[lit-ideas] Re: [lit-id] The Poverty of Heritage

  • From: Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 24 May 2006 21:24:13 -0700

Lawrence wrote:

You’ve lost track of the fact that I quoted certain items from the Heritage report and that various people including you took issue with what I quoted. I never said anything about the cost of housing in Europe. I only quoted the report which referred to size. That is the issue. If you want to have a different discussion, about cost, then I shan’t join because I haven’t run across anything on that.

You want to discuss housing and relative poverty but don't want to discuss the cost of housing?


I would have expected you, as someone who has, surely, analyzed the costs of and budgets for various programs in the aircraft/defense industry, to try to see whether you can come up with any ideas for how someone might survive on (the revised figure of) $780 a month.

Rector's failure to look behind the bare data ('a car,' 'two cars') serves his ideological purpose, which is to deny that there is genuine poverty in the US. His smoke-and-mirrors trick of comparing some highly theoretical poor person here with some underdescribed person in Europe is surely a way of preventing needless worry about the poor here. ('See, these are the facts. The Census Bureau says so. Don't blame me.') His implicit criterion of poverty-in-name-only is material possession.
I mean, surely, somebody in an air-conditioned apartment in Phoenix, is better off than somebody without air-conditioning in London? Who provides such things (landlords? home owners?) doesn't even interest him. But most jurisdictions have rules about what must be provided to tenants (whether an apartment is furnished or unfurnished), which would account for the presence of so many of the luxuries in the flats of the renting poor.


As for Rector's claims about the availability of health care (he doesn't get around to the cost of prescription or non-prescription drugs), the silence of any further explanation on this point says a great deal. It hardly matters that the Census doesn't tell either; he's interpreting the information for us.

It would be nice to have some response to the question of how it is possible for anyone in the US to acquire, maintain, and (even) replace the things the poor are, most of them, said to have, on $748 a month. Let alone eat. Don't think, but look.

Robert Paul
The Reed Institute
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