poverty myths

The statistics below come from the study's web page, it explicitly bursts all the main myths about poverty in the US. These myths have been perpetrated over the years by bourgeois reformists and reactionaries alike. Many of the conceptions of poverty in the US are based in the most vile racist and anti-working class lies. The lies serve to both turn the target of talk about poverty into a discussion of race that ultimately seeks to blame minorities, immigrants and single mothers for all poverty as if poverty were a moral problem while ignoring and erasing the reality of the working class.

Myths and Facts about Low-Income

Working Families

Myth

Low-income families do not work.

Fact

72% of low-income families work.

Myth

Low-income families do not work hard.

Fact

The average annual work effort for low-income working families is 2,552 hours, roughly one and one-quarter full-time jobs.

Myth

Low-income working families are headed by single parents.

Fact

52% of low-income working families are headed by married couples.

Myth

Low-income working families are headed by immigrants.

Fact

69% of low-income working families have only American-born parents.

Myth

Low-income working families have very young parents.

Fact

89% of low-income working families have a parent between ages 25 and 54.

Myth

Low-income working families are overwhelmingly minority.

Fact

43% of low-income working families have white, non-Hispanic parents.

Myth

Low-income working families are dependent on public assistance.

Fact

25% of low-income working families receive food stamp assistance.

Detroit, Gary, New Orleans, and many other cities are looking a lot like that these days. Gary has a stretch of downtown that is largely uninhabited with weeds growing in the cracks in the sidewalks and in the streets up to your knees. These places have been like this for so long that nobody even thinks about it anymore, that Detroit is dangerous the way Bogota is dangerous. At this point it is probably one of the most dangerous places to be in the western hemisphere, right up there with Port-Au-Prince and Bogota. A poll conducted a while back indicated that a majority of Detroit's residents would leave Detroit if they had the chance. The mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick has been unseated and sent to jail because he was caught lying to investigators about an incident that resulted in the death of a call girl/stripper. Chances are the mayor probably had her killed for some reason or other. Detroit has looked like a bomb dropped on it for much of the last three decades. I remember the days when people would go burn buildings down for fun on the night before Halloween. In a celebration called "Hell Night", literally, hundreds of young people once a year would nihilistically go around burning buildings to the ground. As you can see in the YouTube clip there is no shortage of empty buildings to torch.

With a shrinking population the school districts have shrinking enrollment sizes and the city government has the perfect excuse for budget cuts and consolidation. The teachers get paid very little and they often go on strike against a regime that doesn't even pretend to care about them, or the students who serve no purpose beyond that of a wage depressing mass, an industrial reserve army that will never be called up for duty again.

The saddest part is that just when you've thought you've heard the worst about Detroit, there is always something you haven't heard about that's even worse than that. I would not be surprised if we started hearing stories from Detroit about slavery and organ harvesting, or stories about cops getting into gang warfare over the right to shoot street kids like they do in Rio di Janeiro and if it happened in Detroit I'm not sure anyone would care.