What is Martin Luther King Day? If a child asked you this question, you might respond confidently, ‘This is a day we remember a great man, Martin Luther King.’ But is it? Sure the day is named after King, but do we remember him on it? Do we really remember him at all?
Considering the overwhelming santaclausification of King into some jolly impotent figure from long past history, I would say that the fearless radical anti-war activist criminal alive just a few decades ago who the FBI called “the most dangerous man in America” is hardly really remembered. Misremembered, yes. Truly remembered, no.
As Professor Cornel West said back in 2010, “We have to resist the ‘santaclausification’ of Martin Luther King. I don’t want to sanitize Martin Luther King. I don’t want to deodorize Dr. Martin Luther King. I don’t want to disinfect Dr. Martin Luther King, and we’re not gonna domesticate Dr. King!”
We misremember King as an unreal impotent, PC black Santa Claus politely asking if his friend Rosa can sit down when what makes him worth remembering is quite the opposite: He was a fiery, controversial, unresting activist arrested multiple times whose powerful, radical challenges to the war, economic inequality and of course segregation scared the living hell out of not only the average white conservative but the governmental powers that be. His commitment to non-violent methods and focus on love only made it harder for his enemies to undermine him and undermine his powerful criticisms in the eye of the public. While arguably most of his grand, vast, radical vision was shot to death with him in 1968, much of the hard progress that was made then and since then is thanks to him.
Although racial equality and non-racism in America is still far off, and although King’s unrelenting, vociferous attack on the Vietnam war may have garnered him the most dangerous enemies, this is after all a blog about poverty. The adamant, revolutionary critic of poverty demanding economic equality has been greatly forgotten not remembered. The man who was brought to tears upon seeing schoolchildren in Mississippi fed their meager lunch of a slice of apple and some crackers is generally not remembered.
“The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization,” Dr. King said. “The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”
Of course he was more revolutionary than one just asking for more charity and handouts: “True compassion is more than flinging a coin at a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring,” Dr. King said.
Unfortunately, Martin Luther King’s “Poor People’s Campaign” was unsuccessful after his assassination. Globally, 18,000 children die every single day from world hunger. In the United States, millions suffer in poverty including millions of children as well as millions of working poor. Like his dreams of a colorblind society and an end to American militarism, Dr. King’s dream of abolishing poverty has also gone unfulfilled and its creator misremembered.
I have already made many posts about taxes on this blog. The most stunning point to me in those posts is that the rich pay less taxes than the working class in terms of percentage of income–at least in the USA.
I didn’t want to make yet another post about taxes on a blog that is supposed to be about poverty, but I read an article this morning that got my blood boiling. In part, the Buffalo News Editorial says:
Congressional Republicans, who seem to have sworn some kind of blood oath to the preposterously unfair Bush tax cuts–regardless of the damage they do to the economy–now want to eliminate the reduction of the payroll tax they helped to enact last year. The reduction in payroll taxes, while it puts additional stress on Social Security, which it funds, is of greatest benefit to the middle class and working poor.
That’s because it’s a “regressive” tax, taking the same percentage of everyone’s pay, regardless of income level. The amount of income subject to the tax is also capped, meaning a portion of the income of higher earners—sometimes a very large portion—goes untaxed.
In other words, these politicians want to keep the regressive tax system we already have but also make it even more regressive! This is done by simultaneously lowering taxes disproportionately for the rich while increasing government spending and disproportionately increasing taxes on the working poor and middle class.
I understand the psychological complications of a two-party pseudo-democratic system that enable politicians from both parties to get away with a lot of selling out the many to the wealthy special interest few, but I am still surprised these politicians who openly try to make a regressive tax system even more regressive are not overtaken and tarred and feathered or some such by a stampede of angry masses fighting not only for what they think is fair but for what is clearly in their own self-interest. Maybe what gets my blood boiling with this issue is not so much the politicians who I personally have been long convinced are all—that includes both parties—special interest bought self serving liars. Rather what really gets my blood boiling about this kind of issue may be that the masses of people who have the real power in terms both of sheer numbers and productive ability just let themselves get so blatantly exploited.
