Formula for Social Structure, Poverty,
& Crime?
Social institutions and poverty are
linked. According to Lauer and Lauer the
social structural factors that play a role in poverty include "institutional
arrangements of government, the economy, the family, and education" (2008, p. 173).
I would like to address the first two of these in some detail, and then touch on
the latter two at the end. Governmental
institutions at the local, state, and federal levels involve political policies that are
unequal in its power distribution. TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) and
Medicaid are only available to certain people in poverty-stricken conditions, whereas food
stamps are usually a bit easier to apply for and receive. However, what seems to be
helping the poor also aids in the riches of the already-rich (Lauer and Lauer, 2008).
One example of this unequal power –
and money – distribution is food stamps that are used by those who are poverty
stricken, or meet the low-income requirements to purchase food, help the poor and
the wealthy. For instance, the use of food
stamps to buy groceries at the grocery store also makes the grocery store owners wealthier
because of goods sold. Similar results occur
when Medicaid is used at Doctor's offices, making the physicians rich. Job training helps the administrators of those
businesses to make money as well. People may complain that the poor get free
"handouts" but fail to consider that corporate welfare also gives
corporations financial benefits (i.e., "handouts") in loans, taxes, grants,
credits, and real property improvements. The
argument is one that seems to bring prejudice/ bias – promoting a double standard
– to light. How can one argue against
“handouts” to the poor, the homeless, or other low-income households and
families, when vast sums of money are just given away to corporations (Lauer and
Lauer, 2008)? It seems simple at first
glance.
On the other hand, there is also the
argument that government programs that give handouts directly to the poor may be doing a
better service (at least in some ways, depending) by giving grants to non-profit
organizations (rather than corporations) that use this “free money” to help the
poor indirectly. NGO’s (Non-Governmental
Organizations) that use such grants may work locally to organize low-income neighborhoods
and bring better housing, infrastructure, weatherization of homes, new construction, the
building of a community center with a roomful of computers and other resources, etc., help
bring solidarity to areas of great poverty by organizing the people within those
communities. This, from a business
perspective, would be a win-win situation. However,
a grant to an NGO is not necessarily the same as a grant to a corporation; but is it that
much different? Corporations using grants to
build infrastructure in an area for low-income residential development would offset their
expenses, allowing for an end product (low income housing) to be more affordable to the
very people (customers, i.e., the poor) they are targeting.
This type of example where grants to
corporations (as “handouts” or corporate welfare) may or may not necessarily aid
the wealthy, and cause poverty to proliferate, IF the dollars are passed on to the
consumer directly, dollar-for-dollar. The big
question lies in the formula used to determine the financial equality/balance regarding
such endeavors. The social structure of
government monies as “handouts” has to be incorporated into a cohesive and
inclusive (rather than exclusive) view, and how the matter is handled at all levels comes
into play. As an analogy, one could use the
Carbon Footprint Calculator <http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx>
to determine the full impact of your greenhouse gasses/CO2 emissions in your
home for lighting up your Christmas tree and house with lights during the holiday season. The method most people use is very simple, where
total wattage (W) multiplied by the time (T) used is considered the final answer in the
total energy (E) used to run the lights (written as WxT=E); however, what happens when you
take into account the cost of the electricity used at the factory(ies), etc., to make
those strings of lights?
Consider the energy consumed to mine and
purify the metals used in the wiring for a string of Christmas lights, or the energy used
to pump the oil from the ground and the process to refine and create plastics for the
wiring casing, the manufacturing of the light bulbs themselves, and all their components,
the work done by machines or people to put together the strings of lights, cost of trees
and energy to make boxes to package them, the cost in fuel and vehicle manufacturing in
order to ship them, etc. What about the
offsets, where jobs are created due to all of these necessary steps in such an endeavor? Would there be other offsets? If so, what?
In the end, even with offsets, the little string of $5 lights has cost quite
a bit in total energy use, not just the watts used when you plug them in for a week or
month or more. After they get old, or the
lights begin to quit working, and are thrown away, are any parts recycled or are they
hauled to the dump? How many years are they
going to be used before that time comes? The
actual formula, as you can see, is not as simple as WxT=E, and would have to include the
true TOTAL energy used. Of course, it would
be a nearly impossible feat to backtrack that far and consider every single energy
resource that might be used in order to manufacture a string of lights.
Similarly, the social structure of
governmental and other institutions, and their potential or consequential TOTAL effect on
society, especially the direct (or indirect) issue of being a causal factor in poverty,
are inherently complex and would require a difficult formula indeed. It’s not as simple as the dollar amount
of handouts to the poor (H), multiplied by the percentage of profit the
institutions would make off of that (P), equaling the total dollar amount of extra wealth
the “programs for the poor” make the institutions richer (R). HxP=R is just too simple a formula model, and from
another viewpoint that same formula can show that the distribution of dollar-for-dollar
monies are actually benefiting the poor more than the rich.
