Fuck the Poor

I came across this remarkable advert on my FB feed. I think the disconnect is that we treat poverty as a matter of charity rather than as a political problem requiring a political remedy. No offense to the (no doubt) well-intentioned folks at The Pilion Trust Charity, but they are framing the problem in a self-defeating way.

Rochester NY - Economic Disaster Area

The poverty rate in the US has not changed much over the past several decades. No surprise there [1]. That things are bad all over, however, is small consolation to those of us here in Western NY. The Rochester Area Community Foundation as just released this report (pdf) identifying the City proper and the surrounding area as an economic disaster area. At a time when (1) the outgoing Mayor claimed that matters of poverty and inequality fell outside his job description; (2) the Superintendent of schools is lecturing parents and communities about "responsibility,"while proposing that we turn public schools over to be run by local colleges and Universities and (3) local "faith leaders" (why can we not just call clergy, clergy?) are harping about the need for moral renewal as a remedy for the area's problems, this report is a breath of fresh air. It identifies reality - the primary local problem is poverty. And that will not be fixed though denial or hectoring or administrative readjustment or moral uplift or philanthropy or by a combination of those things. It will be fixed by developing strategies for creating accessible jobs that pay a living wage. There are ways that this task might be addressed - I posted on this example from not-so-distant Cleveland some time ago - but that will require major institutions in town (including the University of Rochester) to acknowledge the problem and their potential role in remedying it. That, in turn, will require political pressure, since powerful institutions never take the initiative in situations like the one we confront.

Detroit in Ruins

William Livingstone House, Brush Park, a French Renaissance-style house designed by Albert Kahn in 1893 and demolished since this photograph was taken. Photograph © Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.

I've spent part of every summer for the past dozen and a half years in southeast Michigan and have mixed feeling about the region. On the one hand, Ann Arbor where I teach is too preening and precious for my taste - by a considerable amount. On the other hand, Detroit - which I have to traverse in each direction to get to Ann Arbor - makes me cringe. It is an amplified version of the political economic disasters in Rochester and the other urban areas across Western NY. Each of these cities is an extremely unflattering monument to both capitalism and political corruption. I've posted here about Detroit several times and about Rochester  here  more than that. In any case, The Guardian has run this series of photographs by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre of the crumbling ruins of Detroit. They remind me of work Robert Polidori and others have done on the 'exclusion zones' surrounding Chernobyl. I've posted on that work here a couple of times before. In this instance the catastrophe was economic implosion rather than technological and ecological disaster. These images are very, very far from a complete portrait of Detroit. But they convey an important dimension of what is wrong with the US these days.

Visualizing Suburban Poverty in the US

This is an illegible version of this data graphic from the distinctly middle of the road Brookings Institution depicting the explosive growth of poverty in American suburbs. It reflects research done by Elizabeth Kneebone and Alan Berube, also published by Brookings (here). If you go to the first link above you can find a eyesight ready version of the graphic.

Politically, this is the sort of political economic shift that might sustain metropolitan reform in places like Monroe County where I live and where until pretty recently the city was disproportionately poor and minority and the suburbs likewise relatively well off and white. Hope springs eternal?

Partisanship, Poverty & Paychecks

Susan and I have this Op-Ed in the City Newspaper (Rochester) this week on the importance and limits of minimum wage reform. Here it is:

Partisanship, poverty, and paychecks
Guest Commentary
Susan Orr and James Johnson

In his State of the Union address, President Obama issued a challenge: "Tonight, let's declare that in the wealthiest nation on earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour." On this he finds support from Governor Cuomo, who proposes increasing the New York State minimum wage because, among other things, it "reduces poverty."

Conservatives, of course, reject these proposed increases. Raising the minimum wage, they insist, will kill jobs, especially low-wage jobs. Commentator David Brooks made this claim on PBS immediately following the State of the Union address.

And House Speaker John Boehner quickly tried to puncture the president's proposal: "When you raise the price of employment, guess what happens? You get less of it. At a time when American people are asking, 'Where are the jobs?' why would we want to make it harder for small employers to hire people?" Brooks and Boehner are pushing familiar talking points: minimum-wage legislation has negative consequences and there are better ways to address poverty.

As is frequently the case, our politicians and media analysts are roundly mistaken. Consider the conservative reaction. Economists have great difficulty establishing any significant negative relation between modest increases in the minimum wage and declines in employment levels.

Moreover, the common claim that low-wage workers are typically teenagers or are working part time – and so not "really" poor – is misleading. Projections conducted by the Economic Policy Institute regarding the impact of a higher federal minimum wage suggest a vast majority of those affected would be over 20. A majority would be women. Most would be working full time. And nearly 30 percent of those affected would be parents.

