Social Responsibility - Part 2

Jeanne, over at Body and Soul has a great post up today about the divided nature of the Republican Party. In it she makes a statement in which appears the phrase "the term "working poor" ought to be inconceivable." The post is great and so are the comments, but it was that phrase that caught my attention.

I can understand why there are poor people (I don't think a society as rich as ours should have "poor people" in the sense that phrase usually means, but that's another story). These are the people who have lost their jobs, or are too ill (physically or mentally) to work or are disabled. There should be social safety nets to ensure that being poor doesn't mean living on the street or doing without food or medical care, but that there will be a class of people termed poor is understandable. That we do so little to help this is not so understandable - again a different post.

What I can't understand is why it should be perfectly understandable when someone says "working poor."

That the phrase "working poor" can often mean someone or some family with multiple sources of income is a travesty. I know, I know... I can hear the conservatives saying something about "the power of the almighty market to value work." But what is the cost to all of us that there can exist, in our country - the richest, most powerful state to ever exist in history - people who, in the somewhat mangled words of Lewis Carroll, "must run as fast as they can just to get further behind."

I don't know how to change our society so that "working poor" becomes an oxymoron. If I knew, I sure wouldn't be sitting at my desk dashing out this entry during what should be my lunch break at work. I'm sure I could be ensconced in some "Think Tank" in D.C. advising the Democrats on policy (I'm quite sure the Repugs wouldn't be interested). I'm pretty sure it would have something to do with some form of "Living Wage" and single-payer medical care and a restructured (and loop-hole free) tax system. But what all those things should look like and how they would work... well, I just don't know.

But the fact that it's literally impossible to have an intelligent, informed conversation about this topic in our society (unless you're "preaching to the choir") is a shame and it will certainly continue to come around and bite all of us in the ass.