For instance, if $20 in food stamps is spent at the A&B Grocery store,
and the grocer profits 30% of the sales of that $20 spent, then that institution gains $6. Therefore, the conclusion would be that the
person(s) using the food stamps gained $20 worth of goods, while the institution gained
only a fraction of that amount.
Variables could then need to be factored
in if we were to dig deeper into this scenario, such as how much the $6 profit helps that
business in a depressed economy, and whether the person spending the $20 in food stamps
bought generic brands of food or name brands, or whether they work (let’s say bagging
groceries) at the very store they are purchasing from, therefore gaining employment. In a depressed economy, these small profits of an
extra $6 here and there might make the difference between the grocer keeping his/her doors
open (instead of closing permanently) because the store is finally making enough profit,
and has adequate staff to keep the balance tipped in their favor, thanks to the food stamp
program serving so many in the poorest area of town.
The view might change completely in a rich
part of town, where very few food stamps are used, and the grocery store is just one of
many in a highly successful nationwide franchised chain of stores. In that case, the simple formula measurement
method would also show that the rich do not appear to profit much at all from
programs meant exclusively for those in poverty. These
are extreme cases though, and so one has to ask what the structural norm is regarding such
institutions, and how these kinds of handout programs affect them and the apparent
negative effects of poverty. At this point,
anthropologists, sociologists, social scientists, psychologists, physicists, engineers,
economists, and other professionals would have to come together to work on a formula that
would more accurately measure just how this dichotomy between the rich and the poor (with
an increasingly widening gap, leaving the middle-class as a shrinking entity) actually
delivers the well-known fact of the “rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer”
issue.
The
economy, at least regarding capitalism in America, appears to proliferate the problem of
poverty in a never-ending cycle. Many of the poor are blamed for their plight,
but it is NOT always because the poor are lazy or unwilling to work (a stereotype).
Most work and/or want to work (Lauer and Lauer, 2008). However, when businesses hurt, such as we see
happening today in the news, jobs for the people are diminished, and bailouts (another
type of handout) are only helping a few corporations rather than a huge number of
large-to-small businesses nationwide that are also suffering. If the A&B Grocery store mentioned above
– employing a nearby resident, who also buys groceries from the store using food
stamps – has a financial crisis and has to close the store (perhaps due to a severe
storm that broke windows, knocked things off the shelves, and caused a sudden looting
problem) then the former employee may realize that he has lost his job and join in the
looting process to make up for his own losses. Or
may be he was just working when it happened and he was trying to save the most valuable
items by grabbing them up and putting them in a safe place for the owner. Either way, he is spotted with store items in his
arms, running around like everyone else until he had a scuffle with one of the looters and
a gun went off, killing the other man, and it is all caught on the store camera.
One would question at this point about the
character of the former employee – if he thought it was okay to loot the store
alongside his cohorts – and whether or not he had stolen from the store owner
previously, perhaps while on the job. Criminal
and violent behavior is very common when there is one or more social structural factors
involved: when socioeconomic status is low, education is lacking, the individual is young
and male, friends and/or family are involved in behaviors considered a “norm”
for them but is socially unacceptable – and even criminal – according to the
majority of society (Lauer and Lauer, 2008). The
young man’s former boss might have stereotyped him because of his appearance, but
felt sorry for his plight and desperate need for work, and hired him anyway. Or, after the store was looted and he got
arrested, the cops may have questioned the young man about his life, who he knows, why he
was there, and any previous criminal behavior (let’s say the man had a clean record
and had never done anything against the law, despite his life circumstances of being poor,
a high school dropout, coming from a family where the father was an imprisoned felon, and
his brother was a well-known drug dealer on the streets, etc.). The cops would see all of these “indicators”
and consider the man as someone who “fits the profile,” in which case, they
would be committing the ecological fallacy and pigeonholing him as a life-long criminal
who “just hadn’t gotten caught until now.”
Because of his situation, even if he were
completely innocent, the social structural factors would work against the young man. If the “proof” of the video tape (of the
looting, with items in his arms, and the gun fight and death of the other man) were shown
at his jury trial, he would have a much higher chance of being convicted and imprisoned,
where he would learn from hardened criminals what he would need to know to “get back”
at the people who hurt him by putting him there when he didn’t deserve it. A well-meaning young man, who had somehow managed
to break the cycle of poverty by working hard and saving money in his bank account, and
was taking classes at night to study for his GED test so he could go to community college,
was then – through the years until he got out and “got back” at the cops
and others who ensured his imprisonment – turned into a premeditated murdering
criminal because of structural violence and selective victimization that worked against
him.
Obviously many variables would need to be
weighed into a formula for why poverty is linked to the social institutions of the
government, economy, family, and education. The
answer is not short and sweet, nor all of the reasons obvious (although they may seem to
be at first glance), but certainly programs for the poor also help the rich get richer,
and make the poor get poorer. Now, with the
simple method formula being obviously flawed, more studies need to be done to find out the
reasons why… why poverty is affected so deeply by social institutions and how
that cycle can be broken rather than made worse as time goes on.
References
Lauer, R. H., Lauer, J. C. (2008) Social Problems and the Quality of Life (11th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.