What do you think? Please comment on this post, comment on any other posts about taxation or discuss the relationship between poverty and taxation in this thread about taxation and poverty in the forums.
For years CT has been dealing with a budget crisis. Spending is greater than revenue, and revenue is down as a result of the recession. In terms of poverty this is dangerous because government spending cuts need to be made and are being made, and that means many of the government sponsored-programs that are struggling to keep this state’s poor afloat are are a risk of being cut away leaving the people to sink into poverty.
Worse yet, the alternative–increasing taxes–can be just as harmful. One new tax attempt severely hurts local online retailers many of which are small businesses including many financially struggling entrepreneurs. Here’s the issue: States cannot collect sales taxes from out-of-state businesses. By absurdly claiming online referrers, who independently contract as advertisers for companies like Amazon and happen to live in-state, are a physical presence of the business in the state. In other words, the state intends to claim that paying an independent contractor a commission for advertising is tantamount to opening up shop in the state, even though neither the advertising nor the sales resulting from the advertising are actually happening in the state. If that sounds complicated it’s because it is so absurd a rationalization for collecting an illegal tax. Being such an absurd rationalization, there is a good a chance of the new tax attempt not bringing any new tax revenue. But what is simple is that this tax hurts CT businesses and struggling entrepreneurs.
This new tax means companies like Amazon will end their affiliate programs with any and all CT businesses and entrepreneurs. This is a painful loss of revenue for many of these CT businesses. Ironically, that means the state will be collecting less income taxes from these local businesses and yet will still not be collecting taxes from the out-of-state Amazon. I know this first-hand because I was an affiliate with Amazon until June 10th when they terminated me and all other CT affiliate advertisers. Now my income has gone down as a result of a failed attempt by the CT government to collect sales taxes on a Seattle-based company.
A well-written July 1st editorial from Investors Business Daily explains the way history repeats in regards to this failed tax attempt:
There’s a bigger issue at stake here, though. Ever since the catalog was invented, states have tried to force out-of-state retailers to pay their sales taxes. The matter went all the way to the Supreme Court, which in 1992 ruled that doing so violated the interstate commerce clause.
Now states think they’ve found a way around this restriction by vastly expanding the definition of “presence” in a state to include online marketing affiliates.
Also a New Haven Register editorial from May 27th summarizes the issue well in my opinion:
The budget counts on this new tax raising $9.4 million in the next year, although those following the battle over the tax, which is strongly opposed by online retailers, don’t expect it to yield any revenue next year[...] The likely loss of $9.4 million in tax revenue next year is minor in comparison to a state budget of $19 billion. Its impact, however, will be far larger on the small Connecticut companies that counted on the referral fees from Internet sales.
To balance the budget spending cuts and new taxes may both be needed. But we cannot let most of the burden of these spending cuts and taxes fall on small businesses, the poor and the struggling, who are already unfairly burdened, especially if the burden is from an ill-conceived tax or cut that doesn’t even work and won’t even provide the claimed balance to the budget.
Like many states and like the nation, my home state of CT is facing massive budget deficits that require significant budget changes to avoid bankruptcy and crisis.
I believe there are large amounts of wasteful spending that could be cut from the budget that would close most if not all of the deficit. Unfortunately, what is wasteful for taxpayers is often considered a sacred cow by special interest groups, lobbyists and and the politicians collecting the campaign contributions and other kickbacks from the ones receiving government handouts that they do not need. The regular folks and the poor would be much better off if this type of spending was cut regardless of whether we had a deficit or surplus, but it won’t be cut because of undemocratic, bipartisan corruption and cronyism.
