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"The rich have became so unsocial that those who own property had rather throw their possessions into the sea than lend aid to the needy, while those who are in poorer circumstances would less gladly find a treasure than seize the possessions of the rich."For several years, during every recent election cycle, we hear various politician. asking the rhetorical question "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" For millions of poor people in America, poverty is their daily reality. Homelessness isn't a thing of the past, it is an enduring, ever-present burden upon the spirit. In a nation predicated upon the preciousness of property, those who are without property are treated as virtual non-people, invisible in the streets, damned to a hell where they are seen, if at all, as worthlessness itself. In the ongoing War against the Poor that is politically popular in America today, the poor are truly getting poorer, while the rich are getting it all. There are jobs out there, but at levels that barely approach subsistence. When income maintenance programs (like welfare) got cut, they had serious societal effects, Scholars Frances Fox Piven & Richard A, Cloward noted recently; Three general effects will follow the reduction of subsistence resources: economic insecurity will be intensified among the unemployed; large numbers of persons now exempted from work will be thrown into the labor market, thus creating additional unemployment; and economic insecurity among tine working poor will be greatly worsened. [fr. The New Class War: Reagan's Attack on the Welfare State and Its Consequences (Pantheon Bks: N.Y., 1982/1985), pp. 32-33]In a macabre twist of words (for which politicians are famous) they called the program one of Welfare Reform, but what was reformed was the life options of the poor. What was reformed was the ability of labor to resist the encroachment of capital on their living standards, by resisting lower wages. What was reformed was the power relation between labor and capital, to labor's detriment. What was reformed was the relationship between the working class and the poor. What was reformed was the relationship between poor and survival. In these new series of relationships, capital is strengthened, labor is weakened, and the poor are simply crushed expendable.This, then is Clinton's gift to the poor. Cutting off their knees, for their own 'good'! The very same Clinton that is receiving the wealth of forgiveness blinks at the losses of the poor. The Clinton who "feels your pain" doesn't find the pain of tin poor worth feeling. Clinton has always been the darling of the wizards of Wall Street; those who own wealth call the shots, and it is in their interest to keep labor in constant terror of starvation. Income maintenance programs therefore serves the interest of the workers, for it protects them from the threat of starvation, as well as it protects the very' poor. Whose pain does Clinton really feel? For millions of people in urban and rural America, are things better than they are four years ago? For millions of people in America, the rising of the Dow Jones Average, the stocks and bond volumes increasing, the raging markets, mean next to nothing at all. They live a bare and frugal existence, hoping tomorrow will be better than the. hellish yesterday. And they will have good ole Bill to thank for "Feeling" their "pain." ©MAJ
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The
Poor Still Suffer