THE FUTURE OF POVERTY

...But either too few have so far been hurt seriously enough to react politically...

...The Exclusion of the Poor GOVERNMENT ATTEMPTS to save and create jobs, and to install redistributive tax reforms, may not necessarily result in more equality for today's poor...

...The blue-, white-, and pink-collar workers in the primary labor market are not a class (new or old), a stratum, or even a group with similar interests...

...The least fortunate will die prematurely or deteriorate into what Hylan Lewis has called the "clinical poor": the chronically ill, mentally disturbed, or permanently angry people who become known as multiproblem clients to welfare agencies and as the undeserving or dangerous poor to their fellow citizens...

...Most likely, they will travel a similar but narrower version of the path open to the poor of previous eras...

...43 Effects of Rising Inflation and Unemployment BUT WHAT IF the economy deteriorates further, producing a few years of double-digit inflation and / or rising levels of primary labor market unemployment...

...While there are said to be 500,000 individual millionaires, they could be outvoted by the mass of people of average income, if it were politically mobilized...

...Nor are these pressures usually the result of deliberate planning...

...Antipoverty Policy in the 1980s THESE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL patterns seem destined to continue during the 1980s...

...Much depends on what the Third World nations, which seek greater equality for themselves and sometimes for their citizens, can do to and take from America, and it is entirely possible that egalitarian pressures inside America will be set aside to deal with worldwide struggles about international equality...

...Nor are there any indications that a change in trends—a miracle or a disaster—would enable the poor or their allies to press for egalitarian policies...

...Many people are angry...

...In consequence, even normally liberal Democratic politicians may be reluctant to support an urban policy or welfare reform and guaranteed income policies that would aid the urban poor...

...If they fail, all modern societies must presumably think 44 about schemes to share the existing jobs, in ways that do no significantly reduce people's standards of living even as they spend less time on the job...

...The recent spate of layoffs has not yet produced visible political effects, perhaps because it still appears to be concentrated in the secondary labor market, in which workers have long had to accept layoffs as inevitable...

...The labor unions, which still provide more political support to the poor than anyone else, have their own worries...

...A more productive tax reform scheme would need also to redistribute income and wealth buried in trust funds and corporate coffers...

...They are the semiskilled and skilled blue-, white-, and, among women, pink-collar workers: people who hold the steady, relatively well-paying and, so far, secure jobs in what economists call the primary labor market...

...but the poor are rarely invited into coalitions...

...Government intervention in the economy does not a welfare state make...

...Although the traditional liberal solution to crime—providing employment—is currently unpopular, the government is fortunately still pursuing and experimenting with employment programs, especially for youth...

...Organized protests of welfare recipients and the ghetto uprisings of the 1960s helped maintain the War on Poverty, but it is not clear that welfare recipients can mobilize once more or that large numbers of ghettos will "explode" again...

...European workers joined in a strong labor movement because they faced formidable social and other barriers to upward mobility...

...They voted for him because economic wealth and power have also been centralized and further concentrated in a smaller number of larger firms...

...Fuller employment could be traded off for political dominance by government or corporate economic planners, not to mention excessive bureaucratization and Bertram Gross's "friendly fascism...

...For example, I underestimated the extent to which inflation could produce a significant political reaction, for what happened to the U.S...

...The trouble is that not enough money can be taken year after year from even that impressive number of millionaires to make a sizable egalitarian dent...

...Since the end of the 1960s, disruption by the poor has mainly taken the form of crime, which is not normally viewed as a protest against poverty...

...continued racism in America suggests that this will be particularly true among the black and Hispanic poor, and that fewer will be able to achieve economic security...

...White adult employers and workers are scared of them, both for being young and black, and many firms looking for unskilled help find it easier and cheaper to hire adult illegal aliens, who cannot afford to complain about working conditions...

...Obviously, these attitudes did not develop in a vacuum...

...q they wanted him to replace the incumbent rascal but also because Reagan talked their language, culturally and politically...

...The principal power they retain is their ability to disrupt the social order through actual or 41 threatened demonstrations, riots, and other kinds of symbolic or physical "violence...

...These pressures are not very visible, and are not even perceived as egalitarian, but represent demands for increases in resources and rights among those who previously had less...