Finally, conservatives often insist that targeted programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit are a better way to alleviate poverty than minimum wage legislation. This too is debatable. On the one hand, such tax policies largely represent a hidden subsidy to employers who are spared the burden of paying reasonable wages. On the other hand, they might actually dampen wages because employers assume, often erroneously, that their workers will be eligible for a tax break. For that reason tax credits are better understood as complementing rather than replacing minimum wage legislation.

If conservative skepticism seems merely to mask basic resistance to government intervention, the Democratic case is overly optimistic. The federal poverty level for a family of four was $23,050 for 2012. Imagine, as President Obama suggests, we increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 an hour. That means a full-time minimum wage worker would earn a gross annual income of $18,720. If she lives on her own, this would sustain her above the federal poverty level for individuals. But if the worker has a family, it obviously falls well short.

Our point is not that the president and governor are wrong to recommend raising the minimum wage. Doing so, even to the levels being proposed, can make many people better off. But doing so is quite unlikely to propel many households out of poverty.

This hardly is an abstract complaint. It is directly relevant to Rochester where, in 2011, the overall poverty rate stood at over 29 percent and where just over 43 percent of all children lived in poverty. Raising the minimum wage can go some way to mitigating economic hardship in the city. But it would be only a start. It is the least we can do.

Susan Orr is assistant professor of political science at SUNY College at Brockport. James Johnson is professor of political science at the University of Rochester. They live in Hamlin.

On 'Heartwarming' Photographs (2)

"This photograph has done something terrible and cruel to Jeffrey Hillman. He has been held up to totally unhelpful, mean-minded scrutiny. What an unhelpful, unenlightening picture this turned out to be. Obviously, some may suspect a more calculating aspect to the whole affair – did the picture really just happen to emerge with its flattering light on the New York police department? But that aside, assuming it really is a chance record of a moment of sudden kindness, its viral career demonstrates the fragility of truth and the stupidity of crowds.

Everyone likes this picture, it goes round the world in seconds, it becomes a cosy heartwarming cult for a day. Then the questions start and the warm glow hardens into a remorseless searchlight on an individual who clearly does not need this massive public attention. Hillman is right to wonder what he is getting from all this, as some other viral image displaces a moment too complex, after all, for the illusory warmth of a picture one shares while sipping an eggnog latte in a warm coffee shop."

So says Jonathan Jones at The Guardian. Jeffrey Hillman, of course, is the shoeless, "homeless" vet who become an emblem for the recent feel good about NYC campaign. I was skeptical of the heartwarming photo op at the time and said so here. Mr. Hillman, as The New York Times reports,  turns out to be non-compliant with the heartwarming tale. So much the worse for the tale tellers and for the poor people who will bear the brunt of their disappointment and resentment.

An Interview with Cornel West ...

... here at Counterpunch. It overlaps in many ways with this conversation on Smiley & West this afternoon. For my taste, Dr. West is often a bit long on histrionics, much too long on Christian rhetoric, and too short on analysis. I do appreciate his pushing us to attend to the poor and working classes in America. That said, most poor people are not black. Most African Americans are not poor. Same goes for Hispanics. Most poor people - in absolute numbers - are white. (Source.) So, while I am impressed by Dr. West's discussion of - and openness to -  OWS, and I largely agree with his views on Obama's policies, foreign and domestic, I think that an anti-austerity, anti-poverty political program needs to appeal to a multi-racial constituency. Dr. West does too, I suspect.

On 'Heartwarming' Photographs

I came across this story, about an officer from the NYPD who bought a homeless man a pair of warm boots,  in The New York Times yesterday. Before I go on, let's be clear: the officer did a generous thing. He did a generous thing that many folks, and not just denizens of NYC, would not have done. He deserves the public praise he's received. I myself am just glad he was not reprimanded for leaving his post on an anti-terrorism patrol in Times Square in order to buy boots for the fellow.

The story in The Times and related notoriety (e.g., gazillions of 'likes' and 'shares' on the NYPD facebook page) was prompted by the picture I've lifted above, snapped by a woman from Arizona visiting NYC. So, here is my problem. First, more or less random acts of kindness are, by definition, random. They will not systematically address the difficulties of the poor in America. Second, the picture has elicited lots of 'heartwarming' response. Screw that. Heartwarming is just people feeling good vicariously about themselves. It will not induce anyone to actually do anything about poverty - like stop electing right wingers whose first instinct is to blame the (unidentified) homeless guy for being out on the freezing streets barefoot on his being a 'taker' or a 'moocher.'

