BOOKS
Bader, Eleanor J.
BOOKS The Assault on Welfare the war on the poor: A defense manual hv randy Albelda, Nancy Folhrc. and the Center for Popular Economics The New Press. 142 pages. $10.45. by Eleanor J....
...Since men and women often do not perform substantially equal work according to the Equal Pay Act of 1963, comparable worth is considered 'equal pay for work of equal value' to any employer...
...Did mankind simply become putty in the hands of the master manipulators who ran the cigarette business'1 . . . Or have we been convinced bv these merchants' unyielding insistence that peddling poison in the form of tobacco is no vice if (a) it is freely picked by its users and (b) its dangers have not yet been conclusively, to the last logarithm of human intellect, proven'.'" Kluger raises prickly questions, too, about the motives of governments that refuse to make smoking illegal...
...It will not strengthen the family...
...Kluger specializes in thick books, one per decade...
...Folbre...
...Why should this be...
...Short essays by historian Linda Gordon, political scientist Frances Fox Piven, sociologists Theda Skocpol and William Julius Wilson, and economists Barbara Bergmann, Cyann Brolfe, Deborah M. Fi-gart, Heidi Hartmann, and June Lapidus add depth...
...The Defense Manual is written in a lively, easy-to-read style that utilizes photos, line drawings, cartoons, graphs, and charts to underscore its points...
...citizens and their dependents, the bulk of the book looks at current income supports: welfare, food stamps, and free school lunches, as well as social security and veterans benefits...
...The first, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America's Struggle for Equality, appeared in 1975...
...As the evidence accumulates that tobacco-company executives have been lying for decades about the manipulation of nicotine in cigarettes, author Richard Kluger appears in timely fashion with perhaps the most thoroughly researched book ever about the history of the deadly product...
...The War on the Poor is a coherent, forceful antidote to the constant political and social assault on low-income people...
...Well, yes...
...Dav One...
...In so doing, it attempts to chip away at ideologies that pit the "deserving" poor—the elderly and disabled—against the "undeserving"— teen mothers and single parents...
...In the first half of 1995, women working full-time, year-round, earned seventy-six cents for every dollar men earned...
...This book is not an expose...
...Let some of these men who work in government, let some of them stay home and do that...
...This makes it an organizing tool, helping interested parties hook up with like-minded activists on issues ranging from monitoring welfare legislation to immigration...
...Convincing and jargon-free...
...If she's doing a good job at that, she has to use a lot of skills...
...It is as if the parties have agreed that making the poor poorer will somehow enrich the body politic...
...Quotes from rightwing pundits—including George Gilder, Newt Gingrich, Arianna Huffington...
...Although sexism and racism are not directly named for their roles in sustaining poverty, gender and racial differences are reference points for the Manual's recommendations...
...For example, there is one slice of the book about which I can immodestly pronounce myself an expert, having devoted six months of the last year to investigating the story of nicotine use in cigarettes that was aired by the ABC news magazine...
...Medicaid, and Medicare—has been the centerpiece of the domestic agenda touted by both Democrats and Republicans...
...food stamps...
...The Paper: The Life and Death of the New York Herald Tribune, appeared in 1986...
...In 1993, about 7 percent of mothers were unwed teenagers...
...Among the authors' findings: • In 1993, 27 percent of all workers earned less than the amount needed to keep a family of four above the poverty line...
...Kluger's nine-page foreword, "A Quick Drag," however, is brilliantly provocative...
...42 / May 1996 The Manual includes an annotated directory of national advocacy and research organizations...
...and the Heritage Foundation—provide jumping-off points for the authors as they analyze issues like welfare spending, benefit levels, teen pregnancy, immigration, health care, out-of-wedlock births, job training, and unemployment...
...Yet the image of an obese black woman on welfare, driving a bright pink Cadillac, is as much a part of daily lore as the Horatio Alger stories we were fed as children...
...Kluger explains that his most difficult task "was to try to suspend moral judgment as long as possible in sifting through this immense and untidy collection of materials in order to craft a coherent social narrative about an industry that was, after all, a thriving enterprise well before a conclusive scientific consensus on the hazards of its products was achieved...
...As soon as the main part of the book starts, he becomes more an encyclopedist than a narrator...
...More than two-thirds of all teenage moms were impregnated by men over the age of twenty...
...In addition, 17 percent of Americans under the age of sixty-five have no health insurance...
...That same year, 46 percent of all African-American and 41 percent of all Latino children lived in families with incomes below that line...
...Nancy Folbre...
...Length: You guessed it...
...Kluger's version is superficial...
...While those well-seasoned in welfare advocacy or activism in support of economic parity will find little that is new in The War on the Poor, the book pulls together a wide array of data to rebut pervasive assertions about wasteful social spending...
...Horrifying...
...about long-term solutions for social injustice...
...Medicaid provides assistance to only about half of the poor...
