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The Choices We Face

Posted Oct 15, 10:08 AM | 4 comments | by Editor | Link

By Ashley Bunting Seeber:

When I was younger, I thought poor people were poor because they didn’t work, or because they didn’t work hard enough. I was going to school, I was going to get a good job, and I was going to earn a living … So why couldn’t other people do that?

Unsurprisingly, it turns out that being poor is a little more complicated. John Scalzi fleshes out in concrete ways what it’s like being poor, and the 436 comments that follow his article are worth a read as well.

Poverty has several definitions, a lot of facets, and many faces to it. I don’t want to oversimplify the causes or dynamics of poverty, and I don’t want to add more burdens to people already hit hard in these economically difficult times, but I do think this is a good time to re-think what we want our society to be like. I think those of us who can’t identify with Scalzi’s list have several choices to make.

We can go to Wal-mart because they have low prices because they don’t pay their workers enough (and certainly don’t give them benefits), or we can support Mom-and-Pop stores or chains who are trying to treat their employees well.

We can pay for universal healthcare through rising premiums caused by emergency room visits by those who don’t have health insurance, or we can spend that money as tax dollars to expand Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP to make sure everyone who needs it has it.

We can decide we want more of our tax dollars returned, or we can invest in our national infrastructure so the companies who employ us have safe, working, cost-efficient roads and bridges to drive on.

We can decide we want to choose where our kids go to school, receive our bigger voucher, and leave the rest with no school they can afford, or we can decide to be indignant about the U.S.’ education rankings, pay what educating a child costs, and do the hard work of making the needed reforms.

We can pay low prices at the mall and grocery stores, or we can pay a little more to make sure that people who are working receive a living wage so they can get by with one full-time job and don’t have to hold down two or three.

We can invade countries that “support terrorism” and alienate our allies, or we can choose to, with the help of our allies, invest in post-conflict areas to make sure they’re rebuilt like we did for Europe after World War II.

We can live in a capitalist system that allows the “bottom” to fall out, or we can live in a humane capitalist system that has fair rules of the road so everyone has a chance at a better life.

And we can choose to participate in the system rather than bury our head in the sand, hoping someone else will make the changes that need to be made.

I know this may sound like a manifesto for a particular political party and for a certain candidate (so feel free to leave your comments below), but I also know that giving tax breaks to the wealthy business class and in hopes of it trickling down in fair wages and good infrastructure for the rest of us has rarely actually happened in our nation’s history. I also don’t believe that problems as complex as ours will be solved by people who are pursuing their own interests or by an omniscient and omnipotent market that doesn’t have a name, address, or social security number, and certainly doesn’t seem to share my values.

I think we can keep writing blog posts about poverty and keep giving to charity, or we can make the investments needed to make the system work for real people. We can keep worrying that people will take advantage of the system, or we can realize that’s collateral damage and the price we pay for living in a society that reflects our values.

Editor’s Note: This blog post is part of Blog Action Day 2008.

Ashley Bunting SeeberAshley Bunting Seeber and her husband Kilian live in Geneva, Switzerland, and are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Geneva.

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Welcome to the Reader's Forum

1patrick 10/20/2008 07:57 AM

Firstly, vouchers in schools have been proven to work in other countries. It takes time, but in the long run competition in education will drasticially improve the quality of education. More control in the hands of goverment generaly means quality goes down. Competition, while not perfect, ALWAYS encourages quality.
Good points, but in the words of Derek Webb “We’ve never had a savior on capitol hill”

2Nick Masao 10/23/2008 03:17 PM

This is a great article, I wish our African leaders could read it.

3Laura 10/23/2008 06:44 PM

I agree, there is so much to do and we often wait (with our fingers crossed) and hope someone else will do that for us.
We can make a difference with little every day actions.

I´m from Argentina, my name is Laura.

4David Allen Lower 12/19/2008 09:25 AM

Thank you for your insight and willingness to share opinions.
I have difficulty with the various definitions of “poor” To be poor is a relative financial term.
My father told me a snippet from his 1926 freshman year at Dartmouth, when he asked a classmate Nelson Rockefeller if he would like to go to a movie. Quite as a matter of fact, Nelson said “I don’t have enough money”. It was not a complaint. Nelson’s father had instilled a sense of frugality and his allotment was well budgeted.
I prefer “destitute” to “poor”.Some who are destitute deserve a society provided financial floor. Would you really erase the efficient distribution of goods and food by Walmart because their base wages are low?
Some would argue for us to take a vow of poverty as we develop our philosophy.

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