So when cuts are made, they are made on the services that are needed most by the taxpayers, particularly the poor. Shelters are closed. School programs are cut. Emergency services like ambulances and fire departments are cut back. Social workers are let go. Poverty is increased. The poor are told to make sacrifices so the rich don’t have to make the sacrifices.
The alternative to these cuts is more taxes. Politicians may try to increase taxes on the non-rich, again telling us we all need to make sacrifices but really expecting the regular folks and the poor to make all the sacrifices so the rich do not have to. But on this blog I have often pointed out that the rich already pay less in taxes than the rest of us as a percentage of income. Even worse yet, today I read an excellent but upsetting article in the Hartford Current by Jon Green about how big corporations in this state use tax loopholes and avoidance schemes to swindle millions of dollars from the state and thus make the struggling working people and the poor to pick up the tab.
For instance, he explains how AT&T pays itself to use its own logo to avoid paying taxes. Jon Green writes, “Over a period of 2.5 years, AT&T shifted about $145 million in Connecticut earnings to a subsidiary in Nevada, ostensibly paying licensing fees for the right to use the company’s own name and logo. Nevada has no corporate income tax, so the shifted earnings went untaxed and Connecticut lost out. If it sounds fishy, that’s because it is. AT&T is not alone. Many large corporations use sham transactions designed to move profits generated in Connecticut to a different state where they won’t be taxed.”
Some people brush off those advocating the end of poverty as unrealistic. They falsely label the goal to end world hunger or to end poverty as impossible. In reality, we can end world hunger. We can end poverty.
The world has way more than enough food to feed everyone. To illustrate, people in the United States alone waste 100 billion pounds of food, but only 4 billion is needed to feed all the hungry people in the world. World hunger is not caused by a lack of food. Similarly, poverty is not caused by a lack of resources. The world has much more than enough resources to provide food, clothing, shelter, clean water, health care and education to everyone in the world.
Poverty continues because of decisions made by the people on this planet. It has social and political causes and social and political solutions.
Some corrupt or uncaring people may not want to end poverty, but they can not deny that we can end it.
We can debate which methods are most effective or efficient at alleviating poverty and which ones are fairest. But what is not debatable is that we can end poverty.
As for what’s most effective, most efficient or fairest, there are thousands of posts on this website about that, as well as other websites, books and so forth. Basically, I think almost all of us can agree that unconditional handouts continuously given to the same people over and over are not efficient, effective or fair. In fact, unconditional handouts are often counterproductive by increasing dependency, wasting taxpayer money and subsidizing irresponsibility. In contrast, I think we can all agree that certain other methods are relatively effective and efficient. These methods include student loans, business loans, equal access to quality public education, providing education, job-training or jobs for the unemployed, and treating treatable physical or mental diseases that disable people from working and taking care of themselves. Additionally, I think we can all agree that putting conditions on charity or welfare makes it more efficient and effective. A poor person who wants and needs welfare from a government or private charity can be required as a condition of that help to do their part to help themselves. For example, they can be required to not do drugs or alcohol, to not spend money on luxuries, to go to medical treatment if they need it, to either go to school if they are unqualified or look for full-time work if they are qualified.
Those basic points aside, the discussion and debate about what methods are most effective, efficient and fair will need to be long and in-depth. But what is simple, clear and beyond debate is that we can end poverty.
Lowering the cost of health care would make it much easier for people to afford the cost of living, considering that the cost of health care costs make up a big portion of the cost of living. Lower health care costs would make it easier for poor people to escape and avoid poverty and easier for anti-poverty programs to help people escape and avoid poverty.
Earlier today, I published an article with the top ideas I support for reducing health care costs. Here they are:
- Tax Unhealthy Behaviors and Promote Healthy Habits
- Lower Insurance Company Profits
- Base Insurance Premiums on Habits
- Health Care Pooling
- Lower Health Care Fraud
Please read the whole article because it greatly elaborates on those ideas and provides links to the forum threads in which you can discuss the ideas.