...If poor people became part of a coalition to bring about reform they might be properly rewarded...

...Even so, I cannot imagine that many of the normally Democratic blue- and white-collar workers voted for Reagan believing that he would end inflation...

...In short, the main pathology of poverty was seen to be inequality...

...Equality is, 45 however, neither irresistible nor a revolution but the outcome (among people who are needed economically and politically) of sets of rising expectations and new entitlements that exert constant pressures on the elite, notably politicians seeking reelection...

...At such levels of joblessness, the country's political and economic leadership is apt to reinvent a New Deal to save capitalism once more, even before large numbers of people mobilize to demand action...

...Even if this argument turns out to be accurate, the substitute labor may not come from today's poor, for firms may migrate to low-wage countries or draw on additional legal or illegal immigrants always ready to come to America...

...Some economists have argued that as energy costs continue to rise, industry will have to become more laborintensive, substituting muscle and craft for oil and electricity...

...Since rates of inflation and especially rates of unemployment vary considerably among the country's regions, these workers ultimately act as diverse groups of people suffering an only somewhat similar fate because of the workings of the economy...

...Still, since most poor people are law-abiding, unemployment or poverty alone cannot be sufficient causes of crime...

...The politically most important supporters of the War on Poverty were the mass of moderate-income lower-middle- and workingclass citizens who had tolerated the government's programs in the 1960s...

...and the disasters that have befallen the automobile and steel industries, once bulwarks of the primary labor market, have brought unemployment to previously economically secure workers and have scared others in similarly marginal American industries...

...At that point, the crucial question will be whether government can create enough jobs in a declining economy to defuse unrest and prevent further economic decline...

...Such levels of inflation have in the past defeated incumbent politicians and parties at the ballot box, but they have not led to support for structural change in the economy...

...The younger and more aggressive among the poverty-stricken then "fight back" with increased delinquency and crime, persuading more taxpayers—and politicians—that the poor are incorrigible and undeserving...

...The moderate-income majority has therefore found it more rational to press for reductions of transfer payments to the poor, who lack such muscle...

...Presumably, the workers who supported Reagan will quickly look elsewhere if the Republicans opt for higher unemployment in the primary labor market, but for now, the extent to which these workers accepted Reagan's individualistic ideology suggests again that they remain willing to take their chances with a so-called market economy...

...Nonetheless, it is worth asking how they will fare in the 1980s...

...For example, many citizens have achieved more control over their own lives and the polity, but corporate power has also increased over the last half century...

...Americans continue to view government as an adversary, taking their earnings for public purposes that do not benefit them...

...Perhaps the War on Poverty also changed the moral climate sufficiently so that now, when the more affluent squeeze the poor, they must rationalize their guilt by inventing a rise in "undeservingness" among the poor...

...As a result, few people have noticed that increases in unemployment or underemployment correlate with and precede increases in crime...

...The 20 percent of the population earning less than half the median family income or even the 12 percent below the official poverty line could be a formidable asset in an era of political fragmentation...

...Private enterprise may receive new tax breaks and other subsidies, but since its ability to save and create jobs has not been noteworthy, eventually government would have to act directly, with whatever intervention was necessary in the private economy...

...Now they were turned away mainly by the inroads of stagflation...

...Perhaps the best indicator of the erosion of upper-middle-class support of antipoverty policy is the fact that the socially liberal upper-middle-class candidate in the 1980 election, John Anderson, was not just an economic conservative but a Republican...

...They prefer disposable private income over public goods, and feel they would be hurt by the higher taxes a welfare state might impose...

...Although a minority is unionized, even it lacks a history of political activism...

...Even if they were, eliminating poverty is an expensive method of fighting crime...

...Although some unemployed people suffer from depression that renders them politically apathetic, unemployed activists will be supported by people who fear future joblessness, as well as by businesses whose existence depends on the expenditures of the employed...

...A rise in unemployment is apt to generate stronger political reaction than even a 15-20 percent increase in inflation, because joblessness has a far more drastic impact...

...or in low-wage foreign countries, are ready to take their jobs at lower pay...

...The specific policy reactions will presumably begin with longer and more generous unemployment insurance...

...Admittedly, the poor are not a homogeneous group or voting bloc...

