NOTES FROM THE HINTERLAND
ON BEING POOR
By Laurie Meunier Graves
I.
In the Old Days
Imagine, if you will, a young boy. He is about eight or nine years old and
is dark and poor. His clothes are clean, very clean, but they have been
patched many times. His face is still smooth, and the frown lines that will
make permanent creases in his forehead are still a few years away. The boy
loves to eat, and his mother is a good cook, but he yearns for things that
they cannot afford, treats from the store, especially whoopie pies, which he
sometimes sees when he passes the houses of those who have more money than
his family does. But today he is not thinking about whoopie pies because his
stomach hurts and has been hurting for the past several days. At first the
pain was just a slight ache, and he was able to ignore it. But now the pain
has gotten so bad that it’s all he can think about. Waiting for the pain to
go away, he lies on the bed he shares with his brother. Then he starts to
throw up, and his parents suspect that the boy has something far more
serious than stomach flu. His mother calls the doctor, and he agrees with
the boy’s mother. He thinks it’s the boy’s appendix.
“Bring him to the hospital,” the doctor tells the mother, “and I’ll meet you
there.”
The boy’s parents bring him to the hospital, but there is one small problem.
Actually, it’s a rather big problem. The boy’s parents don’t have health
insurance, and they can’t afford the hospital’s fees. Because of this, the
receptionist won’t admit him into the hospital. Does she feel bad for the
boy with patches on his clothes who is in so much pain that he can’t stand
up? Does she feel bad for the parents who are both humiliated by their
poverty and worried sick that their son will die? Perhaps, but rules are
rules, and people who can’t pay aren’t admitted to the hospital. After all,
sorry doesn’t pay the bills, as her boss frequently reminds her, and, in
this time, with so many people out of work, there are a lot of people who
are poor.
Then the doctor comes and learns that the receptionist will not admit the
boy into the hospital. To say that he is angry is a gross understatement,
and by the time he is done with the receptionist, she is in tears, and, boss
be damned, the boy is admitted to the hospital. The boy does indeed have a
ruptured appendix, which the doctor removes, and the boy lives to become a
man, to become my father.
At this point I have to admit that my imagination has supplied some of the
details in this story. After all, I wouldn’t want to risk incurring Oprah’s
wrath should she discover that some of the details have been imagined.
However, the essentials are absolutely true. My father did have a ruptured
appendix when he was about eight or nine. His parents were too poor to pay
the hospital, which then refused to admit him. The doctor was furious when
he discovered this, and forced the hospital to admit my father. Growing up,
I heard the story many times, and it was always the same—the doctor was the
hero. Who was he? What was his name? I do not know, but I am grateful to
him. Without his intervention, there is a fair chance that my father
wouldn’t have made it, and that I, in turn, wouldn’t be here to tell this
story.
Three other things are true. My father did have patches on his clothes,
which were very clean (after all, he came from a Franco-American family).
And he yearned for store-bought whoopie pies.
II.
What is Hard Work?
In the United States, we have a peculiar attitude toward the poor. That is,
they are poor because they deserve it. This attitude, which we hear daily
from conservatives and from those at the top, couches poverty as a moral
failing, an eighth deadly sin, a sin so vile that those who are poor are
beneath contempt.
After Hurricane Katrina, Bill O’Reilly, one of Fox News’s conservative
commentators, put it succinctly: “The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina should
be taught in every American school. If you don’t get educated, if you don’t
develop a skill, and force yurself [sic] to work hard, you’re most likely be
poor. And sooner or later, you’ll be standing on a symbolic rooftop waiting
for help.”
I suppose it is only fair to concede that getting an education and
developing skills are worthwhile goals, not only for the poor but for
everyone else as well. It is O’Reilly’s last injunction, complete with typo,
which sticks in my craw, so to speak—“force yurself to work hard.” The
implication being, of course, that poor people are a lazy bunch who are too
slothful to work their way out of poverty. And then they stand around on “a
symbolic rooftop waiting for help.” (Like my father and his parents at the
hospital.)
What is hard work? We all seem to agree that CEOs, stockbrokers, those at
the top, work very hard and deserve every billion they make, every yacht
they own, and every mansion they call home. What exactly do these top dogs
do? Those of us in the middle and at the bottom only have the vaguest
notion, but it must be pretty impressive, and it must take a lot of effort.