Most of us know that numerous commendable charities exist that work to save the lives of starving children who they can feed for pennies a day. Other organizations, especially those addressing poverty in less utterly destitute places, focus more on investing in long-term solutions like changing society, turning around economies and uplifting entire communities. The long-term investments require more upfront, but if successful they will save more in the long run, just like the cost of teaching a man to fish today will cost less than just continuing to donate fish to him. Regardless, the fact is at the least we can save children’s lives for pocket change a day if not do more with it to end poverty.
However, based on my experience growing up in the United States, it seems to me the typical person in the first-world does not donate much to these charities that can save starving kids for pennies a day, nor to the ones that work to find long-term solutions. Instead, we needlessly hoard luxurious cars, expensive fashionable clothes, and bigger screen televisions, which not only puts us into a self-destructive debt, but leaves the question: How many starving children could have been fed with the extra money spent on luxuries?
But I do not think the typical person is so callous, so uncaring, so sociopathic that they would really prefer to wear a prettier shirt and let a child die than feel the joy of saving a child. So why do we do it? Let me try to guess what I think are the main reasons.
Commercialism – I think commercialism and excessive consumerism are perhaps the main reason we fail to provide more help to the needy. Unfortunately, businesspeople and corporations can get lots of money by convincing us to foolishly spend our hard-earned money on needless luxuries or other junk that we often cannot even afford. We are bombarded by billboards, TV ads, magazine ads, newspaper ads, junk mail, spam email, sales calls, and other advertisements. We put ourselves into debt for junk we do not need. People who earn enough income to not only live comfortably themselves but also help others end up in debt, unable to help others and in need of financial help themselves! We spend more but end up less happy and less secure. This is not a selfish choice, a callous choice or a sociopathic choice; this is a stupid, self-destructive choice. We cannot only blame the advertisers and businesspeople for the stupid, self-destructive choices inspired by commercialism anymore than the drug user could only blame the drug pusher. We also have to blame ourselves for our own self-destructive choices. We need to stop it.
Denial – I think denial is a common reaction to an overwhelming problem. This is especially true of problems that only bother us emotionally from our acknowledgment of them. Some kid we never met starving to death or suffering hundreds of miles away or even on the other side of the earth does not have any effect on us if we do not know about it. But because we are not sociopaths, we sympathize with them. Their pain hurts us. However, we choose to ignore it, to suppress our knowledge of it like a child suppresses memory of traumatic events. We keep it out of our mind to avoid being overwhelmed by the painful feelings of such a massive, overwhelming problem that calls for such overwhelming action to fix it. This is common, but I don’t think it is healthy. If we can be brave enough and honest enough to truly acknowledge a major problem like this and admit how incredibly terrible it makes us feel, then we can start making choices based more on reality and doing our part to work to fix it. And I think facing life’s obstacles and horrors like that will make us stronger and happier.
We don’t want to give it all up – Most of us would otherwise be willing to give up a portion of our luxuries or time to save lives. But that creates a slippery slope. If we admit to ourselves that it makes sense to buy a not-quite-as-luxurious car and fight poverty instead, then it blatantly follows that it would make just as much sense to buy an even less luxurious car and fight poverty that much more. I think it would be too blatantly inconsistent to give up a little bit, but at the time we fail to get ourselves to give it all up. Is it any surprise we choose to ignore poverty almost completely rather than take a so-called ‘vow of poverty’ and live with no luxuries? For some of us, the only solution may be a very drastic change to our excessively materialistic lifestyle. But also we have to remember that we do not just have to send all our extra money to another continent. We could invest it into our own children’s education or into starting our own local nonprofit. We could just work less and spend more time with our families or volunteering with friends. I think that would help end poverty and make us happier.
What do you think? We’re not sociopaths, so why do we behave like sociopaths when it comes to poverty? When it costs less than a buck a day to save the lives of children, why don’t we? Please post your comments about this blog post and discuss inaction on poverty in this thread at the Philosophy Forums.
