The American Poor

One of the social workers’ favorite question to ask me, aside from my marriage status, is what the American poor live like, or if there any poor at all in our country. They expect everyone in a place as rich as U.S. to be living in a picket-fenced home. And I have a hard time explaining to them why it’s actually quite the opposite. And that many people are suffering now as a result of the market crisis. But one way to help them understand is to compare the relationship between the sub-prime borrower and the corporate lenders to the relationship between the poor illiterate villager and the local moneylender. Both of them charge high interest for those who don’t know better or who have no choice but to pay. And in both cases, the borrower ends up poorer as a result of the lending tactics. So they ask, “what happens to these poor people?” Well, not much help are given to them, because policy-makers call the downturn the “market correction” that we need in order to have a healthy capitalist system. But even though years of unemployment, homelessness, and insecurity may be seen as a dip in the market cycle for an analyst, it means great suffering and uncertainty for individuals. And someone living in a wealthy “free” state should not have to be subjected to this suffering. Or else, what do we really mean by freedom. Is unfettered consumer frenzy freedom? If that’s the case, we should replace the Emma Lazarus poem under the statue of liberty with a plaque welcoming us to the land of purchase power instead
A more secured economic system doesn’t have to be counterintuitive to basic human rights and a fair judicial system. A system which would regulate lending better, provide healthcare security, free quality education, and basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter to the needy seems in fact more consistent with my understanding of human rights. No one willing choose to be unemployed by mass lay-offs, or to see their savings disappear with the crumbling stock market and housing crisis, or to be left homeless. The freedom to choose only makes sense if there are viable and good choices, not the desperate ones some have been pigeon-holed into.