Monday, January 18, 2016

The Poorest of the Poor

A second problem that I have with Bernie Sanders' campaign to be President is his utter lack of concern for the well-being of the poor.

Earlier, I wrote about Sanders' use of the "politics of other" to promote his candidacy. This is a campaign tactic where a candidate identifies some group to identify as "other". The target audience is told that "the other" is responsible for their problems and that the candidate will get tough on "the other" if elected. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump identifies foreigners and Muslims as "the other". Bernie Sanders targets billionaires.

Sanders' other problem is a disregard for the very poor.

In making this accusation, I am referring to the very poor on a global scale.

The World Bank reports that, in 2012, 12.7 percent of the world's population (900 million people) lived on less than $1.90 per day, while 29.4 percent (2.1 billion people) lived on less than $3.10 per day. In 1981, 44 percent of the population lived in extreme poverty.

Most of these gains occurred in China, where "753 million people moved above $1.90 threshold" between 1981 and 2012.

For somebody worried about poverty, it would seem that this is a good thing.

A person who was concerned with the plight of the very poor, it would seem, would consider this to be a good thing, and would want to see this continue. He would want to see the remaining 900 million people moved above the lower line, then see everybody move above the upper line.

Sanders almost never discusses global poverty. The fate of the poorest of the world's poor seems not to interest him.

This fact sits beside the fact that Sanders presents himself as an advocate of economic justice. He expresses a strong moral concern with economic equality. This would seem to entail some measure of concern for those people living on less than $1.90 per day.

However, Sanders simply dismisses the plight of the world's poor.

In a Vox interview, Bernie Sanders said:

I think from a moral responsibility [sic] we've got to work with the rest of the industrialized world to address the problems of international poverty, but you don't do that by making people in this country even poorer.
I know of no way of interpreting Sanders' moral claim here other than to say that it counts as a legitimate objection to a policy that aids those in poverty that the program reduces the wealth of those who have much, much more."

Let us imagine a convention of millionaires in a hotel somewhere. Imagine that somebody brings up the issue of poverty - even American poverty. Imagine the individual in that room saying, "I support the Bernie Sanders doctrine. I think from a position of moral responsibility we've got to work with the rest of the country to address the problems of poverty, but you don't do that by making people in this room even poorer."

The important fact to note is that Bernie Sanders has given voice to this very same principle. He has used it in defense of his policies. Either there must be some morally valid reason why this a valid moral principle when Bernie Sanders utters it but not when the millionaire in the room utters it, or Sanders is guilty of hypocrisy. It is a hypocrisy that he can avoid only by choosing to be concerned with the plight of those living on less than $1.90 per day and saying, "Yes, the quality of their lives matter."

Furthermore, the fact of the matter is that the successes against global poverty have not made the people in this country even poorer. Real median household income in the United States has risen approximately 10 percent over the same time period - from about $46,000 in 1981 to $51,000 in 2012 in real dollars. Certainly, many Americans would have liked to have seen a faster rate of increase, but Americans have not been made poorer.

The "make Americans poorer" argument is a rationalization - a lie (if Sanders knows what has happened to American median income during this time period), or a fiction embraced as true because of its political usefulness.

More to the point, there is reason to believe that some of the policies Sanders will pursue will reverse some of the progress that has been made. If a policy - such as restricting international trade - would have the effect of throwing 100 million foreigners back into extreme poverty, Sanders' attitude suggests that he would not see this as a relevant concern.

One of the things that I seriously dislike about Sanders' campaign - is the fact that he refuses to even address the fate of the people in the world living at near poverty. It is one thing to refuse to have a plan to help these people. It is another to refuse to address very real possibility that one is advocating policies that will make their situation worse - that will reverse 30 years of progress.

The only sensible conclusion to draw from these facts is that, to Sanders, those people simply don't matter.

Here, too, we see Sanders' adopting a moral attitude that is very similar to the attitude that Donald Trump expresses - though Trump is more vocal in his defense. This involves the utter disregard for the well-being of foreigners. Those who are not Americans are not "people" in an important sense. What happens to them is not a moral concern.  

The differences is that, while Trump expresses an active hostility towards foreigners, Bernie Sanders simply doesn't care about them. If we return 1.2 billion to severe poverty - well - they're not Americans. It's not as if their suffering actually matters.

5 comments:

Geoff said...

The brute fact is, nobody in the USA cares about "the poorest of the poor". Insofar as they think about them at all, Americans consistently overestimate the amount of aid that the US provides, and would prefer that we spend less. Any politician who expressed the moral sentiments you endorse would substantially reduce their chances of electoral success. Why should any candidate do so?

Your blog piece would make more sense if you replaced "Sanders" with "all politicians" (mutatis mutandis). Instead, you seem to focus on Sanders. Why?

Alonzo Fyfe said...