In this post I will write my answer to the question we used for a contest we recently held, “If you were given $10,000,000 and all the money must be spent to reduce poverty and hunger, how would you spend the money?”
I think we all agree that charitable handouts of food, water and shelter would not effectively reduce world hunger and poverty alone. As I wrote in a post I made in August 2006, entitled The Method To End Hunger, “if a hungry child fails to eat today, that hungry child dies tonight. However, if the hungry child eats today, then we still have a hungry child tomorrow. We cannot end hunger without food, but food alone won’t solve the problem. Simply giving food to the hungry to solve hunger is like shoveling water out of a sinking ship.”
On the other hand, neither $10 million nor any amount of money one person could reasonably have would be enough to fix the political unfairness and non-meritocracy and the destitute economies that make it so even skilled, strong people willing to work hard cannot escape poverty. In regards to unfair non-meritocracy, even the smartest, strongest hardest-working slave can still live in poverty while his lazy master lives in wealth off the slave’s labor. In regards to destitute economies, what use is a skill that might earn great wealth in a non-poor, fair economy in an economy where resources are so scarce that a new Mercedes-Benz might sell for the prize of a few apples?
So I would spend the money on helping individuals directly, rather than on trying to fix the broken economies and political corruption. Besides, when we help enough individual people directly and thus empower those people, empowered people will be able to work together to fix their political and economic environment.
I would invest the money to create an organization that can continue to grow on its own without the need for any more donations of $10 million.
This organization would focus on providing a lot of help to each person it helps, rather than providing a little help to a lot of people. As mentioned before, we cannot end poverty by only providing the bare essentials to a lot of people through handouts. We would only be temporarily relieving the symptoms of poverty until we run out of money. So instead of just giving people food, clothes or temporary shelter, the organization would find a way to help each client become self-sufficient and thus permanently escape poverty.
Namely, the organization would help people permanently escape poverty by not only providing them with food, clothes and other necessities, but more importantly by providing the following:
1. The organization would get the poor people it helps out of ghettos and bad neighborhoods ridden with crime, violence, drugs and so forth. They would be brought to affordable housing in better neighborhoods. The organization may have to temporarily help these people pay for these new homes.
2. The organization would make sure each person it helps is mentally fit, and make sure they get treatment for mental health problems and addictions if the people have them.
3. In addition to the shelter already mentioned, the organization would make sure each person it helps has food, clothes and health care. Even though we already agreed we do not merely want to provide only free handouts of basic necessities, we must at least loan the funds to get those basic necessities while we find and implement long-term solutions. We cannot expect a person to work on the fundamental causes of their poverty if they have to worry about where they will get their next meal. A hungry schoolkid cannot get the education he needs if he is on the brink of starving to death in the classroom.
4. Each person’s specific situation and needs would be evaluated to determine whether the person needs education and skills-training, needs a business loan, or just needs a better job or business. And then those services would be provided. When completed, the person would have a job or own their own business with which they make enough money after deducting job costs to repay their loans and afford the cost of living. The cost of living must include the following costs (insofar as they are not provided by the government): food, clothes, shelter (in a safe neighborhood), education, unemployment insurance, and retirement.
Of course, this help would only be provided to the people if they are also helping themselves. For example, the organization would not spend its resources providing food and shelter to someone who could escape poverty by going back to school but who refuses to go to school even with the help. We are fighting poverty and world hunger, not laziness and anorexia.
At least upfront, providing those resources to a person or family would require a large investment. But it would be ensured that the people actually escape poverty permanently and become self-sufficient. Then ideally the people could pay the organization back, perhaps even with a little extra. Then the organization could not only continue doing the same work with other people, but hopefully also grow and help even more people at once.
What do you think? Comment on my idea and post your own idea of how to spend $10 million to reduce world hunger and poverty.
In my last blog post, I explained the way that I think ignorance causes inaction on poverty. In this post, I have come up with a series of questions that I think we can ask ourselves to help us relate to poverty and understand how much poverty actually threatens and affects those of us not currently living in poverty.
