MIDDLE-CLASS POLICIES TOWARD POOR PEOPLE,
AND POOR NEIGHBORHOODS
As a starting point, we need to make sure that people who already belong within the relatively stable economic “middle class” do not see it as a `zero-sum' contest, where only limited numbers of people can get in, and therefore, each time someone from, say, a minority race gets in, then a “white person” will have to be kicked out. Instead, if we define “middle class” to include any man (of any race, ethnicity, etc.) who works for a living, pays taxes, and helps raise his own kids – and, as mentioned on a prior page, that is a pretty fair and reasonable definition of `middle class’ in America, today – then it becomes clear that middle-class workers actively contribute to the strength and stability of America, while people who are on welfare and who are constantly wanting to be paid more and more money out of `the public trough’ (i.e., supplied by taxpayers) do not. So, for that simple, logical, obvious reason, our society (and our finances) will be better off, if we can help more people climb up out of the poor and welfare-dependent economic levels, and up into a `holding a job, and paying taxes’ level. If middle class citizens and taxpayers can push and drive politicians to enact policies which will help even a modest percentage of poor people, to climb out of the poorest and almost-poorest economic levels, up closer to (and, in many cases, fully into) the middle class, then our entire society, and nation, would become stronger, and more stable. Any non-predatory merchant or service-provider who is trying to sell any type of goods or services to the public, would benefit from having more people, circulating in society, who can afford to buy those goods or services. And, the heavy costs of welfare, crime prevention, and prisons, would also go down, as well.
However, the challenges, to anyone hoping to find better ways to help people climb up (and work their way up) into the middle class, cannot be ignored. Two of the most important challenges can be summarized as follows:
(1) in view of the huge and horrible debts and deficits we will have to begin struggling with, in the coming years, ANY decision or effort which is seen as (or which can be portrayed on right-wing media as) diverting or reallocating more funding toward the poor, will rapidly trigger powerful suspicions, and strong objections, from anyone who thinks THEY should be getting more of that money, instead of giving it to the poor; and,
(2) there are powerful baises and beliefs, not just among the wealthy, but among the middle class as well, that large numbers of poor people are indeed poor, mainly because they do not know how to handle and use money intelligently, and if more is given to them, they will largely waste it, rather than using it productively.
There are ways to address both of those arguments, but this website is not the best forum to even begin such an effort. For now, and for here, the basic position of The Middle Class Manifesto is that society – and, politicians, and political leaders in particular – need to find ways to:
(1) help loosen, relieve, and reduce a number of predatory behaviors and policies that hold poor people back, and keep them marginalized and living on the outer fringes of productive society. The problems that need to be addressed include: (a) black-on-black crime and violence; (b) policies that encourage business owners to suction any money they can get from a poor neighborhood, out of that neighborhood, as quickly as possible, rather than enabling and encouraging that money to circulate through that neighborhood, several times, before it is taken out; and, (c) improvements that need to be made to public schools, and public education;
(2) develop better ways to teach them and show them how to use what money they have, more skillfully and productively; and, create incentives and rewards for those who actually begin using their money more skillfully; and,
(3) find ways to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, among the poor and unwed.
Those three goals all point in the direction of helping poor people improve their lives, and climb up into the middle class, where they can become active and useful contributors, rather than welfare dependents. Much more will be said, and debated, in the coming months and years, to "add meat to the bones", in an effort to develop better ways and opportunities to enable more poor people to work and earn their way up higher into the middle and more stable levels of our economy.
For now, I would add only one more comment: the best book I have ever read, on how people (and churches) can actually and genuinely help poor inner-city neighborhoods, is called The People Parish. It was written by Fr. Gerald Kleba, a Catholic priest in St. Louis. I live in St. Louis, and Fr. Kleba was a friend of the large Catholic family I married into, after I moved to St. Louis for a new job, met a wonderful woman, and got married, settled down, and raised kids. Each and every chapter, in that book, was the story of how Fr. Kleba worked with his (mostly black/African-American) parishioners, to identify a specific problem, and find a way to, if not solve it, then at least make it “less bad”.
As I read that book, I realized that his approach was a marvelous display, and demonstration, of a management tactic I had read about, years earlier, in the classic business management book, In Search of Excellence. That business strategy is called `The Chunking Strategy’, in the Excellence book. Basically, it says that one of the most effective and successful business strategies is for management to identify perhaps 2 or 3 major problems, at any given time, as discrete `chunks’, and to then figure out how to focus upon, and actually make major progress in solving, the most important 1 or 2 `chunks’ of those problems. The curious pattern is that nearly any management team which can actually solve 1 or 2 of its most difficult, challenging, and important problems, one year; and then, actually solve another 1 or 2 of its most difficult, challenging, and important other problems, the next year; and then, actually solve another 1 or 2 of its most difficult, challenging, and important other problems, the next year after that . . . well, it won’t take too many years for that management team to be recognized, within a larger company, as one of the best and most effective long-term strategic teams that the company has, even though they did not start out with that as the goal. The trick was to break down larger problems into workable, manageable `chunks’, and to then seriously tackle, begin working on, and make progress in actually solving, each particular `chunk’ of a problem.
I assume there were more overlaps, and fewer real boundaries, between the different chunks that Fr. Kleba was describing, in his book; nevertheless, the way he devoted each chapter to how he and his congregation tried to solve a particular problem, gave a powerful impression that he was indeed using `the chunking strategy’ to very good effect. So, for anyone wanting to try to actually help solve problems in poor neighborhoods, I would recommend that book as, at the very least, a good starting-point description of what some of those problems actually are.