Our Occupiers, The Mayor & Rochester's 13 %

What follows is the text of this short Op-Ed Susan and I published in the City Newspaper this week.

GUEST COMMENTARY: Our Occupiers, the mayor, and Rochester's 13 percent

on November 22, 2011

BY SUSAN ORR AND JIM JOHNSON
After protracted conflict and numerous arrests, Mayor Tom Richards and Occupy Rochester reached an accord allowing the protesters to stay in Washington Square Park. Their agreement is crucially important because absent access to public space, effective freedom to speak and assemble, and along with them democracy, wither.

That said, the mayor has not actually engaged with our Occupiers. He claims, after all, that while sympathetic to many of their concerns, most fall far beyond the purview of his administration. Is it so difficult to see how "We Are the 99%!" is relevant to Rochester?

The Brookings Institution just issued a report tracing the growth since 2000 of concentrated urban poverty in America. The basic concept is this: Someone lives in concentrated poverty not just if she herself lives at or beneath the officially defined poverty line, but if 40 percent or more of all those residing in the same census tract as she also live at or below the official poverty level. In 2010 the official poverty level was $22,300 for a family of four.

Using this metric, the situation in Rochester is grim. Of the primary cities in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in America, Rochester ranks third in concentrated poverty. In relative terms Rochester is just ahead of Syracuse (fourth) and significantly ahead of Albany (20th) and Buffalo (29th). In absolute terms, Rochester has a population of 202,644, of whom 56,813 live at or below the poverty level. Of that poor population, 26,705 reside in concentrated poverty. That is just over 13 percent of the city's entire population.

Concentrated poverty has negative consequences. It tends to depress educational quality, real estate values, and private economic investment while placing upward pressure on crime rates, the cost of living, and local government expenditures. Each of these trends is disturbing. Shouldn't Mayor Richards consider them to be central to his concerns? According to the Brookings report, those living amid concentrated poverty confront a "double burden" - their individual poverty is compounded by contextual features of "the place in which they live." This, in turn, "complicates the jobs of policymakers and service providers working to promote connections to opportunity and to alleviate poverty."

The Brookings report, however, neglects other crucially important factors. Concentrated urban poverty has dire political consequences. While it does not break down the Rochester numbers by race, the report notes that, nationally, "African Americans remained the single largest" racial group experiencing concentrated poverty. There is no reason to suspect that Rochester diverges from that pattern.

Political scientists Cathy Cohen and Michael Dawson have demonstrated that African Americans who live in concentrated poverty are more likely to believe that politics works to the advantage of the wealthy and white. And they are less likely to participate in politics in various ways. As in the Brookings report, these findings identify a contextual impact over and above the burden of individual poverty. Significantly, Cohen and Dawson use a much lower threshold (30 percent) to measure the effects of concentrated poverty. So, given the levels the Brookings report establishes, it is likely that the negative political consequences of concentrated poverty in Rochester are especially pronounced.

Put bluntly, concentrated poverty like that found in Rochester is bad for our democracy. It reduces political participation among the least advantaged, making it unlikely that the political system will be responsive to their interests and values. Like their counterparts elsewhere, Occupy Rochester decries economic hardship and the highly skewed distribution of wealth and income. The concerns they articulate point directly to the plight of many city residents. This should not be hard for the mayor to understand.

Susan Orr is assistant professor of political science at the SUNY College at Brockport. Jim Johnson is professor of political science at the University of Rochester.

The New York Times Peddles Stereotypes of Economic Insecurity

Belinda Sheppard and two adult children live above the poverty line, and
barely cover their bills. Photograph © Doug Mills/The New York Times.

So, among the things that is surprising is that just as the OWS protesters are raising a ruckus about political-economic inequality in the U.S., there has been a steady stream of news reports about just how dire matters actually turn out to be. So, here is a report from The New York Times on recent numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau showing the creep of economic insecurity beyond the usual suspects (undereducated, unemployed, racial minorities) and the usual places (desolate urban and rural enclaves).

Patched together a half-century ago, the official poverty measure has long been seen as flawed. It ignores hundreds of billions the needy receive in food stamps, tax credits and other programs, and the similarly large sums paid in taxes, medical care and work expenses. The new method, called the Supplemental Poverty Measure, counts all those factors and adjusts for differences in the cost of living, which the official measure ignores.

The results scrambled the picture of poverty in many surprising ways. The measure shows less severe destitution, but a bit more overall poverty; fewer poor children, but more poor people over 65.