The Questions
How may your life have been different if you were born in a much poorer family? What if you went to a much poorer public school in a much poorer community, with much more crime, with much more wayward students and with much less funding?
What if pretty much all of your family and friends were poor throughout your life? Have you ever been bailed out by family or friends who had spare money or personal connections? What if you hadn’t been?
What if your household never had a car or other automobile for your entire childhood? What if you never had internet or a computer? How may that have changed your life?
Can you think of something that could have been different in your past through no fault of your own that would have caused you to fall into poverty? Even if you had worked just as hard and exercised just as good decision-making, what may have happened to you that could have led to you being poor (or poorer) now?
Can you imagine a future scenario in which you end up poor through no fault of your own? What kind of help would you expect to get or need to get to escape poverty? If you fell into poverty in the future while still working just as hard or harder, how would you feel if people called you lazy or stupid or said you deserved to be poor?
How have you been lucky in your life? How has that luck contributed to your comfort of life and financial situation? Are there ways you could have been much more unlucky that could have caused you to fall into poverty? What sort of unlucky things could happen to you now or in the future that could severely affect your finances and make you poor or poorer?
The Answers
Post your answers to those questions, read other people’s answers and comment on this blog post as a whole in this thread at our forums.
Pass a link to this post along to other people as well. If we all start thinking about poverty, we will be inspired to do something about it and hopefully finally work together and eradicate it.
There has been a lot of frustration over the massive amount of pay, bonuses and luxuries given to the executives at failing banks which together received hundreds of billions of dollars from the U.S. government. Indeed, it leaves us asking why rich people get bailout money to pay for private jets and unnecessarily lavish Superbowl parties when working class people need bailout money just to pay for food, clothes, shelter and health care. In response, some people including President Obama have called for capping the pay of executives at banks that receive bailout money.
But the highly paid chief executive of Netflix, Reed Hastings, has asked for the taxes of executives like himself to be raised. In his op-ed entitled Please Raise My Taxes, Hastings writes, “Instead of trying to shame companies and executives, the president should take advantage of our success by using our outsized earnings to pay for the needs of our nation.”
That idea interests me. And I like when one of the very rich suggests it. At the very least, we could raise the richest people’s taxes enough so that they are no longer paying a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than the rest of us.
Anyway, stopping and undoing the recent economic crisis will cost a lot, but we do need to do it. The recent economic crisis has pushed many people deeper into poverty, many people into poverty and still pushes many people closer and closer to poverty. Raising the taxes of the extremely rich can help fund the costs of reversing the recent economic crisis.
However, poverty is not a new problem. Even before the economic recession, millions of Americans and billions of people worldwide lived in poverty. Even then, working class people still worked too hard for too little pay in a society riddled with corruption and social, political and economic unfairness. Even then, a lot of people were poor who would not have been poor and a lot of people were very rich who would not have been so rich had it not been for the corruption and unfairness.
I believe we can not only reverse the recent recession but also eradicate poverty completely. Just like reversing the recession, eradicating poverty will require an investment that costs a lot upfront. But that investment can permanently solve a very costly problem. In analogy, we can spend $1,000 once to fix the hole in a boat today rather than spend $10 a day to desperately scoop water out of the sinking boat.
Ideally speaking, I see a society in which nobody suffers from poverty, where people don’t go hungry and homeless down the street from an overstocked grocery store and a vacant house. In that ideal society, neither taxes nor government spending would be needed. So one could say I ideally want taxes to be reduced and even eliminated if possible. But noting the difference between theoretical ideals and practical steps, increasing taxes on the richest of the rich in our current messed up society seems like an effective and appropriate way to raise funds to make the investment to push us closer to that ideal society.
What do you think? Do you support raising the taxes of the very rich? Why or why not? Join the discussion and tell us your thoughts in this thread at the Philosophy Forum.
