While I couldn't really figure out exactly what Travis Hornsby was advocating for or complaining about, the main thrust of his column on Monday — that poor people would be just fine if only the rich were allowed to hang onto their assets in totality — is just plain wrong.
I'm a third year law student at UF, and I'm dedicating my legal career to helping the impoverished gain access to justice. I also went to UF for undergrad and had the pleasure of serving as editor-in-chief of the Alligator in 2009. During my time in charge, I received countless letters stating, "I can't believe the Alligator would run this garbage" and took it personally every time. Don't worry, I'm not criticizing the paper for running this column. I just think it's important for readers to know that Hornsby's claims have no basis in fact.
Poverty is a huge problem in America. The 2010 Census data show us that 46.2 million Americans are in poverty, the highest poverty rate since the government started measuring in the 1950s. Twenty-two percent of American children are growing up in poverty. That's nearly one in four. Over the years, there's been an explosion in corporate growth to accompany the explosion in the poverty rate. It is not the children of hedge-fund managers or venture capitalists who live five to a bedroom in a crumbling inner city housing project and only get fed when school is in session.
Probably the most rage-provoking claim Hornsby makes for those who, frankly, give a shit about poor people is, "Those demanding living wages for the poor would be happy to know that the vast majority of the impoverished make higher than the minimum wage." This is a bald-faced lie. Hornsby would have realized this had he performed even the most cursory check of any census statistics, and that's pretty ironic since he's a statistics major.
If we look to the poverty guidelines, it's evident that not only the "vast majority" but, in fact, every single person under the poverty line brings home less than the minimum wage. The system is designed that way. The minimum wage is based on the poverty threshold, and those earning less than that wage naturally fall below. The 46.2 million women, men and children poor enough to qualify for government benefits are all living on less than minimum wage. I have no idea where Hornsby got his data to back up his contention, but it is simply not the truth.
But even those lucky enough to be employed in minimum-wage, full-time positions don't earn enough for their families to live on. That's where the idea of a living wage comes from, and it's really a very simple concept. The United States is one of the most affluent countries in the world. Despite that reality, millions of people here are homeless and hungry without the bare necessities needed to subsist from day to day.
The Poverty Guideline used by the federal and state governments to determine eligibility for public benefits is an absolute, rather than relative, measure. This means that, rather than take into account what people actually need to survive, the government started with an arbitrary number based on a single agency's recommendation in 1964. The process to increase that threshold to account for everyday realities such as inflation and rising costs, along with the process to increase the minimum wage (directly tied to the poverty threshold), is convoluted and almost impossible to navigate.
The government designed it that way. Poor people are not a politically popular group in American society, nor do the poor traditionally wield any significant political power to change their plight. Our democracy is structured in a way that stifles the voices of those at the bottom. The elderly, military veterans and the disabled fare slightly better in having their needs met by the government because they are considered "deserving" poor. But the others — the 26.2 million people who simply cannot make ends meet in society despite their best efforts — are swept aside. Their needs are ignored by a system that does nothing to alleviate their plight.
In the eyes of the law, corporations are people. They have certain rights and freedoms, and the government can't just step in and change things willy-nilly. Those laws that do exist to curb corporate power, such as the Dodd-Frank Act, came about in the wake of multi-billion-dollar widespread corporate scandal (remember Enron, anybody?). The government has made clear that it lacks the power to end some of the practices Hornsby points to, such as widespread outsourcing and other consequences of globalization that further aggravate the problem of poverty.
But I fail to understand how these practices are necessary consequences of helping the poor. The problem of poverty does not lie in corporate greed as much as the solution can't be found in the alphabet soup of government bureaucracy. The solution lies in the hands of the American people, and until we stand up for each other instead of turning the other cheek, nothing will get any better.
Nicole Safker is a third-year law student at UF.