Otherwise, they wouldn’t earn so much. When we think of these high earners,
we seldom stop to think of those who work under them. Somehow, the top stars
dazzle so brightly and earn so much money that we are blinded by them and
are lulled into thinking that they do everything themselves. Help? What
help? They got where they are solely by their golden bootstraps, unaided by
family or society.
On the other hand, what do those at the bottom do? Here, I am on firmer
ground. From family and personal experience, I can tell you exactly what
some at the bottom do. They clean your house and your hospital room; they
cook your meals; they stitch your shoes; they make your shirts; they grow
your potatoes; they pick your apples; they wait on you at the corner store
as they make your pizza and serve your coffee and ring up your groceries. In
between, they raise their families and go to church and keep their houses
very clean. What a lazy bunch! No wonder the rich look down on us.
Let’s imagine something else. Let’s imagine that this is a country where
everyone has a job that pays well enough so that every worker has a decent
place to live, enough to eat, and enough money for higher education and
health care. Let’s imagine we could wave a magic wand, and suddenly, all
those who worked in poor-paying jobs were bumped up into jobs that paid
well. Goodbye to dead-end work that pays minimum wage, goodbye to work
without health insurance or retirement benefits. This is quite a fantasy,
and only those with the most fanciful imaginations can conceive of this
happening in the United States. Because in our heart of hearts we know the
truth: there aren’t enough good jobs for everyone.
Besides, if everyone ditched their dead-end jobs, then who would serve
coffee or pick apples or clean hospital rooms? Who would do the work that
those at the top either can’t or won’t do? In short, who would keep society
running?
Finally, here are two questions to consider. Who is it, exactly, that
benefits most from the hard work of others? The man who owns the yacht or
the man who picks apples?
III.
Jesus Was Right
Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,
than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” He had many other
pithy comments to say about money, and none of them were good. However, many
Christians, so avid to use the Bible to condemn certain things, are much
less eager to refer to the Bible for examples of what happens to those who
obsess about money and who look down on the poor. This is a pick and choose
kind of Christianity, where inconvenient lessons are jettisoned in favor of
a more comfortable and profitable approach. Fortunately, not all Christians
are like that, and many truly do have compassion for those who are poor.
Unfortunately, such Christians are not running the United States right now.
Instead we have an administration so obsessed with money, with making it and
keeping it, that it colors every decision made, from domestic policies to
foreign policies. For years, progressives have comforted themselves by
asserting that George W. Bush is dimwitted, as though this was some sort of
consolation prize for losing the White House, the Senate, and the House.
Well, it isn’t, and he isn’t. He may not be a good leader, but that is not
the same thing as being stupid.
To get a sense of just how shrewd Bush is when it comes to making and
keeping money, I suggest that readers rush out and get Paul Krugman’s The
Great Unraveling. Krugman, an economist who writes for the New York Times,
spells out exactly how Bush made money in Texas, how his “personal fortune
was built on privilege and insider dealings…on large-scale corporate
welfare.” Krugman couldn’t be blunter when he writes “Mr. Bush profited
personally from aggressive accounting identical to the recent scams that
have shocked the nation.” And Dick Cheney, of Halliburton fame, is
apparently of the same ilk.
So here’s what it comes down to—we have two men running the country who are
so keen on making money that they can think of little else. From oil in Iraq
to cushy deals for Halliburton’s Iraqi reconstruction projects to tax cuts
for the rich, most of Bush’s current policies are designed to flow one way,
to the top. In addition, they don’t want people to get the notion that
government is good for anything that will reverse this flow. The nifty new
Medicare prescription drug plan and the response to Hurricane Katrina are
perfect examples of how the Bush administration has done its best to make
the government look foolish and inept. If the Bush administration can
convince people that government will not be there to help when times are bad
and that the private sector should handle most services, then all the better
for them and their cronies. After all, more money for those at the bottom
means less money for those at the top.
Fiscal conservatives are famous for claiming to want “to starve the beast,”
referring to the government and social programs. But it’s not a nameless
beast they want to starve; it is hardworking American people who would
benefit greatly from social programs, people who don’t have the luxury of
coming from rich families who get ahead by insider trading and “aggressive
accounting.” People like my father, who nearly died because his family did
not have either health insurance or the money to pay for hospital fees.
Poverty might not be one of the seven deadly sins, but greed is. And the
Bush administration makes it abundantly clear why this is so.