Of the 51 million who appear near poor under the fuller measure, nearly 20 percent were lifted up from poverty by benefits the official count overlooks. But more than half were pushed down from higher income levels: more than eight million by taxes, six million by medical expenses, and four million by work expenses like transportation and child care.

Demographically, they look more like “The Brady Bunch” than “The Wire.” Half live in households headed by a married couple; 49 percent live in the suburbs. Nearly half are non-Hispanic white, 18 percent are black and 26 percent are Latino.

You'll notice that roughly half of those among the "near poor" - meaning they are above the official poverty line, but just, and that they are one mishap or mis-step away from the precipice - are white. This is an important story about the "suburbanization" of economic hardship and insecurity.

Unsurprisingly, right-wingers want to invoke euphemisms to mask the extent of the problem. (Why even bother to ask mouthpieces from the Heritage Foundation?) But the real questions I have are for the "liberal" reporters and editors at The Times: Why put a black face on this predicament? And why not a married couple instead of a single parent? The photograph at the top of the page appears just below the story headline.

It is not that I want to discount the hardships of Black Americans, but politically, it is too easy and too common to identify poverty as "Black" or "Hispanic" and so as not "our" problem. The visuals matter.

Rochester Mayor Tom Richards Complains that Issues of Poverty and Democracy Fall Outside his Job Description

So, having already arrested nearly three dozen OWS-Rochester protesters, the Rochester Police Department is ticketing such violent and destructive actions as affixing signs to lamp posts. Heinous crimes! And, as the Democract & Chronicle also reports, at the same time, Rochester Mayor Tom Richards complains that the OWS folks are raising issues beyond his remit. Well sure, world peace is beyond his control, but how about the central issues of economic mal-distribution, poverty, unemployment? Mayor Richards ought to look at this recent Brookings Institution report that find the poverty rate in the city hovers at approximately 30%. As I noted here a couple of years ago:

In Rochester, the city where I teach, 29.1% of the population lives at or below the poverty rate. Of children in the city, the rate explodes to 48.7%. The percentage of families in the city subsisting at half the official poverty rate is just over 17%. The rates vary, but not by much for the other upstate cities I mentioned above. (The national poverty rate for the entire U.S. is 12.4%, surely bad enough, but it is less than the rate for New York as a whole and nothing compared to Rochester or any of the other upstate cities.) You can refer to this report from the Fiscal Policy Institute in Albany for figures. And this study by The Brookings Institution shows that the rate of concentrated poverty among the working poor in Rochester is not only deplorable but increasing.* During the period 1999-2005 the rate of concentrated poverty in the city increased more than 13%, the fourth highest increase in the nation. The impact of such poverty, as political scientists Michael Dawson and Cathy Cohen established a decade and a half ago, extends beyond its dire direct effects on the health and well-being of individuals to collective consequences, especially a pronounced dampening of political participation.

Hey Tom! Why aren't poverty and democracy your concerns?

Why Not Rochester?

There is an extremely interesting interview here with a fellow named Ted Howard who has launched what he calls the Democracy Collaborative. This venture sees the intimate relationship between democracy and economic development and locates the contest to reinvigorate that relationship not in some far away land but in Cleveland. (Look here too.) The collaborative works with poor urban communities to help initiate and sustain worker-owned cooperatives that do business with large employers (like Universities and Medical Centers). The aim is to generate jobs in the communities that are green, local, well-paying and not likely to be exported. As a by-product, of course, such businesses will enhance the municipal tax base. This is a model that should fit Rochester - and all the other economically depressed cities across Western and Central New York state - extremely well.

Western NY as Third World Country

I have posted on this subject here several times before. But the bad "news" re-emerged once again this week when the middle-of-the-road Brookings Institution published this report on the suburbanizaton of poverty in the United States. Before we get to that phenomenon, let's have a look at the "Top 10" cities in the United States ranked in terms of the percentage of their populations living at or below the (niggardly annual income of $21,834 for a family of four that constitutes the) Federal poverty level. Here they are:

1 - Hartford, CT ......................................... 33.5%
2 - Youngstown, OH-PA ........................... 33.5%
3- Detroit-Warren, MI ............................. 30.7%
4 - Cleveland, OH ..................................... 30.5%
5 - Buffalo, NY .......................................... 30.3% (53.0%)
6 - Syracuse, NY ....................................... 29.7% (53.1%)
7 - Rochester, NY ..................................... 29.3% (53.5%)
8 - Dayton, OH ......................................... 29.2%
9 - McAllen, TX ........................................ 28.3%
10 - Provo, UT .......................................... 28.2%

Note the three cities in red (the parenthetical numbers are the proportion of the population living in princely style at less than twice the federal poverty level) . Moving eastward along the thruway we find Albany, the state capital, is relatively affluent - only 24.9% of its population falls into the poverty category! The worse news is that the poverty rate in the suburban areas surrounding these cities is growing rapidly. In 2008 the suburban areas that encircle each of the three Western New York cities had poverty rates of between 8.2% and 8.6%. The Brookings folks project continued robust growth on this score in the immediate future. This pattern is a political and economic scandal.