...In the closing paragraph to his foreword, he asks: Are cigarette merchants "businessmen basically like any other, selling a product judged to be highly hazardous long after its usefulness to millions was well-established, and are now sorely abused by 'health fascists' and moralizing busybodies, or are they moral lepers preying on the ignorant, the miserable, the emotionally vulnerable, and constitutionally susceptible...
...The War on the Poor: A Defense Manual challenges these false assumptions and attempts to replace rhetoric and distortion with reason and fact...
...She's putting in more than forty hours a week when she's taking care of her family...
...Their work offers suggestions and strategies for social change—ideas, perhaps, for a future debate Eleanor J. Bader is a writer and teacher from Brooklyn...
...They'll find that a woman is not lazy when she's taking care of her family...
...people should know better...
...Randy Albelda...
...In her place, Albelda...
...economic survival has gained priority over mere physical fitness, to the chagrin of public-health advocates...
...It's an enraging and provocative work, which finally puts the image of the "welfare queen" to rest...
...Over the last twenty years, economic growth has failed to improve earnings for all but the most highly educated workers," the authors write...
...As a reference book...
...The War on the Poor spotlights the inadequacy of current benefit levels and argues for income supports that provide "a generous and effective safety net" for those who need it...
...and the Center for Popular Economics confront the myths about poverty, and make a case for government assistance to ameliorate economic want...
...Martin 's Press...
...This does not lend itself to seamless storytelling...
...An Immigration and Naturalization Services study released in 1992 found that less than 0.5 percent of illegal immigrants had fraudulently obtained food stamps or AFDC payments...
...Welfare reform—or less euphemistically, the slashing of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC...
...It will only make people poor...
...And because of its superficiality, it is misleading...
...While The War on the Poor offers other suggestions, including Cyann Brolfe's call for a guaranteed minimal income for all U.S...
...they write...
...The second...
...Trouble is...
...New-York...
...and the Center for Popular Economics have erected a monument to survival...
...Length: also more than 800 pages...
...In a case of supreme irony, not to say perversity, the more evidence accumulated by science on the ravaging effects of tobacco, the more lucrative the business has become, and the wider the margin of profit," he writes...
...But contributors Figart and Lapidus see comparable worth as a way out of the morass...
...They offer concrete examples: In states without comparable-worth protections, the median weekly wage for the predominantly female occupation of maid is $245, while the median for mostly male janitors is $303...
...In a typical chapter, Kluger mingles set pieces about that decade's scientific research on the health hazards of smoking, the economic fortunes of competing tobacco companies, the latest tactics of industry lobbyists, the hand-wringing compromises made within government agencies, inadequate media coverage of life-and-death matters, and the passing of folks who played significant roles in tobacco's history...
...Not until page 760 does Kluger say that he has come to believe cigarette-company executives lied about the health charges made against their product...
...Every one of Kluger's chapters is divided into a half-dozen or more set pieces, written more compellingly than most encyclopedia entries, to be sure, but otherwise quite similar...
...the book notes...
...In nine spare, unembellished chapters...
...Can all these national governments be justly accused of callous indifference to the well-being of their peoples, or might it be argued instead that, in Darwinian terms...
...His most recent is "The Reporter's Handbook: An Investigator's Guide to Documents and Techniques...
...The hourly wage required for a full-time, full-year worker to bring a family of three to the poverty threshold [$12,590] and pay day-care costs for one child in 1991 was $6.67...
...Ashes to Ashes is a success...
...A Long Drag Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris by Richard Kluger Knopf...
...by Eleanor J. Bader Unless you've been living in a media-free world, you're probably aware of the most recent incarnation of the U.S...
...government's war against the poor...
...Length: more than 800 pages—a nonfiction masterpiece...
...Kluger's latest is about the tobacco industry...
...And to me that's not laziness...
...Slashing social spending for the disabled, elders, and mothers raising children on their own will not balance the budget...
...Almost half of all women workers earned less than this minimum sufficiency wage" during that year...
...generations on the dole," and lazy, female slackers popping out a kid a year at the public's expense...
...Damn it...
...Kluger doesn't follow through...
...A majority of these women had experienced rape or other sexual abuse as children or young adults...
...from his home in Columbia, Missouri...
...Worse, there is a near-daily barrage of articles and news programs about "children having children...
...Shocking...
...despite public outcry, only 8 percent of welfare-dependent households are currently headed by teen mothers...
...published by St...
...My intent throughout has been to bring an unpremeditated approach to a subject that has historically generated a good deal more heat than light...
...In today's economy a woman is considered lazy when she's at home taking care of her children," says welfare recipient Denise Turner...
...Steve Weinberg (Steve Weinberg writes long books, but not as long as Kluger's...
...832 pages...
...The pieces do not always connect well, linked only by chronology in many instances...
...It will not punish the wicked...
...Great come-on...
...This approach sacrifices depth for breadth...
...But as a book to be consumed for pleasure, it will probably be considered heavy going by readers with less stamina than Kluger...
...35.00...
...Comparable worth is predicated on the assumption that occupational segregation has led to the systematic undervaluation of work done by women and this undervaluation is reflected in lower wages...
Vol. 60 • May 1996 • No. 5