...Even if that does not happen, reforms engineered by or for the working and lower middle classes are likely to be designed to help only them, with a few crumbs to the povertystricken...

...and the less fortunate majority will remain in the secondary labor market...

...A significant minority of workers has come to favor "supply side" economic policies, which aim to deal with inflation by cutting back government welfare expenditures and to reduce unemployment by increasing tax and other subsidies to private enterprise...

...Then corporations could perhaps be required to invest in laborintensive rather than capital-intensive activities, to save jobs at the expense of profit, and to restrict the export of jobs...

...No one can know whether "primary workers," who with their families make up an American majority, will act politically if their economic condition worsens—and whether they are likely to move to the left in any significant numbers...

...In a vicious cycle that has so far not been halted, poor people lack incentive to vote because politicians pay so little attention to issues that concern them...

...Poverty in the 1970s IT WAS no coincidence that the War on Poverty began during a period of affluence, although even then it was never more than a skirmish...

...Meanwhile, some political discontent over the economy has been drained off by the biannual national elections, in which people can vote an incumbent president or Congress out of office, hoping the next one will do better...

...Some reforms would of course be universal, for the the poor—as well as the rich—benefit from price control...

...Egalitarian ideas had just begun to flourish when the War on Poverty ended in the early 1970s, and they now have lost much of the popularity they had then achieved...

...The political power of the poor, in Washington and elsewhere, also has declined...

...The poor European immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries seem to have experienced these diverse fates, and there is no reason to believe that the poverty-stricken of our era will do better...

...Equalization, in fact, is not inevitable, and if a permanent decline of economic growth in America results in sharper conflicts over the allocation of scarce resources, a return to greater inequality is also imaginable...

...Many of them are rapidly becoming members of an underclass cut off from the institutions providing access to the rest of the economy and polity...

...The rise of stagflation and the halt of economic growth are of such recent vintage that many people do not realize both may be permanent...

...If and when these payn.ents cannot be cut further, sufficient political support may develop for tax reforms that soak a small number of the very rich in favor of a large number of moderateincome people—and precisely because the very rich are small in number...

...That opposition acts like a permanent lowpressure system on the political climate, discouraging people from carrying out or supporting political actions that they know to be in their own interest...

...As the economy and the government's economic policies squeeze moderate-income taxpayers, they in turn support further squeezing of the poor...

...Although characterized as a conservative "me generation" in the 1970s, this group is actually still in favor of some government intervention in the economy— but now for itself rather than to aid the poor...

...Although initiated by Michael Harrington and other socialist writers on poverty, the revival came about because researchers and practitioners in the antipoverty program realized that most poor people in America suffered less from extreme material deprivation than from having fewer of the basic goods, services, and rights that make up the standard of living enjoyed by the average American...

...These demands are largely economic, which the government either cannot satisfy or which the affluent majority would forbid it to satisfy...

...or they are not a significant political force, like the old and the poor who have been seriously hurt by inflation...

...equality of condition is...

...But even if a lowering of the obscene levels of unemployment among poor young people (estimated at about 35 percent among blacks and over 60 percent in some ghettos) would reduce crime or head off future ghetto explosions, no one has yet figured out how to employ them on a massive basis...

...moreover, no one can guarantee that they will be...

...Were they to do so, an American version of the West European and Scandinavian welfare states might be in the offing, if only because these states have, until recently, been very successful in maintaining full employment...

...migration from the Northeast and Midwest to the South and Southwest has cut into the power of those states in which economic liberalism had its strongest political base...

...Senate on November 4, 1980 comes close to structural change...

...The two economic debacles in fact have not produced many significant political reactions of any kind...

...Writing a few days after the Reagan landslide, I still stand by my long-term scenario: that egalitarian policies are possible if and when there is high unemployment among primary labor-market workers...

...Moreover, many people realize that their elected representatives are not able to do much about inflation or unemployment in the first place...

...This vicious circle may not yield even to the best-intentioned politician, for the polity will probably not respond to the demands of the poor...

...Under these circumstances, it should not be surprising that neither inflation nor unemployment have yet produced a political shift to the left...

...In times of austerity, however, institutions and individuals have less money and sympathy for the poor, so that since the start of stagflation in the early 1970s the poor have again become more unequal...

