The Myth of the Working Poor
Steven Malanga: City Journal
The War on Poverty
• Michael Harrington, The Other America (1962):
• Millions of Americans are stuck in hopeless
poverty that only massive government
intervention can help.
• Since 1962, all levels of government have spent
about $10 trillion on poverty programs, with
disappointing, even counterproductive results.
The Myth of the Working Poor
Steven Malanga: City Journal
The New War on Poverty
• Today, a new generation of journalists is straining
to duplicate Harrington’s feat of igniting a new War
on Poverty.
• The new generation brushes aside the failures of
the war on poverty and the successes of so many
in climbing out of poverty by themselves.
The Myth of the Working Poor
Steven Malanga: City Journal
The Effects of the Welfare Reform Act
• Since welfare reform has passed, employment
among single mothers who had never previously
worked has risen 40 percent.
• Child poverty in single-mother households fell to
its lowest point ever in just three years after
welfare reform became law.
The Myth of the Working Poor
Steven Malanga: City Journal
The Effects of the Welfare Reform Act
• NY Times: “Lawmakers of both parties describe
the 1996 law as a success that moved millions of
people from welfare to work and cut the welfare
rolls by 60 percent.”
• The Welfare Reform Act reduces government
benefits and thereby forces people to get a job
and work for a living.
The Myth of the Working Poor
Steven Malanga: City Journal
Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed
• How were “the roughly four million women about
to be booted into the labor market by welfare
reform…going to make it on $6 to $7 an hour?”
• Ehrenreich works as a waitress, a maid, and a
sales associate in Wal-Mart, and cannot earn
enough in these jobs to support herself, much less
any dependent children she might have had with
her.
The Myth of the Working Poor
Steven Malanga: City Journal
Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed
• Ehrenreich ignores the fact that 80%-90% of
persons with entry level jobs move up quickly to
better paying jobs.
• Even though about 13 million persons legally and
illegally immigrated into the U.S. in the 1990’s,
poverty rates declined because most persons rose
out of the lowest income categories.
The Myth of the Working Poor
Steven Malanga: City Journal
Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed
• Ehrenreich paints the low-wage workplace as
oppressive and humiliating to workers.
• She is “oppressed by the mandatory gentility” that
the compacy requires of her, as if being nice to
customers and co-workers were part of the
tyranny of capitalism.
The Myth of the Working Poor
Steven Malanga: City Journal
Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed
• When her outrage is not shared by her coworkers, Ehrenreich assumes that they accept
their terrible exploitation because they have
become psychologically incapable of resisting.
• Ehrenreich claims that the upper and middle
classes should feel ashamed of our dependency
upon the underpaid labor of others.
The Myth of the Working Poor
Steven Malanga: City Journal
The Myths
• Mostly, it is bad choices and bad attitudes that
keep people in poverty, not the quality or structure
of the U.S. economy.
• What is really missing from the lives of many who
cannot escape poverty are the types of values and
traditions that stigmatize the behaviors that keep
them in poverty.