Market Fundamentalism and the Compassion Gap

There is good paper up at Longview Institute called The Compassion Gap in American Poverty Policy (link to a pdf on this page). The article discusses several key points about poverty in America.

- An increasing number of Americans are falling below the poverty line.

- Poverty continues to grow along Black, Hispanic, women, and Female-headed Household lines.

- The American Dream, a single family home, health care, and a college education is increasingly beyond those living at the minimum wage and below the poverty line.

- The inflation of prices for housing, health insurance, high quality child care, and higher education put those basics of the good life out of the reach of a growing number of Americans.

- The American Dream has been eroded by the reduction in assistance to the poor.

- Other countries who provide assistance to the poor do much better than the U. S. regarding these basic statistics.

The article goes on to discuss the compassion gap: the idea that people who live in poverty are the victims of their own bad behavior. This is an idea that has been trotted out for a lot of years. The article goes on to point the many contradictions underlying the notion.

The key idea underlying the compassion gap is the market fundamentalist approach. The market will work its magic in lifting everyone out of poverty. Those who don’t make it out of poverty are merely the victims of their own bad behavior. Therefore, the mind of the market fundamentalist is thoroughly absolved from responsibility when the market prices the essentials of a decent life beyond the reach of millions of people.

One can approach America’s immoral approach to poverty in many ways: Marxism, Socialism, Progressivism, etc. The plain fact is that the market fundamentalist approach and its immorality have not worked to make this a better country for all its citizens, and every time there is a virulent attack of market fundamentalism, poverty and suffering increases.

One does not need to be ultra-radical in one’s critique to separate out the facts from the ideology. The question is given the massive support a functioning market requires from society is it even worth the effort to have a market economy? We might merely be involved in a redistribution of income scheme and nothing more. The old standby defense for the market by the market fundamentalist is that the economy is growing. We are much better off than we were 35 years ago. The simple reply is no--some are better off, but many are not. Indeed, the ranks of those who are not are swelling.