America = Needing Poverty

12 years ago I posted about a book on poverty I'd read wherein the main impetus of poverty during the Middle Ages was "God could have made all men rich, but he wanted there to be poor people in this world, that the rich might be able to redeem their sins."

Today, we can read Ezra Klein on the dirty secret of capitalism being that it heavily depends on the existence of poverty:

I suspect the real political problem for a guaranteed income isn’t the costs, but the benefits. A policy like this would give workers the power to make real choices. They could say no to a job they didn’t want, or quit one that exploited them. They could, and would, demand better wages, or take time off to attend school or simply to rest. When we spoke, Hamilton tried to sell it to me as a truer form of capitalism. “People can’t reap the returns of their effort without some baseline level of resources,” he said. “If you lack basic necessities with regards to economic well-being, you have no agency. You’re dictated by others to live in a miserable state.”

But those in the economy with the power to do the dictating profit from the desperation of low-wage workers. One man’s misery is another man’s quick and affordable at-home lunch delivery. “It is a fact that when we pay workers less and don’t have social insurance programs that, say, cover Uber and Lyft drivers, we are able to consume goods and services at lower prices."

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “how can we possibly pay for that?" 

Sigh. Can we grow up, people?

For the most part, America finds the money to pay for the things it values. In recent decades, and despite deep gridlock in Washington, we have spent trillions of dollars on wars in the Middle East and tax cuts for the wealthy. We have also spent trillions of dollars on health insurance subsidies and coronavirus relief. It is in our power to wipe out poverty. It simply isn’t among our priorities.