Poverty Amid Plenty
Relative Poverty and the COVID-19 Response
“How can you say that? There are children starving here!”. My student was incensed; I had just explained the concept of relative poverty to the class. The idea is that poverty is an intractable part of our society; we cannot eradicate it because there are those that will always have more and those that will always have less. We, thus, have to find a lesser degree of poverty based on our how our wealth and income are distributed. As I explained that the worst poverty in the U.S. would be considered average or even good in other countries, my student pushed back. I was minimizing people’s suffering, she said. It made me think of a question to ask the class: what does it really mean to be poor in a country where starvation is rare? Or, more plainly, how can people be poor in a country with so much?
The United States is uniquely situated in the world; we claim to be a thriving meritocracy. If you work hard enough, you’ll get your reward! What we find when we pull back the layers, however, is a very different story. While it’s true that the “rewards” here are absolutely staggering (see Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos for examples), the flip side is dire. We have a profoundly high poverty rate; children are disproportionately represented in this number. Even before the pandemic, we had 35 million people in poverty, including 1 in 7 children. Since the pandemic, 8 million more Americans are in poverty. Prior to the passage of the healthcare bill in 2010, these numbers were even more skewed, as this was the number one cause of personal bankruptcy. If you pull back the layers even more, the explanations become clearer.
The United States has a distinctive political system. The power is divided between the federal government and the states; the federal government itself is comprised of three distinct branches. That fragmentation has consequences; a safety net where no one falls through is difficult to implement.
In addition, we also have a distinctive attitude. The idea of American “exceptionalism” runs deep. Ronald Reagan called us the “shining city on a hill”. We’ve been referred to as the “last, best hope”. There is something about the U.S. that we see as both and worthy of universal praise and admiration. We are, for lack of a better term, special. We are not the first people to claim this; we are in a long line of nations that believed (and often still believe!) the exact same thing, and so it can be hard to see this as a myth that has built up over time.
Finally, we have a chasm of inequality that started at the beginning and has done nothing but grow over time. In order to prevent minority populations in the U.S. from voting or seeking help, laws were passed and responsibilities were heaped onto the states. With little regulation, the discrimination could continue. This weakened the social safety net for everyone, but it impacted minority populations disproportionately. Even as the discriminatory and racist laws were overturned, there was still a push against widening the safety net to include everyone. In addition, very little scrutiny was given to a system that needed a wide safety net to begin with.
There are many times in our history where these points were clear. After the Civil War, negotiations were made to remove Union troops from the south; once that happened, there were overwhelming efforts to prevent newly freed slaves from voting and holding office. The Jim Crow era of the south began and is still felt today. Franklin Roosevelt made concessions when he passed his New Deal programming; one big one was to exclude agricultural and domestic workers from receiving any benefits or insurance. Harry Truman changed the programming during his presidency, but those that started receiving benefits earlier were disproportionately white. This was a head start. The examples go on and on, but fast forward to our current moment. The U.S. COVID-19 response intersects the fragmented government, the myth of American exceptionalism, and the deep inequality.
When the country first heard news of a new “novel” coronavirus in China, there was little fanfare from the general public. We had seen SARS and MERS come and go with no major issues in the United States. It cannot possibly be a problem here! American exceptionalism contributed to this attitude; the “shining city on the hill” was extraordinary. The best doctors. The best scientists. The best everything. The virus would simply be stopped. This did not happen.
As cases began to spread on the coasts of the country, governors in these impacted states reached out to the federal government for help. The resulting chaos illustrates the problems with a fragmented governmental system. There were governors competing with each other; they were outbidding one another on PPE, masks, ventilators, and other important items. The federal government is a big ship, and it was slow to react. This put the entire response on its heels. COVID-19 took off like wildfire, and there was very little infrastructure to battle it. Scientists, doctors, and healthcare staff sounded the alarms, but a virus waits for no one. When a partial lockdown was finally put into place, it had neither teeth nor comprehensive breadth. There was no way to eradicate a fast-spreading virus without both of those things. As the states began to rebel and open up in early summer, the virus moved into its uncontrolled spread phase. Now, as the fall begins to work its way into winter, we are still at uncontrolled community spread in the majority of states.
Our fragmented government creates economic issues as well; Democrats in the House of Representatives fought hard for stimulus bills early in the pandemic. The CARES Act was passed in late March and pumped 2.2 trillion dollars in the U.S. economy. While there was criticism of how the money was spent, the bill had a profound impact. It prevented more dire devastation and headed off a major recession. However, as time went on, we saw more aid in other countries but no more in our own. Even now, with an election looming, there will likely be no other COVID relief bills signed into law any time soon. In addition, the Senate has taken on the task of considering a new nomination to the Supreme Court. This new justice could make it possible for the Court to overturn the Affordable Care Act in the middle of a pandemic. The majority of Americans support the ACA, and a large majority say they would rather have a stimulus bill than a new justice. However, the space between the people who make the laws and the ones that have to follow them is vast in the United States. This is where the fragmented government intersects directly with inequality.
Inequality in the United States is a major variable in the COVID-19 crisis. This is true for health as well as economic issues. The data show that COVID-19 disproportionately impacts people of color and the poorest in our society. There are so many related variables to this; people of color and the working poor are the most likely to be on the frontlines as “essential” workers. They did not stay home during the “lockdown”; they simply continued without the protective equipment that would have helped them avoid the virus. Even now, more than 8 months in, there is inadequate testing, contact tracing and equipment for the most vulnerable in our society.
The economic consequences are also dire. As the world’s richest people saw their fortunes rising by more than 27% during the pandemic, the most economically vulnerable teetered on the edge. The moratorium on evictions ended in July with no relief package in sight. Congress cannot come to a consensus on any relief money for Americans, and the gap between the haves and have nots just continues to grow.
The United States sees poverty amid plenty in the most “normal” of times, but this pandemic resulted in light reaching the darkest corners of society. The lack of government response, the refusal to take up relief, and the idea that the United States is somehow above these problems has exacerbated the issue. Our poverty may be relative, but it is real, and there is profound suffering across the nation. It is a deep hole to dig out of, but recognizing these issues is one step in the process.