...Just as restricted European opportunities in the past created worker realism about the need for a welfare state, the plethora of American opportunities led to worker innocence about the virtues of economic individualism...

...The longer-run future can only be imagined...

...The election results show that unemployment has not yet become a serious political issue, at least among that half of the population that still votes...

...An American welfare state could also foster a more egalitarian society, reducing some of the inequities between the rich minority and the moderate-income majority although, as I will suggest later, the poor would not necessarily benefit...

...European workers have realized since the 19th century that improvements in their income and quality of life depended on a welfare state, but equivalent Americans continue to have faith that they can make it "on their own," through economic growth overseen by private enterprise...

...The Democratic party, once a defender of the poor, has also been suburbanized, even as it has continued to unravel...

...and perhaps the most important economic indicators for the poor—the minimum wage and average welfare benefits— have lagged far behind the rise in the cost of living...

...As a result, the multigenerational working-class family that long characterized Western Europe and made its members enthusiastic unionists and socialists has not been prevalent in America...

...If they will ever support egalitarian policies, they will not necessarily favor the welfare state of American socialdemocratic theory or of Scandinavian practice...

...Even in the late 1960s, as the discussion of antipoverty issues moved toward the inevitable conclusion that poverty was really inequality, and that neither could be affected significantly without some redistribution of income and wealth, these liberals became, understandably enough, nervous since their incomes would most likely be cut by redistribution...

...or they have been hurt so seriously that they have become politically impotent...

...The processes of equalization operate more quickly and effectively in social and legal than in political and economic areas, but even there they are slow and lurching, with forward movement only slightly outdistancing regression...

...Changes in the economy suggest it may take them longer to escape poverty than their European predecessors...

...In an economy dominated by automating oligopolies and multinational exporters of jobs, the poor are no longer even essential for keeping a lid on the wages of other workers...

...If, however, unemployment rates among male primary labor-market workers who have not been laid off for years should reach 10 or 15 percent in many parts of the country, political reactions can surely be expected...

...The Long-Run Outlook for More Equality THESE OBSERVATIONS, predictions, and guesses lead to a gloomy outlook for egalitarian policies...

...an irresistible revolution which has advanced for centuries in spite of every obstacle...

...An American labor party did not come into being largely because enough American workers hoped or assumed that their children would be middle class...

...What, then, will happen to today's poor...

...However, tax-reform schemes that redistribute monies to the moderate-income population but not to the poor are perfectly conceivable, particularly since the poor no longer pay federal taxes...

...In any case, it would be dangerous to underestimate the strength of individualistic values among America's workers, or the extent to which actions reflecting these values exist to protect them from a variety of businesses, professions, and bureaucracies seeking to intrude into their private and familial lives to advance one or another public interest, alleged or real...

...These workers have not, for the most part, been subject to the low wages, layoffs, and disappearing jobs of the secondary labor market in which the working poor are typically employed...

...At present, however, this scenario is unlikely...

...Political change is less predictable than any other, and the American political system is sufficiently fluid to make political surprises possible, particularly in an economic crisis...

...Government then might be allowed to create jobs by improving public services, by competing with private enterprise—and surely also by thinking up new military ventures and weapons...

...As a result, the contemporary underclass could turn into a political-economic caste, peopled, of course, mainly by blacks and other darker-skinned groups...

...Ultimately, hard-pressed people could even look for ways to recoup economic losses, such as soak-therich tax reform...

...Some union members are fearful that poor people, in the U.S...

...The highly ambitious and fortunate few will find a niche in the primary labor market, but not all will be able to pass their achievement on to their children...

...Perhaps by then someone somewhere will have invented the blend of economic egalitarianism and political and personal individualism that, I suspect, all societies must eventually achieve in order to make the good life available to as many people as possible...

...Economically and politically powerless people do not have much leverage over political or policy processes unless they are in some way needed—and the poor seem to be needed neither by the economy nor the polity...

...If the poor were needed in the economy, many could presumably leave the ranks of the poverty-stricken...

...Other structural and cultural patterns act as additional obstacles to fundamental welfarestate policies...

...Alternatively, if the poor were needed by a political party with a presidential victory or a congressional majority at stake, they might obtain governmental aid that would help them out of poverty...

