Terrorists break into US Capitol Building

[Suppressed Poet]

Part of why this is such a tough topic to talk about is that (US) conservatives and liberals have polar opposite perspectives on the issue. Conservatives are very concerned with the notion of who deserves help, while liberals are largely concerned with who needs help.

Ultimately though, the issue of poverty is not an individual issue: it's a social issue. Failing to address poverty has massive consequences for everyone, and treating it as an individual issue not only completely misses the structural problems that enable poverty in the first place, but it also exacerbates it and creates more need for the social safety net programs.

Take Welfare, for example. Right now about 45% of SNAP recipients are children. Another 20ish percent are their parents. The rest are more diverse, but the elderly and the disabled make up the majority of them. If we focus on whether or not the parents "deserve" help, then we're actually disproportionately harming children- literally taking food out of their mouths. All we're doing at that point is perpetuating poverty which just expands the need for the program in future generations.

Literally no one benefits from trying to cut a program like SNAP back. And doing so only serves to punish people for where they come from, not who they are. That's the opposite of a meritocracy, which is a concept that has historically been very important to conservatives.

There are over 45 million Americans living in poverty right now (~10% of all households), and our Welfare benefits are already so stripped down and have such convoluted eligibility criteria that only 70% of them quality for any assistance. 20% of our children live below the poverty line, and about 60 million Americans get some form of help from Welfare.

Taking money and resources away from such a massive percentage of our citizens just makes it harder for them to climb out of poverty. It also deprives local businesses, especially in areas with high poverty rates, of income. In turn that deprives people in the area of job opportunities (and often basics like nutrition) and causes massive spikes in crime from people who don't have enough to get by. Again, no one actually benefits from this.

But if we look at this as a social problem with the goal of providing support to families to help them climb out of poverty, we'll actually reduce long term poverty and create more opportunities for people who happened to have been born in the wrong zip code. Despite the commonly believed narrative that if you take money and resources away from poor people, that will somehow make them more likely to get out of poverty...it's actually the exact opposite.

You mistake me and are making some very broad assumptions. I am not concerned with who deserves what. Poverty sucks. Instead of just focusing on making it suck less, can we not spend effort to make it so there are less people in a total state of suckiness?

I volunteer my time frequently to help my local food pantry (Saint Vincent De Paul society). I say this not seeking praise or virtue signaling, but so you may understand that I and perhaps many others like me who may have a different political view are not all just heartless assholes who don’t care about those who are less fortunate.

You can’t just simply throw money at the poor to make them not poor. I want to see those 45 million Americans you mentioned grow past the poverty line and into the middle class, not just remain in a state of a life long reliance of welfare benefits. My intentions for that statement are not because I think those people are bad or undeserving. It’s because I would rather see their lives be TRULY improved. Poverty is a state of mind just as much as it is about one’s income. Taking care of their immediate needs of survival like food and shelter are important, but to really lift people out of poverty requires a lot more than that (mainly through education). The goal should be to have them become contributing members of society. Not all of those 45 million are capable for one reason or another, but a great many of them can achieve this.

So we are clear, I’ll once again state that I do not wish to end all welfare programs. I want to keep such programs minimal, and invest in economic and education programs and policies that will help a poor person transcend into a better future that is self sustaining.