Rochester in the News ~ Poverty & Schools

I have written here before on the criminally high levels of poverty that beset Rochester and other urban areas of Western, New York. There is rural poverty in the hinterlands too, but the cities are racially segregated and poor. No coincidence. No coincidence either, that the schools in the cities are under-performing and dangerous relative to their suburban counterparts. So, here is a report that has escaped our local news ghetto into the national media spotlight. It is shameful that Yolanda Hill feels the need to smuggle her kids out of the Rochester schools and into the system in the neighboring suburb of Greece. It is more shameful still for the Greece district to be spending money on detectives to monitor and disrupt this particular underground railroad.

World Press Photo Awards

Following an eviction, detective Robert Kole must ensure
residents have moved out of their home in Cleveland, Ohio,
26 March 2008. Photograph © Anthony Suau/Time Magazine.

And the winner is ... Anthony Suau. World Press Photo has announced the winners of its 2008 photo contest. The image I've lifted here was selected as "Photo of the Year." You can find the 'winners gallery' here.

I want to note, in particular, that Brenda Ann Kenneally, about whose harrowing portrait of how the poor live in upstate New York I have posted here before, won 1st Prize in the Daily Life "Stories" category. The only troubling thing is that her depiction apparently is not "news," seemingly because it is not an event like a war or a famine or an epidemic. Actually her subject is an epidemic. The lives Kenneally shows us are no less calamitous for not being newsworthy.

Representing Poverty Upstate

"The Family's Benefit Cards" Deb clears $240 per week
from her job at The Marriot. Six children and one grandchild
under her roof entitle her to Medicaid benefits. When her
daughter, Kayla gave birth to her first child at 15, Deb was
given custody of the grandchild and the baby's Medicaid card was
added to the family's pile. Photograph © Brenda Ann Kenneally

Considered in terms of poverty rate, the string of cities that stretch across New York State - Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Albany/Schenectady/Troy - are a disgrace. On this dimension New York is sandwiched right there between Oklahoma and Alabama. It has the 12th highest poverty rate of all 50 states and has far and away the highest rate of poverty in the northeast. But the statewide poverty rate of 14.3% is positively rosy relative to the situation here in upstate.

In Rochester, the city where I teach, 29.1% of the population lives at or below the poverty rate. Of children in the city, the rate explodes to 48.7%. The percentage of families in the city subsisting at half the official poverty rate is just over 17%. The rates vary, but not by much for the other upstate cities I mentioned above. (The national poverty rate for the entire U.S. is 12.4%, surely bad enough, but it is less than the rate for New York as a whole and nothing compared to Rochester or any of the other upstate cities.) You can refer to this report from the Fiscal Policy Institute in Albany for figures. And this study by The Brookings Institution shows that the rate of concentrated poverty among the working poor in Rochester is not only deplorable but increasing.* During the period 1999-2005 the rate of concentrated poverty in the city increased more than 13%, the fourth highest increase in the nation. The impact of such poverty, as political scientists Michael Dawson and Cathy Cohen established a decade and a half ago, extends beyond its dire direct effects on the health and well-being of individuals to collective consequences, especially a pronounced dampening of political participation.

The numbers are numbing. They show, however, the depths of the poverty that Brenda Ann Kenneally depicts in her harrowing work, much of which is set in her own home town of Troy. Kenneally recently won the 2008 Canon Female Photojournalist award. Her project Upstate Girls won the 2007 "Community Awareness Award" from Picture of the Year International; you can find the series (from which I lifted the image above) here. You can find even more of her work here.

Note to Obama supporters: I have said this here before [1] [2] but it bears repeating. When you hear your candidate talk about faith-based initiatives - let's be honest, about charity - as the centerpiece of official anti-poverty efforts, a cursory look at the numbers for upstate cities or even a brief consideration of Kenneally's photography immediately should give you a sense of just how clueless he really is. When you hear him derided as "liberal," you should immediately start to grasp just how far to the right American political discourse has swung.
__________
* Concentrated poverty is measured by the percentage of Federal tax filers in a specified area (a zip code) who are eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit. Note that one has to be working to file with the IRS.