...Occupational and political beliefs as well as expectations for the future have therefore not yet been adjusted, and even American workers who have always been cynical about capitalism's concern for their well-being cannot yet entertain the possibility that an expanded welfare state would improve their economic position...

...Even so, welfare state policies requiring egalitarian government intervention in the private economy would be strongly opposed by various coalitions of affluent corporations and by other organizations and individuals, 42 whose veto power appears to remain massive even as political parties continue to crumble...

...Liberal political organizations with uppermiddleclass constituencies continue to lobby for the poor, but upper-middle-class enthusiasm has weakened...

...While anger and despair seem to be as pervasive as in the past, ghetto inhabitants know that they were the ones who suffered most the last time, and that the police now are more heavily armed than in the 1960s...

...often people suddenly disobey orders or rules they had previously obeyed, and as often as not the order-givers retreat quietly, and the rules are no longer enforced...

...and most suburban voters are not ready to do anything for the urban or rural poor, except keep them out of their own communities...

...Suburbanization has continued to erode the power of the old cities in which the poor are numerous...

...A hopeful scenario would imagine an eventual compromise among the developed and developing nations to allow de Tocqueville's irresistible revolution to continue in America...

...and the corporations, at least, are not only good at lobbying but can also talk about eliminating jobs, a threat that could scare off supporters of redistributive tax reform...

...As a result, the prospects for egalitarian politics—or even for modest antipoverty policies that have minimal or no redistributive consequences—are not hopeful...

...At that time some began to pay greater attention to "social" issues on which they could take liberal stands, such as 40 nuclear energy, environmental protection, and abortion...

...Nearly full employment could be achieved in the primary labor market without drastically improving conditions in the secondary labor market...

...Americans, on the other hand, have always expected that their children would obtain better jobs, higher income, and greater occupational prestige...

...they are physically hard to assemble, and they lack the common culture that helped bring European workers together and enabled them to build a strong labor movement and powerful labor parties...

...And while World War II created a slightly more egalitarian income distribution and postwar affluence increased the number of people able to enjoy the American standard of living, Postscript THIS ARTICLE was completed in July 1980, and although I sought to look at egalitarian possibilities from a long-range perspective, I implicitly expected four more years of Jimmy Carter...

...Unemployment has edged upward, the gap between the poverty line and the median income has widened (as has the gap between black and white incomes...

...but even so, ILstill agree with de Toqueville's conclusion, now over 150 years old, that "the more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that...

...Except in wartime, the history of American tax reform has been dismal, partly because those who would pay higher taxes have flexed their political muscles quickly and effectively...

...However, the stagflation of the last ten years has halted their upward mobility...

...Prospects for an American Welfare State IF MORE EQUALITY and greater social justice for the poor do not seem likely in the 1980s, there is another scenario, in which a large number of nonpoor Americans, fed up with inflation and scared of rising unemployment, use the powers of their number to push the government and the economy in a more egalitarian direction...

...Some demographers expect the aging of the population to produce a labor shortage before the end of the decade, but no one can be sure that this will occur or that it would be solved by recruitment from the now underemployed, unemployed, and unemployable...

...So little is known about the ideological proclivities and underlying attitudes of primary labor-market workers that no one can say whether they would support a publicly or a corporately controlled economy if it came to that choice...

...Allies of the poor are less numerous than in the past...

...It would be illusory to think that America will necessarily model itself on the social-democratic European welfare state, partly because of its individualist traditions, partly because of the weakness of its labor movement...

...Their ability and willingness to vote seems to be limited...

...I was wrong, however, on some short-term issues...

...By that time, the European welfare states, which are currently faced with the beginnings of high unemployment, may have set an example that America could follow...

...But it is also possible that the people who seek more equality in America will be major supporters of the fight against more equality for the Third World...

...As a result, politicians continue to be inattentive, which then further discourages voting—or other conventional political activity—among the povertystricken...

...Worsening inflation would surely bring on wage-and-price controls, already favored in public opinion polls, and if they fail, perhaps a scheme to control prices and profits more than wages...

...So far, it remains cheaper to hire more police and to hope that crime will take place on somebody else's block...

...The rest are not easily organized...

...and because those laid off from primary labormarket jobs are still collecting unemployment insurance...