverty rescue program and a wealth management program could cost the same amount of money and target the exact same people and have different outcomes. A casserole delivered to a family in need might do less good than a neighborhood block party that feeds the same family. Granted, a block party might not be appropriate for a family recovering from a funeral. But it illustrates the different mindset.