Since I write so many posts objecting to the making of derogatory overgeneralizations (which, indeed, was the first of the objections to the Sanders campaign that I posted), it would hardly suit me now to make derogatory overgeneralizations.

The activities that Jimmy Carter, the senior George Bush, and Bill Clinton engaged in demonstrated that they did, in fact, care about the well-being of the poorest of the poor. There's a reason why the world was able to cut extreme global poverty in half - and much of that reason was the trade liberalization that these politicians pursued. Then, you look at the private activities of these individuals. All of them show great concern for the poorest of the poor.

Sanders is the only candidate running in either party who is actively campaigning on a platform that would reverse that progress. As he does so, he explicitly states that it is wrong to transfer wealth from those who have more to those who have less. And all of this while he insists on the moral imperative of redistributing the wealth of the very rich.

mojo.rhythm said...

If a policy - such as restricting international trade - would have the effect of throwing 100 million foreigners back into extreme poverty, Sanders' attitude suggests that he would not see this as a relevant concern.
Ha Joon Chan, a very good economist from the London School of Economics, showed in his book Kicking Out the Ladder, that nearly every single major economic powerhouse got to where it is today by disobeying the free trade mantra. It was only after they got huge and wealthy that they 'kicked out the ladder' and pursued free trade policies.

The activities that Jimmy Carter, the senior George Bush, and Bill Clinton engaged in demonstrated that they did, in fact, care about the well-being of the poorest of the poor.
Bill Clinton? The same man who endorsed sanctions in Iraq which caused over 500,000 Iraqi children to starve to death? You regard that man as having concern for the world's poor? To put it into perspective, the two UN diplomats who were charged with overseeing the sanctions resigned in protest because they stated that the sanctions were "genocidal". Or what about the fact that NAFTA caused countless numbers of poor people from Mexico to flee to the United States because the trade liberalization caused their places of work to shut down (as they were out-competed by massive multinationals)? Does none of this enter into your equation?

mojo.rhythm said...

Sanders is the only candidate running in either party who is actively campaigning on a platform that would reverse that progress.

Assuming that your beliefs about free trade are correct. But they are highly, highly disputed. Surely you acknowledge this?

Alonzo Fyfe said...

Concerning the Iraq sanctions - a policy such as that can only be evaluated in the light of available alternatives. Clinton came into office after the sanctions were already in place. Among the options were (1) an invasion of Iraq (we saw how well that worked out), (2) empowering Saddam Hussein (or practice of propping up despotic dictators has not been one of our most shining accomplishments), or (3) supporting civil war, or (4) supporting an Iranian conquest of Iraq. And there was the fact that Saddam Hussein could have brought the sanctions to an end easily enough. Why is he always let off the hook? The point being that this is a highly complex issue and a red herring.

Now, as for the actual subject under consideration:

To start, one must take some care with a phrase such as "your beliefs about free trade".

What is commonly known as "free trade" - particularly in some conservative circles - would be more accurately described as "corporate feudalism" in the ways that it distributes powers and immunities among the lords (corporate executives) and serfs (workers). For example, there is the fact that the people in one group can kill millions through pollution and are merely fines, while the people in the second group are executed if they kill only one. The former group can rob people of billions of dollars with impunity, and the latter group gets shot taking a pair of shoes.

The way some "free trade" advocates treats an issue like climate change is actually the definition of communism - the environment (the climate) is held in commons until it is destroyed.

With those things understood, I would like to know a better explanation as to how 900 million people were brought out of extreme poverty without the so-called "exportation of jobs" that tooks place in that same era. And it was not the case that their benefit came at a reduction in the standard of living in the United States. In that same time period, the standard of living in the US continued to grow - though slowly - while the poorest of the poor caught up.

Even if it is "highly disputed" (I regard that it is highly disputed in the same way that man-made climate change is "highly disputed") Sanders does not even acknowledge a dispute. It would be one thing for Sanders to say, "There are worries over the effects these policies would have on global poverty - here are my ideas on global poverty."

Instead, Sanders answer to these concerns is to ignore them, or to literally say that a policy that aids the poorest of the poor can be rejected if it makes those who are better off poorer. That was his actual answer to the question discussed in the article above. That is the principle he put forth. The fate of the poorer of the poor cannot be addressed by policies that make those who are better off poorer.

Finally, I can (and have) provided a number of arguments favoring a redistribution of wealth. Not in the way that Sanders would redistribute wealth. Sanders' policies regarding wealth distribution also ignore the poorest of the poor. In effect, he wants to take the wealth of the top 5% and redistribute it to people in the top 60-95% range - and ignore the bottom 60%. For example, I would argue for a 100% estate tax on wealth above a certain limit, which an individual can only avoid by donating it to a viable charity that serves those with the greatest need (e.g., the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation).